Back in August, six lab workers drank coffee from the same coffee machine, and each fell ill almost immediately. One even passed out. They were all treated at the hospital. Investigators found that the coffee had been spiked with sodium azide, a preservative used in the labs that oh by the way is deadly. This news didn't come out until yesterday, when the Boston Herald broke the story. But hey, maybe this was just some sort of accident thing?

"An accident? Sodium azide is a poison," said David M. Benjamin, a toxicologist and Chestnut Hill-based clinical pharmacologist. "Absolutely not."

Whoa, okay, excuse us! Not everyone here is a toxicologist, Mr. Benjamin. Harvard is still being weirdly tight-lipped about the investigation of, ahem, Attempted Murder Most Foul. For PR reasons, doubtlessly—they saw what happened at Yale in the Annie Le case. Although they do note they're "installing more security cameras" in the medical school. So if you med students are gonna fuck there, fuck quick.
[Pic via]

Sorry Starbucks but we're pretty sure the Olsen twins and Anna Wintour are not gonna be too enthusiastic about drinking some Sanka type shit, what are they, auto repairpersons???

Starbucks' whole sales pitch here: It tastes the same as our regular coffee, but it's way cheaper and you don't have to go to a Starbucks for it. Bad move.

"We're convinced a majority of people won't be able to tell the difference," said Mr. Schultz, who explained that he has secretly been serving Via to people at his office and home for months and that they haven't realized they were drinking instant coffee.

1. Well, no reason to pay Starbucks prices now, hmm? Why don't we all just carry our personal hobo cups, fished out of the trash, and heat water in a sardine tin, with a Bic lighter, and mix it with our Starbucks Hobo Coffee Crystals? Sounds good? God.

2.Physical danger.

[Pic: Flickr, Flickr]

From the Everett Daily Herald:

Five baristas are accused of engaging in prostitution at an Everett bikini espresso stand following a two-month undercover police investigation into complaints that the women were selling more than coffee.

Detectives say the women were charging up to $80 to strip down and flash customers while fixing lattes and mochas.

Investigators saw the women expose their crotches, lick whipped cream off their co-workers' private parts and pose naked for pictures inside the Grab-n-Go Espresso stand at 8015 Broadway, according to police reports obtained by The Herald on Wednesday.

Yes, it is called Grab-n-Go Espresso. The arrests were the result of a two-month undercover investigation into complaints about prostitution at "various bikini coffee stands around the Everett area." Two things of note: 1) There are bikini coffee stands, and 2) More than one of them have generated complaints that they are actually espresso stands/whorehouses. The detectives singled out the Grab-n-Go because it had generated the most complaints, and probably because the name was just too much.

More from the Herald:

An Everett detective took a city prosecutor to the stand to witness firsthand the activities of the baristas. During that visit, two women allegedly engaged in a "whipped cream show" in which they sprayed whipped cream on each other and licked it off.

[snip]

Detectives say the women also charged customers to play "basketball" - a game in which customers were allowed to throw waded up money at the women, who caught the money in their underpants.

No word on whether the baristas' defense attorneys got their degrees from the Wal-Mart School of Law. We're gonna go grab a coffee now.

UPDATE: Apparently this is a thing. A commenter points us to a site that compiles all the "bikini baristas" coffee shops for your convenience. The latest addition: Sweet Cheeks Espresso in Des Moines, Wash.

They're raising prices on macchiatos and frappucinos and the other fancy drinks of the sort that mediocre comedians like to mock in exaggerated tones, adding, "What does that even mean?"

Conversely, the "Just a regular coffee" drinks of the sort that mediocre comedians pine for as a counterpoint to the fancy newfangled drinks will see their prices go down.

So the yuppies willing to pay more for fancy coffee are now subsidizing the poors, who will get their basic swill cheaper. Starbucks and Barack Obama should probably meet in some sort of socialism summit?
[Pic via]

According to Closer magazine, via D-Listed, The Three C's and a D Of A Healthy Diet: Coffee, Cigarettes, Champagne, and Vodka. Kosher, yes, but how healthy is a diet of these four things? Are there benefits? Disadvantages, possibly? Let's take a gander. We could use to be a little cuter, a little more rockstar, and maybe, even, a little healthier.

