new comedy year resolutions

So I have this thing (I like to call it "intensity." In-ten-si-ty.) where I become interested in a project and drop literally everything in service to it.  And then -- just when it's getting comfortable and thinking about asking me to move in  -- I say, "It's over, project. Your clothes are outside."  And then I'm like, "Here's your bag./ Let me call you a cab." Beyonce always says it better than I can.

Sometimes this involves disappearing immediately after I finally organize the weekly open mic of my dreams.  Other times it's as simple as neglecting my script work the exact moment I gain an iota of momentum.  Sure, it was nice when that lady from Onion TV gave me her card back when I worked at Starbucks, but did I actually call her? Uh oh/ uh oh/ uh oh/ oh no no.  Like most normal people, I preferred slinging lattes and waking up at 3:30 in the morning to making contacts in the field of my dreams.  

See, not running as fast as I could in the opposite direction of progress would have required me to give up my identity as a professional, Olympics-quality self-saboteur.  The kind that smokes pot in public and then tries to sneak onto the back of a cereal box.

Thankfully, those were the misdeeds of Old Eva.  New Eva also secretly hates success, but she also knows to love the things she thinks she hates.  And she eats way, way more leafy green vegetables.  

Tomorrow is August 31st.  I spent this last month 'processing' my 'Film School experience,' having a tear-inducing stand-up epiphany (bearing in mind that I cried at the series finale of Arrested Development), and starting from scratch -- scratch being everything from Feydeau and Oliver to The Awful Truth to devising what I think is an excellent system for cataloguing what makes Curb Your Enthusiasm so damn funny.  I'd explain it to you, but it's pretty complex.

Alright, fine. It's just irony.  Happy?

So I plan to enter the month of September striking a balance between writing and open-mic-ing.  My muse will be Lady Gaga, whose voice manages to be 50% Madonna and 50% Gwen Stefani with literally no spillover.  We have a lot to learn from her, such as what not to do at a party. Seriously -- is anyone else completely terrified by the lyrics to "Just Dance?"  She can't find her keys, she lost her phone.  Don't even get me started on the fact that she don't even know what club she's in.  Seriously, Lady Gaga.  Get it together.

Also, my new hobby is to become irrationally angry over song lyrics eight months after they come out.  

I'll talk more later about my recent toe-dip back into the world of stand-up, but I'm going to stop writing stuff about myself when I should be writing stuff about myself that I can perform tomorrow.  And you can put a ring on that.  

Just some quick 4am NY Times irritation

I relax my news standards on the weekend.

When I open the paper on Sunday, I'm prepared to read a profile of Matthew Settle that refers to him as "TV's hunky rebel dad."  Am I happy about it?  No, I'm in purgatory.  But I will read the article from opening image (Matthew Settle on a skateboard. Pathetic.) to philosophical final quote ("I am a dad.....and I'm playing a dad."). That's the rub of weekend news. 

Between their series of articles breaking the news on how Mad Men rules all and their hard-hitting expose of college tour guides who don't walk backwards, the New York Times may get on my Nixon-esque dislike list.  Alexis Bledel is getting very lonely.  

That being said, Monday is a real day which demands real news.  And as such, it's not a day for the World's Most Unprofessional Op-Ed masquerading as an actual news piece.  That would be "Democrats Pounce After Christopher Christie's Misstep. "

I know it's August.  I know it's hot, and summer-y, and that you're trying to figure out how to tactfully tell your son or daughter that they will never get into an Ivy League school.  But it's also Monday.  For some people -- the people who use "summer" as a verb and prance through the days of the week like some endless martini-soaked beach party -- it doesn't really matter what day it is.  But other people -- the people who wake up every Monday feeling self-righteously above their current jobs -- would just like to read "NY Region" news and fantasize about living in the Tri-State area without having to read militantly anti-Democratic sentiment.  

It's not that I even care that much.  But seriously, if you're going to say that the Democrats are 'grabbing hold of [the Christie scandal'] as if it were a defibrillator," just put it in some cutesy Sunday Magazine op-ed, okay?  I'm trying to pretend I'm on the 'A' Train here.

not bad, ABC family!

We all have those things we hate that everyone else seems to like.  Kettle corn.  Intimacy.  Children's laughter.

For me, #1 on that list has always been 10 Things I Hate About You.  Or should I say, 10 Things I Hate About 10 Things I Hate About You!

Huh. Didn't know they had tumbleweeds in this part of the country.

