You’ll Never Guess What The Prince Of Darkness Wanted From America, You’ll Probably Guess Why Security Stopped Me

Adrian Slack Tale
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There’s been a little talk around here lately about Adrian Clarke, our goth car designer who, up close, looks like someone who would hang out with Neo in the first Matrix movie. He’s imposing. He’s got the scary mohawk, the many piercings, and the impossibly long black coat concealing who-knows-what. Actually, I know what that coat hides… a big, sweet, soft heart.

I know this for a few reasons. First of all, when we met up last year in England we went out to dinner and a show and he was a lovely gentleman. He even got my daughter some candies, art supplies, and a stuffy. Since then he’s already sent over one car package of beans, sweets, and more gifts for Bette.

Second of all, knowing I was inbound to London once again, Adrian asked me to bring him something one could only get in America. Would that be a firearm? A thumbdrive containing forbidden dark electro? The blood of a Cajun?

(Also, note, these are DMs, not a general chat)

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Haha, ok, not beans. We have some pretty good beans, but sure. So what could it be?

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That would be our Andrea, the occasional contributor and frequent badass. How lovely of her.

I don’t really drink coffee or any caffeine, so I thought he wanted the liquid stuff.

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Apparently, you get more out of the powdered stuff so it’ll go further when Adrian has the moments in his soul when he needs… fuckin’ Hazlenut Coffee Mate! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

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According to my wife, who drinks coffee, the filter coffee here is tasteless and too weak and the americanos are fine, but not the same thing. Sure.

So I went to the grocery store hoping to score some and, lo and behold, the Stop n’ Shop had everything except Hazlenut Coffee Mate.

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Desperate… for Coffee Mate? Wild country, that England.

So I stuff the big tube of powder in check-in luggage and make for England and then…

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Oops. It’s a giant thing of powder. Of course they stopped me. It’s amazing I didn’t see this coming. Adrian was super worried:

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There’s no stopping this silver tongue.  Img 2631

It’s true! I wasn’t the Artful Dodger but I was the Artful Dodger’s friend Charlie. It wasn’t a great part, but I had a couple of lines.

So, there you have it, our scary goth designer is actually a stuffy-giving, sweetheart, hazelnut coffee swillin’ Karen.

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124 thoughts on “You’ll Never Guess What The Prince Of Darkness Wanted From America, You’ll Probably Guess Why Security Stopped Me”

  2. I was visiting a construction site one time and they offered me a coffee – “Yes, thanks, with cream.”

    “Sorry, we don’t have real cream, only powdered carcinogen.”

    Ever since, in my mind, Coffee Mate is powdered carcinogen.

    I also read Adrian’s request as, “Can you get me some Hazelnut Coffee, mate”. Punctuation is important as I would have brought flavored coffee.

      1. It would be interesting to know whether hazelnut-flavored Coffee Mate is as flammable as Original… which is alarmingly flammable as a powder.

    2. That reminds me of the kid at the theater who asked me, “Do you want butter flavored grease on your popcorn?”. I can’t not think of that every time I go to a movie.

  3. Black coffee for me only. I never wanted to find myself in the desperate state of running out of sweetener, etc.
    Besides, I don’t need the extra in my coffee because I’m amazingly sweet and creamy on my own!

  4. This entire exchange is both hilarious and charming.

    I’m also a big fan of hazelnut Coffee Mate. I’m surprised it’s not available in the UK. We know our British cousins are well-acquainted with the humble hazelnut, they’ve been binging on Nutella longer than we have.

  5. I gifted my EU based trainers bacon panko after a particularly not waste of time week of training. Upon trying bacon wrapped shrimp, they had commented that you don’t mix pork and seafood, but somehow it was delicious. I of course told them ‘muricans put bacon on everything. Hope they made it back without incident.

    1. Sophia Loren trying to carry a mortadella the size of a basketball through JFK customs and offended at the insinuation that an Italian pork product could be a source of infection. She says something like “do you think the pig had a cold?” Looks like a wonderfully cheesy movie. Thank you.

      1. More sausagey, I’d say. (Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.)

        It was directed by the same guy who directed Big Deal on Madonna Street , and it’s a commentary on America at the beginning of the seventies. I’ve only seen it once, when I was a kid and it ran on either mid-morning or late-night TV. The NYT review complains that it focuses on the less-attractive scenery of period New York, but that was kind of the point.

