Caramel Macchiato Flavor

Why does everything taste better with coffee?

I was at the Burton U.S. Open and in the village, there’s always a sponsor village at sporting events catering to the younger generation, there was a Clif Bar booth.

I cannot resist free food.

I also cannot throw out food. Yes, I grew up in the era wherein children were starving in Europe, our parents really said that, and to put more on your plate than you could eat was a crime.

But my father was into gourmet foods, and he loved to fress, whenever there was a buffet, at a bar mitzvah, a wedding, he couldn’t resist.

I guess I’m my father’s son.

And I rarely get too full. And there’s no such thing as too rich. I only stop eating when my brain says so, not when my stomach sends me a message.

So my father found real estate for Friendly Ice Cream. Back when Friendly was seen as a breakthrough, do you remember the Big Beef and the Awful Awful? (Awful big and awful good, but because of a trademark dispute they had to rename it the Fribble.) And every time my father went to a location he brought home half-gallons. That was the size back then, you never bought pints, that arrived with the super-premium ice cream of the seventies, Haagen Dazs, then Ben & Jerry’s.

There was always ice cream in the freezer. Chocolate Marshmallow was my favorite, yum. And there was Toasted Almond Fudge…

And Mocha Almond Chip.

There’s that coffee.

I am not a coffee drinker. I want no artificial stimulants ever. I want no buzz, no illegal drugs, I have a hard enough time keeping myself on the straight and narrow, and I want to have all of my faculties 24/7.

As for the Starbucks phenomenon… I’m not sure if it’s really about the coffee. It’s kind of like a Rolex, owning it/using the product labels you, it signifies that you’re too good for the old Maxwell House.

But when I finally went into one, after being overwhelmed by the descriptive lingo, wondering how anybody managed to order, I found out what they’re really selling are milkshakes, with coffee, calorie-laden drinks that you can rationalize because you got them at Starbucks and they’ve got a hint of coffee and you need your buzz.

And it’s the coffee that gives it its bite.

That’s what coffee provides, a zing you can’t get anywhere else.

Like that McConnell’s ice cream with the coffee grounds mixed in. A winner!

So, at this Clif Bar booth they’re handing out samples, which they’ve baked in a toaster oven.

Now I don’t ever foresee toasting my energy bars, but I’m game.

It tasted DELICIOUS!

Now my nutritionist is anti-Clif Bar, because they’re full of carbohydrates and contain little protein, they’re almost like cakes. So I never buy them. Oh, I eat one now and again when I get one for free, and they’ve got their Builder’s edition which tastes nowhere near as good but speaks to the balance…

That’s my energy bar of choice, the Balance Bar. But it seems to have lost the war, you’ve got to be number one or you’re no one, and now they’re hard to find and they’ve reduced flavors. So, for a while there I ordered them in bulk on the internet, but then I realized I was devouring them like candy bars and I went cold turkey, except for when I go skiing, when I really might need a boost.

But that’s another thing my nutritionist told me, it’s not real protein, the bars are not real food.

But they had a whole table of these Caramel Macchiato bars and roaming women giving them away for free, actively pushing them on people because the event was just about to conclude, so I took two.

And tried not to eat them.

But yesterday I broke down, I was starved, and when I broke the foil and took a bite it was so satisfying, far beyond any other Clif Bar, and that’s when I realized…IT’S THE COFFEE!

I just ate the second, I’m not gonna buy any, I’m part of the resistance. But will I break down now and again?

Maybe.

I turned on Netflix and found out there was a third season of “Babylon Berlin.” I didn’t even know there was a second!

Used to be you didn’t know a band was playing in town, then you didn’t know they put out a new album. Do you realize James Taylor released his covers album last week? I saw it on the homepage of Spotify, or Amazon, otherwise I wouldn’t have known. I mean I knew the album was in the pipeline, but how many more albums are gonna be released this week? I love that JT covered Felice’s father’s “Moon River,” but the real surprise is the closing track, “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top.” If you’re a boomer, you grew up with the show tunes. I remember making my mother play all the Original Cast albums until I found “With A Little Bit Of Luck,” I could hum the tune but I couldn’t remember the title.

Now we’re waiting for “Ozark.” I could watch “Ozark” every day! But it doesn’t come back until the end of the month.

So we were looking for a new show to watch, and I remembered Harlan Coben’s e-mail, about his new show on Netflix, “The Stranger.”

Now it’s not “Babylon Berlin,” with a deeper meaning. I always recommend “Babylon Berlin,” but I’ve got to warn you you won’t know what’s going on, that’s a feature, not a bug, and it drives many people away. As for the subtitles, if they bug you you can stop reading right now.

“The Stranger” is a tale, made from a genre book.

