Espresso Yourself

Russell Namalata Thomas

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This is an auditory sense of community of personally curated Starbucks patrons. The goal is to sit down with a Starbucks patron and get to know them, their human soul. Of the Starbucks patrons, by the Starbucks patrons, for the Starbucks patrons.

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Keegan Pitz, The Next Big Idea: AirBnB meets SoundCloud Search Engine

2017. He wrote the idea on a napkin in a coffee shop (Starbucks?) in San Francisco, sat down with an investor at a pitch night, got invited at Capitol Music Records in Los Angeles, California. Music to their ears. That was it. He was the genius inheriting a fortune akin to Napster. Unfortunately, the pandemic happened. Nearly destroyed him, fell into depression. This 5-year career plan has already taken 40-year old Keegan Pitz ten (10) years to get it off the ground. What's five more years? All great ideas require time. All genius ideas require patience. World of difference: Patience is the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting. For the first time on my show, 15+ years in the making, FanParty will be hosting a launch party on July 1st (Saturday). Imagine, you can host your own space, your house, at the beach, at a rooftop bar—heck at a barn in Dubuque, Iowa to book your favorite artist(s) to come play your favorite songs, surrounded by your friends and loved ones. All in your phone! Like it's f*****g Uber. 'Hello, Iniko? Chase McDaniel? Qveen Herby (of Karmin)? How much to play at my best friend's wedding in Calabasas?' This is a game changer in the music industry, period.

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Damu Bob, Digital Producing For Damu's

Digital producing seems like a career fit for a younger candidate. Well, they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but not for 47-year old Damu Bob who has been doing this for a while. Sports and Damu is what is a ball to a net. The human mind is inescapably fascinating (to me); he briefly followed his Dad's footsteps in the computer science career, he in Intel, his Dad in IBM. On the same body to a hand that's good in math and engineering, the other hand is good in picking up a sport, any sport, learning it, and masters it, no matter how many times he had fallen on his butt: his first love, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, ice hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball, tennis, you name it, Damu can break into a conversation with you on it. Lapped by the individualistic, for a lack of a better word, itch to 'cover the news', his voice be heard, and giving a voice to those devoid of it, a single father of two boys, both well into their pubescence—that's a whole new life sport, Damu Bob is not an old dog. He's the Alpha.

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Amanda Gluck, Vicariously Me: A Memoir (Audio Version)

Espresso Yourself is her first podcast ever. Seven years she has waited to be in one. Timing couldn’t be more on our side. Meanwhile all necessities packed, others donated, thrown, and in storage, what an absolute honor to sit down and take a breather, simply connect with 28-year old Amanda Gluck. As young as 8 years old, Amanda is a prodigy. But she’s not excellent in them. She’s just okay. ‘Good’, at best. ‘Prodigy’ is not always measured in being extraordinary. Amanda is a prodigy because her thirst to learn is bottomless. “I love being around people who are better than me. They inspire me”. Amanda speaks as genuinely as she moves. “What I enjoy is I miss being bad at something.” A string of words put together that never thought possible to be any less braver statement when she says, “The only way you fail is when you give up.” Yet reportedly, four years working with and for Hollywood A-List Glen Powell, these uniquely precede her in show business.

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Pauline Fontaine, Belle Âme

Respectfully Dr. Pauline, or as the Tahitian locals (French Polynesia) would say, 'Taote' Pauline, which means 'doctor', 35-year old Pauline Fontaine has a PhD in Molecular Genetics. Simply put, if a cell is the building block of life, a cancer cell is the building block of death. She has taken the better days of her life, and still taking upon herself to do so, to find the end-all for cancer. The human mind is inescapably fascinating (to me), how when she was younger and has looked up to her father, the most kind man she's ever known, 'putting others before himself', has led her to this: no stone left unturned for an elusive cure to one of the most destructive diseases ever cursed onto mankind. I speak for everyone when I say the short and unpredictable lives of your loved ones quintessentially is all about 'buying more time'. That's the goal, that's the finish line, that's the big wave Pauline is waiting to ride.

