Brad Warthen's Blog

I spent everything I had for this hat

Finding myself at the Surfside Pier this afternoon, and having forgotten to bring a hat (having the sun glaring down in the gap over my shades drives me nuts), it occurred to me that I had never, in all these years, bought a hat that said "Surfside Beach."

And "all these years" is a lot of years. My grandfather bought two lots down here in about 1957. He built a little cottage on one of them. In about 1968, he built a house on the other lot, which is on a freshwater lake about two blocks from the ocean. He sold the other one to a friend of the family, and the lady lived there for about the next 30 years. Then it was sold and torn down to make way for TWO houses of the tall, skinny, stilted variety that started cropping up around here about 15 years ago. Here's a coincidence for you -- Tim Kelly has stayed in one of those houses, which are right across the street from the "new" house. Very small world.

Anyway, needing a hat, I spotted this beauty. I hope you like it, because it cost $8.99 plus tax (see the price tag still on it, my little tribute to Minnie Pearl), and I only had a sawbuck in my wallet.

In fact, I had to take $2 out of my wife's purse to buy coffee at this coffee shop so I could come post this. I didn't want the coffee, but you have to have cover. Speaking of cover, as I've mentioned before, this coffee shop is actually sort of a front. The real business is a commercial bakery in the back. Zoning rules required that it be a retail business, so they put in the coffee shop as a sort of retail fig leaf. A few minutes ago, the young counterwoman said she was leaving, but I didn't have to leave; I should just let the guy in the back know when I leave. Very casual. I'm glad I'm not keeping her, the way the old man did the waiter in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." She had enough on her mind because she was trying to keep tabs on a little boy out in front of the cafe, in the bright sunlight. She had to keep telling him to get out of the street. She had been sitting in the sun in front of the place when I arrived, and it was easier to keep track of the boy that way, so I felt bad that she had to come in on my account. I felt worse that she had to brew decaf for me. She said she didn't mind. But it occurs to me that she would have been perfectly happy if I had just come in to use the internet connection rather than insisting on buying something. Since the main business is in the back and all.

She's getting married soon, so I congratulated her.

By the way, I didn't really come in just to post this. I came in to get my column ready to post tomorrow. What, you think I don't have better things to do?

Stepping forward into the past: My cool new Moleskine notebook

As you may have gathered, I'm a bit of a gadget guy. One of the reasons I blog is for the opportunities it gives me to mess around with cameras and PDAs and laptops and the various ways you can use them to produce text, sound, video, etc. This very night, in fact, I'll be trekking out to the Verizon store to get a Blackberry to replace the Treo I use for work. That Blackberry will be, as my Treo is now, a place for working with e-mail, my calendar, my contacts, as well as providing another browsing platform and a backup camera. Oh, yeah, and a phone (although I use the current one least for that).

But at the moment I am most enchanted with a piece of low-tech, retro equipment that my youngest daughter was so thoughtful as to give me for Christmas, ignoring my hint for a new insulated coffee travel mug. She gave me a Moleskine notebook -- specifically, a Moleskine Reporter Ruled Notebook. You may have seen them in bookstores. They're advertised as the notebook of Hemingway and Picasso. In years past, I had thought of buying one (I was a great admirer of Hemingway in my youth, and he had something to do with my choice of career). But I couldn't justify the expense. After all, I get all the reporter's notebooks I need for free at work, right?

But I misunderestimated, to use a bit of Bushspeak, the magic of a really nice, classic, classy notebook in one's pocket. I just started carrying it yesterday, and it's already affecting how I work -- for the better, I think. Since the notebook itself is special, it makes me think a little more carefully about what I choose to jot down. And it also makes me WANT to come up with stuff that's worthy to write in it. It's a motivator in the way a blank screen on a laptop or a PDA is not. It's like, I don't know, working on a painting or something -- the sense that what I write here stays here, is permanent, has a life, and if this notebook is dug out of an old box in an attic by one of my great-grandchildren, they will read what I am writing today.

I find myself thinking I need to get a better pen to write in it with.

