Foto-Kwiz #4.

Beef goes in for the kill

I guess it was just a matter of time. Ever since Beef paired off with Molly they've been sharing an electron, and it's not like anybody's against it. Well, maybe Spongebath and Emeril. Those guys are the most adamant anti-life-moving-along types I've ever met. They're stuck in some kind of "two bros living in a cheap apartment" stasis that rises and falls by the Pizza Chicago delivery window. Plus that enormous stack of home entertainment equipment they're always adding to. Are they right, or am I wrong? Is that zen? Not everyone's made for marriage, but they could clean up their comments a bit. It's not like you're going to dissuade some dude who's headed for marriage, and if you try, it's pretty much closing the shutters on your friendship.

They're registered for some pretty average stuff, like low-end stamped knives and nonstick cookware. I might go off the registry and get them some good stuff that will actually be fun to use and last a while. I think every new couple should get a cast-iron pan, an 8" knife, and a wood cutting board. In a perfect world, the government would mandate that you receive this when you get married. There's nothing a cast-iron pan can't do...you could roast a turkey in that bastard if you put your shoulder into it. And don't get me started on "knife block sets." How much crap is that. Four shitty steak knives, cheap shears, two paring knives...what?! A carving knife? Please. I hate products that are designed to be sold to people who will never have any idea how to use them properly.

Okay, I'm putting my foot into the stirrup and getting off the high horse. I caught some Rick Bayless on the TiVo and I have about exactly half an hour until Lyle gets home and starts yelling about how "real" Mexicans cook.

Chris is such a Darrylict

So Chris is a bigshot now, with his subscription to the "Bacon of the Month Club." That fool wouldn't know salty from sweet most nights, the way he gets on with his $1.99 screw-tops from Grocery Outlet (I've seen the receipts). Yeah, I've been liberating a few of his slices here and there for my own purposes. I should probably start my own "bacon blog," where you can read things that actually work. That guy wears a coonskin cap and misses the bus on weekends -- at least I think about what I'm doing while I'm doing it.

Tonight while he was out eating lousy family restaurant food with his family, I cooked down a few slices of his latest jowl bacon. I put it in a hot, fresh-baked baguette with super-slim grilled, trimmed asparagus stalks, shaved Gruyère, mint, lemon zest, and chopped hard boiled egg. Mayonnaise and a romaine leaf moistened it up, and it was complete. Much nicer than the Study in Pepto he worked up for you last week. Stay tuned, I guess. I hear he's getting his next shipment tomorrow, and I bet he doesn't even know.

Foto-Kwiz #3

Foto-Kwiz No. 2

Whole Foods Attitude girl

I had to get some fresh dill, which is actually pretty hard to find around here, so I went up to Whole Foods in San Mateo. It was kind of a schlep, but I'm working on a lobster roll variation that uses west coast crustaceans (read: affordable non-lobstertutes) so I needed it.

Now, you know the kind of girl that works at Whole Foods. Slightly peppy and political, probably with some tattoos and Vans. I like that. I want to roll with that. I actively want to spend time with that kind of girl.

Or, I thought so. While I was meandering down the bulk spice aisle, this gorgeous Siouxsie Sioux-type with tousled bangs and big eyes (and some armpit hair, okay, not a deal breaker) asked if I needed any help. I already had my dill, so I said I was looking for lemongrass...she called me silly and started to pull me by the hand back toward the produce section, where they keep that stuff fresh. I guess no one's pulled on my hand lately -- it felt like an immense come-on.

Once she'd shown me the bin where they keep the lemongrass, she walked away, like Whole Foods was this big toy house where she lived and played and thought nothing of pulling on guys' hands. It was kind of a letdown after the personal contact, so after I suggestively lingered in the produce area I pushed my cart around the store trying to find her again.

I guess she was avoiding me, because after ten or fifteen minutes of wandering the aisles I gave up and checked out. Once I'd paid (JESUS CHRIST ON GOD MOUNTAIN IS THAT PLACE EXPENSIVE) I started to shove off, and there she was at the manager's station chatting with a few of her heavily tattooed co-workers. She glanced at me, made some sort of comment, and then the little batch of them started to snicker. Like there was something wrong with me. I left, kind of pissed off.

