Yesterday I wrote a piece called “I’m A Douche At Starbucks“. I penned it to mock two things: 1) My first time sitting at Starbucks in front of a laptop acting like a stereotypical Starbucks laptop douche, and 2) people who, on a regular basis, do what I did yesterday, and who go above and beyond normal douchery by incorporating Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) and other increasingly pretentious icons of self-importance. I’m certainly on the path to number two.
And speaking of number two…. (best segue ever…) while I was typing that blog post, something else was … Click Here to Read On! …
Look at me! I’m hot shit. I’m in a Starbucks on my laptop, trying to look interesting. Hmm. Where’s my Bluetooth earpiece? I don’t think I’m looking quite douchy enough. I’ll put that in my ear so the flashing light draws attention to me. Also I’ll place my phone on the table so everyone can see it. It’s red. Should be easy to see. And I’ve set a countdown alarm to go off in 15 minutes. In exactly 14:52 everybody will look in my direction and I’ll be all like, “Oops, let me turn that off for you, sorry. Hahaha.” And then I’ll set it to go off again in 15 mins.
All out of coffee! I should create a spectacle about how I need more. “Man, I’m all out of coffee,” I say to the nice lady next to me. She smiles uncomfortably. “Guess I’d better get some more…” She knows that I’m right. The flashing light of the Bluetooth hypnotizes her. “Is the flashing light of my Bluetooth bothering you,” I ask politely. She shakes her head no. She’s not allowed to speak because then I’d have to pay her as an actor instead of as an extra. I think she’s lying anyway. The light on the Bluetooth is pretty bright. I swapped out the old light for a 5 watt Cree LED and upped the strobe rate to about 20-25 Hz. Aimed my ear right at her eye, too. Trying to invoke an epileptic fit. How ya like me now?!
I like Ruby’s. It’s a fun place to visit. Clean, bright, reminiscent of the days of yesteryear. A time when a cute teen waitress in a cute short skirt could be sexually harassed by her employer without anyone saying boo about it. And the food’s really tasty too. I’m a sucker for 1950s themed diners anyway. Love ‘em. Can’t get enough of ‘em.
Ruby’s has always struck me as America’s consolation prize for living way out in the middle of nowhere. If you’re in the BFEs there’s probably a Ruby’s there. It’s like America said, “Well my friend, you live way the fuck out here, and we can tell that you’re trying to put on a sort of cosmopolitan air. You’re not quite a ghost town; You have enough residents to warrant a Starbucks and a Target. We can’t give you any of the really schwanky stuff like Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s or Spago, but we still want you to be a part of American culture, so here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna first send you a Quiznos. If you’re really good and you do right by the people at Quiznos, then we’ll give you a Ruby’s Diner. But you have to be really good and not cause any trouble. Deal?”
Sounds like a deal to me. Whenever I’m driving through your bumfuck tract-home insta-village I’ll always make it a point to stop in your consolation restaurant for some curly fries and a side of ranch. Mmm, those skirts are cute!
The Getty Villa has something that I’ve seen a few dozen times in life: A pool of water with coins in it. I doubt the Getty people put the coins in there. I suppose it’s possible, but I’d guess that it’s a contingent of plebian visitors who are mucking up the pool with coins. My first assumption would have been that the Getty caters to a more selective, cultured audience who might refrain from dumping their pocket change into a classy reflective pool, but having seen the practice with my own two lying eyes, what I’ve known for years has been proven true again: For whatever reason, humans cannot resist throwing coins into a body of water. People usually won’t ditch coins deliberately in the ocean or in lakes, maybe because you lose visual connection after you dump it into the surf, but if you put a pool or a fountain in the middle of a mall or any centralized walking space, especially if you might take a date there, without fail some jackoffs will have thrown handfuls of coins into it. I wonder if it’s the same people who put chewing gum under restaurant tables. Who the fuck is doing that?
The coins-in-pool phenomenon reaffirms my hypothesis that the quickest and surest way for me to achieve my fortune is to create a chain of trendy wishing-wells not unlike Starbucks. I could call it Mybucks, because that’s literally what it would be. Naw, that’s a stupid fucking name. By the time I cut the ribbon I’ll have a way better name because I’ll hire a marketing strategy genius to brand my wishing well as really upper-crust and to convince people that my wishing well chain is the absolute best in the entire world. Creme de la creme. I’d sort of want the Cognac XO analog to wishing wells, whatever that is. A wishing well that inspires loyalty. A wishing well that will make people scoff at the other wishing wells the way they scoff at cheap coffee, cheap cigars or cheap wine. “Sorry man, but I only use Russ of America brand wishing wells, they’re way better than that stupid seagull shit-encrusted wishing well in Marina Del Rey. My cousin is a wishing well expert and he says that the RCoA brand is tops and that I should accept no substitutes on account of I’m a superstitious high roller!” And yes, I’d want to have exclusive contracts with top casinos, hotels, and other venues to install about 200 of my wishing wells all throughout Vegas. Ooh, and in Dubai! I’ll be the Dubai wishing well mogul! I’m not sure if wishing is against the Islamic faith, but you can guarantee that if there are people in Dubai, and a wishing well in Dubai, then Dubai people will put Dubai coins in the wishing well in Dubai, Islam or not. It’s science.
