Notes From the Coffeeshop

status check - Grand
background ambiance - Tristan Prettyman, "Love Love Love"

Transcribed from jibberish written at a Quincy coffeeshop - between laughing with Michelle and the baristas about the satellite "Best of 90s" mix piped through the house

The setting has changed - the flourescent lights of campus housing dimmed to darkness broken only by an illuminated bar and TV screens. Bright colors and patterns have been replaced by black as the color of choice, each dark item topped with different hairstyles, more makeup or closer-shaven faces. The tables and chairs around you hold strangers with jobs and career ambitions. No more classmates struggling with course requirements to be found in your presence.

You focus your gaze on the new and, seemingly, improved faces of old friends in this new location. The familiar players in an unfamiliar context discuss with your their post-graduate lives and you can commiserate. Student loans, rent, the oppression discovered while climbing the ladder or, in some cases, trying to decide on a ladder to climb. You appear to have, appallingly, matured.

That said, you're back together on a Friday night - with your college drinking buddies still ready for release on the weekend. Maturity, you're relieved to realize, only takes you so far.

You're nervous at first, taking this journey down memory lane. You've equipped yourself with the many memories of weekend misadventures. They're all carefully tucked away within reach when pangs of nostalgia take hold. But the comfortable nature of those past encounters is not guaranteed - you wonder how you will feel if you don't fit into your worn and easy niche like you did before.

The apprehension melts as you settle into rounds of hugs and mutual compliments. The smiles feel warm and genuine as you climb onto your stool at the bar - the one they said they saved for you.

Conversations are temporarily halted by cheers when more of your crew arrives. Everyone, save you, has returned to or moved to Massachusetts - your cheeks flush happily as they urge you do the same. It feels good to be wanted somewhere you want to ultimately be.

You settle into small groups, each carrying on a revolving series of conversations. It's easier to speak loudly to a few people over the clamor of other patrons. With The Playwright's dark paneling and long narrow design, you imagine the bar to be longer than reality would dictate. You don't know how far back to room goes, but you imagine distant clusters of friends doing the same thing yours is.

A group actually does merge with yours for a bit - as a group of guys infiltrates your female-heavy crowd. You and a friend are invited to play a few rounds of the computer trivia game located by you - that game designed to eat up your money after a few rounds at the bar. The guy leaning next to you at the computer screen is an Eagles fan, but you'll let it slide for the time being - all the more so after he asks if he can buy you a drink. You're both feeling the effects of your drinks, but he's cute and but you're able to refute the arguments he's making for why Philadelphia is bound to win come Sunday. You laugh as he realizes he's losing the argument, but keeps trying anyway. It's all playful fun - on your side, at least. He buys you another drink and interrupts his Eagles description to tell you you're gorgeous. You remember just how pleasant it feels to be complimented by a stranger. You carry on for a bit more, until it becomes clear that the Eagles/Patriots obstacle would be too much to overcome - or so you tell him. It's really just that he's getting obnoxious and you want to talk with your friends. But it's fun while it lasts - you wonder if he'll remember the next day.

You celebrate a friend's progress toward becoming a lawyer. You catch up with another you haven't seen since graduation. Has it really been almost three years? You discuss your job and see eyebrows raised in appreciation. You laugh with the funny, animated bartender you've always wanted to order from, but had never found at a bar before. You feel like The Playwright was created just so your group could come together for the night - it feels familar, like somewhere you could go on a regular basis and be guaranteed a good time. Even the cheesy computer games always say you're a winner at the end, no matter how many times you accidentally click the wrong buttons. Hey, it's all good - you weren't paying.

You set up plans to meet up again soon - you exchange hugs to those starting to depart and promise to write, call, stay in contact better than you have before. You know the odds of it are slim, but you've mentally circled a date on the calendar when you'll be able to laugh and catch up again.

After you're one of two left from the group, you set your glasses back on the bar, say goodnight to the bartender and walk out, turning on the sidewalk back toward the apartment a few blocks away. You navigate the huge piles of melting snow that make the streets look like a winter battleground - laughing as you recall bits of the evening and fill in the other on the portions they couldn't hear from their places.

It's a warm evening and you feel heady and saucy - but more than anything, you just feel comfortable. Everything worked out as it was supposed to and you mentally thank the friends, the strangers, the bartender and the stars for shining all the while.

In other news. I came across a quasi-blogged suggestion to check out The Shore. Since I had a little time to kill before embarking on the Great Massachusetts Caper, I decided to pick the album up and take a listen. And, to my delight, I'm pleased with the purchase (which was coupled with the re-purchase of Keane because it's among those in my missing CD book). I spent a portion of travel time on 89 trying to figure out how to describe the sound - the best I've come up with is that if you were to take the Howie Day/Stereophonics tour last year and discover that the musicians got drunk on the back of the tourbus one night and procreated, The Shore would be that offspring. Since I love both HD and S, I'm loving the results.

Also musically speaking, The Postal Service has managed to improve upon an already astounding song ... it's been well established that "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" is one of my favorite songs - partly because it's brilliant, partly because I feel that warped "Wait! DC! I was there! I totally get what you're saying!" affinity toward it. But I was introduced this evening to a remix that appears on the (equally brilliant) Sup Pop: Patient Zero compliation ... the pace of the vocals are slower and focus on Jenny's high harmony (and anything with more Jenny is a good thing, in my opinion), but it's juxtaposed by a fast electronic house beat. And works, in a bizarre way I wouldn't have expected. Which naturally made me echo the thoughts of indie girls everywhere, exclaiming out loud for the first time, "Jesus, I just fucking ADORE Ben Gibbard! But I feel like a walking cliche for even thinking that."

And, finally, take a listen to The Thermals' "How We Know." Absurdly addictive.

You spoon water like love and I will take it...