Coffee Analysis Project #4

'Sup from the Valley!

Welcome to the CAP, where I analyze the personalities of readers who send in a photo of their typical morning cuppa. Of course this is all scientific and legit and I am totally qualified to do this and the results are always 100% accurate.* Without further ado, let’s dive into this week’s submission.

This edition of the CAP is brought to you by ME, who lives in the Valley! I don’t even need to follow that with what country or state that’s in because IYKYK.

"It’s just a matter of time before the great power plant upstairs turns off the juice and we retreat to the black pit of nothingness from whence we came.” —from The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The first time I opened my email and saw this photo, I had to lie down with a cool washcloth over my eyes for twenty minutes. It’s a lot to take in, even for me, a Professional Coffee Analyst.

Full disclosure #1: I thought this might be ME’s mug on this mug. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen this mug on the mug before. I had to do a Google Lens search. I’m not proud to admit it, but there you go. (I can’t keep up with the internets and unfortunately I’ll never be a pop culture maven, my brain starts to catch fire if I spend more than 20 minutes online.) And through a convoluted search that led me to the dark underbelly of web2 (read: LinkedIn), I discovered who this is.

So. ME has a mug bearing the mug of Nic Cage. Hmm.

As I mentioned, at first I thought that ME had sent me a photo of a mug bearing his own mug. Which would have been very meta, and not surprising because ME lives in a meta state. Not Meta (he only begrudgingly consents to being on Facebook and really wishes his partner C would take care of the obligatory Posts to Prove We Care About People on Facebook for him). No, the kind of meta state ME lives in is that of professional writer. If you’re a writer, you know what I’m talking about.

How do I know ME is a writer? It looks like he’s got about 500 new pens (bought on sale at Coscto) in the background of the photo. And he’s got a yellow legal pad (also from Costco). Who even uses paper anymore? Writers, that’s who. Also, I happen to know he has a super-cool newsletter that you will want to check out here.

Let’s get back to that mug for a second. It was a gift from ME’s partner (wife? IDK), C. One day ME was feeling wound up from all the coffee—look how much coffee is in there! Not even any creamer to soften the blow! (And that is just cup 1 of 6.) Anyway, he was coffeed up and thinking writerly things like what does it mean that the mole on my left foot is shaped like Madonna’s boobs, and how can I turn that into a story for the internet, and almost freaked the f*ck out. It was bad. C came home to discover he’d baked three marbled pound cakes, knit the dog a sweater, and was in the process of digging out a hole for a pool in the back yard.

Once household order had been restored, C purchased this mug as a gift. Let’s back up a bit: Nic Cage is a favorite of ME’s. Ever since Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out, he’s looked up to Nic as a role model and has been trying to spend his life falling out of VW vans in a cloud of pot smoke.

But then things got weird for Nic, and ME took it hard. And C knew that this mug of Crazy Nic Cage would have a sobering effect on her partner. She knew that no matter how bad things got in his life as a writer from there on out, all he had to do was look at that mug to remind him not to go there. It’s worked pretty well, except for a few bad days around his birthday last year.

I think that ME’s home office resembles a dark cave, like the one in Empire Strikes Back, and every day he has to psych himself up before he goes in to face his biggest fears (himself, of course. Or maybe Nic Cage). So this photo was taken in the kitchen or some slightly happier place in the house. There are bills, yes, but there is also tech, and here is pink stuff in containers. That’s gotta be good.

With that, we will all back away slowly, and leave ME to sip on his liquid courage which he’ll need, because he is a writer.

Full disclosure #2: Nic Cage happens to be my cousin.

Want to participate in the CAP? Hit reply (or email hello@acneil.com) and send in your photo, which should include your typical morning beverage, and a little background scenery for context. You won’t be sorry! Okay, maybe you will, but still.

*totally not true

Thanks for reading!