The book itself is esthetically appealing -- you can see why Hemingway might have wanted to carry one around the Montparnasse or to the bullring or the front or whatever. It's a perfect size for the hand and the suitcoat pocket. It's black. The paper is of high quality. It has that cool, built-in elastic band to secure it with, giving a feeling of completeness and accomplishment when you finish a note and get ready to put it back in your pocket. Using it is just an appealing tactile, visual and interactive experience all around.

And it's making me more efficient, of all things. Y'all know how I tend to start my day with breakfast downtown, where I pore over The State and The Wall Street Journal and whatever I else I have time to look at over my coffee. Well, I get a lot of ideas while doing that, but too often, by the time I get back to the office, and have my morning meeting, and then start dealing with the e-mail that has to be read and the copy that has to be moved and talking with Robert about a cartoon and so forth and so on, next thing you know it's past lunch and my ideas of the morning are long forgotten.

This morning, I had a column idea for Sunday of the classic ephemeral sort that would be likely to evaporate long before I had time to start on it -- bits and pieces from different stories I was reading in the paper. Wanting to hang onto the thread, I thought of sending myself some notes by e-mail on the Treo. But that is cumbersome at best, typing on that little thumb keyboard, and it lends itself only to the shortest of reminders. But then I remembered the notebook. So I sent myself an e-mail that simply said:

Hope springs, even in South Carolina politics

See Moleskin notebook

Then I opened my notebook and filled two pages with an outline for the column, an outline that would be just waiting for me to flesh out at my first opportunity (which, as it happens, did not arrive until mid-afternoon). Since I all too often don't write the first word of my Sunday column until midday Friday, this put me more than a day ahead on one of my must-do tasks of the week. Consequently, I might have a chance to write an extra column to run Tuesday (a page that has to be done this week because of the MLK holiday), one that occurred to me as I was doing the final editing on the Tuesday editorial (about the Obama inaugural).

A classic, simple black notebook. What an ingenious device for enhancing personal productivity. What will they think of next?

How is coffee affecting me? It's none of your blasted BUSINESS, that's how! So BACK OFF, Jack!

Recently, I've gotten a number of e-mail releases from a "Dr. Mike Magee," and in the split-second I spend deciding whether to delete an e-mail or save it to look at later, I had saved these, under the vague impression that they were from someone I actually knew, namely the erstwhile USC athletic director.

But noo-o-o-o-o! These messages are from some busybody stranger who's asking me nosy questions such as:

The Coffee Fix
How is coffee affecting your life?

By Mike Magee, MD
Is coffee part of your daily routine? If it is, you are like millions of Americans, who start their day with a cup – or two or three – of coffee. But even if it's part of your daily routine, it makes sense to stop and ask a few questions. How much do you know about your morning pick-me-up? Do you ever think about where it comes from or how it’s affecting your body?

First, he hammers on my conscience:

Most small farmers sell their coffee directly to middlemen exporters who pay them below market price for their harvests and keep a high percentage for themselves. This forces these farmers into a cycle of poverty that keeps working conditions poor, wages low, and often involves child labor. Coffee workers are usually paid the equivalent to sweatshop wages and they toil under harsh conditions.

With all of this in mind, we’re left with two major questions about coffee. One, is it good or bad for your health? And two, what about the health and well-being of the coffee farmers and workers around the world?

Then, just as I'm turning away, he lures me in with nice thoughts:

On question one, you might be shocked to find out that coffee is full of antioxidants that dampen inflammation and are believed to be positive and preventive when it comes to chronic diseases. Studies by major journals have confirmed that coffee is a major contributor of antioxidants in the diet of Americans.

But just as I'm thinking this guy might be OK, he hits me with this:

But there’s the caffeine to consider. Once it’s ingested, it’s rapidly absorbed into the blood stream in 30 to 45 minutes, and takes 4 to 6 hours for most of it to be eliminated. At low to moderate doses it increases well being, happiness, energy, alertness, and sociability – but at higher doses it can cause adverse health effects.