There are two moments from high school tennis that I remember as alienating.  The first was when the team decided to make our uniform matching Abercrombie&T-shirts and I was the only one who saw this as hilariously unintentional self-parody.

The second was when we stopped by Stadium High on the way to a game in Tacoma to "take pictures." As many of you know, Stadium High is the picturesque, mansion-esque high school where they filmed 10 Things I Hate About You:

It's a nice school, sure, but worthy of a pilgrimage? No way.  Yes, Stadium High is Tacoma's Stone Henge, but Tacoma also sucks.
My dislike of 10 Things I Hate About you is at least partly due to my not entirely rational hatred of Julia Stiles and all that she stands for.  Here's how most my conversations about Julia Stiles go:

Friend:  Julia Stiles is doing Shakespeare in the park.

Me:  Ugh.  What a phony!

Friend: Why? She's a huge Shakespeare buff.

Me:  Yeah, I hate her too.

But really, it's because the movie is just plain ultra-lame.  So you can imagine my surprise -- and consternation, don't even get me started on the consternation -- when I watched an episode of the ABC Family series version of 10 Things About You and actually......kind of liked it.  

I've always considered sitcoms to be a form of escapism.  Not just because they take place in a world where writing a sex column in a B-list paper makes you mysteriously wealthy, but  also because sitcoms are a world where trading cruel and devastatingly clever asides is an acceptable way of relating to people.  

Seriously, I don't think I've ever watched a sitcom and not asked myself at one time or another, "Why are these people still friends?"  At the same time, if I had an acquaintance who was witty enough to say to me, "What are you, an immigrant?" in my hour of need, I would make her my maid of honor.  We all have a special place in our hearts for the mean-but-entertaining person in our lives, and some of us are that person.  

Amazingly, some of the characters in 10 Things I Hate About You fit this category.  For one thing, Kat (which was the role played by Julia "I'm an unlikable feminazi caricature" Stiles) is actually kind of funny.  Like, when the town has to evacuate to the local high school because of a fire and Bianca tries to get her curling iron, Kat says,

"Geez, there could be people who are really hurt and all you care about is your hair. You're as bad as Anderson Cooper."

Timely, funny, and "you know it's true!"  Oh, and Patrick, the love interest? Also semi-funny.  Take this exchange:

Kat: Where's your family?

Patrick: I killed them all. They were slowing me down.

Edgy, aisle five?

Seriously. The sassy old ladies are sassy ("Lighten up! I know alot of cat ladies that started out like you."), The mean popular girls are, like, really mean ("I know you're really stressed about losing all your dead mom stuff."), and even the Pontential Love Interest for the Single Dad -- a sub-plot of family sitcom that is always either creepy or boring -- has her moments ("Oh, no...are you married, separated, big fat cheater?")

I'm not saying 10 Things I Hate About You is the best thing that ever happened to me.  But if 30 Rock and The Office are funny's varsity tennis team, 10 Things I Hate About You is its underclassmen alternate who has potential and tries really hard.  Case and point.  If you drop Julia Stiles, then you, too, can become a tennis star.  Though I would like to disclaim that hating Julia Stiles does not preclude you from double-faulting an entire set and being hit in the face by your own lob-ball.

And whole foods reminds us that it's better to be mean than mean and stupid

I don't associate success with happiness, or a fulfilling career, or even with the rearing of non-ugly children. I associate it with shopping at Whole Foods.

Maybe it's shallow, but I'll know I've 'arrived' when, and only when, I can be at that store for more than 5 minutes without feeling guilty and tense.

For me, Whole Foods is kind of like Flowers for Algernon, only instead of leaving behind higher consciousness you're leaving behind grass-fed chicken and gluten-free hemp cookies. Their food is way better for you than ordinary food. They have bread there that cleans your teeth while you chew. And, like, files your taxes and stuff.

Unless you've earned it, every trip to Whole Foods can be like the life you don't have. Sort of like It's a Wonderful Life, or whatever that shitty Nicholas Cage movie was shooting for. So I try not to go there. I make do with Whole Foods' easier but slightly less attractive sister, Trader Joe's. (Trader Joe's carries non-organic meat, which is grocery store equivalent of being the town mule.)

That being said, I when I read what the CEO of Whole Foods wrote in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, I thought it was a darned shame.

I can't say I was that surprised when the John Mackey, like so many drug front candy stores before him, revealed himself to be a giant hypocrite and is for that reason hated by all. And I hate him, too. Not because he's immoral, but because he's really fucking stupid.

