"way too much coffee. but if it weren't for the coffee,

i'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever."


--david letterman


today i thought about taking you through an afternoon at the magic bus, but something else struck me while i was enjoying a cigarette and a delicious cup of our fair trade, shade grown, organic, darth vader roast.

waffle house coffee.

there are very few things that make me feel as safe and warm as drinking waffle house coffee with my best friends while chain smoking and listening to the god-awful music that the good old boys in my hometown play on the juke box.

for my birthday, kimi, janna, steph, and i went to waffle house to celebrate. we ordered four cups of coffee and four glasses of water. none of us take cream in our WaHo coffee, but kim takes sugar. one of our usual waitresses was serving us. her name escapes me. when she brought our drinks to us, she was holding a vat of cream and upon seeing that i said, "oh, sweetie, we don't need cream." (i always feel the overwhelming need to call waitresses things like "honey" and "dear" because they get shat on by so many other customers.) she looked up and realized that it was just the four girls and not the pile of boys that we usually bring with us she said, "oh, that's right. that boy ain't with ya'll," referring to kim's boyfriend at the time. we all had a good laugh and moved on to our usual ritual of smoke, coffee, water, repeat.

in the past year and a half, so much of my life has revolved around these moments at waffle house. my girlfriends and i even named ourselves "the WaHos." we spent an entire summer participating in various forms of debauchery and ending the night (or the morning, when the occasion presented itself) at waffle house, drinking obscene amounts of coffee and smoking clove cigarettes. when i broke up with my boyfriend last february, one of my best friends chris said, "c'mon. get in the car. we're going to waffle house."

at this point i can imagine you might be a little disturbed by the great pleasure i take in drinking one of the worst brews in town. but the thing is that waffle house coffee, like pabst blue ribbon, is the best of the worst. i have had some really bad coffee. joe muggs is still my absolute least favorite cups. joe muggs is worse than the free coffee that i had at discount tire while i waited for my tires to be aligned. it tastes like the barista found some papertowels, filled them with last week's grounds, and ran them through their brewer. i've had gas station coffee, i've had coffee so dark that it almost crossed the line of tasting like dirt, i've had my fair share of bad coffee. despite the fact that waffle house is hands down the weakest coffee i drink and that it's probably about as fair trade, shade grown, and organic as a polyester shirt from china, it's my comfort coffee.

coming soon: coffee mix! this could take a lot of time. a friend of a friend made a cigarettes mix that took him eight years.

also, check out the sidebar for new drink creations and also coming soon, a coffee dictionary.