Arrrghhh! Who do you think you are, you imperfect stranger? You can't even spell McGee, and you're lecturing to me about my coffee?!?!? Back off! Where's the pot? I need just one fresh cup to calm me down and clarify my mind...

Product placement on TV 'news'

Don't know what y'all think of this, but these must be some pretty unassertive "news" people who stand by while their station collects revenue for product placement, and they don't even get any free coffee out of it!

What a raw deal:

    Oooooooh, they’re calling out your name.
    Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.
    They’ve been on the Las Vegas station set for about two weeks, following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, and they’re still looking every bit as frosty and tantalizing (BUY!) as they were the first day you laid your eyes on them.
    But wait, here’s the best part: They’re not real. Fake coffee on the real news, two plastic cups permanently filled with some kind of bogus drink. The anchors aren’t even supposed to acknowledge them, McDonald’s reps explain. That’s part of their genius, my little lambs! They get into your mind without you knowing it. So they just sit there, two logo-emblazoned plastic cups, percolating into the psyche. Made-to-scale models that weigh something like seven pounds each — refreshing, and bottom-line boosting!...

By the way, if Starbucks would like to pay a bunch of money, and give give me lifetime free coffee, for ads on my blog, what's stopping you? I mean, I'm drinking the stuff anyway.

Also, as you can see above and below, I can sometimes get my guests to play along...

Where will the Starbucks ax fall?

The one thing I wanted to know in the news stories about the closing of 600 Starbucks locations is the one thing none of them could tell me: Which stores will close?

To a true aficionado, this is a matter of some import. Among those I hope will not close are the following:

• Gervais Street -- I went by this one this morning just to help out by buying a cup of the much-maligned Pike Place Roast. The Vista's only location, its opening last year was long overdue. I suppose the cutbacks preclude the realization of my dream of another store opening nearby, only on the south side of the street -- that one would have a drive-through window, and be well-positioned for those of us coming into town from Lexington County via 378. As things stand, the Gervais Street location is the only one conveniently located for folks coming in from West Columbia or Cayce, and therefore should be untouchable.
• 5 Points -- Like the Vista, Five Points has to have at least one Starbucks, even though I've always slightly resented the fact that this one replaced the last incarnation of The Joyful Alternative.
• White Station in Memphis -- Located right next to the Southern railroad tracks, this is a sentimental favorite for two reasons. First, it was for years the only Starbucks convenient to my in-laws' home in the Bluff City, and I made many a trek there in the early days of my addiction -- I mean, infatuation. Second, it replaced a Pancho's taco location where my wife worked with her friend Mary to earn the money for their backpacking trip across  Europe the summer just before I met her. I wasn't there, but I've heard so much about it. And I ate a few tacos from there. I suppose I should resent that one replacing Pancho's, just as I should resent the Joyful Alternative thing, but I don't.
• Kirby Parkway (Memphis) near the Bill Morris expressway -- Just because I picked up two cups (a tall Pike Place for right away, and a travel mug of Sumatra for the road) on my way out of Memphis Monday. It's near Mary's house, where some of us stayed over the weekend.
• Columbus Circle in Manhattan -- Near a subway station I use pretty much every time I'm in New York. Several of my kids and I used coffee from that location to warm us as we walked through Central Park on the super-cold (to me, anyway) day after Thanksgiving last year.
• The coffee shops in Barnes & Noble -- Yeah, I know these aren't technically Starbucks locations (they don't accept Starbucks coupons for that reason). But they do "proudly serve Starbucks coffee," and they loom large in my own Starbucks legend. That's where it all started for me, as documented in the early days of my blog. Being ignorant of the way business works, I worry that somehow the Starbucks corporate woes might indirectly affect some deal that Barnes & Noble has with them. May it never happen, because Barnes & Noble bookstores are my favorite places to drink the coffee, while browsing (but seldom buying -- you don't have to tell the Barnes & Noble people that, though). My two favorite such locations? Harbison, and the one at exit 247 on I-81 in Harrisonburg, Va. -- a great place to stop on the way to PA.