And I don’t read the mysteries, because there’s always a twist at the end that you can’t foresee, that seems irrational, and you feel ripped-off after the investment of time. Of course there are exceptions, like “Gone Girl,” the book, not the movie, but “The Woman In The Window” made me want to throw my Kindle out the window.

Now I’ve never read any of Coben’s books, but as I’ve said previously, I love the film “Tell No One,” maybe only the French truly know how to elevate this kind of material, Americans get all caught up in production values and stars and the story is overlooked.

And then I watched Coben’s “The Five” on Netflix.

And in this window before “Ozark,” I decided to pull up “The Stranger.”

Now it’s about secrets. Should they be revealed?

That’s the deeper meaning, assuming you see one.

But that’s not really the plot.

The twists and turns all make sense. And Stephen Rea is fantastic. As are all the other actors. “The Stranger” was made in the U.K., where everything is in service to the story.

You might recognize Richard Armitage, who is attractive, but his looks do not overpower his performance.

You’ll definitely recognize Siobhan Finneran, who was so great in my number one Netflix recommendation, “Happy Valley.”

And it turns out Hannah John-Kamen has appeared in all these genre flicks I never see, like “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” and “Tomb Raider” and “Ready Player One,” so she was new to me.

And, of course, there’s Jennifer Saunders, from AbFab.

So, do you want to know your spouse’s secrets? Or does that upset your vision of your life too much?

It’s kind of like affairs, worse than the stepping-out is the fact that you’ve got to reconstruct everything you thought happened. Where were they really? You put together the pieces and find out the life you were living wasn’t real.

So, are the good people bad?

And what does it take to find out the truth? Coincidence? Legwork?

And does the truth ever really come out?

I haven’t told you much, because I don’t want to ruin the ride. You’ll watch an episode and get hooked, you’ll find yourself staying up late, unable to turn off the TV as you devour episode after episode.

It’s a journey far superior to the mysteries on the big screen. The characters are developed, the story can go through so many twists and turns.

But it’s all believable. At no point do you say this is too hokey and you need to turn it off.

To a degree it’s empty calories.

Then again, we all live our lives, wondering what is true and what is not.

Watch this.

“in the seven states where polls have closed so far, Sanders has led by a median 37 points among 17-to-29-year olds and 20 points among 30-to-44 year olds. But Biden has led by 24 among 45-to-64-year olds and by 33 among seniors.”

“Stark generational divide appears in early exit polls”

It appears Joe Biden is having a very good night, but can he beat Donald Trump?

Sanders polls better against Trump but that is not the story being sold. The mainstream media is selling fear.

I got an interesting e-mail from my newly empty nester friend Liz Nowak:

“The MSM snark against Bernie pro Biden is lost on the millennials. Most don’t have cable and get their “news” from other sources. That is why I feel Bernie has so much of their support.”

I don’t mind voting for Old Joe, I’d like a return to normalcy, wherein I don’t have to think about politics 24/7.

And maybe hatred of Trump runs so deep that Biden will make it.

But his election won’t fix the underlying problems in this country. A vote for Joe is a vote for the status quo, and that’s not working so well for the millennials.

If you’ve been following the mainstream media, they’ve been throwing a Hail Mary pass ever since Saturday night. Buttigieg and Klobuchar folded, the oldsters rallied around Joe and are hoping that everything’s now fine.

But the mainstream media continues to miss the story of unrest amongst today’s youth, who worry about climate change and college debt and the minimum wage and so much stuff that gets back-burnered by the baby boomers as they continue to rape and pillage this country so they can live exorbitant lifestyles which they catalogue online.

Now I’m really scared of Joe debating Donald. On his best days, Biden misspeaks. And no matter what the liability might be, the truth is Joe’s son got a sweetheart deal in Ukraine, and the Republicans have done a good job of painting Joe with it, in a negative way.

Don’t give me the facts. Of course Biden is innocent, but what is the PERCEPTION!

There’s this fiction amongst the Democratic elite that it’s about turning those who voted for Trump last time, the so-called independents. But the truth is they’re gone, because the Democrats abandoned them, and the intelligentsia rallying around Biden to deliver him the nomination are not changing these people’s minds, this is what they hate about the Democrats, that all power comes from the top, the elite, and the rank and file are given lip-service at best, told just like Deborah Dugan that change must be gradual, that you cannot upset the apple cart.

But the youth have been upsetting the apple cart for twenty five years now. These early adopters killed the CD…only oldsters still buy them, they connected on social media first, it’s the youth that have pushed the envelope. Sure, the boomers pick up the scraps, try to imitate the youth, with their expensive smartphones and posting on Facebook, but the truth is the youth have contempt for this generation, which denigrates them at every turn. Yup, the millennials have a short attention span and they’re addicted to their devices. This must be stopped, just like Bernie!