1. Coffee! It's made from beans that are often picked by underpaid farm workers in South American countries, but that's okay, because it's a widely accepted practice, now. The beans are ground up, water is put through them, and a drink is made.
Pros: Coffee tastes good, especially when you drink it black. It has lots of antioxidants, which are things that apparently do something good for your cells, like prevent them from aging as fast. It's been proven to reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, kidney stones, and combat asthma issues. It might be combative against Type-2 diabetes, liver cirrhosis, gall stones, Alzheimer's disease, and other things. It helps contribute to things like mental performance and memory, which are proven! And it's an appetite suppressant. Also, it makes you shit, which is good if you need to be skinny on the fly.
Cons: Well, it makes you go doodie, which isn't good if you're stuck on the beach with Kate Moss and you don't want to go in the water. Also, it's been controversially associated with increasing the likelihood of heart disease, though that hasn't been proven. It definitely ups cholesterol levels, which is funny, because people like coffee with eggs which have lots of cholesterol in them and that's some bad 1-2 shit right there. It can cause irregular heartbeats, but so can these two ladies (SWOON), so it must be especially bad for them because they have to look in the mirror all the time. It has unfavorable consequences on blood pressure, can trigger heartburn, can fuck up your sleeping cycles, and is pretty goddamn addictive. You can develop a pretty harsh dependence on it. Some people put cream and sugar in it, which makes it less great for you. Also, Sweet N' Low used to give rats cancer and it still might. Splenda looks like cocaine, which is neat. Also, it'll stain your teeth, but if you can't afford fake teeth, WTF are you doing drinking coffee?
Feed It To LilyMoss In Mass Quantities? Sure! There are worse things than being talkative and poopie.

2. Champagne A favorite of rappers and the fiscally liberal everywhere, probably for the mere effect of opening it, upon which a piece of cork shoots out with a wonderful noise and foam bubbles over the top of the bottle in a somewhat phallic, metaphorical release of opulence. There are lots of sparkling wines but only The Real McCoy can be called Champagne, because it comes from the Champagne region in France, where - other than the fact that they keep their local economy thriving - locals probably detest most of the people who drink it.
Pros: Bubbly drinks are filling. Drinking booze supposedly has lots of benefits, but the process by which Champers are made - making it bubbly - makes it healthier, I read somewhere. Also, in rats, consumption of Champers led to less damage when they introduced strokes in the rats! Poor rats, but good for strokes? It's a status drink! People drunk on Dom smell way less than people drunk on, say, Bakers bourbon, which will give you the distinct odor of an assy barn of horseshit left out to dry in the hot, blazing, summer sun after a monsoon.
Cons: Plenty of champers tastes like piss, but if you enjoy the taste of piss, then this isn't really a problem. Also, people who drink too much end up in bad places, like the gutter. Too much booze can leave you looking aged, which, compounded with all that coffee, won't help. Also, drinking a lot makes you do ridiculously stupid things, like talking a lot on stage.
Feed It To LilyMoss In Mass Quantities? Maybe! All the bubbles make it hard to drink too much and make you gassy. Also, Champ-hangovers are worse than regular hangovers so it kind of regulates itself. And if they have a stroke, well, shit! They're in luck. Finally, surely there's some kind of nutrient in something that comes from a grape.

