COFFEE!

“If I don't have coffee within an hour and a half of waking up, I'm gonna commit a murder.” – Bill Simmons.

I think I'm starting to get addicted to drinking. I don't mean “drinking” in the sense of alcohol, but just the desire to always have a beverage with me: water, coffee, milk, beer, Arnold Palmer. It doesn't seem to matter anymore.

In my teenage years, I despised coffee. I would drink coffee whenever I was a kid as it was free and available whenever we'd go to the Stop-n-Shop grocery store. I then bought into the myth that coffee affected your height. I blamed coffee drinking as a child for not allowing me to be at least 6 feet tall. Genetics or just being Indian had nothing to do with it. It was coffee.

Even in college, when I started my suspect sleeping patterns, I survived heavily off Mountain Dew Code Red for caffeine purposes. I'd enjoy it anywhere from breakfast to my graveyard shifts working at the computer lab.

It wasn't until a couple years ago that I really hopped aboard with coffee again and forgave it for making me still above average in height for an Indian guy. It probably helped that I dated someone who worked primarily with coffee, hooked me up with free coffee, and bought me a coffee pot as a birthday gift.

It used to be that I would just have a simple cup of coffee each morning. I sometimes would just buy it at the cafeteria at work. It allowed me to keep alert with my growing responsibility at my day job and the late nights that come with comedy. Now, it has just become a problem of sorts.

I invested in a travel mug at Target, so that I could easily brew at home and take it with me to work. I now drink eight cups of coffee every morning. It breaks down as four cups that get brewed at home and taken to work. I pound that down over the course of an hour, then end up in the cafeteria at work, plunk down 55 cents to re-fill it with another four cups.

The taste in coffee is dramatically different in the first four cups as opposed to the second. I now think I have fixed myself on the name-brand home coffee that I like and it's Newman's Own Organics. The price is normally affordable in comparison to Starbucks home brew, tastes way better than Starbucks in my mind, is fair trade, goes to a good cause, and, hey, it's got Paul Newman's name on it. You can't go wrong with Paul Newman! I actually had a dollar off coupon for Starbucks the other day, which would have made it $9.99 but Newman's Own Medium Roast was on sale for just $7.49! Yes, my Giant Eagle Advantage Card can feed my addiction!

The next four cups are kind of terrible. The cafeteria at work primarily serves Seattle's Best coffee, which is frankly Seattle's Worst and probably World's Worst in regards to mainstream coffee. I get Level 3 which is acceptable. I also have tried Level 4. Level 4 is described as “Rich, elegant, complex.” I can assure you it is none of those adjectives mostly because I don't know what those adjectives mean in regards to coffee. They're possibly saying the coffee is comparable to chocolate, could be best found at a royal wedding, and/or may have a personality disorder. It's unimpressive, and when you see that it at times is the same price as Newman's Own Organics, I cannot understand who would go with Seattle's Best. You can't go wrong with Paul Newman!

So, anyway, I have the potential to be like the guy in the commercial below. As Golak said to me when this commercial aired, “That's you at 8 p.m.” (On a side note, with Golak, when he needs caffeine, he'll drink the Vitamin Water Energy, which I tried and it actually made me more tired. Okay, I totally have a problem.)