The Boy With the Arab Hat

Afshin made plum vodka months ago using very cheap vodka (filtered through a Brita multiple times) and a bunch of plums from a tree in our friend Lucinda's backyard. He finally decided it was time to remove the plums, filter the vodka, and switch it from one bottle to another. He called for my attention; the filtration process was going remarkably well and he was justifiably pleased with himself. I looked up and saw that he'd taken several thicknesses of cheesecloth, covered the mouth of one bottle with it, and secured the cheesecloth filter in place with a rubber band.

"Nice work," I said.

"Yeah, it's all right," he said. He gestured to the cheesecloth capping the bottle. "It's called an Arab hat."

I couldn't imagine who, except maybe Afshin, called it that. Skeptical, I asked, "Do they really call it that?"

He burst out laughing.

"I should know better than to believe anything you say any more," I shrieked indignantly. "You jerk!"

Camel Crossing

A few months ago Afshin and I accompanied some friends to the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco. I wanted to see the Vivienne Westwood exhibit (which was excellent, by the by), and we figured the boys could run around on their own while the ladies checked out the insane fashion. Afterward, we'd all have tea in the Hagiwara Japanese Tea Garden. I hadn't realized it until I was there, but I'd been to the tea garden before, as part of a tour I took while vacationing in San Francisco in 2001. I remembered this one bridge immediately—it's kinda hard to forget a bridge with such tiny, vertical little steps. Not steps, really. More like ridges. It's like climbing an inverted U–shaped ladder, as you can see from the picture below. But Afshin had never crossed the bridge before, so we got in line.

While we're standing in line, we pass a plaque bearing some sort of description of the bridge. Afshin glances at it and then tells me, "You know, this bridge was built specifically for camels."

I looked at him, agape. "What?"

"Yeah, they're particularly suited to this type of bridge."

"But how...?"

He burst out laughing. "You seriously believed that this was built for camels?"

"Well, I saw you look at the plaque, and then you said it all authoritatively...but I was going to ask you how that was possible that camels could get a foothold on this. And why they'd have camels in Japan to begin with."

Camels are the new jackalopes.

The Infamous Jackalope Incident

Let's kick off with a bang.

Several years ago I was in a butcher shop in Brooklyn, buying ham for a dinner party. Afshin was there to be my meat mule (which sounds a lot filthier than it was—he was helping me carry the ham and other assorted supplies). While we waited to be served, Afshin pointed to an animal head mounted on the wall and said to me, "Look, a jackalope."

I stared at the head—it was a rabbit head with antlers, by golly, mounted on a plaque. "They're real?!" I squealed.

Afshin's expression was a mixture of bemusement and contempt. "No, of course they're not real."

Is it my fault he sounded so authoritative?

Not long after the incident, Afshin was telling his friend Simon the story. He got to the part about the jackalope head on the wall when Simon interrupted him with:

"Wait, you mean they're real?"

I told you he sounded authoritative.