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In the strange and distant world of Baton Rouge in the early 1990s Peter Excho, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., opened a 24-hour coffee shop called InsomkneeAck Art House. Now, I don't know that world, I was around eight or 10 years old at the time, living somewhere between Kansas and Germany. But I have seen Sex, Lies and Videotapes circa 1989 and if James Spader was sulking in the Bayou, then I think Kevin Smith with ear gages was probably at InsomkneeAck's. Artwork, musical performances and gallons of coffee attracted an eclectic crowd characterized by a childlike lack of pretension. But it shut down when Peter high tailed it to Washington, D.C., several years ago. Due to circumstances Peter politely and artfully refuses to discuss, he, like so many runaways before him, came back to Baton Rouge. As a result, in January of this year, the coffee bar that never sleeps arose from its dormancy in the lap of Florida Street next to Broadmoor Theater.

If you haven't experienced the eccentricities of its owner or the delights within InsomkneeAck's there is no better time than this Friday. Between taking advantage of the shop's tattoo parlor, hanging artwork and gazing at what Peter claims is "the original Milli Vanilli platinum record," guests can enjoy the most expensive coffee in the world. Yes, Civet Coffee will be available for $15 a cup. Oh, it sounds crazy because it is crazy.

This precious delicacy runs for $250 a pound, which makes InsomkneeAck's asking price a little less absurd. But there is a good reason this coffee is so pricey and why this event has been tactfully dubbed, "Poop Party." The aromatic bean is first processed by the Asian palm civet. This cat/raccoon/fox-like mammal eats the coffee cherries, then the beans take a wild ride to the back end of the gastrointestinal tract and later some lucky fella in the Indonesian Archipelago gets to collect the civet's feces, encasing the partially digested bean. Next it is cleaned, roasted and shipped to your local art house coffee shop.

I don't know how this trend started. I like coffee a lot, but have a general rule that anything expelled from the body of a feral, jungle beast as waste is probably just that.

But Peter has embraced the oddity of this drink and is offering it to Baton Rouge because "we deserve stuff like this, it shouldn't just be for the rich," he says.

Behind the initial gag reflex there is a sense of playfulness and mockery that Peter is drawing attention to. Not to mention that when we show up, going against every variation of the five-second rule we learned in grade school cafeterias, to throw down 15 bucks for cat poo coffee, there will be local art propped around us. So if Peter is marketing absurdity to draw a crowd into an art house on Florida Boulevard, then I'll take one cream and one sugar.