News From DogBrain Studios & TEAM ELF

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

JAVA JIVE
" I like Coffee...
I like Tea!
I like the Java Jive and it likes me!"

So I got this buddy, been my best friend pretty much since we were in 6th grade together, back when dinosaurs roamed Venice beach looking to pick up bivalves. We have stayed best friends by maintaining a couple of rules:

1) Respecting each other for who he is and not trying to change him
2) Supporting each other even if that involves holding hair while vomiting
3) Maintaining a level of confidentiality that would make the Kennnedy conspiritors envious
4) Living as FAR THE HELL AWAY FROM EACH OTHER AS POSSIBLE!

This last point's elegance will not be wasted on those who have attempted long term friendships or marriages. Separation is key, it maintain a level of detachment that is essential. We started out living close together but he moved to Kuai ans I moved to Santa Monic, then he moved to Seattle and I moved to North bay.

When he was in Seattle, Olympia actually, I started to go visit him on occasion. I was living in Sacramento when I started this ritual, something he and I called "the Drive". You get in your car with tapes, food and a gas card and drive like a fool until you get where you wanted to be...usually about 9 hours.

During one trip, on the way back from FOOD (a fine diner on the highway headed for the Olympics) we stopped to pick me up a towel before a cruise on Steve's venerable TROJAN cabin cruiser. Outside the "Cheap Towel and Car Parts" place there was a shivering guy with a little cart. At this point I will stop while you load ominous music as this poor freezing bastard was the harbinger of things to come for all of us. This was the first ESPRESSO CART I had ever seen. Steve told me that these things had been popping up around town like Zombies after a spring rain. We scoffed at the concept of $3 for a cup of coffee and enjoyed a day of the waters of Puget Sound.

Next trip up Steve and I went to the ULTIMATE geek playground, the BOEING SURPLUS YARD. As I strolled through the gates, my brain all aswim with thoughts of cheap Cleco Fasteners and Surplus AirCal passenger seats I notice not one but THREE of those Karts, now brightly coloured and "manned" by attractive young women with winning smiles and Ligere that qualified as architecture. Understand that the scrapyard is located in the FINEST subdevelopments made of refridgerator crates in the industrial district of Seattle. This time I actually bought something from the pneumatic barrissta...the drug had entered my system and all was lost.

So here I sit in STARBUCKS, pounding this out while my Venti-Triple-Non-Fat-Latte cools. The ciurcle of Caffine is complete.

posted by Martin 5:27 PM