Music and more with claudecat17 (aka Chris Davlin)!

I’ve been a coffee drinker all my life, beginning at age 14 or so after a short fascination with various teas and even more exotic things. Ever try Postum? It was or maybe still is a coffee-ish hot beverage powder made of, like, healthy shit. We had it in the pantry so I tried it. Not terrible but no caffeine, which I’d already come to depend on to help face each morning’s barrage of unpleasantness that on most weekdays ended with being in my home room at school. I walked to school all through my educational experience aside from one year in first grade. It sucked only during blizzards or heavy rain, but I digress.

As years passed I never stopped drinking coffee, but it was never anything fancy. Most often it was what I made in my own treasured Mr Coffee brand drip coffee maker, passed down from mom’s house, where it had been in heavy heavy use for over 5 years. It was a fairly fancy one for the era, with a timer function, even a little screen with more elaborate settings now forgotten, never used anyway.

All I looked for in coffee back then was the basics. Is it hot? Is it coffee? Good enough! Although I could tell a good cup from a bad one. Once I was buying my own I always bought on sale, though I remember going through phases like that Luzianne stuff with chicory or Cafe Bustelo, both cheap so automatically attractive. I’d drink any brand, whatever was cheapest that week.

In truth I never had a favorite brand until much much later, well into my 30s, when I found that the Wegman’s supermarket literally across the street from my building had coffee grinders right in the aisles so you could grind your own right there. I tried a few of the on sale options, naturally, but eventually found 8 O’Clock brand 100% Columbian, with the delightful phrase “vigorous and winey” right there on every bag. That’s actually not a bad description! It’s still my favorite, though Amazon has a knockoff that’s a little cheaper and just as good.

I was moved to write about all this by my recent increase in quality and quantity of coffee ingestion, more specifically how much goddamn coffee I’m now drinking daily. It’s maybe 4-5 large cups a day, often 2 just to get fully awake in whatever part of the day is currently morning for me. It changes…

The coffee I make now is perfect every time. I still use a simple drip coffee maker, a cheap one bought using surprisingly little Amazon gift card money – It was under $14! It’s nothing fancy but the thing I really like is the permanent filter, so easy to wash and care for, and it’ll never wear out. Where the fuck was this feature in the 70’s? Did I just miss it entirely? Buying filters was as second nature as buying toilet paper, which they can be used for in a pinch. Living as a single guy by yourself teaches you things…

My routine is simple. Two slightly heaping little scoopers full of the coffee, currently the Amazon, already refunded due to my insistence that it’s not as good as 8 O’Clock, which it’s not. Tastes just like it though! Being an English major for the motherfucking win, baby! We know all about loopholes. We have to, being destitute and all.

Pro tip: any food item you buy on the big A can be refunded without any need to send it back. They just credit your gift card or whatever way you want it. You only have to interact with an automated return bot via chat and answer none of the above to a few things and bada bing! You get free coffee!

Still with me? So 2 scoops of the coffee, then I fill the machine with clean cold water up to the handy indicator line that reads 3, close the handy lid fully, and wander the kitchen looking for ways to quickly make things more handy, maybe check the fridge for later. I rarely eat anything with my “morning” joe, the only exception being an occasional bag of Frosted Donettes, chocolate, or their Little Debbie equivalent. Not the whole bag. Maybe 5-8 per coffee. That John Belushi ad really worked!

The key to my success recently has been finding a large ceramic mug that fits the handy 3 line amount of coffee perfectly, but better yet it’s massive so it absorbs heat quickly. I can be literally guzzling my brew within a minute or two max. Oh, and I add only real sugar to my coffee after a brief foray into the world of fancy creamers months ago. I liked them but they got to be too much. That’s a dessert, not a coffee, Black with sugar, two heaping teaspoons please, but not too heaping. It’s delicious every goddamn time! Good to the last motherfuckin’ drop, even with that sediment crap in it, every motherfuckin’ time.

I should settle down. I normally don’t cuss that much, but I get excited about my coffee now! I haven’t even mentioned the grinder I have now or the blower thing I already had that keeps it clean. Grinding (I like it coarse, and my coffee itself relatively weak) can get very messy, with coffee grounds on everything until you’re done and can blow them onto the floor for air freshening purposes and/or ambiance.

That’s my coffee story. I always used to try to find a tune on the old blog to match the topic, so I’ll do that here too. I searched titles and artists for the word coffee and this was the most intriguing one. Ella Mae Morse was like 18 when her big hit “Cow cow Boogie” put brand new Capitol Records on the map and in the black. I have an old post on her I’ll recycle at some point.

My old stereo, as mentioned in the long comment down yonder. Concert Hall quality it was not…

This tune’s a lot more modern and big band-y, almost bop-ish, way different from her hits, which were shockingly great sounding blues records with occasional yodeling and lyrics not typically sung by young white women at the time. Loco weed is mentioned in her million seller! She seems to have survived but there had to have been some pushback from the religious and other idiots when “Cow Cow Boogie” turned into what “Call Me Maybe” was some years ago.

This is not that but it’s nice nevertheless and fits the profile. There’s a funny clip on YouTube of Ella Mae with Liberace, who was a giant star for a few years as TV was becoming popular. I’ll leave finding that one to the reader. Either of you…