  7. This is a lovely little story. Adrian, if you really must defile coffee with hazelnut, why not at least go all in for the best: Philz Coffee Philtered Soul.

    2. I used to talk shit about pumpkin spice. But then I realized I should know what I’m talking about before I keep talking shit. So I tried a pumpkin spice latte. And that shit is delicious! It’s dessert in a cup, but you’re allowed to have it for breakfast because coffee.

  10. In the 80s, I brought a Schwarzwälder Schinken (Black Forest Ham) back in my checked luggage. I was in my 20s, never thought about importation regs and all that sort of thing. I also didn’t declare it and waltzed through.

    2. Did something very similar last year, bringing chorizo back from Portugal. At one point, I was waiting for my checked bag in San Francisco with the meat products in my carry-on backpack next to me. I felt something brush against my back and there was a very nice looking beagle, taking a sniff at my pack. Without thinking, I said something like, “Hi pup!”, but he just sniffed one more time and walked away. Hooray for vacuum packaging!

    3. Ugh, jealous. I forgot about a landjäger in my carry-on once and I end up getting searched more often now. No idea if that’s related, but it sucks.

      1. A long time after my Germany adventure, I worked for the US gov’t and had a notation that whisked me right through US customs on return. I don’t know if it’s still on there, but I hope it is!

  11. Wow smuggling powder, legal, but powder did you get a cavity search?
    And as far as England goes Lord Lucas is the lord of darkness. Especially for cars because the worst electric set ups ever.

  12. Rumor has it Adrian got a taste for the stuff after cleaning some white powder out of the Mondial left by the previous owner.

    With his nose.

    Corporate american coffee is pretty trash and I’m a pourover aficionado, but my second favorite coffee is 7/11 or gas station coffee with those little cups of hazelnut, vanilla, and Irish creme whitener.

            1. The last time I saw them live (and I certainly wouldn’t have paid money to see them on their own) was when they headlined Mera Luna a couple of years ago. Not as bad a couple of year previous to that when they headlined and people were walking away from the stage, but still pretty terrible. Fuck him.

  15. Do we need a bean exchange? Because HEB’s Shiner borracho beans are pretty good. Shiner’s kind of syrupy meh as a beer nowadays, but it works really well cooked into beans.

    There’s also the Jalapeño Ranch Style Beans that I drank out of a shoe to sneak Spec 944 take-off suspension bits past Lemons tech. That worked, and then my car broke. Anyway, those are really good beans, too.

    I still need to try beans on toast. I think I need a Bread Friend to split good loaves with, though, because I either get burnt out on sandwiches before I’m done with it, or half the damn loaf goes bad before I’m done with it. Grumble.

    2. You can actually freeze bread for a month or two and it’ll be fine. Anything more than two months and you might get some freezer burn. Ranch-style beans are awesome, not sure about the shoe part though.

      1. I was going to mention that freezing bread is really handy.

        Top tip: slice it before it goes into the freezer, then you can take it out and put it directly into the toaster instead of waiting for it to thaw.

        2. Freezing bread is good, however refrigerating bread is not good. Just cooling instead of freezing increases the rate of the going stale process.

        1. Good man you are of a certain vintage if you remember Charo! I was born in 71 and she was everywhere in the 70’s! Couldn’t take my eyes off her but didn’t know why at the time lol. Actually she was a tremendous musician. Loved the reference going to watch her on YouTube now!

          3. Yeah, let’s go with “vintage” 😀

            Although to be fair (to be faaaaaaaair) she was everywhere for a good portion of the 80s as well. And she was definitely an amazing guitarist – flamenco in particular, IIRC.

    1. Crowley would take his coffee black, though.

      Although he would have been the one to INVENT Coffee Mate, since the cumulative psychic damage of making the coffee of millions of people just a little worse is just his style.

  17. My mom once brought me a five kilo wheel of Stilton via Heathrow to JFK in her suitcase. There was an amusing story involving dogs and customs but every time she told it it would digress into details unrelated to cheese. The dry cleaners were of the opinion that someone may have died in the clothes however.

    1. Ok, now I’m imagining your mother recounting the Stilton Cheese Incident in the style of Jim Blaine telling of his grandfather’s old ram 🙂

  18. My son is a Tortilla mule for me. His bag gets checked every time for the 20 dozen he brings me and him twice a year. I can’t stand the stuff they call tortillas in the stores around me.

  19. My parents moved from England to the US 40 years ago. Unable to find custard powder here, my dad asked his mom to send some. She put the white powder in unlabeled baggies and shipped it across the Atlantic. How it didn’t get stopped and checked for cocaine, we’ll never know.