You know that excuse you make to yourself when you buy non-free-range eggs or order pizza from clinic-bombers? You feel guilty, but you rationalize it by making grandiose promises about how you'll live your life once you have the income?

Whole Foods people have it. And what's more terrifying, they have the time to care.

Which brings us to the real lesson here, and that is: if you have to be a jerk, don't be a jerk when you have the one customer base in the country that's actually rich enough to be moral.

Here's the thing: if Walmart had written into the Wall Street Journal complaining about Universal Health Care, I would have been okay with it. Why? Because Walmart claims no moral highground above, say, not selling poison milk to schoolchildren.

Whole Foods, on the other hand, has this whole caring, sustainable living, helping indigenous farmers platform.

Another general rule: if you think your customers care enough about your "wind energy credits" for you to talk about it endlessly on your website, don't 180 on health care. They're different issues, but trust me: they sleep in the same plush, high-thread count, Whole Foods customer bed.

I'm not saying that Whole Foods customers are perfect. Some of them are total jerks. But they're jerks who have wealth guilt. Wealth guilt means that while you still buy your daughter a new car on her 16th birthday, you make sure it's a hybrid. Or at least a cute two-seater.

Maybe you could sell out America's future if you run a personal shopping business, because if you run a personal shopping business, your customers probably belong to the Let's Reinstate Chain Gangs demographic.

But not Whole Foods customers. Whole Foods customers spend their time thinking about heat-efficient ski trips and how to make their servants carbon-neutral. These people care.  Why else would they donate their Facebook statuses to Gaza?

That's why when John Mackey says:

"A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America."

he's being particularly stupid because he's alienating his customers. Whole Foods shoppers don't just believe in rights, they want to think they believe in rights. And that's even more dangerous. Maybe they only believe in the right of their daughter to have an cushy unpaid internship at Goldman-Sachs and still get health care. But trust me: they will boycott you, and so will their groundskeepers.

I'd just like to end with my favorite line from the Op-Ed:

"We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age."

Yeah ... if you subsist solely on the grass-fed, all-natural, sugar- and wheat-free animals they sell at Whole Foods. Which, by the way, probably have better health care than we do.

The 10 life lessons of Julie & Julia

With a dash of romance, a sprinkle of Streep, and rounded tablespoon of women who eat their feelings, Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia is a triumphant souffle of --

Just fucking with you.  Were you totally scared?

Moving on to the actual topic of this post: which is how every movie has a lesson.

It doesn't have to be life-altering.  It can be anything from Harry Potter's "Good will always triumph over evil" to the less-applicable "Dating someone with Alzeimers is hilarious!"  (50 First Dates.)

The lesson I will take with me to the grave?  "If you say you brought your daughter on the airplane and no one believes you,  then Peter Saarsgard is lying."  

God bless you, Flight Plan.  Only you had the courage to say what I was always thinking.  

To that end, here's a list of things Julie & Julia taught me:

1. If you don't like to watch happy couples be cute with each other in real life, you're also not going to like it when it's projected on a twenty foot screen and you're just kind of stuck there.  

2. You can never have enough butter, but you can have enough butter jokes.  

3. No, seriously. If you have butter jokes that you must get out of your system, than at least test them first .  If Nora Ephron had gone to an open-mic and said, "Guys....what is the deal with butter?  I mean, seriously! Who's with me?  Anyone? No one?" she might have realized that butter, like 9/11, is just plain off-limits.  I myself know several people who find butter jokes to be tasteless in light of all the New York firefighters who died from heart disease.  

4. If your inner critic doesn't die when you watch Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, than you have no soul.  

5. While good relationships are built on trust and communication, the only real aphrodisiac is landing an agent.  

6. "What's for dinner?" is the new "You had me at 'Hello.'"

7. In case anyone was wondering, it's not yet possible to be nostalgic for 2002.

8. You can take Stanley Tucci out of the ambiguously gay, but you can't take the ambiguously gay out of Stanley Tucci.  Like, there was a part of me that expected him at any moment to turn to Julia Child and say, "You bet your size 6 ass!"

9. Years from now, when they do a biopic of Hillary Clinton's life, it will star Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep's cryogenically frozen body.  Translation: Meryl Streep has and will continue to have a lock on every single semi-interesting role for older women in Hollywood.  Forever. 