3. Cigarettes. Oh, wonderful cigarettes. They're made of tobacco which was once farmed but is now mostly made in a factory. They're paper and synthetic cotton and might actually have some real tobacco in them sometimes, who knows? The idea is to light them on fire and smoke them and get a buzz from them. They come in all different kinds of packages with all different kinds of "flavors" and whatnot but for the most part are all the same.
Pros: Sometimes, they give you a buzz! They don't really taste good but sometimes smokers convince themselves that they do. Cigarettes with recessed filters make for great impromptu hipster coke spoons, like Parliament Lights! Also, appetite suppressant, diuretic, and social accessibility point of entry into possibly otherwise impermeable conversation!
Cons: They give you cancer, they make breathing more difficult, they make you smell, they're addicting, you're giving money to really bad people (as opposed to only kinda bad people with coffee and booze), they make you poo, they turn your teeth yellow and make your breath stank like ass, the give you a nasty cough, have killed at least two people you know or are related to, cost a shitload of cash if you live in New York ($11/pack?!?!), and have a strong social stigma attached to them. Children will give you far meaner looks if you're smoking than if you're drunk or strung out on caffine. And you don't want awful looks from children, do you?
Feed It To LilyMoss In Mass Quantities? Let's try not to. They are smelly enough with the coffee. Also, Kate has kids! Smoking in front of kids is kind of bad if only because they don't have a choice. Not that being drunk isn't bad, but they're going to get drunk one day. They don't have to give their money to Big T like us, who are terribly hooked.

4. Vodka. It's fermented grain booze often made with potatoes, and it's the reason the Russians can't ever get anything right besides getting totally krunk with the komrades. Vodka can be mixed with pretty much anything but by the end of the night as long as you have something to chase it with, you could mix it with Pedialite and be fine (note to self: try this sometime). Vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol with a nice bottom note of "ouch."
Pros: Gets you really drunk, really quickly. Some Moscovite doctor once noted that Vodka in small quantities will help prevent atherosclerosis, which sounds like something you'd want to prevent. Also, Vodka's pretty filling as a booze. If you drink too much of it, you don't have to work hard to "pull the trigger" because puking up vodka's a relatively simply, effortless process.
Cons: It's vodka. What isn't bad about it? Anything but vodka, please. Seriously. Malibu and Milk. Peach Schnapps. Bottom shelf tequila. Whatever. People don't realize how truly awful vodka is. Vodka is the worst. Vodka's like those older kids you first meet in high school who you think are so cool, and they take you out and you drink and smoke with them and then a year later, they're working at the Gap and doing lots of Acid, and you're like, woah, what the fuck? I thought you were cool. And they were like, so did we. And then you do everything you can to get out of town and never see these people again.
Feed It To LilyMoss In Mass Quantities? Sure. Whatever, they're going to do it anyway. Besides which, who are we to judge? Just look at them. Hotness in motion. Someone, somewhere has said that fame and beauty take sacrifice. In which case, color me hot. I know how I'm getting into shape this season.

The Wall Street Journal reveals that the coffee company of choice for robots has a whole team of efficiency experts that will come to your Starbucks location, watch your every move, then tell you how, by plotting the movements of your arms, legs, fingers, toes, and head on a PowerPoint graph that is cross-referenced with a 3D image map of cataloging even your smallest eye twitches, you can shave several seconds off your Macchiato assembly time.

He and a 10-person "lean team" have been going from region to region armed with a stopwatch and a Mr. Potato Head toy that they challenge managers to put together and re-box in less than 45 seconds.

Huzzah for "fun" corporate thinking tools! That Mr. Potato Head is just one of the tools Starbucks used to help its super-efficient Oregon City story "cut two seconds" off its average drive-thru time (the other tool: threats). No price is too high to pay to achieve our common Starbucks goal!

If Starbucks can reduce the time each employee spends making a drink, he says, the company could make more drinks with the same number of workers or have fewer workers.

Work harder. Work faster. Work more. Work yourself out of a job!
[Pic via]

McDonald's Corp.'s sales rose 5.1% last month as the fast-food chain continued to attract consumers amid the global recession and rising unemployment...this year's results were aided by the introduction of new McCafe coffee beverages.

McDonald's message is this: "Now you have a good excuse to buy a cheap ass burger while you pick up your daily tub of coffee, yuppies." Clear, direct, and honest. Meanwhile, the chief marketing guy at Starbucks is like "McD's will recruit all these new yuppies who will get tired of drinking their swill and trade up to our swill!" while glancing around nervously, adding, "Yea, that's the ticket. 'Trading up.' Yea, I like the sound of that." We all know you're toast, Starbucks man.