As for which ones they should close? I have a list, but I don't wish to see anyone lose his or her job, so I'll keep it to myself for now. Let's just if something has to go, I suppose I could live without any that compete a bit too closely for customers with any of my favorite locations...

Save this woman's life! Vote for McCain

Dropping by the Starbuck's on Gervais after this morning's McCain event, I found his national press secretary, Brooke Buchanan, standing outside smoking while other aides were inside picking up the senator's joe. I had a rather stern chat with her about her nasty habit, and she promised to give it up as soon as Sen. McCain wins the nomination, a pledge I captured on video so she couldn't wriggle out of it later.

So now it's up to you, the voter. The fate of this lovely, vibrant young woman with her whole life before her (the NYT says she's 26) is in your hands. To save her, you must vote for McCain in the Jan. 19 primary.

Doesn't this just make the choice so much simpler?

McCain videos, and much better than the ones I shoot

We've initiated something new for The State's editorial board. We've been tiptoeing up to it for a year or so, with my relatively unobtrusive gathering of video snippets from our meetings with newsmakers. But on Monday, when the board met with John McCain, Andy Haworth of thestate.com shot the whole thing on a real video camera -- he's got a tripod and everything -- which is a far step beyond the low-res, no more than 180-second clips I'm able to grab with my little digital still camera.

I haven't gotten around to posting anything yet from that meeting -- too much to digest during the busy days that have ensued -- but Andy's put up some of his gleanings on thestate.com. You can find links to them here.

While I've been running around having lunch with a representative of the Edwards campaign, dropping by a Giuliani town-hall confab, posting video from that, meeting with Sam Brownback and writing a column for tomorrow about that, I have managed to get one key question answered regarding the McCain meeting Monday: Andy was curious about the Starbucks cup that played such a prominent role, looking almost like a Hollywood-style product placement. What sort of drink was it, and why did it have "Buzz" written on the side of it?

I had not noticed the "Buzz," but it was obviously a reference to Buzz Jacobs. So when I couldn't reach him, I asked B.J. Boling (that's him at left, listening to the senator's speech to the Columbia Rotary Club) to find out for me what sort of drink it was. After a reader recently unjustly accused me of being a latte-drinker, seemingly attaching importance to such a choice, I was concerned about what the senator's choice might reveal that was heretofore unknown. As a longtime McCain admirer, I worried about the "Buzz" -- in my experience, they don't write customers' names on cups unless they ordered something fancy, if not something downright effete.

I asked him late Monday, and had still not heard back Tuesday morning, which had me doubly worried: What were they hiding? Please, please, tell me it wasn't a caramel frapuccino!

B.J.'s response:

I left a message for you on your cell phone last night [which I had not yet played]. It was regular coffee from Starbucks in the Vista.

... and the world resumed its accustomed shape.

This thing's gone far enough

OK, I should probably admit to you where I was going when I drove by the girl who was talking on the phone while jogging. I mean, if I don't face up to my problem, how am I ever going to get better?

I was on my way to ... well, to this place again. What's so bad, or noteworthy about that? Well, this was the first time ever that I left work and drove halfway across town and back for no other purpose than to fetch myself a cup of coffee. In the past, it's always been, "Hey, I think I'll go book-browsing," or, "I have an errand to run in Five Points," or, "I need to go to a hotspot to do some blogging" -- and pretty much always on a weekend.

(Oh, and for those of you keeping score on my time management: Except for that 20 minutes, which substituted for a lunch hour, I was very productive the rest of the day. Especially after that last coffee. So judge not, lest ye also become a blogger.)

This time, I didn't even pretend there was an excuse. I had been thinking about my next cup of coffee ever since I had my last one, at breakfast (unless you count that half a cup I got at mid-morning, after begging the guy in the downstairs canteen to open back up just for me to get a refill, and then draining what little was left in the insulated carafe thingie). So first chance I got between meetings and such, I put on my coat, muttered something about "an errand or two to run," and drove straight there.