Maybe I don't actually like girls who spend a bunch of time looking like a particular downer style, or who work in politically charged low-end leftist jobs. I'm more or less "leftist"; why do leftist chicks drive me crazy? Is it true what they say, that you hate in others what you hate about yourself? Maybe I'll try to meet a tennis chick, with a blonde ponytail, diamond earrings, and an ML 350. Someone with no issues and rad thighs. I think I'd hate that, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm due for a personal breakthrough. Look how great I am, I don't even need specialty books or a padded mat to help me affect positive change in my life.

Stupid Todd and his death wish

So a couple weeks ago Todd died. He had forgotten to bulk up for winter hibernation, and his body went kaput at the first cold snap (apparently he'd been on an America's Funniest Home Videos bender for a month or so and had ignored his body's primal instinct to gorge itself during autumn). His dying request was that I film me hitting his corpse over the fence with a baseball bat and send the video to America's Funniest Home Videos. I did, and this morning some police came to the door. Apparently squirrels getting clocked with bats raised a few red flags. I guess if I'd thought about it I would have realized that that's kind of a perverse thing to send to anyone...but when it's Todd it just seems like another funny PCP party trick.

Anyhow, Lyle got the door and I listened to his conversation with the cops from behind the couch. It went kind of like this:

LYLE: SooooOOOO! It's YOU again!

COP 1: Sir, are you Téodor Orezscu?

LYLE: Do I look like that fat pussy to you? Tell me now. Say it to my face, asshole shitwad. I fucked your mother and drew a daisy on her ass. [spits]

COP 1: There's no need for this kind of behavior, sir.

LYLE: Oh yes there IS! [sound of bottle breaking] ACE OF SPADES!

COP 2: Sir, have you been drinking?

LYLE: NO!

COP 1: Does a Téodor Orezscu live here?

LYLE: What's this about, mustache-dick? Your partner here put his dick across your upper lip like a mustache? Is that why you're buggin' me? I already have a mustache, so NO THANKS on the lip pedro thing.

COP 2: We're investigating some charges of squirrel cruelty. Does the squirrel in this photograph resemble anyone you know?

LYLE: Nope.

COP 2: And this...[flips page]...is this Téodor Orezscu?

LYLE: Never seen that fat piece of crap before. Get lost. Both of you. Get in your cop car and go to your cop car parkin' spot.

COP 1: Have a nice day.

COP 2: Make sure you clean up this broken glass. It's a hazard.

LYLE: Fuck...YOUUUUUUUUUU! [door clicks]


So, I figure I've got to lay low for a while, and probably change the way I look pretty significantly. Should probably grow a beard...get glasses...maybe do the Hasidic Jew thing with the black suit and stuff...what are those corkscrew sideburns called? I think my great-grandpa Bliklish had a pretty rad set. Okay, off to Jew it up. The next time I see you, it will not be as Téodor Orezscu. It will be as...Herschel Schviz-Meskewicz.

Got kicked out of my one-man band.

I gave up on trying to learn how to use all that professional recording equipment. Too many dials, knobs, sliders, cross-faders, modalities, and unlabelled function keys. No user interface design to speak of. More Enigma machine than envelope, if you follow me. Every time I stood in front of it, I felt like Dave at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, presented with all those monolithic lucite "buttons." One wrong push and the whole thing might blow up in my face. Suffice it to say, I won't be releasing any album that isn't a YouTube webcam clip of my left hand doing the chord changes to "Free Fallin'." Yes, I will be sitting on my bed. Yes, at the end you will see me get up. Off-camera, I will hit the space bar, which stops the recording. You will hear the first half of the click of the key. VIEWS: 17. COMMENTS: Yah that was good, chek out mine 2 :) [link]

What's new with me...I've been making a lot of bread. I uncovered a bread machine in the garage (a wedding present that had never been touched), and it's great. It takes the crappy part out of making bread (interminable kneading), and leaves you to just throw essentially free ingredients together, wait a bit, and then see what happened. It's like tossing a grenade over a hill, having a smoke, and then climbing over to discover that the grenade has turned into a lovely rosemary focaccia.

I've got a sourdough starter going right now, this yeasty slop that's supposed to sit out for three days and rot. The more I try to figure food out, the more I find that toeing the line between discoloration and dysentery is where real flavor lies. Should we always be eating food that might almost make us sick, in order to keep up digestive strength? There might be some wisdom there.

You know what? I've never had Limburger cheese. Or Liverwurst, for that matter. I'll be stinkin' it up tomorrow. For dessert? You guessed it. I'm going to eat a red onion like it was an apple. You'll know me — I'll be the guy swatting away vultures with a big diagram of Mitteleuropa.

