Goodbye, Mr. Coffee

Stupid, lousy, stupid, stupid, red coffee-maker...


It’s been a difficult few weeks.

No. I mean more difficult than usual. My coffee-maker broke. It just stopped working. No evidence of an obvious malfunction. The water spouty-thing, without warning, stopped delivering water from the water tank over the grounds and into the carafe. The heating element stopped radiating heat. The clock still worked, but that was it.

I have been through the stages of grief and have now settled on the stage that Ms. Kubler Ross neglected: Delight.

I have come to realize that my life can be divided into eras defined by the coffee-maker. I’ll be honest here, the Braun Era was something of a golden age for me. It had the expanse of England’s grand Victorian Era. That is to say, there were some truly awful moments, but it lasted so freaking long that it also encompassed some of my most glorious escapades. And as with the Victorian Era, I am wont to remember it for the good stuff. Victoria, I’m sure, would prefer her Era to be associated not with the poverty, disease, and squalor, but for those adorable houses in Cape May, New Jersey with the eaves and the parlors and the lattice-work and what-not.

Just so with my Braun Era. It lasted for the actual majority of my life, and comprised as it was by a host of ups and downs, I seem now to recall primarily the adorable lattice-work. My Braun coffee-maker, purchased at a ridiculous mark-up at the fabulous, old Robinson’s Department Store in Beverly Hills when I was really young and would have been willing to buy anything that put me that close to women who smelled really good, lasted for nearly twenty years. Even then, the coffee-maker only broke when the dog knocked it off the counter-top one fateful day in 2006. (There was, I think, an errant piece of cheese nearby.)

The Braun Era rocked. Oh sure, it had its horrors. But it beat the hell out of the brief but miserable Mr. Coffee Era.

I did not choose to begin the Mr. Coffee Era; it was foisted upon me. Someone gave me the Mr. Coffee. Of course, I was grateful because I didn’t have a lot of (any) money then. But even so. It was red. And I was stuck with it.

Who buys a red coffee-maker? A red coffee-maker, I can only imagine, is best suited for a brothel. Is there really much demand for brothel decor coffee-makers? And if so, surely one should not expect that it would be produced by a brand whose cache was at its zenith when Joe Dimaggio was hawking it. Yes, Mr. Coffee has been around forever, but clearly that does not translate to being a product of legendary quality. After all, it broke all on its own well inside the three year mark, whereas it took an act of dog to finally take down my Braun.

When I consider why they tried to make such a stodgy, underperforming product all sporty with red, I think of how Chrysler tried to produce convertibles. Truly, this is the Chrysler Sebring of coffee-makers.

I might add, nothing has gone particularly well in my life during the Mr. Coffee Era. It may be a coincidence, but maybe not. Why risk it?

So today I have begun a new era. And suddenly my whole future feels full of possibility. It’s like how England felt when that smattering of Edwards and Georges quit flitting about for their gnatlike and unimpressive eras and finally made room for Elizabeth II to settle in for a good, long (substantially irrelevant but carving an indelible groove into history, nonetheless) reign.

Now I might have purchased another Braun. But I’m not even sure they make them anymore. If they do, I can tell you that they sure don’t sell ‘em in most of the coffee-maker selling outlets in Chicago. (Granted I didn’t go the really high end stores. Because now I find that if I want to, I can smell really good-smelling women without having to pay exorbitant prices.) And it stands to reason that when you make a small appliance that lasts for twenty years or more, you may well go out of business before people get around to buying s’more of your product.

And God knows I wasn’t going to get a Mr. Coffee II. If we have learned nothing else from the English, we should have learned not to keep repeating the names of our eras. Just consider that yawner of micro-eras spanning across Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, and George VI. In 51 years there was one interesting moment in 1936 when Edward VIII flaked out.

No. What I need is a good solid new beginning. Something reliable and indefatigable. The Brits instinctively knew they had this when Elizabeth II cozied into the throne, and they celebrated with blissful relief. That’s what I need: An Elizabeth II Era. I.e., a kitchen dominated by a stoic and dutiful small appliance that is, strictly speaking, unnecessary, but in whose absence I would be lost.

I thought very seriously about declaring the Cuisinart Era. I have a few other Cuisinart products that are holding up quite nicely. (My now vintage food processer finally broke recently after being handed down over a span of something like 30 years.)

But when I went to look at the Cuisinart coffee-makers, I found that the one that most suited my needs came with what they called “retro” styling. Which means they designed it to be cleverly ironic with old fashioned toggle switches. Sadly, this violates a crucial rule for me: I must resist all urges to be sucked in by clothing or interior design elements that are primarily amusing. Because they ultimately look stupid. Neither clothes nor home furnishings should be funny. Whimsy has no place in decorating. This rule has saved me from purchasing a wide array of regrettable shirts with slogans and furniture with now painfully dated prints. This is why, unlike you, I have almost no picture frames made with distressed metals from the early 1990’s and have never had to ditch a futon. It’s a good rule, and so I obey it faithfully.

Then I saw the Krups. A fine coffee-maker with a fine reputation. Back when I bought the Braun, I remember that Krups was the only serious competitor to Braun, poised among the gloriously scented women at Robinson’s department store. And they had it in stainless. Which is good, because I don’t care how much you paid for that Kitchen-Aid mixer of yours, if your small appliances are not generally white or stainless steel, you probably have no business being in a kitchen. And a grown-up should probably start authorizing any of your purchases over $100.00.

