Several months ago, my friend Dana Vachon, in a studious effort to avoid doing anything that remotely resembled investment banking (his day job, pre-massive book deal), wrote me several brilliant Garrison Keillor-esque "Letters to the Editor" under the pseudonym "Reginald Butters." The first one, in its entirety, with the relevant portion in bold:

Dear Elizabeth,

I live in Akron, Ohio and I came into town with my wife just last weekend. She is a gardener, and for years we have had the finest impatiens on the block. She spends all day on the flower beds, and buries a blueberry muffin beneath each patch. She thinks that this makes the flowers grow so big. What she doesn't know is that I sneak out of bed at night and spray those things to the gills wtih my special mixture of miracle grow and ground up steroids that I got after I threw out my back last April. I do it because I love her, and because I feel guilty for a few things that happened years back.

She's gotten it in her head that she wants to become a gardening columnist. I keep telling her it doesn't make sense, but her flowers are really amazing and she's been writing for our local newspaper. She logged onto your site a few weeks back and made me promise to take her to your bistro for dinner when we got to the city. I don't like french food but I said I would because I feel guilty and what not. We bought a Zagat's guide but could not find your establishment. You should do a better job of publicizing yourself. She was beside herself and when we came home she tore up half her own flower garden! Went ripshit! Now she's lost her column in our local paper, and I'm running out of the steroids that made her flowers so pretty in the first place.

First question. Do you have any prescription meds perhaps left over from surgeries or what not that you could send me FedEx? Second question. Even though we didn't buy a fancy dinner, can you give my wife some advice on how to get her gardening column carried in New York? I swear to God her tulips are bigger than anything in Central Park, which from what I understand is pretty much full of used condoms and rabid squirrels anyway. Finally, thanks for your help. It's been pretty rough lately, and I just need to get right with my wife. These flannel nightgowns are killing me.

Sincerely,

Reggie Butters

I responded with something along the lines of: HAHAHAHAHahahaha!

Then, secondarily: Hmmm... an actual media bistro...frightening. (We already have that. We call it "Michaels".)

Apparently, it's not so far-fetched. The guy who invented "Pong" is starting a restaurant called "Media Bistro" in West Hollywood:

...the servers will not be human waiters but powerful central computers that will record food orders and display video games that customers can play while they eat.

Our official response: HAHAHAHAHahahahaha! And it's still frightening.

Waiter, there's a laser cannon in my soup. [FishbowlLA]