Rough goings with music recording efforts.

THE USER INTERFACES ON MUSICAL RECORDING EQUIPMENT ARE MANY LIGHT YEARS BEHIND THOSE ON GENERAL-PURPOSE COMPUTER EQUIPMENT OR EVEN BLENDERS. Thank you for listening while I got that off my chest. It's just that all this high-end gear I borrowed from Ray is virtually inscrutable. I go to establish the settings on one input track out of 64, and I'm faced with twelve knobs, two sliders, five three-position buttons, and so many LEDs that I might as well be shining a flashlight into a cave full of bats. I JUST WANT TO MIC MY ACOUSTIC GUITAR WHILE I PLUCK AWAY AT "APRIL COME SHE WILL." SORRY I'M NOT THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC. I'M LIKE A FAMOUS CHEF WHO BOOKED HELL BUT ONLY NEEDED TO COOK A SINGLE HOT DOG. Oh look, I'm yelling again. Maybe it's because I hate everything in my room, including the large stupid machines and the little idiotic man who is sitting on the floor in front of them.

Into the Studio

Wow. I was in Ray's garage looking for a soccer ball, when what should I find under a sheet but a huge mixing table, a bunch of recording equipment, a big Pearl drum kit, and a bunch of Pro Tools software! He had about fifty grand worth of gear in there, so I asked him if he was planning on doing anything with it, since I've really been itching to lay down some tracks.

RAY: Téodor! Doggie, you find that soccer ball I said about?

ME: Yeah, but it was flat. It looked like a rat had been eating one of the panels.

RAY: [thinks] That's right. Damn. I put that ball away with a slice of sandwich ham stuck to it. I shouldn't have done that. [Shakes head] Man, what if Coach Dan saw me doin' somethin' so—

ME: I saw a ton of recording equipment out there. [Pretends to give Ray benefit of doubt] Are you starting a recording project?

RAY: Don't talk to me about that stuff, man.

ME: What? I'm sorry.

RAY: Hell of annoying, dogg. Bad times.

ME: Bad, huh. I'm sorry.

RAY: Bad, dogg. You want a soda? Amstel?

ME: You don't want to talk about it, do you.

RAY: Well, I got kind of burned.

ME: Damn.

RAY: Yeah. These dudes from East side, you know, they played me this demo with this fat track on it, some real delicious wax, you know, but they said it was produced on equipment that had recently been stolen from them. I said I'd procure new gear and they had this thing where it was getting to be dinnertime, and they kept mentioning dinner, and I was like, I'll get on these dudes' good side, take 'em under my wing, get 'em some dinner. So we went and had steaks down at The Chophouse, and I dropped on some good wines, to kind of start grooming them for the limelight, and then afterwards real quick they said they had to go to bed because of all the food and wine, so I chuckled and they rolled off. I tried their pager the next day but no deal, it was fake, you know, and I played their demo for a friend of mine and turns out it was just the new Krass Medik single that got leaked onto the Internet that I hadn't heard yet. These dudes just burned that onto a CD and pretended it was them. Meanwhile I had ordered all this gear Next-Day Air. I feel like a stone idiot about that.

ME: Wow. Damn. Conniving, you know?

RAY: That's exactly it! They were conniving! Exactly!

ME: So you gonna sell all that stuff back on eBay?

RAY: I don't know. I'm kinda hopin' some new act will come along and need it.

ME: Why don't I take it to my place, and hook it all up, and learn it, and that way if a good act comes along, but they aren't too technically proficient, I can kind of serve as their engineer. A lot of times these guys can't tell an RCA jack from a USB port. All they know is straight mic.

RAY: [gets real quiet for several seconds] Damn. I had about sixteen thoughts just now. But yeah, yeah. That is a real genius idea for a service. A lot of these dudes had no advantages. There is this one guy, Kareem Kara-mell, his whole thing is that he can't use any digital technology, he is so poor. He can only use analog technology. He's warped. He's out there, but his sound is so odd, I can see it in like a Cingular ad. Old Navy at least, or like if Old Navy started to sell ringtones.

ME: Awesome. How can...do you have a flatbed we can use to get the gear to my place?

RAY: I'll take care of it. Business expense, you know. Nice. Thanks, T. This is real smart.

ME: Alright. Let's set that up right now.

