French Press

The cheap one I'd never before used, tonight I brought down from the top cabinet. I've run out of filters and watching Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes" made me fiend for a cup. The "press" apparatus was not strong enough and all of the grounds pushed right up through the brew. So much for that.

When I'm at Sarah's place, I use the press exclusively. Her actual coffeemaker is this scary industrial looking thing that is more ideal for an after dinner round of joe for five or six people, not for the two-cup drinker. I find that as I get older, I appreciate the earthy crudeness of pressed grounds more and more.

In any case, back to Jarmusch. Carlos, whose taste I now trust implicitly, warned me that it was uneven. I would agree--and I would add that in places it was inane. There were gems peppered in some of the dialogues/vignettes. I laughed out loud in places, but for the most part, think I could write a more convincing movie about the universality, the assumed and presumed upon attitude we have toward coffee...the utter inanity and absurdity of the things that are discussed to the backdrop of its scent--first aromatic, then stale--the way it lends itself to cigarettes.

During the Iggy Pop/Tom Waits scene they comment that in the 40s it was coffee and pie, and now we are a coffee and cigarettes generation. I have always loved men who smoke cigarettes while drinking coffee...black, so that was a truism that gave me the patience to finish it.