McGriddles aren't the only hot thing my McDonald's is servin' up these days. The popular fast food chain has gone hip, with a new bean. Java, that is.

For the past three years, I've been wonderin' when Mickey D's was gonna get McWith it, and start serving some decent, robust Colombian brew to accompany those Egg McMuffins I buy on occasion, when I'm strapped for time in the morning and don't give a McDang what I'm eatin'.

Thanks to Starbucks, strong, bold flavor with a kick is what we expect from coffee. And up until Monday, March 6, Mickey D's was wimpin' on us.

Gourmet premium roast has arrived at the Golden Arches. Finally.

Dunkin' Donuts introduced espressos, latt?s and cappuccinos in 2002. It was just a matter of time before marketing executives at McDonald's would wake up and, well, smell the coffee!

But that's not all the marketing wizards at McDonald's have awakened to. What's going on around the outside of the McDonald's coffee cup is even hotter than what's happening inside. A teenage couple exchanging body signals with one another is a slightly new twist in McDonald's latest marketing campaign, "i'm lovin' it."cq, all lowercase, according to the copyrighted slogan

This isn't the first time McDonald's has spiced things up a bit. About a year ago, supermodel Heidi Klum was hired to help "supersize" sales revenue.

Let me be clear. There's nothing distasteful or offensive on the latest McDonald's coffee cup. Paris Hilton lusting after a Carl's Jr. in a rapacious fantasy, it's not. By any "sex sells" standard, it's tame. The cup action is cute, but very, very clever. I know enough about advertising and the excruciating attention to detail given to imagery placement to safely say the juxtapositions on Mickey D's coffee cup are no accident.

For example, the girl's orange tank top reads "TAKE TIME OUT," a variation of the old "You Deserve a Break Today" slogan, which after 26 years, I still can't seem to get completely out of my head. But at first glance her shirt can easily appear to read, "TAKE ME OUT," because of the roundness of the cup, the viewing angle, the way her body is positioned, and because of the way "ME" in the word "TIME" is subtly emphasized. Her eyes exude a medium-rare gaze, far from listless, that falls somewhere between modest flirtation and raw seduction.

He, has both hands ploughed into pockets - as so many other healthy young males do when they react to the heat of the moment or send the signal of aloofness. His shirt reads "SMOOTH." Just above his right shoulder are the words, "CAUTION: HANDLE WITH CARE. I'M HOT."

McDonald's intends for the warning to apply to the cup of course, not the guy. Yeah. Of course they do. It's just a coincidence those words were placed right by his head. In fact, it's probably just a coincidence that these two McHotties wound up on the cup in the first place.

McDonald's is once again cautiously flirting with the "sex sells" marketing genre. The company recently got into hot water with critics well-versed in urban slang who threw yellow flags over the company's use of the phrases, "I'd hit it" and "pound one." The question on the minds of McDonald's executives would appear to be "how far should we go," the same question apparently on the minds of the two people on the cup.

Like I said, there's nothing controversial about the images. But this is McDonald's, not Abercrombie and Fitch.

How does the coffee taste, you ask? I'm lovin' it.

Bullington is senior policy adviser and director of New Mexico government relations for the Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber law firm. He writes this column weekly.