paul, and i do not mean this rudely, but that photo of that plate of food may in the future contribute to me giving up food altogether.
those shades of green, just not, i dunno, food-ish. and the brown, gravy looking substance? um.
one time, i was in new york city busy not being on a train that was going to derail and a friend recommended i walk/ride to such-and-such an area because they had great indian food and i was all "i've never had indian food" and they were all "oh dude you gotta try it" (excpet they didn't use the word dude and stuff), so i rode to that are and starting wandering around.
so, i found the street, which in my addled memory is a bunch of brownstones, but keep in mind a brownstone to me is just some type of building and not a specific proper Noun, and i was thinking "dammit i'm lost there are no food serving places here i'm not going to knock on someone's door and say "oh i'm sorry i thought your house was an indian restaurant"".
so i start walking down the street and i realize it isn't houses, or not all houses, and i kinda poke my head in and this dude sets me at a table and is all "what do you want to eat" and i'm all "um, menu, maybe, please, um," at this point i was, i think, 18 or 19 and when i would get nervous i would get a pretty bad northern wisconsin accent which i'm told is "cute" but i'm pretty sure that is politese for "you sound like a retarded hick".
so, if there would be a universal descriptor for "small town boy wide eyed in the big city", it would have been me. and the nice waiter obviously could tell that.
so he brought me a menu.
which i stared at, and finally, maybe just about to cry (perhaps i embellish a tad), i point at some stuff at random because while there are a bunch of words on the paper that i recognize, i had no fuck*ng clue what i was looking at.
so then i stupidly remember what my friend had warned me of earlier, do NOT get them wet and no feeding after, uh, wait, no it was "make sure you get the mild".
so, i said "uh, sir", and he stopped and pivoted and looked at me. :uh, sir, can i get that as mild as possible?".
at which point he said "most assuredly" and walked off.
getting back to queens sucked.
and seeing, paul, your plate with the brown gravy stuff on it, well, my toes are itching and my ear drums are sweating.
i think i'm going to go have a lie-down now.