Caffeine Brews Bimonthly Jolt

A few years ago, when coffeehouses were still a Southland novelty, you could list them all on one hand.

Cafetoriums are now so plentiful that you can get your java from Highland Grounds, Higher Grounds, Pasadena Higher Grounds, Common Grounds, Sacred Grounds or Ground Zero.

Whew. Wish you had a score card? Now you do. Check out Caffeine, a bimonthly journal of poetry and art (based in Woodland Hills) composed by those fun-loving folks in black who haunt open-mike nights at local coffeehouses.

Now in its fourth edition with a circulation of 15,000, Caffeine includes art and poetry from regulars on the amateur-poetry circuit, along with addresses and listings for local poetry readings.

But our favorite part of Caffeine is the contributors’ biographies, which nicely delineate the Angst, anhedonia and general crankiness of L.A.’s coffeehouse denizens:

“I am a singer in a band whose songs have no words.”

“Jim has recently joined a dating service and quit smoking.”

“At the moment, I’m an anxious young woman listening to Moroccan music in an airless hotel room in Hollywood.”

Odder Than Odd

Out on the party scene, you run into some odd couples and some even odder couples. The oddest surfaced at a recent party for Ivana Trump, where romance novel coverhunk Fabio and Barbara Davis were spotted chatting together about the importance of physical fitness. A Social Climes spy hovered long enough to hear the Fabiolous One counseling Davis on his bodybuilding techniques.

“So to tone up your body, you need weights,” Davis said. “To burn fat, you need cardiovascular exercise?”

Fabio nodded sagely. “That’s right. You know, I eat 5,000 calories a day.”

Added a bystander, “Gee, even I could do that.”

No Escaping ‘Em

Here in L.A., beepers and portable phones are as ubiquitous as backward baseball caps. We’ve seen them at Dodger Stadium, on the dance floor at nightclubs, even at the gym. Still, it was a bit of a shock to be walking on Santa Monica Beach on a sunny Saturday afternoon--only to pass a shirtless jogger who had a beeper clipped to his waistband and a portable phone strapped to his waist.

Is this the new power bathing suit?