I’ve recently embarked on a project in which I’ve been compiling a collection of various people describing their favourite coffee mug and the story behind that mug.
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Brandon Marshall Age 37
My favourite coffee mug has a picture of Farrah Fawcett on it.
I was never a big fan of Charlie’s Angels as a kid as I thought it was a girl’s show, and anyway, Farrah Fawcett wasn’t really my type—too skinny. I thought that Cheryl Ladd was way hotter. Anyway, I’m just telling you this so you know that this isn’t my favourite mug because of her. Anybody or anything could be on it and it would be my favourite mug.
About ten years ago my friend Paul was hosting a poker game. There was a guy there named Allan– a friend of a friend of a friend– and he was a real asshole. He had a grating, yippy manner, and he was just out of synch with the rest of the guys. Our games were always relaxed, you know. We’d have a few beers, maybe smoke a joint and just allow the poker game to serve as the event around which we talked, but this Allan guy needed to dominate. He bet more money than was appropriate, got drunk, told shitty, racist jokes and to make matters worse, kept winning.
Well, he was drinking out of this Farrah Fawcett mug that night. I remember he pulled it out of his knapsack– with a bottle of rye and two cans of diet coke—which he drank from all night. Like everything about Allan, it was irritating.
To make a long story short, I busted him in one hand. I took everything he had, including this coffee mug. Allan was certain he was going to win the hand, and he kept betting extravagantly and taunting me, and when I won, all of the other guys at the table began to applaud really slowly, and Paul, who was hosting the game, said, “Allan, I think you should probably just go now.” And then Tom began to sing that Habs chant:
Nah, nah, nah,
Hey, hey, hey,
Goodbye!
And everybody joined in laughing.
I’d never felt closer to my friends.
It might sound ridiculous, but I swear to God, it might have been the best moment of my life, and that’s why this is my favourite coffee mug.