Chemically Imbalanced (espresso-jogged screeds) » induced tangents

coffee and bikes and commensurate likes …

bz — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:53:03 +0000

breaking speculative theory: coffee highs spawn hallucinogenic bicycle longings. for some reason.

obscure spro goes glossy

bz — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:16:04 +0000

spro purveyors to whom we kow-tow — two of them — get the full feature treatment in the new issue of imbibe magazine. just desserts for hinterlands coffee laborers everywhere, if you ask this blog … but particularly for the barista-poet and greenville’s hudgens. we’re deeply apologetic for marring their foray into the kleig lights by being quoted. we blame the esteemed author!

…

p.s. actually, the march/april issue makes a handy layman’s primer to the third-wave coffee pecking order, no? there’s the adoring, double-truck photo spread of the ubiquitous nick cho‘s face — from multiple angles! — the interior feature art involving perennial barista competitor jon lewis and his truck, a subsection introducing hudgens to the world, and just over a graf of riffy supporting material from your bloviating blog.

it’s like a specialty coffee meta-narrative in one glossy issue!

our advice: project upon your christmas tree

bz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:27:54 +0000

this blog cannot recommend strongly enough this boffo bit of holiday decoration from urban outfitters.

it’s practically carbon-neutral, it leaves plenty of room for presents AND it’s appropriately reflective of morose, charlie-brown-like december outlooks! pass us some more of the idido misty valley …

the lengths we’ll go for trouble-free spro

bz — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:41:24 +0000

remind this blog: which part of the homemade kombucha wonder beverage isn’t prohibitively gross?

oh, right. the part about punting for good those caffeine highs and lows. still, the more our vital beverage-making fungus grows, the more this blog wonders if this ale is worth the slimy spectacle. we now have a closet of this stuff, and it’s getting harder to hide it from the neighbors.

blog’s booch

bz — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:53:57 +0000

smelly disasters notwithstanding, this blog continues to pursue the kombucha. which, you know, requires months of rotting, in the dark, so that The Mother may do her work creating our wonder beverage.

comes now the day of reckoning, when the jar is removed from the obscure yonder and our espresso detoxification ale of choice meets its maker.

um, wow. that’s soooooome Mother. the scummy top tier isn’t really the part you drink, but … this blog is still, ah, cajoling itself. or perhaps those caffeine come-downs after a dozen morning shots aren’t such a burden after all.

keys to cafe success: supporters!

bz — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:10:37 +0000

what does it mean that h&m — worldwide swedish purveyor of the fittingest underoos known to man — is coming to octane‘s atlanta neighborhood? it means another reason to frequent big cities we hate (next closest store: d.c.). it means more staggering spro-shop-spro-eat-spro road trip tabs. it means that purchasing our next batch of manshorts won’t involve 16 hours of driving and nick cho’s place, but four hours of driving and chris owens’ place!

knock it off. when they fit like this, any distance is justifiable.

come to think of it, in a booming hipster quadrant of what will soon be america’s worst commuter city … where there will soon be the twin trendy spending draws of h&m and ikea … how is there still only one retail coffee establishment worth visiting (maaaybe two)? how long until batdorf & bronson’s atlanta roastery goes all industrial cafe? someone give those people the cool saturation they want!

wherever there are favored briefs, this blog smells a market opening.

UPDATE: ignore jaime the square. hipness has everything to do with brilliance behind the bar. think manshorts! comfy, swedish manshorts!

old blog becomes new

bz — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:46:42 +0000

it’s a new blog — quite possibly more kinetic, topically random and hedonistically devoted to white space than ever before!

your bookmarks needn’t change, nor the rss feeds. if they do, then we will flog the toiling blogbrother, whose hours of service created this place, and who purports to have crafted a seamless transition. e-mail me with problems … bszob at bellsouth dot net.

the visual sleight of hand you see up top comes from solis jake, whose design this blog shamefully didn’t even fully grasp until we had gawked at it for awhile. and the junk on the right is now highly streamlined junk! — including the musical grooves to which we may or may not at the moment be listening.

the lengths to which the platform may enable us to, say, execute live web streaming of the cypriot’s new fluid crossover knockbox technique remains to be seen. but it’s an idea.

