Sunday, February 08, 2009



muerte a los baristas

I recently watched Linklater's Slacker on DVD, along with a ten minute trailer for Viva Les Amis, a documentary that mourns the loss of a locally owned cafe that was replaced by Starbucks. Three Starbucks baristas are interviewed. None of them seems to know much about the former cafe, and their tepid mannerisms would seem to symbolize all that is troubling about Generation Y. They are articulate and self-confident, but so dispassionate and uninformed as to seem pitiful. I think the filmmakers make this impression deliberately, and that there is something distasteful about it, about any generation that would sneer at a younger one for not being cool enough.

I recently bought coffee at Starbucks and actually liked the "The Way I See It" quote printed on the cup. Can such a thing remotely compare to experiencing a live hub of counterculture? Of course not. But perhaps a beautiful thing about being young is that nobody gets to do it in exactly the same way. 

The Way I See It #76

"The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life." 

- Anne Morriss

There's always Spider House.

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