RAY: Cool. [makes phone call]

Now I'm here in my room with tons of gear and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I'm now able to produce studio-quality sound. It's a heavier burden than you'd think. Imagine when Simon & Garfunkel went in to record "April Come She Will," with just one voice and one guitar: that guitar's tone would forever define the feel of the song. Think also of the distinctive Stella that Kurt Cobain used here and there on Unplugged. Do I have a unique instrument like that? One that's got a sound worth recording?

Aw, crap. I'm acting like every note I set down will be angel-kissed. I'm probably gonna toss 99% of this stuff, then re-record later. Simon & Garfunkel probably threw out enough tape to rig a thousand Cutty Sarks. It's such a rookie move to act like every early project is worth saving, like it's going to be featured in a documentary twenty years from now. Do I watch too many "rockumentaries," or do I just think too highly of myself? Can someone please help me plot a realistic Venn diagram.

Beef = new GOF think tanker?

Man, I've never seen so much online discussion about the GOF. I guess I've never looked for it, but this year, with Ray and Beef calculating a huge B.O.C. surprise overthrow, everybody's on home row at full tilt. I read thousands of threads while the action was unfolding, most of which were based on Barry King's offshore blog, and a handful of which actually made decent points.

I loved the full-level razing of the grounds, and as a fan I'd like to see the concept of the Fight rise up from the ashes in a new format. In fact, I'm surprised it took this long for the contestants to try to overthrow the grounds themselves. Anyhow, for my money, the guys at alt.gof.new have a lot of it figured out: for grandeur and drama, they have to take Beef on in an executive-level advisory role. He clearly knows more about the Fight than any of them, and, as many software security companies have demonstrated, you need to hire your most dangerous adversaries. Why do you think you see so many sixteen year-old Ukrainian kids driving around in Maybachs?

I don't want to be too nosy or anything this year, but I'm sure they're going to call him and I'm pretty hopelessly interested in seeing how it all plays out. You stick around a place long enough, you see things like this happen.

WINE SUNDAY

I've been commiserating with Cornelius, of all people, about bad wine experiences at Trader Joe’s (I'd have thought he was above buying wine there). TJs has long been of renown for affordable wine, but sometimes it takes a couple guys getting together to compare notes and discover that, actually, hey, TJs is selling some ruined, backlot wines.

Cases in point are:

Their recent $4.99 Meridians (typically $8 at other stores), which basically taste like “wine.” I’m talking about the kind of wine you’d expect at Malibu Grand Prix.

That “Amarone” they are selling, which should be a raisiny, sweet, complex dark wine, but instead tastes like “antler piss” (imagine a rack of deer antlers shooting piss out of the ends)

Their viogniers, some of which taste like simmered Mad Dog 20/20 that has been poured and left to cool among the upraised strands of an astroturf mat that a dog sleeps on.

This information, taken in with the fact that Trader Joe's often puts oversized, funny-shaped, horridly flavored bottles of wine on prominent store-front displays, indicates that they are not the quality broker they originally purported to be.

Here's another weird thing about their liquor aisle: all of the full-pint canned 6-packs (Oranjeboom, Peter's Brand, 3 Horses, Melcher's, Henninger) taste the same. Why carry 5+ different brands? Do they have some LagerBringer machine in the back, and just shoot the stuff into different packaging? Those lagers are fine, but it's weird that there are five of them in a store with limited shelf space.

TÉODOR'S PHOTOSHOP PHRIDAY

They say to take vitamin D these days

I had a pretty rotten afternoon. I walked down to Starbucks to get my usual afternoon doppio espresso, and sat outside on the planterbox to take it in and maybe see if I could bum a smoke off of one of the local kids. Nobody was around, though, so I just sat and looked up and down the sidewalk for a while.

Just as I was about to go, this older bald guy approached pretty quickly in my direction. You know how you can tell in an instant that something's threatening you? I couldn't ever put my finger on it, but this guy was trouble. He was walking too fast, and a little too...thinly, his steps getting out of control, and when he was about ten feet from me his feet got all tangled up in each other and he took a pretty good header onto the sidewalk. The shoulder of his navy blue jacket landed square in a coffee-tinged puddle, and he scraped his head. The skin on his scalp was whitish-pale, and looked unnatural. I jumped up to see if he was okay.

"Are you alright? Sir?" I asked.

"I'm fine!" he gasped.

"Can I help you up?"

"I'm OK! I'm fine!"

"Here, let me give you a hand." I reached out my hand to help him up.