the tentacles of tragedy

bz — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:49:12 +0000

in a tiny and unsettling example of how many people are unexpectedly “touched” by large-scale tragedy, this blog is getting hits (we kid not) from people googling “23 QuickTime video files showing Cho talking directly to the camera” … for some obvious reasons involving name similarity and previously posted quicktime video.

thought provoking, that’s all. startling.

jaunt, explained

bz — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:45:56 +0000

the cause of the day-trip d’atlanta, which we normally shun like the gassy, pretending robusta that it is:

now all we have to do is harness her with a spro cart and the gs3.

p.s. it’s a 1970 vespa p200e … or that exact scooter, anyway, made in 2003 and sold under the name stella. it’s the result of a former vespa plant securing an agreement to continue making that model machine until very recently. which makes for a vintage bike without the attendant problems of three decades of use!

this blog’s ears, needless to say, have been full of streaming wind-tears all day.

paging hoffmann

bz — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:54:39 +0000

question is, if billy is serving up “espresso pearls” at the northwest barista competition, will the judges grasp the visionary ability to esteem them (or, say, fawn like an appreciative fiancee?)? or will they behave more like, you know, swine?

p.s. thanks to reader mikep, who once again keeps us covered on vital matters of barista arcania.

p.p.s. this blog, of course, has indulgently pledged to drop the ‘underdog’ descriptor when it comes to billy’s competition status. still, the tattooed one takes the opportunity to note, for publication, the wee-morning hours of a competing production-line barista!

“The best part is staying up until 1 a.m. and then coming in to open at 5 a.m.,” Wilson says with a laugh.

was it a cynical laugh? a knowing laugh? was there a wink involved?

you can depend on CI to ask the leading, paranoid questions!
(vital background)

p.p.p.s the food scientist weighs in in the comments.

well, dang

bz — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:40:51 +0000

it’s not just that billy’s scintillating signature beverage from last year’s u.s. barista championships got ripped off by a euro poo-producer. it’s that coca-cola now impudently robs him of this year’s concoction before he can even compete! “effervescence” indeed.

isn’t it enough that everyone’s favorite production-barista underdog gets called “heavily tattooed” every time he appears in gushing, high-profile enterprise pieces on the cultural relevance of rock-star baristi? now this! why, it’s enough to make a guy take his blog private.

gulp

bz — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:41:56 +0000

yeesh. this blog never really wanted this kind of reader.

rare induced tangent (moblogged)

bz — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 01:35:24 +0000

one hesitates to contemplate the impetus for a neighbor who proffers — count them — four wheelchairs. free, apparently, and all at once. on the curb. in a color range roughly analogous to a 1990s j.crew catalog.

what the innerneck looks like without that morning shot

bz — Sun, 21 May 2006 04:35:02 +0000

this blog, apparently, is getting web hits from all sorts of messed up places.

CI, your drill-down bloggy investigator

bz — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:46:42 +0000

hmmm. is coffee-blogger teme’s breezy review of the latest ‘barista magazine‘ a barely veiled sign of quid pro quo for the extra linkage he now gets on the magazine’s ‘community’ page? it’s not like the mag only lists three carefully selected blogs in an environment of at least a couple dozen regulars. wait … it is? ok, it is! talk about declining journalistic credibility! … talk about insider third-wave collusion! this must be why teme is always so nice — to everybody!

UPDATE: reader G.C. notes that i linked above to the debut portafilter.net podcast that featured a partly blunt discussion about journalistic credibility at coffee mags, yet they still get free linkage from the ‘barista’ folks … true enough, but you’ll notice that since then, said podcasters bestowed the widely coveted “magazine of the year” title on the editors, an honor currently trumpeted on the magazine’s home page! and wasn’t that portafilter.net blogger jay caragay who was both profiled and featured in a full-page, faux-mafia ad pictorial in two of the magazine’s inaugural issues?? i’m just sayin’…

UPDATE: let’s clarify here that this is all in good fun, and partly the fallout of my cynicism-generating day job as a business and politics reporter, where i’ve heard enough about appearance-of-conflict and credibility issues to fill a leer jet to scotland. remember: an exclamation mark = facetious snark. not to say that these topics aren’t relevant to the tightly knit specialty coffee community, already marred by one insider scandal. still, i’m just poking … (translation: me, me, me! link to me please! free linkage! i’ll publicly drool on the may/june issue! google-cache royalties for everyone! or — if i’ve already dug my grave — then at least recognize some actual thought-provoking barista champion persons!)