And if there's one thing that you should take away from Julie & Julia, it's this:

10. Nora Ephron thinks you're a moron.  

I love Nora Ephron. But sometimes I suspect she wanted to teach special ed and that her scripts are way of, like, reaching out to her would-be students.  Just take the first scene of the movie:

Julie: "Why are we in Queens again? Oh, right, because we have no money and it's close to your work."

Because that's how we all talk.  

Or the birth of the food blog? 

Julie:  What am I going to do? All I know how to do is write and cook!"

five minutes later:

Julie:  I have an idea! I'm going to write a cooking blog, and through it I will write and cook!

I felt patronized.  Patronized like one of those kids who at the end of summer camp gets some sham award like "Biggest Trooper," or "Most Closely Related to own Sibling," or "Most Improved." (Sorry, guys -- we all know "Most Improved" is camp lingo for "You Had Nowhere To Go But Up.")

So all in all, the lessons of Julie & Julia are there if you're willing to look.  Though I've got to admit it helps to know firsthand the unique heartbreak and misery of having your only blog reader be your mom.

the self-righteous Nora Ephron fan rant

If you are what you watch, then look no further than TV ads for a serious wake up call.

TV commercials are your friend. Why? Because unlike your "person" friends, they have the courage to tell you what would you will never willingly tell yourself. Namely that you have no ambition and are literally going nowhere.  This is particularly the case during any show involving one of the Kardashians.  

And if still don't believe me, answer me this: Is anyone who watches The Today Show in its entirety truly above enrolling at Devry?

Film previews are the same deal, only a little different because if you're watching a film preview, you got out of the house and maybe even showered. This means that even if you're attending a weekday matinee, you're still in the "has potential for dignity" category, if only by virtue of wearing pants.

Next time you go to the movies, observe which "Coming Attractions" Hollywood has chosen for you and accept the consequences.  If you paid $10.50 to see He's Just Not That Into You, you deserve to be thought of as someone who would appreciate New In Town.  

And if you spent the whole of He's Just Not That Into You mentally comparing it to the book version you keep next to your bed, just stitch a big "HJNTIY" on your dress a la The Scarlet Letter and get some counseling. (I myself find blogging to be extremely therapeutic.)

In light of all this, I was kind of disappointed in the previews shown before Nora Ephron's Julie&Julia.  Frankly, I deserved better.

I went to Julie&Julia for the same reason I went to You've Got Mail. Not because I thought I would like it, but because it was the right thing to do.  

Nora Ephron wrote Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally. The people who like those movies are cool. And we don't want to be associated with films that aren't as cool as we are. We corny Nora Ephron sentimentalists may spend half our time fantasizing about having a Meg Ryan diner moment, but we spend the other half of our time saving the world.  (We spend the third half of our time at the top of the Space Needle scouting for potential husbands.)

So if this post has a point, it's this: I'm a Nora Ephron fan, dammit. And I'd like some freaking respect.

Therefore, it was with a particularly heavy heart that I observed the following "Coming Attractions," which are really kind of lame:

The Blind Side: Webster meets Billy Madison meets Sandra Bullock's horrific southern accent. There. Now you don't have to see it.

It's Complicated: Wow, this movie is exactly like Something's Gotta Give. Omigod. It's by the woman who wrote and directed Something's Gotta Give. Only this time she's armed with cutesy facebook references and the plot of The First Wives' Club.

The Lovely Bones: Peter Jackson directing Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci and Saoirse Ronan in an adaptation of Alice Sebold should be good. Though I think the fact that neither of the screenplay's co-writers have ever written dialogue for non-Hobbits is kind of a gamble.

The Stepfather: I may end up seeing this, if only because I think it's cute when the stars of Josh Schwartz teen melodramas try to act.

I'll talk about Julie & Julia itself soon. But before I do that, I think I need to take a look in the mirror and ask myself some hard questions about Hanging Up.  

The film school post -- or how i learned to stop worrying and love the cave

The last few months have been eventful ones for me. 

Wait! Before you turn off your iPhone and start actually listening to whoever you're dining with -- God forbid -- let me clarify that they were real events, not just Eva ones.  Eva events usually consisting of seeing someone on the street who kind of looks like Patrick Dempsey but isn't.

Stuff did happen in the last few months that were eventful by an objective standard. Such as:

(1)  Running into Hillary Rodham Clinton and getting a picture with her.  This also spawned a (2) second event, which was my setting a record for the most unmemorable, garden-variety first impression known to man.  At least I didn't say, "You're that lady who was humiliated by that younger lady!"

