#345 Kuppa Bud

Naming stuff has taken on a life of its own. I hadn’t realized until recently how much this commercialized process of the naming of sporting events and arenas has taken over American culture. You know that there’s been a paradigm shift when young people take for granted things that were a painful process you lived through. Like Pearl Harbor Day in my parent’s generation and John F. Kennedy’s assassination in mine. To the young folks John F. Kennedy is an Oliver Stone movie at best, and asking them where they were when JFK was shot is like, duh, I wasn’t born yet—get over it. So it was the other day when I was walking downtown in the Percival Landing area. I chanced to hear some kid up in front of me asking his parents how Budweiser got the naming rights to the bay. It took me a few minutes to figure out what he was talking about, but then it dawned on me. Oh yeah, Budd Bay. What with Key Arena and Safeco Field, I guess it made sense. And real close we have the city of Dupont. What’s next, Intel Inlet? I wonder if the kid thinks Rainer beer had anything to do with that mountain.
Is it some strange cosmic coincidence that certain words appear in the public consciousness at the same time? And they happen to sound not only similar but pretty good together. Like in the sentence, I was sitting back sipping a macchiato and taking a long pull on my macunudo. I suppose they’ve both been around for a while but only now has American culture embraced them to the point they’re on my radar. Macanudo. Macchiato. They could do a sitcom with working girls in Seattle. Macanudo, Macchiato, Hasslebeck incorporated.
And speaking of Seattle’s number one industry, I wonder if it would have done as well if it was called Shultz’s. Probably been bought out by some conglomerate from Oklahoma. So the other day I order an espresso again. The first time, years ago, I wasn’t ready for the flavor. I have a lot of bitter taste buds so a straight shot of undiluted espresso puckered me like a lemon enema. I decided maybe I was ready to give one a try again. It wasn’t bad. There just wasn’t much of it. Definitely a drink that you sip. Like a fine cognac but instead of a giant manly bulbous snifter you get this little tiny cup that you have no other choice but to demurely hold like Aunt Prissy’s antique china. So the mystery of the day: Why is it if you order a straight espresso, which is nothing more than a single shot of espresso dripped into a tiny cup, that it costs $1.75, but if you order a second shot, the second drippings are only 50 cents? Does it really cost a dollar and twenty-five cents to wash a cup? And what if you order it to go? Does it cost a buck and a quatta for a paper cup? The mystery of the second shot. Someone call Oliver Stone.
America, ya gotta love it.