UPDATE: another reader — a long-time regular! — notes that i recently weighed in on the same issue of ‘barista’ mag that teme is now propping. that’s correct, but it’s one thing to backhandedly allude to a dosing debate that happens to be taking place in the pages of a given publication. it’s quite another to open by saying “there are several good articles,” then note — in the same post — that the magazine is now linking to your blog! work it, teme!

UPDATE: sigh. another reader: “did you link to jimseven’s blog because he’s one of the few coffee bloggers who links to you?” touche’! see what i mean? there are shadows of slimy coffee collusion everywhere you look! it’s a convoluted case of quid pro quo quo, if you ask me! … (please. no e-mails purporting to correct my latin.)

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: the newly crowned u.k. barista champ just called this blog “wildly entertaining.” let’s be clear: this blog did not see this coming in any way, nor did the recent addition of jim’s blog to the blogroll on the right have anything to do with the compliment. in a totally unrelated development, this blog has decided that the jimseven site is one of your top two coffee destinations on the world wide interwebs! in fact, the content there is truly riveting, in a breathtaking, mind-bending sort of way. also: seven thumbs up!

heaping pikes of inconvenience

bz — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 05:43:17 +0000

no sooner had the power returned than the phones went out — presumably the fault of those electric pole-climbing types fiddling with their wires and ignorantly goofing with those wires. the cheery, two-dimensional voice at the other end told me that not only had my problem already been reported, but the requisite repairs would be made no later than december the 27th. to which, i yelled into the receiver, “WHAT, the …?” only to be told, “i’m sor-ry. i did NOT under-stand you.” it was one of those voice-recognition lines. blarg, i say. blarg.

anyhow, read a sayers mystery instead of hunching over th’almighty innerneck this evening. just for kicks. you suffer, but my life takes on texture! twist! leisurely nuance! obviously, the broad extrapolations from last week’s code brown will have to stew a bit longer.

drink idea: crystalline sheathing

bz — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 01:58:29 +0000

clearly, the almighty weather widget was right:

the entire world had been sheathed in a hefty layer of crystal and the power went the way of the victrola. it’s the first time i have been one of the statistics, as far as power-less-ness goes, and, as it turns out, i have been one of roughly 700,000 people. so. the trees exploded and sent pleistocene spears slicing through roofs and lawns, snapping telephone poles and throwing a beastly kink into the traffic, though the streets remained passable. took the family in search of fire and didn’t get a cup o’ joe or access to the indispensable innerneck for what seemed like eons. when the lights did come back on, late friday, the isomac kindly responded by warming itself …but the code brown was stale. *sigh*

still, some notes forthcoming, more on the workability of this blend as opposed to its flava profile alone. in the meantime, a garish morsel from the past 72 hours:

choice bleat

bz — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:26:10 +0000

jury duty, described riotously by one of my favorite authors.

2 things

bz — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 13:38:53 +0000

1. no, this blog is not dead. it moved last week, and built an espresso bar over the weekend, and tried an alternate and primitive grinding method, and used 600 feet of galvanized wire to roast a batch of ethiopian harrar, and employed a blowtorch in the pursuit of frivolously leisure espresso, and experimented with homemade spirits and fried a belt sander and left indigenous animal life accidentally encrusted under layers of quick-drying epoxy. but more on that later.

2. on the one week this blog laid (layed? lied? looed?) dormant, it received an insane record amount of blog-hits. as in, 26 times the previous high. investigating, this blog found kindly linkage from such esteemable sites as texas-lottery1.i-jogo.net and mortgages3.i-jogo.net and vicodin1.i-blog.net. this blog is truly humbled and gratified that a new and untapped segment of innerneck readership has found its espresso-jogged fixations so inspiring.

seriously. pics, video and full accounts pending. i promise.

what could be more tedious than calibrating brew pressure?

bz — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:05:18 +0000

deftly avoiding past aesthetic horrors, the effulgent cypriot has produced, with the help of szymon the pollock, a bewitching bit of tastefully stitched time-accelerated stills from his back yard. watch it. it makes you want to shimmy. then, when you realize he took a single photograph every minute for, like, hours … it makes you want to work the crick out of your neck.

why post it? because it’s my blog. also: who am i to levy spelling criticism at a pollock and a cypriot? mostly, i think i like the music. and so: “my lilly”