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Shukura Halliday-Shimura, Alexa, play Love In An Elevator by Aerosmith

PICTURE THIS: You're 20 years old, and the ding of the elevator signals you to go in. School just ended, and you just can't wait to go home. As you pressed the button for the doors to close, a hand blocks it, a boy's hand. He caught the elevator in time to ride with you. 10 years later, that same boy, now a man, has asked your hand in marriage. 37-year old Shukura Halliday-Shimura has held this man's hand all these years, what started in New York, followed him in Japan, and finally followed her back in Los Angeles. I'm floored by the sheer fortune of finding true love in an elevator. Five floors before he loses her interest and literally walks out of his life, I wonder what was his elevator pitch that pressed all her right buttons?

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Alon Shalom, Kiss and Tel Aviv

That’s the thing about older, attractive, gay men, they move on and don’t look back. The human mind is inescapably fascinating (to me), how a 22-year old Israeli heartthrob had loved a woman with all his heart; she the jet black-haired catalyst for his thriving by-appointment only hair salon in L’Ermitage Beverly Hills. Still, she and him, once kissing like the sand and sea of Gordon beach, have stayed friends twenty-two years later. 51-year old Pierce Brosnan supposedly cousin Alon Shalom tells us all, the first coupling with a man, and why ‘perfection’ is like getting a ‘perm’, it’s misleading because it’s never permanent at all.

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Kelly Landry, Maine Character Energy

Some women had the misfortune of getting ghosted at the altar on their wedding day. 36-year old Kelly Landry, who at 21, ‘fresh off the boat’ at LAX was stranded on what’s supposed to be her winning day. You don’t know heartbreak like she did. Three years later, she has become Nickelodeon’s funniest ‘Kristen Stewart’ babysitter vampire. To think, looking back, this writer-directress by profession once has shown fangs of talent when she was only 10, making movies in the basement of her childhood home, with her Dad’s rickety old camera. One line she had said that left marks on my flesh and soul is, 'Never create from ego.' Always ask yourself, 'Why am I truly creating?'

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Tianna Kim, Cogito, Virgo Sum. I Think Therefore, I am Virgo.

Trust Starbucks patron and USC Law student will teach me the difference among England, Britain, and United Kingdom, and using them interchangeably makes you sound——let’s just grab a map! Like the true Virgo she is—August 26th, she forms a thought a mile a minute, she talks fast, overthinks, self-deprecates, but all in good fun; and I love that about her. Finding yourself craving for ice cream in SoCal? Message her. She’s your cherry-on-top girl.

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Tanvi Patel, Stop, License, and Listen

Starbucks Espresso Con Panna changed her world. You know what else changed her world? Music. 55-year old Tanvi Patel traversed from India to the US at a very young age, during which time her untrained ears have crystallized to what she proudly has nurtured under her famous last name, her own music licensing company, Crucial Music. Born into a family of doctors, her parents could've had her ears checked, because in the Patel household, their ears are pedigreed for listening to heartbeats and answering outpatient calls. Tanvi would've politely told her parents, on the phone, at a sold out concert, 'I can't hear you over this Harry Styles song!'.

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Nico Robin, Small Town Boy, French Dreamer

Just a small town boy, living in a lonely world. He took the midnight train, straight to Hollywood. 35-year old French actor Nico Robin couldn’t as possibly be remotely cringey of an actor as Scott Eastwood. But sure hell you look twice making sure it’s not him. Tell me, are actors born or made? That’s the (mis)fortune of Nico, he had thought ‘nepotism’ is a mental illness, like ‘autism’ or ‘aneurysm’. He couldn’t possibly be warmer.

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Artur Ignatenko, Ukrainian Refugee Actor

How far will you go to be an actor? How about fleeing the Ukraine-Russia War? 26-year old Starbucks patron Artur Ignatenko is an old friend of mine. Living every actor’s wet dream in his home country, getting booked for movie roles left and right, the war inevitably as it was unexpected for him happened. A man whose government can’t even tell him what to do, he fled. An elite Cambridge alumni fleeing the war? They didn’t cover that in the syllabus.

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This is an auditory sense of community of personally curated Starbucks patrons. The goal is to sit down with a Starbucks patron and get to know them, their human soul. Of the Starbucks patrons, by the Starbucks patrons, for the Starbucks patrons.

صناع العمل

Russell Namalata Thomas
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© Russell Namalata Thomas
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Espresso Yourself