Dazed, but processing an enormous amount of information, he missed a beat before reaching for my hand. "I'm a cancer patient. Good thing I didn't have chemo today," he said to the ground.

I didn't know how much that might mean. I helped him to his feet and he, thanking me briefly while brushing off his shoulder, pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, walked a distance away, sat on the curb, and placed a call.

Once I saw that he was fairly engrossed in conversation, I tossed my cup in the trash and disappeared around the corner. He couldn't have been less aware of my departure.

STOP WAKING ME UP

I swear, if I'm woken up by one more baby bird almost-catastrophe (Philippe), or whiskey yelling (Lyle, Chris, et al), or loud David Lean biopic (Cornelius), or 6:20am nail-clattering in the kitchen (Olive, the damned dachshund, prancing around antsily for breakfast), or Calvados yelling (Cornelius, Chris, Ray) I'm going to put a shine on this place and find an apartment downtown. It's like living in the Tower of Retard Babel around here, waking up to hear Lyle yelling "NO, MAN, FORGET WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT MEDIA-DELIVERED GOVERNMENT. THAT'S ALL JUST COLA WARS -- EVERYBODY WINS. THE REAL POWER IS HELD OUT-OF-CIRCUIT BY A MUDDHIST IRISH MASONIC CLECT BASED IN SNAHOMISH, WISCONSIN..."

I just want some damn sleep. I usually go down around two or three, after I've played a bit and scribbled down some tablature and recipe ideas. Lately I've been woken up about every half hour from six on, as the house stirs into life and people start getting into fights or misusing volume-regulating technology. I'd get earplugs, but I'm paranoid about sleeping through a life-ending fire. I know I'd probably wake up as the flames started to lick at my hide, but ideally I'd have a few minutes first to make sure my high school yearbook had been properly set atop a small pyre of old socks.

I have gotten the hang of "Asian"-flavored slaw.

First off, there have been no more recurrences of the dream where I choose to abandon the retarded boy. This is a big relief.

Lately, I've been trying to pin down what makes an "Asian" flavored coleslaw tick (don't you just love how since the Blog Quality Bar has been set so low, I can mention this entirely without a segue, and it will seem like high literature simply because there are no misspellings and you can't tell which band I'm listening to?). I like a mayonnaise-based American coleslaw as much as the next guy, but this one travels better and has a lighter aftermath. The secret is fairly equal parts cilantro and mint—herbs you'd never find in the original—which, when paired, give it an exotic quality. Here's a rough recipe (I never measure this carefully, except for the dressing, and it always turns out great).

Salad
1 small handful chopped mint
1 small handful chopped cilantro
1 grated carrot
2 chopped scallions, including green top
3 regular handfuls of paper-thin sliced cabbage (I get the pre-bagged kind)
1 small handful toasted chopped almonds or peanuts (chop and toast these yourself for stronger flavor - they will cut nicely with a sharp chef's knife)

Dressing
2 TBSP canola oil
1 TBSP soy sauce
2 TBSP seasoned rice vinegar (plain rice vinegar OK)
1 TBSP peanut butter (any kind)
juice of 1/2 lemon

Once the nuts have cooled, stir the salad ingredients together and store in the fridge. Shake the dressing thoroughly to dissolve the peanut butter, then dress and toss the salad right before serving, or keep cool for up to an hour.

I made this to go alongside a nice piece of sesame-marinated halibut steak a few days ago. While I was watching the fish under the broiler Ray wandered in, offering to help me throw a few Oranjebooms back. I let him sample a forkful of the slaw out of the bowl where I was storing it in the fridge, and while I was plating the fish he ate the entire thing (about four full servings). When I pointed out that it had been for my dinner he looked sort of aghast at himself, and made this really scared, upset, scrunched-up mouth. He set the fork and mixing bowl down extremely carefully in the sink and walked really quickly out the back door, cursing something inaudible but clearly self-chastising (he also slapped his forehead every few steps until he left the yard).