The joke on both of them is that there are no yuppies left. Only wretches.
[Ad Age, WSJ. Pic: mm mcderomott's Flickr]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.I am 95% confident that this was written by this guy.
[Ad Age. Pic via]

Scientists used to think that coffee was bad for you, but now they say, woops, that was just because so many people who drink coffee are smokers, too. It was the cigarettes, not the coffee! Which is no great comfort for you, our intoxicated target demographic. But this is:

Coffee seems to protect the liver against cirrhosis, especially that caused by alcoholism. It's not clear, either for cancer or cirrhosis, whether it's coffee or caffeine that may be protective.

So just to be safe, drink lots of coffee and take a few handfuls of Vivarin whenever you're "out on the town"—or just sitting home alone in your darkened apartment draining the last of a bottle of Popov Discount Vodka! But don't smoke cigarettes. But your medical marijuana's still safe!
[LAT]

Honestly I haven't seen one fucking ad for this yet, myself, but that's okay, since McD's did an excellent job hyping up how their ads are EVERYWHERE, don't even try to miss them:

McDonald's — never known for a delicate marketing touch — is about to drop the mother of all campaigns on you, an everywhere-you-look, invade-your-dreams ad campaign in support of its McCafé specialty coffee drinks that will be not so much viral as bubonic. An estimated $100-million mega-buy across TV, Web, radio, print, outdoor and social media, the McCafé push beginning today will be, according to the company, its biggest "menu initiative" since it began serving breakfast in the 1970s.

Fine, fine. But Starbucks is an identity, not just a coffee shop. The bigger question here is: Will the yuppies of America sell their very faux-souls during a recession for measly $100 mil, forsaking Starbucks for the clutches of McD's? Sure, if McDonald's puts some fucking copies of Akeelah and the Bee by the register, some Dylan on the radio, open a store on Astor Place. Yuppies will flock to that shit to save a nickel. Drink your McCafé, yuppié.

[I'm getting some tomorrow!]

The thing is that both of these Starbucks were always fucking packed. Packed with the same people who would always be like "Starbucks right next to another Starbucks, WTF, they're taking over, corporate bullshit, etc." People like us! But those fucking Starbucks just kept on making money, money, money.

Or so one would think! But now the big ass location on Astor and Third Ave. is closing down. We knew SBUX was having trouble, but this—this is the end of the world as we know it. If you lived in New York during the NEW GILDED AGE of the mid-to-late 00's, you'll always remember those two Starbucks, a mere block away from each other, standing astride the East Village like living "Fuck You"'s to anyone nostalgic for the heroin and Bob Dylan and Basquiat and all that other romantic shit. Starbucks, baby. Suck my latte. Now there's only one Astor Place location left, dangling all alone, like Lance Armstrong's last testicle.

Starbucks, you bastard. You are Cobra Commander to our G.I. Joe. It wasn't your presence that destroyed our rage against the machine. It's your absence. What do we hate now? Coldstone?
[Eater]

Yes, coffee. The brown elixir that has provided a legal addiction for so many of you for so long, has been found to cause hallucinations. Sort of. Scientists trying to better understand the nature of hallucinatory experiences found that people who are "high caffeine users" (seven cups of instant coffee a day) are three times more likely to, like, hear people's voices when no one's there than those who only drink about one cup a day. So, um, duh? Coffee makes you jumpy and crazy, especially if you're drinking seven cups a day. But if you really want to trip balls, maybe you could drink like fourteen or twenty-one cups a day and before you know it trees will be growing out of Judy's knees and Tom will have become part of the floor. And for so cheap!

Another good technique that's been circling around the internet for a few days is The Ganzfeld Procedure. It sounds like a Tintin adventure, yes, but it's really quite unexotic. All you do is cut a ping-pong ball in half, put 'em over your eyes, lie down, and put the radio on a static channel. Eventually, due to the lack of sensory stimuli, your brain will come up with its own shit to entertain and engage you. People see horses and talk to dead relatives and stuff. And all that costs you is the price of a ping-pong ball! And a radio, I guess, if you don't have one. Though if you don't have a radio you're probably in worse shape than most and probably shouldn't be spending your time getting ping-pong high anyway.

