Why We Suck (17 page)

        4. Have him run from one end zone all the way to the other-as fast as he possibly can.

        5. Watch as he tries to avoid the sixty-seven pit bulls and twenty-three Doberman pinschers who have gone unfed for a week and will be 1 running full speed right at him from the opposing forty-five yard line.

    

    He makes it from one end to the other alive? He gets to go free.

    I'd offer that deal to Michael Vick right now.

    Otherwise?

    Let him finish serving his time.

    And send a feral cat up into his colon to claw the old footballs out.

    

    No, this is not an anti-Starbucks rant.

    I did that already.

    It's called Coffee Flavored Coffee and it's on my second album, Lock'N Load. Buy that or the DVD and listen as I wallop my way through nine minutes about bullshit java recipes-nine minutes of caffeinated cobra spew.

    I could update that bit this very second with my thesis on how Starbucks may be responsible for the pussification of America-I reresearch the subject once or twice a week when I stand in line there and listen as some limp-wristed, yellow-Lance-Armstrong-bracelet-wearing, metrosexualhair-goo-sporting, Hillary-Clinton's-tired-old-ass-worshipping puke spends twelve minutes trying to decide between the Orange Cranberry Vagina Muffin or the Pumpkin Cream Tampon Cake while fingering a Save The Rain Forest Compilation CD featuring Sting, Sheryl Crow, Joni Mitchell, Sting's Abs, That Hot 19-Year-Old Blonde White English Chick Who Sounds Like Janis Joplin, and Sting's Penis-who apparently pops out of his master's yoga pants to sing his new single "How I Have Tantric Sex With Trudie Styler For Seven Straight Hours."

    Which is amazing.

    Not that the penis can sing-but that he can actually be that horny for Sting's wife. I mean-seven minutes maybe.

    I guarantee my wife would not be interested in me physically expressing my love for her over the course of seven straight hours-unless six and a half of those involved getting out of bed and cleaning the house.

    Very quietly.

    And while we are on the subject of bullshit-let's get rid of the term "barista" right the fuck now.

    In the dictionary-not the Starbucks make up your own words dictionary-the Merriam-Webster real life, real words, real definitions dictionary-"barista" is defined as coming from the Italian language and meaning "someone who works behind a bar."

    Which is big news for a bevy of guys named Sully and Fitzie and Clyde and Reggie who have been serving soda glasses full of Canadian Club with Budweiser chasers and Jell-O shots and Colt 45 Malt Liquor for decades thinking of themselves as nothing more than trumped-up bouncers with two dishrags and a baseball bat under the counter.

    Hey guys-you are no longer just bartenders. Yer baristas!

    Run down to Starbucks and get a goddam raise, a sixteen-thread Egyptian-cotton apron and a free copy of Mitch Albom's new book Five Dead Guys Who Are Dating My Dead Mom!

    Barista is meant to conjure up images of a profoundly dedicated coffee sommelier who busies him- or herself with a constant search for the perfect mug of espresso-tinted java with just the right hint of cream combined with enough of the individual bean's aroma to justify its taste on your eager and expensive tongue.

    That ain't what it means no more.

    Thanks to Starbucks, barista has come to mean an overly friendly, far too kinetic Fall Out Boy fan who chowders up a smirky smile and a loud Welcome To Starbucks Hope You're Having A Great Day So Far What Can We Get For You Sir but then immediately blanches when you mention the actual word "coffee."

    He almost always just stands there for a beat-the Fall Out Boy lyrics draining from his Vicodin-rattled veins-before asking if you would prefer to order from the menu.

    Then when you say For seventeen goddam bucks a cup I don't wanna read a fucking menu, he begins to blink uncontrollably.

    That's what the term "barista" conjures up.

    Or a slow, slim-witted, corporate robotron who feels the need to mention that the term "large iced coffee" has to be reconfigured as Grande Vente Ristretto Breve Bullshit Blah Blah Mucho Machiatto Craptalk.

    When she is finished and you deliver a long sarcastic stare back at her nose ring and a quick gander at her neck-where the red tendrils of a dragon or a flower or a dragon EATING a flower tattoo are peeking out of her Obama '08 T-shirt-she makes a mental note to blog on her blog later on during her blog break about how she was sexually harassed by a middle-aged celebrity who she's pretty sure was the bad guy in the first Spiderman movie.