Then there was (3) getting advice and glimmers of hope from a tv producer I greatly admire.  

I don't usually trust positive feedback, but I knew she was really listening when she told me that if I wanted to get a staff writing job, I needed to stop talking shit about, like, everyone.  

That she picked up on my propensity for self-sabotage within five minutes reveals, I think, an understanding of human nature bordering almost on clairvoyance.  Or that I'm just that obviously a bitch.  

Whatever the case, I've decided to stop indiscriminately insulting people I don't know.  I'm not sure how other people re-channel this negative energy -- or, for that matter, if it's even ethical. I truly believe that if more people in this country spoke out about how much Jimmy Fallon sucks, there wouldn't be so much arson.    

And then there was the other event -- the main one, if you will -- and that was (4) attending a screenwriting workshop at The Film School.  

You ever have those friends who, like, go on bullshit self-discovery retreats? And when you ask them how they liked it, all they do is close their eyes and shake their head in that blissful, "you couldn't understand if you tried" way?  I think I finally get those people.  

That's right: I am a toolish, yielding, in the tank, drinking-the-koolaid Film School aficionado. 

It's nice to be the minion for once, as opposed to my usual "derisive loner."  

When  I was a junior in high school, my class went on this retreat to an undisclosed location where we were given a strict regiment of prayer, shame, and the dreaded "prayer shame."  By the end, we were taking responsibility for everything from our relationship with our parents to the Enron scandal.  I think at one point I might have apologized for 9/11.

It's not like I didn't want to get anything out of it.  But while the other girls discovered God and did trust walks and injured themselves falling backwards into one another's arms, I'd be thinking stuff more along the lines of, ".....Shit.  Did I tape Friends?"  

I also happened to be, in addition to the only Jew ever raised in Bellevue, the only Jew ever raised in Bellevue who had eight years of all-girls catholic education.  But that's a different story.  

In light of that, I was nervous about taking a 12-hour-a-day, intensive, self-reflective anything.  But this time, I got it.  And what's more, it illicited complex things in me, these sort of .... feeling-type sensibilities.  I don't have the word for it yet.  

I did come out with some major identity crises about myself as a comedy writer.  The kind of crisis you get when you suddenly realize you want to aim higher than writing the next Big Daddy.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Film School was my god retreat, only I'm awaiting the coming of the next Arrested Development and praying forgiveness for all those cheap shots I took at Michael Jackson.  And that unfortunate period in my life when I thought there was inherent humor in the word "Snuggy."  So many regrets.  But there is a God, and his name is Buck Henry.  

So if I could just quell these terrifying new doubts I have in my ability to be a comedian, I'll be good to go.

Oh, the workshop ended with this classy graduation party that was kind of like the Lacey party scene from Annie Hall.  So that was also kind of cool.   

What, were you expecting some kind of payoff? I told you, I'm not there yet.  

Paper Heart: thoughts and the briefest of proto-feminist rants

Don't see Paper Heart until you've gone out and found your soul mate.  

Seriously.  Just find someone, chat them up, buy them some dinner at the food court and high-tail it over to Paper Heart.  Why?  

Because if you don't see Paper Heart with your soul mate, you will feel really weird.  

 Paper Heart is kind of like Valentine's Day in August, which I found to be kind of unnerving.  See, for me, August is the one time of year when my birthday and Christmas are 5 months in direction, February 14th is 5 months in the other direction, and for one brief, wonderful moment I can be in the eye of the proverbial "hating myself for being single" storm.   I try to take it easy around this time and just hate myself for being in debt. 

It didn't help that the phenomena of people inexplicably leaving one empty seat between themselves and the next group forced my friend and I to split off into different rows.  So so I was literally surrounded on all sides by spooning, spooning couples.  The depth of the spooning cannot be overemphasized.  

I liked Paper Heart, don't get me wrong.  It was a feel-good romantic film, cute, cutesy, and idealistic.  And I like that kind of stuff.

But after awhile, it gets to be like, okay, Charlyne Yi:  You're successful and funny, you hang around with Seth Rogan and Dmitri Martin, and Michael Cera is totally in the tank for you ... that's it? Really?  

My friend said the film worked because it's impossible to go wrong when you interview cute old, cute sassy gay, or cute redneck-but-educated couples about how they met.   It's basically the documentary equivalent of saying, "I like the Beatles!"  Which is great.  But I also think that to achieve true dramatic conflict, sometimes the Beatles have to get hit by a bus, y'know?

