Turn Your Head and Coffee

"Is it impossible to get a cup of coffee flavored coffee anywhere in this country? What happened with the coffee? Did I miss a f*%^ing meeting with the coffee? You can get every other flavor except coffee flavored coffee. They got mochachino, chocaccino, frappaccino, cappuccino, rappuccino, Al Pacino - what the f$&%!" - Comedian Denis Leary, "Lock 'n Load"

That was me two years ago. I couldn't stand the taste of any kind of coffee that dared to touch my mouth that didn't taste like what coffee was supposed to taste like - coffee.

It was a rich, unique, robust flavor that kept me woke me up when I felt like sleeping and kept me going when I felt like dropping like a bag of cement out of a twentieth story window on top of a car. It had just the right amount of caffeine to keep me buzzed but not so much that I would twitch and squirm uncontrollably until people thought I was nervously carrying some kind of makeshift fertilizer bomb in my pants.

I even gave up the coffee for a long time. I rejected all forms of caffeine totally because my friend and exercise buddy at the time, Chris, told me it's an essential part of losing weight. And he was right! I lost forty pounds in the span of five months. I thought I was rid of the ground menace forever until I crossed over...to the Other Side.

I think the minute I first became a college student, something instinctively inside me screamed, "I need a latte! Now!" The first sign that should've tipped me off was the fact there's a Starbucks less than a block from my dorm room. I ran down the sidewalk as fast as my Doc Martins could carry me and ordered the largest container of coffee I could buy.

"Give me a large coffee!" I screamed at the waitress.

"Uh, I'm sorry we don't have that here?" the waitress said in a frightened tone if I were a rabid animal foaming at the mouth while asking for a cappuccino.

I looked feverishly at the menu above my head. "All right!" I bellowed again. "Give me a large café latte!"

"Large?" she asked confused and looking even more frightened than before. She didn't know what the word large means! Why did they change the sizes? There's a million Starbucks all over the world. Everything was fine until they changed the sizes! Next thing you know, you'll have to use the metric system to divulge the exact volume of creamy, caffeinated goodness you want.

My Brazilian Cocoa hormones were already raging with the raw efficiency of a thoroughbred. "ME WANT COFFEE IN BIG CUP NOW!" I shouted.

"Oh OK, please don't hurt me sir," the waitress said in a voice so meek, it could only be heard on internal sonar. "VENTI LATTE, AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BRING IT NOW!" It took five members of the SWAT team to pull me out of that Starbucks when I asked for a cream cheese danish.

Now, my trashcan is overflowing with old, biscotti wrappers and empty Starbucks containers. I find my twitching and shaking for no reason helps when I have to sit on the street corner with an empty coffee cup in my hand while passers-by toss loose change into it. I may not have the restraint or the control I once exhibited when I had the power to say no to a tall iced Colombia Nariño Supremo, but now I've got enough change to do my laundry for another week.

Make Roommate for Daddy

"Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates... When I pointed it out to my roommate, he said, 'do I know you?'" - Steven Wright

One of the great things about this side of life called college besides the drinking, the total freedom and the drinking is that it's the best way to prepare yourself for the real world once you get a job and stop borrowing money from your folks to pay your own water bill every month. Believe me, that side's a bigger mess than the one I'm in now and we have textbooks here to help us out.

But no textbook, no pamphlet, no educational film can fully prepare you for the experience of living with someone else for the first time. The only way anyone can survive sharing a one-room apartment with somebody else is to just do it in a controlled setting, preferably one with armed security guards.

I wasn't very keen on having to share a living space with someone else for the next two to four years. I loved having my own room. Sure, I had to spend it under the same roof as my parents so I wasn't totally liberated, but I still had a room that I could decorate and call my own. But I knew that when the time came for me to marry supermodel Molly Sims who will defy the laws of time and space by not aging a single day until I meet her by having her body cryogenically frozen, I'd have to learn to live with another human being.

So I packed up every thing I owned into the largest cardboard box that Office Depot stocked and moved into my dorm room when I found this stranger, lying on a bed in my room watching a Queen video on VH-1.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Hi, I'm Josh," he said smiling with his hand extended. I immediate slapped it away.

"Who the hell do you think you are, buddy?" I asked angrily. "You think you can just waltz in here, lie on my bed, watch my TV in MY room whenever you damn well please?"

"Yeah, see I'm your roommate," he responded. There was a short pause. I looked at him momentarily.

"Oh," I said meekly. "Uh, nice to meet you. Did you want this side of the room or what?"

I flipped out. I freaked. But I apologized after our neighbors managed to get me out of the headlock he had me in. We pressed on. I've tried to ignore the little things Josh does that make me want to smash myself in the head with a crowbar. I thought I was the biggest slob in the world when it came to food and/or eating. I thought I had reached new heights when I accomplished the Sour Cream Mild Chicken Wing Eat Off of 1995, which I completed in the time it took to watch an episode of "South Park," but this guy took that cake and pureéd in his blender.

He buys popcorn practically everyday, and enjoys an occasional snack every now and then. But one day, I came home from class and found this bag of popped popcorn with one side ripped all the way open sitting on his bed. I personally could never eat a lot of popcorn. Something with that much salt content shouldn't be fed to horses.

Anyway, the bag remained there and I soon forgot about it. But suddenly, the bag mysterious disappeared and three days later, it reappeared under his bed practically uneaten. Again, I dismissed the mysterious popcorn bag from my mind figuring that if this thing did have some kind of supernatural power, it would've killed me by then.

Now, I'm not making this part up and if you know Josh, my roommate, personally, don't tell him I published this because he'd probably stick my hand in an operating blender on the soonest margarita night. But anyway, I woke up one morning late for class and Josh was just waking up as well. I could tell he was starving basically because he couldn't stop screaming, "God#&$@, I'm #&*$ing hungry." Just call it intuition on my part.

And wouldn't you know it, the Gods of the Food Pyramid were smiling upon him that day because he found the gracious gift of the popcorn bag under his bed and proceeded to enjoy the microwaved treat, which by then had enough microscopic bacteria to start an mitosis convention.

Needless to say, I've been eating my meals in the cafeteria ever since. But I realize that nobody's perfect and that everyone has flaws or little habits in their life that somehow materialize behind the curtains they hide them behind. I'm sure I do a billion things that drive my roommate up the wall.

He always leaves the room when I'm walking around in my Spider-Man underoos. I'd try to talk to him, but man can he run fast.