    Her blog is called Rebel Notes From The New Millennium, by the way.

    And is read on a daily basis by her, the Fall Out guy and her boyfriend Seth-who's in a band called DysFunktion (they sound like a cross between Pearl Jam and Audioslave, if Pearl Jam sucked and the guys in Audioslave somehow had their hands lopped off) and he actually thinks that drinking any Starbucks beverage with the word "chai" attached to it leads to good karma (plus, like-I'm pretty sure some of the money goes to help improve the environment, dude).

    After a decade or so of blighting stares and angry grimaces and trying to set an example to the others by storming out of Starbucks with nothing in hand and the echoes of my brilliantly abusive tirades ringing in everyone's ears-I have come to realize the one weapon we all have just waiting in the wings:

    Oprah.

    Because Oprah can shame anyone into admitting the truth.

    There was an author named James Frey who wrote a book called A Million Little Pieces. No one was going to buy the book, besides Frey and the various people in it he blamed for making him a giant, alcohol- and 1 drug-ingesting mess and-of course-the chosen special few who had helped him climb out of that very very dark hole.

    Then he appeared on Oprah and voilа-the book became an international best-seller.

    After many sales and almost as many months, it became known that most of what Frey claimed to be true in the book was, in fact-lies. Blatant, made-up, totally untrue and fiction-dressed-up-as-factual crap.

    So Oprah invited him back onto the show and asked a million little questions about A Million Little Pieces and the next thing you know, Frey had crawled away cringing and crying and spewing I'm sorries.

    Oprah had used her secret weapon: shame.

    Shame shame shame, shame on you.

    I wanna drag a barista onto Oprah and have her cross-examine him or her and I know that within minutes she will have an open admittance that Chai and Vente and Breve and all that shiny sugary Starbuck smack is just an excuse to charge mo money mo money for what is-in the end-just another good cup of joe.

    Oprah, my friends, is the cure for what ails America.

    Too fat, too thin, too out, too in, too dumb, too smart, your skin, your teeth, your ankles, your ass, pregnant man, pregnant man's wife, pregnant man's penis-you name it and Oprah has asked about it, investigated it, researched it, been funny around it, bitten into the middle of it, digested it and spun it out into silken rivulets of golden information that helps to mollify us all.

    When I saw the headlines and a front-page picture on the New York Post about a woman who became a man but retained his/her womb just in case and then got pregnant I had many many many questions-a million little questions-but the one that bubbled up to the front of my head every time I read about it was "Does this guy have a dick or what?" As expected, no newspaper-not even the Post-addressed the issue. And if the Post ain't gonna do it-you know it just ain't gonna happen.

    But God Bless Oprah.

    If the story ran the first time on a Tuesday? Oprah had the guy and his girlfriend on her show that Friday-she found them and flew them in and sat them down and you bet your Oprah-loving fan site she said-about four minutes into the interview-"Let's get to the penis question." Turns out the guy has enough of a clitoris going on that it actually forms a small penis and him and his gal pal can have intercourse. I don't think it's any kind of Sting and Trudy marathon event but it qualifies and obviously satisfies them both. But that's not the point.

    The point is Oprah.

    Asking anybody about anything.

    And always getting an answer.

    Pregnant Man, Cancer Dogs, Brad Pitt, Young Millionaires, Great Moms, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Messy Kids, Tyra Banks, Bad Dads, Bill Clinton, Energy Vampires, The Husband With 24 Personalities-she has dissected and discussed and presented them all.

    Jerry Springer and Maury Povich and Montel Williams and Sally Jesse Raphael and all the other dig-up-the-dreggers who pulverized us with drunks and junkies and whiter-than-white-trash trailer trash in their tighty whiteys and cheap lace panties and thong-cracked asses have all died by the wayside-victims of Oprah's ultimate faith in just how smart you can be-no matter how dumb you already are.

    Before I started writing this book all I knew of Oprah was The Occasional Guy Click-In-that's where men dial up Oprah on the TV because of The Wife or The Girlfriend-usually in the middle of an argument about a towel that turns into a sudden tornado involving:

        a. Sex

        b. This relationship is going nowhere

        c. You never talk about your feelings

        d. All of the above but not in alphabetical order

    

    And then in the midst of the teardrops and the angst and the stony side-long looks she finally deigns to mention that Oprah just yesterday said blah blah Find A Better Soul Mate blah or Oprah said a couple days ago blib glib Is He Really The One For You? glub Oprahdey glub.