The Krups (Model KM1000 if your curious) has everything I was looking for: A good brand track record. An easily accessible water tank that doesn’t require the precision water-pouring technique of a Cirque De Soleil performer. Easily visable cup measures for those bleary-eyed mornings. Fully programmable with a pause function during brewing. (A feature I did not fully appreciate until I was without it during the Era We Shall Never Speak of Again.). I also was able to save several bucks by getting the 10 cup machine instead of the 12-cup machine. (I have never, ever, ever, ever needed 12 actual cups of coffee in one brewing. We should admit this: No one does.) And, importantly, it had no design elements that inspire one to comment on how cleverly whimsical it is. I would have gotten it in plain white so as to be certain I'm not being too hoity-toity about it, but the ideal model was only available in stainless steel. Good enough.

The Krups Era promises to be a bright shining era, indeed. I have nothing but hope and a couple pounds of Seattle’s Best French Roast in the freezer. The world is my Falklands for the repatriating.



The Coffee-maker is dead. Long live the Coffee-maker!

This might mean my moral compass is de-magnetized.

Is it wrong that I'm kind of hoping for a pernicious return of the Swine Flu in the fall so I can spend more time gazing at Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius on C-Span?




She's just so... so... so... sigh

Jenny McCarthy is coming, and she's bringing killer bees!

Bah! I knew it!

In February I said this would happen. What I didn't do was establish incontrovertable proof that I said this in February. And why didn't I do that? Because that's how I roll: Swathed in layers of regret and backpeddling.

Here's what I wrote down, but did not document in a public forum, on February 13, 2009: Jenny McCarthy wil get her own daytime talk show, and it will be excruciating.

It's a gift I have, seeing the future. I saw the return of the goatee in men's facial hair fashion during the early nineties. (It was the Van Dyke actually. And I saw it coming.) I saw the election of George W. Bush in 2000 when others still laughed him off during the early primaries. (It was Laura. She made him seem more likable.) I saw the evil that lurked in Mel Gibson when everyone else still thought he was buckets of fun. I knew Rod Blagojevich was going to jail before he even got elected to congress.

Yes, It's a gift. And the ironic twist of that gift is that I never quite get around to advising others of my uncannily accurate predictions. In this way, you see, I am burdened. Burdened both by my eerie ability to foresee the future and burdened by profound laziness that prevents me from doing anything about it. I am like a superhero who keeps forgetting to get my superhero outfit back from the dry-cleaner.

Here's what else I wrote but did not think to have notarized more than three full months ago: Today I saw yet another story on the news about how strenuously the FDA is saying that vaccines don't cause autism. And I got to thinking about how much Jenny McCarthy has become the voice of alternative conceptualizations of autism. And then I got to thinking how she was recently on Oprah. And how she's been on Oprah a lot in the past year or so. And how Oprah seems to like her a lot. And how she seems more and more expertacious every time she's on. That's when the vision came upon me: Liked by Oprah. Sliding into the expert role. Being the face of a newsy issue. It all adds up, doesn't it?

Oprah is going to hand Jenny McCarthy her own show and there's nothing we can do about it.

Jenny has an ideal set up by going up against the FDA. Sure, with ordinary opponents, she might just seem like a moderately successful entertainer insinuating herself into a discipline well outside her skill-set. But against the FDA, she might as well be Marie Curie. I wasn't particularly buying the whole vaccination etiology theory of autism, until I heard how stridently the FDA opposes it. Now I can only assume that vaccines are, like most of what the FDA oversees, some source of kickbacks and pay-offs for the FDA, a department entirely dedicated to whoring for the pharmaceutical industry. If it's Jenny against the FDA, I'm with Jenny.

But what I don't want, (and didn't want on 2/13/09, mind you) is to watch her talk show, squarely slotted between Rachael Ray and Dr. Phil.

But it's coming. I knew it on Valentine's Day Eve. It's official now. Get beneath your desk with your head between your knees and brace for it.

And while we're at it, we should brace for a few other things that I will now detail in a rambling fashion, lest they come to pass before I document it, and I will be unable to enjoy the position of smug superiority that suits me so well. Please note: I have a bad feeling that Valerie Bertinelli is moving into the talk show host orbit. . . If Chicago does win the 2016 Olympics, it will more than likely be withdrawn when Rich Daley is finally indicted for a generation's worth of corruption based on depositions by John Harris in the course of Rod Blagojevich's trial. (Either that or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald will die mysteriously.). . . Pope Benedict (who is essentially a rebound girl for the Catholic Church that still closes its eyes and pictures John Paul II during genuflection) is going to make a few more winking gestures to welcome Nazi sympathizers back into the fold and say a few more crazy things about condoms spreading HIV, all the while stroking his furry Prada muffler, and there will be an open movement to dump him. . . He will forestall this by speeding up the fast track to declare his predecessor a saint and the Church will forget what it was saying, sigh softly, and pretend they’re not still thinking of JPII when they’re looking at whats-his-name.

I’m not saying I can predict everything. For instance, I definitely missed the psychic boat about that week when the news was dominated by pirates. Nor did I anticipate the trip down memory lane with Swine Flu. (Although both of these events lead me to suspect that we may soon be at the mercy of killer bees and Legionnaire’s Disease.) But this I will never yield on: I totally called the Jenny McCarthy thing.