You see the new is the devil. Downsides are focused on. Despite students of the game knowing that something is always lost in the march forward, at least at first, like low-res MP3s and vent windows in automobiles. Hell, you can’t pick up the paper without reading anti-electric car articles, but isn’t it interesting that Volkswagen posted amazing numbers while our American SUV manufacturers are on shaky ground. You see VW woke up, after Dieselgate, they’ve given up on that fuel, VW is second only to Tesla in the electric car world. You see VW cast aside the old wood and prepared for the future. If you think Joe Biden is preparing for the future, then you’ve just been convinced by the mainstream malarkey.

Where is the vision?

Our tech titans were full of it. And there have been negative consequences. But has Congress instituted any change? NO! As for the article above, I found it on the maliciously maligned Twitter. Yup, that’s where tastemakers get their info. Sure, there’s hogwash on the site, but it’s immediate, and millennials know that news can change hourly, they want to keep up, baby boomers are just overwhelmed.

Everything the kids stand for the oldsters hate. Streaming music, hip-hop, the list goes on and on. Isn’t it interesting that rock was killed by the internet. Rappers gave it away for free with mixtapes and Soundcloud postings and when streaming hit its stride, rock was nowhere to be found. Youngsters were never exposed to the rock revolution, they live online, where rock was absent. And at this late date rockers constantly bitch about Spotify payments, even country outstrips rock on streaming services.

And all the mainstream can talk about is the success of Disney+ and the coming of Quibi.

Disney+ gave it away for free, at least to me, with my Verizon unlimited plan, and every millennial has an unlimited plan, to pay by the megabyte is like watching network TV in the era of cable. Sure, tens of millions signed up, but what about beyond that? Netflix keeps making new shows and all the oldsters can say is the company is spending too much money, focusing on the bottom line not knowing the lesson of tech, which is you strive for primacy, kill all comers and continue to innovate, because he not busy being born is busy dying. Remember the boomers going insane when Netflix said it was switching from DVDs by mail to streaming? They want those DVDs! And you know how I can tell you’re a boomer? You send me an MP3, that’s what people did twenty years ago, today you link to a streaming site, which oldsters can’t even do. As for Quibi…youngsters are gonna pay all that money in the era of Tik Tok, where the posters are the stars?

And youngsters abhor e-mail, because of spam, so-called “legitimate spam,” you know, the endless offers you get if you buy anything.

And youngsters leave their voicemail boxes full, or turned off completely, they don’t want to return calls, they don’t want to talk on the phone at all!

No one under thirty ever tells me they want to speak on the phone.

Yet oldsters go on and on about the connection… Well, these youngsters are connecting all day long, this is what the internet has wrought, and it’s much better than the old days when you had to wait for a phone call.

It’s like the sixties all over again, and the fascinating thing is those who actually lived through the sixties don’t get it, they’re too busy protecting what they’ve got. The boomers are narcissism on parade, it’s the youth that care about their brothers and sisters.

Now I’m not sure if Biden gets the nomination that Sanders supporters will vote. Because they will be convinced that their voice does not matter, that the system trumps people, as George Carlin said, the owners of this country don’t want to hear from them, you can vote, but it doesn’t make a difference. Come on, Biden, from Delaware? Everything you hate about corporations emanates from that state, do you really expect Biden to stand up to them? NO WAY!

And the bitch about Bernie is he’s not integrated in the system.

But neither was Shawn Fanning.

Change always comes from outside. And those inside never see it coming. Just read Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma.”

And isn’t it funny that the press lauded Jack Welch when it turned out he cooked the books to show steady earnings and left GE dependent upon financial services and it got killed in 2008. If only the company had still been diversified.

Which is the same thing I can say to the Democratic Party. You’ve left too many people out. You think you’re winning, but you’re not.

I will vote for Joe Biden if he gets the nomination. And I hope he wins, but I’m fearful he’ll lose. Because Biden stands for nothing. He’s a compromiser from another era who wants us to return to that time.

You’ve got to give the people hope, that’s the only way you win.

Biden is just the anti-Trump.

And you wonder why the youngsters and those who voted for Trump lost hope.

I’ve lost faith in the “New York Times.” A biased publication that did its best to make Bernie Sanders look like a loser, even when he won.

I’ve lost faith in MSNBC, which is speaking to the monied elite.

I’ve lost faith in the pollsters. We’ve learned in the past month that no one can predict the future, as hard as they might try.

I only have faith in me. Yoko and me, Felice and me, isn’t that what John Lennon said?

Lennon spoke the truth, he said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, and they were! It was the Beatles who changed society. They paid their dues and they spoke to us. And they were constantly pushing the envelope…an album without a picture on the cover, not even a drawing?

As for those who burned their albums…what were their names again?

Be prepared, the youth are in revolt. And if you think controlling the government gives you power over them…

You’re probably still listening to those damn CDs.

From “I’m Looking Through You” to “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Tune in today, Tuesday February 4th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive