Subject: Kyle Quaffs Chicago Coffee
From: lecl@quads.uchicago.edu (elizabeth e. leclair)
Date: 1991-01-09, 16:41
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

   Quoted from _Strong Coffee_, a Chicago coffee-house art-article-poetry
newsletter:

    One of the endearing qualities of the FBI agent played by Kyle
     MacLachlan on the television series "Twin Peaks" is his now-
    famous sincerely-expressed appreciation of good coffee.  Kyle was
    in Chicago last month with co-star (and forer Evanstonian) Lara
    Flynn Boyle.  He spent several hours at Scenes Coffeehouse and 
    Dramatist Bookstore.  Kyle's verdict on the house coffee?  It's
    "mighty good."

In a rather tangential note, I note that Strong Coffee has a continuing
column called "The Teachings of Baba Java: Path to Coffee Consciousness."
It includes a distinctly Buddhist guru tutoring the adept in the ways
and lore of caffienated enlightenment.  I reproduce some of it here, 
knowing that Coop would surely approve:

    Path to Coffee Consciousness, by Kastanya Kaphinada

LESSON TWO: A Separate Reality

  I had been sitting in a North Side coffeehouse for a couple of hours,
when I felt a distinct change in the shop's collective mood.  Someone was
soliciting donations.  No matter.  The coffee meditation techniques taught
me by Baba Java, Coffee Sage, allowed me to shut off all kinds of annoyances,
such as the bizarre political superstitions being discussed at the next 
table.  I did take the precaution, however, of downing my twenty-fourth
cup of coffee-- the one hundred and twelfth step in the complex ancient
ritual known as "Thirty-Cup Eye-Cycle."  As instructed, I held myself very
still and watched the world vibrate relative to my caffeine-steadied hand.
Good.  The velocity was increasing.  Very soon the power of caffeine would
blur out the reality we so blithley accept, and bring me to the realm of the
Bean Warrior.

[Baba Java arrives in the guise of a woman dressed in a blue spandex suit,
who is soliciting donations for a lesbian separatist community.  Our 
protagonist knows that this is truly Baba Java.  Baba tells the following
parable:}

  There once was a coffee sage named Heer Ortego who had two disciples.
The first disciple asks,

   "Honorable Heer, is it not better to drink coffee and meditate in a
coffee house where the stimulus of other's stimulation may enhance one's
vision?"

The second discplie asks:
       
    "Honorable Heer, is it not better to drink coffee and meditate in 
private, so that the stimulus of other's stimulation may not pollute
one's vision?"

  At these questions, Heer Ortego became very wroth and slew both 
disciples and made their skulls into coffee mugs.

[Our protagonist considers the parable and suggests that Heer must have
been served decaf with imitation non-dairy creamer before the incident.]

  I tried the obvvious:  "Is it because one can drink coffee anywhere and
still have the same insights?"
 "No," said Baba with a disgusted look.  "It is because one must drink
coffee somewhere, whether one has insights or not!"

*******************************************************

Coop would surely approve.  TP's back this week!  Oh, YES!

Elizabeth E. LeClair 
lecl@midway.uchicago.edu