Airball

I haven’t posted a new Overheard in Dunkin’ Donuts in a long-ass time. Is it because I make coffee at home / in the office rather than go out to get it? Is it because people are more boring than they were in the old days? Who knows? All I can say is, I was prompted to bring back that tag this morning after I noticed this poster up in a DD near my office:

airball

Yeah. A poster from Michael Jordan’s baseball-playing days, which were c.1994, long before this DD was even built.

I, um, wow . . .

Answer me these questions three

On the way to the airport yesterday morning, we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts in Boonton. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve gone there on the way to Newark, but I’m going to have to quit that practice. As it turns out, their coffee is so impossibly hot that I only get to drink four or five sips of it by the time I get to the airport. So I’ll need to find another one earlier en route.

But yesterday’s stop does give me occasion for the first official entry in the Overheard in Dunkin Donuts category of VM (I’ve retroactively added those other recent DD posts)!

I walked into the place around 6:45am. A workman (flannel shirt, jeans, boots) was in front of me on line. He finished his order and then asked the cashier, “My boss come in here already?”

“I don’t know. What’s he look like?”

“Short guy. Looks like a bridge troll.”

“Oh, yes! He was in about half an hour ago.”

Shock the Monkey (with caffeine)

A few months ago, I wrote about a strange moment in a Dunkin Donuts on my morning commute. Today, I pulled in to another nearby DD on my way back from lunch, and a woman driving a Jaguar walked in ahead of me. She was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweater, with a plaid flannel shawl.

I stood behind her on line, and noticed that she had some sorta loose collar on her neck. It was red, with little silver buttons. A red, heart-shaped “dog tag” was hanging from it, on the back of her neck. It read

PET MONKEY
BILL IS
MY MASTER

I’m just gonna hide under my desk for a while.

Unrequired Reading

I promised some Unrequired Reading for a Friday morning, so here it is:

Jane Galt has a sad post about the economic destruction of Zimbabwae. There are some “interesting” comments after the post.

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Via Bookslut, a collection of covers from old Penguin and Pelican books.

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Ten YEARS of South Park?! Man, I’m getting old.

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It’s Ramadan. Don’t be a jerk.

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What’s organic?

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Mark Cuban talks balls.

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Ron Rosenbaum on William Kennedy, Hunter Thompson and the America’s Cup.

Bonus: Ron on the Dunkin Donuts Coffee Roll.

It’s the end of the world and all of western civilization

I got my breakfast (black coffee and a blueberry muffin) at a truck-stop Dunkin Donuts on the way to my office. As I was walking out, I passed a woman. She was in her early 40s, not quite haggardly thin, with dark hair and a face pockmarked like Sadie Burke. She carried a canvas purse and a pack of cigarettes.

She stepped past me to a man sitting at a table and asked in a thin voice, “Are you going west?”

“No,” he said. “Where you headed?”

“California.”