    They talk about Oprah like they spoke to her on the phone on Sunday or she was just here having tea this afternoon.

    I clicked in once and saw Oprah's Extreme Makeovers and thought yeah this housewife looks better after being plucked out of the audience and taken backstage and hosed up and wet down and rubbed raw with Loofah pads and trummeled and trammeled with resins and oils and cucumber creams-before being tucked into a designer dress held together with a roll and a half of two-sided fashion tape and some glue but-what happens after the show? She won't make it from the studio to the car without the blow-dry foofing up into a horse's mane and tomorrow when she and her husband wake up she's gonna look the same way she did before she went to see Oprah because there won't be a team of eight gay men and six Korean cuticle experts to cut, paste and paint her into the tart he saw on TV.

    What then? Huh?

    Before I started writing this book I blamed Oprah for all the damage Dr. Phil has done. He was nothing before her. Just another balding blowhard with endless axes to grind, but she made him into a star and produced The Dr. Full Show which unleashed him onto all of America, where he can say such thick and exasperating things as "Everyone has their own personal Ground Zero."

    Oh really?

    Does that mean someday two large speeding planes will crash into the side of your insipid, hairless head?

    Let's hope so.

    I was ready to steamroll right over Oprah-she was the reason so many wives and girlfriends were disappointed and unamused. She was a one-note wonder, fooling feckless women with her Makeovers and Make-unders and a seemingly relentless river of Hope:

    Men Can Change!

    Children Will Study!

    You Can Be A Better You!

    What a crock.

    Then I sat down and watched a few Oprahs.

    I'm not kidding, guys-I got worried.

    One day she was angry as she mourned her recently departed cocker spaniel Sophie with a special piece entitled "Lisa Ling Investigates Hidden Puppy Mills."

    The next day she was cackling in apparent Full-On Crush Mode as Gorgeous George Clooney detailed a practical joke he had played on his good buddy Brad Pitt. Oprah seemed eagerly enamored as she giggled and swooned.

    The next day her brow became creased with intense concern about Security Clutter Foods-admitting how, just like the rest of us, she gorges on snacks she keeps around the house for the sole sake of gorging on them.

    Security Clutter Foods? Holy shit.

    She turned a harmless box of macaroni and "orange-colored cheese" into something akin to a terrorist attack on her ass and-unlike Dr. Full when he invoked September 11-I did not wish her ill.

    Instead-I threw out bags of Cheetos.

    One show she was heavy. The next show she was thin. Or thinn-ER.

    One show she was happy. The next show? Sad.

    The show after that she was five different emotions in between those two before being both of those two-sometimes at almost the exact same time.

    I was fascinated. Jay Leno is always Jay Leno. Jon Stewart is always Jon Stewart. The guys on SportsCenter might make a dumb pun here and there but they always just give me the scores.

    Watching Oprah was like staring into a human mood ring-each day a glint of light from some unseen source shifted her emotional core.

    Before I started writing this book I would have guessed that my take on Oprah would have been skewed toward the negative and that-like anyone else twisting a comic turn-I would be focusing on her flaws and foibles. But you know what I came to realize? It's impossible.

    Whatever flaws she has, SHE has already found them.

    Her weight loss, her weight gain, her impatience, her pretense, her most recent weight loss, her upcoming weight gain, her face her hair her legs her obsession with clothes? Done.

    

    Holier Than Thou Oprah, Down And Dirty Oprah, Black Oprah, White Oprah, Mad Oprah, Sad Oprah, Oprah Outside Hermиs, Oprah With Obama, Oprah In A Snit, Skinny Oprah, Acting Oprah, I Was Molested As A Young Girl And Could Have Become A Stripper But Instead I Became Oprah Oprah, Mochiatta Oprah, The Color Purple Oprah, The Oprah Makes Up With David Letterman Oprah, Plump O, Chubby O, O In Size 10 Calvin Klein Jeans, O In A Cashmere Fluffy-Necked Puff Sweater-Oprah On A Couch, Oprah In A Slouch-Oprah Yelling Oprah Laughing Oprah Scowling Oprah Braying Oprah Giving Away Free Cars To Everyone-she has already praised, prodded and taken the piss out of all those Oprahs as she makes her journey forward.