Whomever designs this wishing well would have to make it a real sweet piece of ass. Maybe delicious-looking imported Italian marble or some kind of special fountain that shoots water out of gorgeous robotic chrome nipples. Sexy blue and purple lighting for after hours like a space-age bachelor pad. Maybe some mist and a disco ball. Esquivel playing softly from speakers hidden in fake boulders. I’m not sure. But it’d be a hell of a sight to see whatever it looked like. Shiny, clean, sexy, smooth, sleek and mod. Maybe we’d have a different design theme for each well. Kind of like Fry’s Electronics. Zen, space ships, ancient Egypt, old Holland, verdant Irish knolls, lots of gold trim and frescoes. Like a really classy miniature golf course. There’d probably be a way to pick lottery numbers and special designer cubby holes in which to aim your coins if you wanted to wish for people’s health and other jive like that. But not bullseyes because we don’t want the thing to look like a fuckin’ SkeeBall. And as part of the branding we’d spread some propaganda so that people knew that my chain of wishing wells are extra famous for giving extra good luck, especially if you put extra money into the wishing well. Fuck pennies, you cheap motherfucker! Throw a roll of quarters in there if you want to maybe have your wish come true. Wrap a $20 around a pebble and toss it in. Don’t worry, we have dryers. It’s not very scientific, but if people give money to psychics on the belief that those thieving turds can discern the future by playing solitaire with a spooky deck of cards, I don’t see why that same person wouldn’t give me all of their spare change on the unrealistic expectation that they’d somehow prosper for it. Humans are ridiculously superstitious and they deserve to voluntarily empty their pockets for my benefit, and in this economy (here we go again with that expression…) I don’t mind helping them out.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
[c] 2009 Russ of America
(Gratitudes to my lovely bebbeboo for discovering that nasty weave fountain with me in November 2008)
PS: Yes, I’m aware that the title of this article is grammatically incorrect.
Not sure about you, but I’m not always in a bloody rush to get to Starbucks so I can juice myself up with caffeine, run bollocks errands and sit in traffic. Sometimes I take it slow. Real slow. Not when I walk, because I do that fast, because ostensibly I’m trying to get somewhere, yes? But if I’m lazing about the domicile or such, and I have to paint the porcelain yellow, I don’t mind sitting down for a few seconds and flipping through the National Geo. Sometimes I like a nice, leisurely no-pressure leak and I like to sit down to do it. Is that a problem? Is that effeminate? Don’t I have a choice? Didn’t you ever take a leak while standing, and it was so rewarding that your eyes rolled back into your head and you got dizzy and had to brace yourself against the wall? Sure, maybe you were drunk at the time, but still, didn’t it feel good? Wouldn’t it have felt better if you were seated? You probably wouldn’t know because you were too afraid of the implications to your masculinity to try it.
I definitely don’t have to sit while peeing. I definitely don’t do it all the time. I do it on nice quiet occasions. I certainly can pee standing up and I have for decades. In my lifetime micturation narrative, I’ve peed in urinals, toilets and troughs. I’ve wizzed on walls, in bushes and on cars. Empty polystyrene cups, Gatorade, Mickey’s Malt Liquor and Olde English 800 bottles have all proven to be precious porta-pisspots in a pinch. I’ve made water in the sink, in the tub, off of the porch, the roof, in a parking garage, and into a floor drain. I’ve peed in the snow, the dirt, the grass, into fire, the ocean, a box of cat litter, a hole in the ground, in outhouses and I’ve even pissed while in motion, walking down the middle of the bloody street late at night. And I did it all while standing up. So I have some manner of expertise on the issue and I am willing to be the beacon of acceptance in a foggy sea of sexist stereotypes. If you are a man and you wish to have a leisurely slash while sitting on a toilet, that’s abso-fucking-lutely okay. Take your time in life. Relax. Set a spell. Just don’t fall into the toilet bowl.
Things are pretty glum down at the old office; Frankly, I’m just tired of complaining about fudgey spoons in the sink and having to order the fucking toner all the time, so I’ve been distracting my fury by doing some professional writing work, which is totally a good thing. My most recent gig is as a blog writer for Courtney Love. Trust me, CL is too busy to write her own blogs, so her people hired me to do it. I’ve written about seven of them so far and I charge a pretty penny. I’m totally willing to offer you my services for pennies on what Court is paying me, but that’s only because I like you. Just tell me a little about yourself, I will write up a contract and we can get started.
Here’s a sample of my work:
ROTSI
so sick and tired of all the wanking paparotsi tho follow me into the starhbusk to see me lift myskirt and piss on the toilets eat -why do they do that they never gave a shit when i and kurt were poor an dliving cigarette to cigarette or even when we were on the top of the world and i had to throw bottles at madonnas head to get attention or so much as a look from anyone who matterd- And kurt who was so sucessful he took a dying textile flannle and revaginated it so that all the motherfuckers who wanted to be rockers but couldnt afford the axl rose pants pants could go into their grandfather scloset and pull out the flannle shirts nbody care dabout him when he did that did u?but he coulda made milions just from saving flannle =but now that i’m famous the papparotsi stick theres camras in my junk and photograp hme and take my blogs which i write myself and steel them to put them in their tmz fuck you cunt harvey levin don’t give a shit about nobody cept when there somebody and there b/coming nobody again=- me and kurt used ta say that whenyour nobody you cant be famouse for nothing but only once your famouse can you be famuose again for being a nobody – curse of the downtrodden selsl magazines dont it fuck you harvey levin im a rocker and ive seen it all and you are all worthless roaches- i swear to gawd papaROTsi some day you will ake like i ake
Naw, that’s a stupid fucking name. By the time I cut the ribbon I’ll have a way better name because I’ll hire a marketing strategy genius to brand my wishing well as really upper-crust and to convince people that my wishing well chain is the absolute best in the entire world. Creme de la creme. I’d sort of want the 
There’d probably be a way to pick lottery numbers and special designer cubby holes in which to aim your coins if you wanted to wish for people’s health and other jive like that. But not bullseyes because we don’t want the thing to look like a fuckin’ 