  20. The image of Uncle Adrian huddled in a corner of his kitchen spooning the last of his treasured Hazelnut Coffee Mate into a cup with trembling hands while waiting for Matt the Mule to show up with his re-up is simultaneously delightful and terrifying.

  21. Wow. Our beloved grumpy uncle Adrian has impossibly sophisticated taste in design, and the most dreadfully basic and awful taste in coffee creamer. You’re right, I did not see that coming!

    1. Scene: Matt and Adrian are in a London pub:
      Matt: “I’ll have a tankard of craft brewed, small batch, ridiculously named bullshit”
      Adrian: “Give me a cold pint of domestic swill”.

  23. I wondered if it might be peanut butter.

    I’ve always chuckled at the seemingly performative dislike of it among non-Americans, but every one I know who’s tried it loves it. As they well should; it’s both tasty and not the worst-thing-in-spreadable-form for you.

    1. “it’s both tasty and not the worst-thing-in-spreadable-form for you.”

      Unless you’re allergic to peanuts. Then it’s right up there with fresh liposuction fat.

    2. Plenty of British people like peanut butter, at least, they sell a lot of it in UK supermarkets.
      The go-to high-calorie nutrition-bomb hunger-banisher for this British person is a peanut butter and banana sandwich on wholemeal bread with plenty of real butter for extra lubrication.

    1. Judging by both the label and the first store’s stock, looks like many agree.

      (I keep the plain version as strictly emergency coffee whitener if the half and half runs out)

          1. Related, every now and again, I buy real, full-on cream and wow it’s great. I know it’s pretty common outside of North America, but in part probably because coffee there doesn’t come in gigantic cups like we like it/it’s not consumed all day long.

            1. I do the same. Normally the coffee gets fat-free half+half, but sometimes there will be heavy cream left over from a recipe and wow, the difference is substantial. And very tasty.

          2. It’s not one I’ve heard before, but I do like it better than the “non-dairy creamer” I have always heard. I’ll admit I’m a tea guy more than coffee, so that probably has something to do with it.

            1. If you start with bad enough coffee, that crap makes it borderline palatable.

              Somehow, coffee like this tastes just a tiny bit less bad in styrofoam than in paper. (Reusable cup, in this context? GTFO.)

      2. We use heavy whipping cream in our house. If that runs out (which is rare), I drink it black. I can’t stand the flavored crap. I like my coffee to taste like … coffee.

    3. I’ll pass on putting cream (dairy or otherwise) in my coffee — used to drink it straight black. I’ve softened in my old age; now I put some sugar in it. So hazelnut-flavored coffee it is, black with sugar.

      1. I worked with a guy who considered anything other than straight, bitter black as heresy. The guy was a savage because he would pull the coffee filter out and squeeze it into his mug because it “had all the good stuff”. He chewed tobacco too, and we all joked that it wasn’t tobacco in his mouth but the leftover coffee grinds so he could really savor the flavor.

        1. To be fair, that’s pretty much what a French press does — squeezes every last bit out of the grounds. And you’ll inevitably wind up with some fine grounds at the end of the pour… Some say that’s the part that has the real kick to it…

          1. I did have another coworker who used a French press every day. He was the most foodie-foodie I’ve ever met, and his coffee was always some expensive imported stuff that always had some story with it that intrigued him and disgusted me (I remember he had the bat guano coffee that made the news 10+ years ago). He did comment that the fine grounds at the end were his favorite part.

          2. Nah. If you’re using a French press, you’re straining it rather than squeezing it. Grind it a bit coarser than you would for drip coffe (burr grinders are best at a uniform grind), and you don’t end up with much in the way of fines left in your cup.

            Turkish coffee, on the other hand, leaves sludge behind.

    4. Did you know that you can actually light that shit on fire? That, and the stuff they make it out of freaked my wife out. Now I have to go and buy fresh milk all the friggin’ time.

      But I don’t have to worry about any pyrotechnic situations, usually.

      1. You don’t see the resemblance? Adrian is tall and imposing, like Wez, has a somewhat similar face, and that mohawk really adds to the aesthetic similarities.

        1. accidentally replied to your post, wouldn’t let me delete it, so i replaced it with a thumbs up emoji, and of course it got posted as a bunch of ????. Think a mad max photo shoot with the staff would be hilarious, but how could they choose which vehicle?

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