Finale (hopefully) of the recurring dream

I was at the desk, and the desktop still had the name "Adrian Rodeo" carved into it, and I knew it was time to open the closed classroom door and see who this was. I walked slowly over, turned the handle, and then I was in the back scullery room of Clown Alley, a hamburger restaurant in my old home town that had shut down years ago. A mentally retarded Chicano boy was washing tall piles of greasy, discolored, oversized woks, and the floor was dirt. An Indian man in a thin, cheap business shirt looked at me and disappeared into an office. Then, loud and clear in my head, I heard it said, "That is Adrian. He needs you." The boy was wearing large white low-top generic sneakers, baggy jeans, and a heavily-weathered sweatshirt with the word "RODEO" barely visible across the chest. I knew that it was time to accept responsibility for Adrian, or I could just run away. I saw that the back door was open, and I felt terrible for doing it, but as I escaped I felt a future of misery disappear. I knew I would always feel guilty for leaving, but I knew I'd done the right thing.

So, I guess the dreams had nothing to do with my future success as a packaged food entrepreneur.

I spent most of tonight just tooling around in the kitchen, working on various risottos. People wandered in and out and ate and were all effusive but I don't think any of the recipes were really hitting. I just didn't have the focus to nail them.

Revisit of the recurring dream

I had that "Dorian Dareo, CEO" dream again. As usual, I was alone in the classroom, and the big heavy beech-colored door was shut, and I *knew* Dorian Dareo was standing behind it. I had no visual or auditory cues, but my soul was buzzing with the awareness that he was there. The silence was thick, and the fluorescent light rested on my hair with the weight of a napkin. I went through several emotional states while waiting for the handle to turn: fear, anxiety, extreme self-confidence, a drastic reduction in self-confidence, a "jokey" phase where a lot of jokey introductions came to mind, and finally a steady, passive anger. Then, as I stared at the door, I heard the click of the knob being turned, then the protracted squeak of the hinges as it swung open, and the soft bump as the rubber door-guard thing butted against the dark gray wainscoting.

The odd thing was, the door remained firmly shut the entire time.

Then I felt a horrific buzz around my ears, that signal you get when you realize someone's standing behind you. I bit the bullet and swung around: nobody there.

After examining the corners of the small room I looked down at the desktop, only to see that the carved name of "Dorian Dareo" had morphed into "Adrian Rodeo." Just then a rubber chicken-shaped eraser started whining, and I woke up, and Philippe's stray bird pet had waddled into the hallway and was whining outside my door. I put him back in his towel next to the mechanical alarm clock and hot water bottle and after a little while he was asleep again.

Recurring dream.

I'm my age, but I'm sitting at an old elementary school flip-lidded wooden desk, with a heavily scratched wooden top. Clearly carved in neat letters near the bottom-right hand side is the name "Dorian Dareo, CEO." The letterforms are a tiny bit shaky, as though they had been carved by a child, but consistent enough to imply that they are based on a particular font.

What does this mean? I've been playing around with the idea of selling a "just add water" brine mix recently — a dry mix of salt, sugar and spices that you'd just stir into boiling water and use to soak pork or poultry. Maybe the dream means that it's going to be really successful, and this "Dorian Dareo" will be the Howard Lester to my Chuck Williams. As far as I know, those two have a decent working relationship, and Williams-Sonoma is a highly profitable company, so this is all right.

On that note, I'm going to go work on my brine mix. Recent tests proved that boiling the ingredients in the water first really does help them enter the meat more thoroughly. Picture a handful of dry sugar granules sitting on a favorite sweater — now picture two ounces of sugar syrup being squirted onto the same sweater. The syrup is obviously going to get further into the sweater than the granules.

Ray's Mind-Menses

I was roasting some beef bones for stock this afternoon when Ray called me up on my cell phone and started rambling. It went something like this.

ME: Hello?

RAY: The Cure!

ME: Ray?

RAY: The Cure, that's who!

ME: Ray?

RAY: If The Cure is traveling at 76 miles per hour, and the main Cure guy leans out the window, and the wind pulls a teardrop off of his cheek, how long until it hits the ground, assuming that a cubic tear weighs one gram?

ME: Less than a minute.

RAY: YOU HAVE SOLVED THE PUZZLE.

ME: Great, what do I win.

RAY: YOU DO NOT WIN A THING AT ALL.

ME: Not even a little can of Dr. Pepper?

RAY: Oh, alright. You win a little can of Dr. Pepper.

ME: Now?

RAY: Heh. Yeah, comin' your way. Hold on, alright? [hangs up]

About twenty minutes later he was at the front door with a fifth of Glenfiddich and the Braveheart DVD. Our home theatre is pretty humble, but that didn't slow his enthusiasm. True to form, he sat forward and pushed my shoulder repeatedly during the Robert the Bruce scenes, and had to leave the room during the part where William Wallace is drawn and quartered.