So spend your peyote money on groceries this month and try these new homemade, DIY methods. Sure you probably can't really roam the streets and effectively imagine that you're in olden times, but you'll still be able to escape (transcend?) the daily mundanity for a moment or two. And that's probably about as much as we can ask for these days.

Wieden & Kennedy (also behind this Nike campaign, incidentally) spent four long years working for Starbucks, and, according to an excellent Ad Age story today, none of that time was particularly happy. But Schultz was pals with Wieden's founder, so it went on and on. The conflict can be read either as a case of a prima donna client, OR the case of prima donna ad agencies not feeling "appreciated" for their brilliance:

"Wieden always felt like it was a one-way relationship," said an executive familiar with the matter. "They felt like they presented a way to drive the brand forward, and Starbucks wasn't receptive."...

Other agencies that have worked with Starbucks have felt frustration with the marketer too. Rich Silverstein, co-founder of Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which did two stints representing Starbucks, said much of the fault lies with the mercurial Mr. Schultz. "He does not appreciate advertising," he said. "Any agency that comes in has one foot out the door already."

"Wah wah" would be the knee-jerk reaction to this—but keep in mind that it must have been actually really bad in order for an agency to walk away from an account of this magnitude.

Unrest at Starbucks is hardly new. The company has been described as a difficult client for many years. It's infamous for greenlighting projects and later withdrawing approval. For instance, the chain made its TV-advertising debut during the last holiday season, but a broadcast campaign had been under way at least once before.

Oh well. Starbucks has never had a truly great ad campaign, anyhow. Can you name one? I can't. So it's probably no great loss on either side. Starbucks is in a bad place, with the economy how it is, and no ad agency will be able to stop that.

Anyhow, Starbucks needs to focus on its hand herpes problem first.

[Ad Age]

Each bean is fully dried before roasting, ensuring a more evenly cooked bean, which makes it less bitter.

That's right, you've finally lived to see the historic day when Folgers sells coffee grounds that are the product of a slightly upgraded pre-roast drying process! The future is now.

Also notable: Folgers' ad agency says this campaign is "the largest marketing investment in the history of Folgers.” So how big is it?

[It] is expected to be in the low six figures.

Starbucks spends that much every day on nutmeg, dude. America's not dead yet.

[NYT]

Boomp3.com

The baristas (baristi?) at a Toluca Lake coffee shop reached their breaking point with frequent customer Miley Cyrus over the weekend. According to one barista who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Cyrus’ frequent abuse of the homey atmosphere of the store may lead to her permanent eviction. They said, “We don’t mind it when people come in and hang out. We encourage it, but you have to buy a drink first. It’s the unspoken rule. She usually doesn’t order a drink until after an hour or two of just hanging out.” Apparently, Cyrus was in the store on Sunday for over forty-five minutes before placing her order for a caramel mocchachino with skim. It was at that point that Steve, the manager, warned her that she had just gotten her second strike.

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Boomp3.com

Normally, a crippling fear of spilling her drink order consumes Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo on her daily Starbucks run. Instead, the baristas must’ve assumed that when she used the name, “Ellen” it was a fake name and that her real name is Renee, as in Renee Zelllweger. Pompeo tried to laugh off the case of mistaken identity, but it really got to her. Pompeo confessed, “We’re both awesome and blonde, but that’s it. That’s where the similarities end. We’re nothing alike. Two completely different people.”

[Photo Credit: Flynet]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Boomp3.com

Entourage star Jeremy Piven bucked the established order of the fashion world by sporting a pair of white pants after Labor Day in New York City on Tuesday. When asked why he dared to commit a fashion crime this heinous, Piven claimed that his pants weren't white, they were actually vanilla. Piven said, "They're vanilla bean colored — that's what my glam squad told me. Check the catalog."

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.