Translation: not being able to reciprocate the depth of freaking Michael Cera's love is not a problem.  Michael Cera secretly being an Axis Powers double agent a la Eye of the Needle?  Now that's a problem.  But no one listens.

So coming out of Paper Heart, I had my requisite offput-cynical-viewer tirade fueled by my ambivalent love/hate/coveting for Michael Cera and Molly Moo's.

But then I went home and read one or two reviews that kind of irked me.  And not just because neither of them acknowledge that Charlyne Yi won the Walter Salt Award for Best Screenplay. (The footage of her winning is here.)

I'm not even going to start on Marshall Fine of the Huffington Post, who judging by his bitterness may or may not have been served with divorce papers twenty minutes before he took on Charlyne Yi. 

What really, really bothers me is when the New York Times writes, 

"Wearing a permanently baffled expression and a succession of androgynous jeans and hoodies, [Yi] shuffles through the movie without acting ability or, it seems, basic survival skills."

He's holding Yi, a comedian, to the standard of "basic survival skills?"  It is only by virtue of having no survival skills that one becomes a comedian.  Yi's onstage and film character is as deliberate and consistent as any male auteur's.  

The glasses, frizz-halo, hoodie and "andro" jeans are her -- in the same way that Larry David slouches around season after season of Curb Your Enthusiasm in the same pair of khakis and sneakers and long-sleeved crew necked T-shirt (why the fuck do I know this?).  Because that's Larry David.  Playing himself.  To be neurotic and quirky and "above it" is every comedian's prerogative, and it is also Yi's.  

If Larry David and Woody Allen and all the other comic auteurs can run around being total neurosis-filled weirdos with bad hair, why can't Yi wear "androgenous" pants?  

Can't Yi be just as fucking creepy as her male counterparts?  Not shower? Avoid feelings via the tactics of sarcasm, self-disparaging comments and laughing at really inappropriate times?

I mean, my God, Woody Allen auteured a dozen films where his being a literal freak of nature somehow escaped every critic's notice. Yet they take exception to Yi's clothing for being .... bland? Conspicuously?  

Look, just a basic rule to keep it all straight: if, for whatever reason, you find yourself not wanting to talk about Woody's pants, then don't trash Charlyne's, okay? Okay.

The Stepford Coffee Shop -- i.e. the new "local" Starbucks is fucking creepy

You know that film Coraline about that girl who enters a seemingly perfect alternate universe only to discover she's been lured into a godless, distorted succubus of all that is good and pure?

That's what the new Starbucks on 15th Ave is.  Or rather, "Fifteenth Street Coffee and Tea."  

At first, the coffee shop seems to good to be true, in the way that Stepford Wives or Metropolis or Nazi Germany also may have seemed too good to be true at one time.  Endearingly hand-drawn signs. Rustic wooden tables.  

And while the people behind the counter wanted to sell me coffee, they also seemed just as happy to talk to me about local bands and street art and homemade aphrodisiacs made out of hemp.  It was heaven, if heaven used its wall space to promote local womanist paintings.     

And yet.  And yet.  

Something also seemed a little off.  

On closer inspection, that effortlessly edgy barista -- the one with the frosted tips and nose ring -- looked suspiciously like that corporate kool-aid drinking tattletale that worked at the Starbucks that was there, like, last week.  

Are handwritten menus always so ruthlessly neat and accurate?

Come to think of it, is it necessary to put a sign on a table reminding you, in case you didn't already know, that "this table is reserved for the community?"    

Then I realized: this was faker than pre-ripped jeans.  Or pretending Rachel Leigh Cook is doggish because her hair is in a ponytail. Starbucks is manufacturing local neighborhood culture, in all its endearing imperfection.  That isn't just evil. It's cartoonish super-evil.  

I'm not being melodramatic, but it's clear that Starbucks will stop at nothing short of world domination and the procurement of your first born.

Granted, I'm not what you would call an "activist."  I may not care about "education" or "justice" or "my own family."  But I pride myself on taking a stand where it matters.  And when I'm feeling petty jealousy toward people more successful than I. But I digress.

People: avoid the pseudo-indy, rustic, 100% organic dystopia on Fifteenth street.  Just walk right by.  Otherwise, before you know it we'll be drinking watery "victory lattes," your entire family will be "disappeared" the next time they go out for a Frappuccinno and never heard from again, and the last four immortal words of 1984 will have to be updated to read "He loved Uncle Howard."