Here I am acting all bemused at the idiosyncracies of youth (my last post) one minute, then the next I'm standing in a long line of them waiting for a caffeine fix. I listen to them rattle off elaborate, absurdly complex orders that sound like litanies chanted in a foreign tongue -- with repetitive responses intoned by the help behind the counter -- and edge forward, waiting for when I can order my "plain coffee." The lad in front of me actually asks, "What do you have?" The reply is, "Depends on whether you want hot or cold." Everyone -- except me -- is hugely entertained when he asks for something in-between, and is informed that's one thing they don't have.

By the time he removes his inconvenient self and I belly up, I've scrapped plans for "just a small one," and order the "grande." The counterman overfills it -- no objections from me there -- and I ruin a perfectly good dress shirt and pair of gray pants trying to drive back. Ah, but it's worth it. It tastes lovely. I even find myself tearing away the insulating wrap to savor the inanity of "The Way I See It No. 49." I am utterly lacking in discrimination at this point.

This is madness. I managed to quit Vicodin when I had taken it day and night for weeks after I broke my ribs kickboxing several years back. (And believe me, I felt its pull. No wonder it's the favorite addiction of TV writers, from "House" to "The Book of Daniel.") So what's with this? Why does this dark brew charm me to greater foolishness each day?

Well, I'm going to summon what shreds of self-respect I have left. Tomorrow, one coffee with breakfast. A big one. But that's it. Or maybe another small one, if they're just going to dump it out anyway. But no more mad, mid-day quests.

Today I hit rock-bottom. There's only one way to go now.

The Caffeine Also Rises

This is blogging. This is the true blogging, el blogando verdadero, con afición, the kind a man wants if he is a man. The kind that Jake and Lady Brett might have done, if they'd had wi-fi hotspots in the Montparnasse.

What brings this on is that I am writing standing up, Hemingway-style, at the counter in a cafe. But there is nothing romantic about this, which the old man would appreciate. Sort of. This isn't his kind of cafe. It's not a cafe he could ever have dreamed of. It's a Starbucks in the middle of a Barnes and Noble (sorry, Rhett, but I'm out of town today, and there's no Happy Bookseller here). About the one good and true thing that can be said in favor of being in this place at this time is that there is basically no chance of running into Gertrude Stein here. Or Alice, either.

I'm standing because there are no electrical outlets near the tables, just here at the counter. And trying to sit on one of these high stools and type kills my shoulders. No, it's not my wound from the Great War, just middle age.

So that puts me in mind of Papa. No, excuse me: I once had lunch with Mary Welsh Hemingway (wife number four) at a hotel down by the river (the Mississippi, not the Seine). It was 1976. She drank a Bloody Mary; I had one of those crisp, cold Dutch beers in the green bottle. It was good, and it did not mount to the head as those things sometimes do. We were standing in line at the buffet when I started to ask her something about "your husband," and I stopped myself to say, "It seems silly to keep saying 'your husband' as though he had no name. Is it, uh, is it OK if I just call him 'Papa'?"

No, she said. That was just for family.

Good for her.

Anyway, this line of thought got started partly because of the writing-standing-up thing, and partly because I'm standing under that mural they have around the cafe area in Barnes & Nobles, with all the famous writers sitting in a real cafe looking intellectual and bohemian, and Hemingway is up there with Joyce and Faulkner and Neruda and ...

Well actually, no, he isn't. I've stepped away and walked around the area three times now, probably drawing stares at such odd, peripatetic behavior, and he's not up there. But he is on the one on Harbison, isn't he? I remember it because it bugged me that they showed him smoking a pipe. At least, I think they did. I'm not in a position to check. Anyway, I've never seen a photograph of Hemingway smoking a pipe. Not the kind of thing he would do. I've got a certain stereotype of pipe smokers in my head, and he doesn't fit it. Of course, I could be wrong about him.

I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does. I'm going to walk around again to see for sure if he's up there...

Nope.

You know, the coffee here is a lot stronger than I expected. She warned me that it was really hot and really full (too full for me to stir in my six packets of Sugar in the Raw without spilling), but she didn't say it was this strong. It's enough to make a man start babbling about nothing. Nada y nada y pues nada.

We are all a lost generation.

Who said that? Oh, no -- she is here...