The ACHEWOOD A-LIST! ...for December 19, 2005.

December 19, 2005...Holiday cheer...it's the ACHEWOOD A-LIST, with your host MOLLY SAYS!

Those who start the 5am shift at Starbucks see the night befores and the morning afters as they happen...we note that local scofflaws TODD SQUIRREL and NICE PETE stood shivering in Brainpan Alley (the gutter where the goop from the Foodland butchershop's armored door gets dumped in the wee hours)...were the jitters from the penetrating cold, or the icy retreat of Eddie Ephedrine? As is the case with most lucky Camels, they put the shared butt out and jittered off their own separate ways, sans much formal adieu. The slow, cold-weather turnover of Pete's van was heard a few minutes later, off over the rooftops, during which time Todd had crawled into a bag of McDonald's trash and no doubt rested his twitching head on a sachet of ketchup.

Next on the docket...sweet old Cornelius, who claimed to be out of Orange Pekoe, came in around six for a Tall Sumatra with room. He topped the brew off with nonfat and Splenda, then sat for nearly an hour hand-editing a nice leather folio full of writing.

Around seven thirty a taxi carrying Ray Smuckles stopped briefly at the light in front of our shop before shooting off...despite the fact that the light hadn't turned green (though Ray had). May be time to invest in companies that shampoo taxi-cab carpets!

There's always something new to report, and you'll read it here first — MOLLY SAYS!

I think I actually am starting a gossip column!

It won't pay the bills, but after last time's entry where I played with putting certain words in bold, I found myself thinking in gossip-columnist voice. Beef would walk into the room, and I'd think, "there's Roast Beef." A bird would chirp outside, and I'd think, "Good news! I see a bird." That, coupled with my new job at Starbucks, which has made me the hub of Achewood's social universe, has set me up to be a self-styled gossip diva of the first order around here. That isn't saying much, but I'll take what I can get.

First off, who would have thought that Ray's signature caffeinated beverage (the "High Systolic," he calls it) would be a cinque (five espresso shots) whole milk latte with three spurts of raspberry, one spurt of hazelnut, whipped cream, caramel lattice, and a $3.50 Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie cookie depth charge. The cookie makes a "hella yummy mess" that he likes to scoop out with a spoon once the coffee is gone, he says.

Turns out T. Orezscu's quaff of choice is a doppio (two espresso shots), into which he shakes a half packet of raw sugar. No frills, just the straight stuff. Yesterday he downed it in one quick gulp before jumping on his skateboard and youthfully kicking away.

Surprise of surprises, even Lyle visits Starbucks! His drink of choice? A venti (20 0z.) cup of black coffee. I'd have guessed that, had I had time to recover from my shock at seeing him in front of me, which I didn't. Nice to see he always throws fifty cents into the tip jar.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time, on the...words...I write...on the Internet...WEB PAGE!

Happy Holidays!

Hello, Blog! Oh, who am I kidding. I'm not feeling all that cheery. Work has been hellish (I'll explain), Ray's pool house is drafty and freezing, and Beef just keeps giving me the most useless Christmas lists imaginable.

The first item of business is Beef's Christmas list (my, that looks official in bold! I could be a gossip journalist!). I know he's from a pretty broken home, but to ask for "a breakfast of steak and eggs, cooked only one time, if you want, and at your convenience" is hardly getting the spirit of things. I asked him to add to it and he wrote at the bottom, "I will do the dishes afterwards, you don't got to clean up." Jesus, what am I supposed to get him? He already has a laptop, and that's about the only other thing on the planet he's interested in besides the protein that enables him to use it.

The pool house is drafty. The only thing colder than our toilet seat at night is Beef's nose when he kisses me as I get back in bed, so I have a treat waiting for me at both ends of the journey. I'm going to talk to Ray about turning the heat on, because Beef refuses to.

The situation with Napoli. Shortly after Butte's head chef Piyaugh got sacked, Mr. Del Vecchio (okay, this bolding thing is getting annoying), the restaurant's principal investor, started to get a little nutsy around the edges. He renamed it after his birthplace, and had the whole interior done up with these big drapey velvet curtains (even the bathroom stalls had thick drapey curtains across the front). He put pictures of his mother over every booth, and during service he sat at the bar and doodled spirals and doors all over his cocktail napkins. Eventually he stopped coming in at all and one day we learned he'd "gone to rest in the country for the winter." Then last night an old guy apparently had a heart attack and died while smoking in a bathroom stall and the whole place went up in flames, which means I'm out of work again. The fishy thing is, I don't remember any old guy. We had only three tables at the time the fire started: a dad and his college-age daughter (Glenlivet 12, house Chardonnay), five blue-hairs who ordered a round of Sambuca, and a young couple on a date who were way out of their price range (tap). Best not to stick my nose into the whole situation, I figure. Maybe I'll get a job at Starbucks while I look for something in a different field.