Title of Work: What does MxDin represent?


Pinto: MxdIn is short for Mixed Ingredients. It is pronounced Mixed In. It has to do with an aspiration towards clumplessness in an industry full of clumps.

Why matcha?

Chiefly L-Theanine, but free radical fighting antioxidants never hurt anyone. It is also the color of vitality. Whereas many of its caffeinated counterparts are the color of death.

What makes your matcha special?


The L-Theanine levels are high enough that you can drink 15g of it in a day without getting ants in your pants and headlining stress-fest.

Is there a secret menu?


Earn my trust, and you’ll find out.


Is a beverage a fashion accessory?

Lifestyle has more and more become the chief fashion accessory of late, and this points to the current ubiquity of athleisure. A beverage can be a lifestyle statement, id est, it can certainly be a fashion accessory. The recent forays of fashion brands into food & especially beverage point to how true this is.

Hot or Cold

Cold, forever and always, though I do reserve concerns regarding said decision’s impact on my qi.

Your go to drink at home?

I go through fixational cycles. Right now I find myself between ripe pu-erh brewed four to five times over the course of an hour and a rock oolong brewed fifteen to twenty times over the course of two days. My tea guy is one of my dearest friends. The bowl I drink from has been handed back and forth between us two or three times in the last seven years. It has a well-earned patina.


Metal or Ceramic?

I suppose that’s entirely dependent upon the use-case. I’ve been an ABS plastic guy since I was a tot. I used to like legos. Now I like modular furniture built from the stuff. I am more and more into metal, aluminum, powder-coated steel and the likes. But I’ll tell you this much, I’d much rather be holding boiling water in ceramic than stainless steel.


What are your latest obsessions?

I love Gut Nuts. I think they’re just the best, the peanut ones. I want them to branch out into nut butters. These are the things I think about. What does fermented peanut butter taste like? Pen pals also. I love my pen pals so much. Having a pen pal is the realest human connection there is to be found in the modern world.

Favorite Orchard Street Character?

I think my favorite characters are all ghosts of memories or memories as ghosts. I think of Din and my brother in the King Dumpling basement. Thus I am grateful to see Willy on the corner in front of Nonfiction. I think about Stanley so often, and the conversations we had through the window and in the Pharmacy. I miss having Cream on the block every day. I miss Elvin.

What does boxing do for you?

Releases tension, dispels brain fog, improves timing. It’s a top-shelf upper body cardio option, maybe only beat out by swimming in that regard.

What does ritual mean to you?

In a wispy sort of way, it has something to do with discipline, our need for control, and a respect for the impervious power of entropy.

What beauty do you find in routine?

Routine creates repetition. Every relevant detail is studied through repetition. Optimization is born out of understanding of the relevant details.

What grounds you?

Subjection to intrinsically difficult circumstances, animalistic circumstances, circumstances so vital that the thoughts are driven from my mind, and only the instincts remain.

Why are you doing this?

Life experience.

What makes a created world believable?

Depth and complexity. It has to be expansive and perplexing. The goal is to engage someone, entrance them even, long enough to ensure they forget the possibility of its intentional fabrication, at least for a time.

Top three books?

The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and anything Capote wrote. With that being said, I prefer fiction.

How do you rest?

A good rule of thumb is that the most valuable hours of sleep are between 10pm and 2am. Most people downtown laugh when you tell them that.

What’s a detail that will never get past you?

Shoes. I don’t understand where or how it started, but I pass so much judgment via footwear. I think shoes are the most difficult thing in the modern world. Separately, I wish to change one of my previous answers to “La Visite Au Musee” by Eric Moren and Sebastian Gandera.

What is the last smell that’s stuck in your mind?

Lilies.

Last song you played?

“Shiver (On Ice Dub)” by trickpony.

How can you find identity behind experience?

Patterns.

What's to come? / the dream?

Chocolate bars, maybe cows.

Anything we should’ve asked?

Who is the prettiest girl you’ve been lucky enough to hand a drink to?