SPIDER: Would you like some fresh breh-ade?

Dear Fairfield visitors,

Where is the town of Fairfield anyway? It is near the halfway point between Dallas and Houston at milemarker 197, and is notable for the fact that yours truly stops there on his trips to and from Dallas. Otherwise, it is wholly insignificant. The fields aren't that fair, though the girls sure are adorable with their East Texas accents.

One of my friends didn't have the chance to read this post before I shut down my old blog. He had mentioned that he stopped at the McD's in Fairfield frequently. So yet another re-release is inspired by him.

--

Sep 11, 2009

me: 'What? Breh-ade?'

'Yes, breh-ade.'

me: 'Oh, bread! Sure, I'd love some.'

About 25 miles out from Dallas, I spotted a sign for Sam's Gift Shop & Restaurant, breakfast, lunch, burgers, buffet, dinner, exit 197, Fairfield. Only 70 miles away. An eternity. Then 65 miles away. Stomach wrenches on itself. Fifty miles. Maybe I should stop by McD's...

Billboards, milemarker 243+0.5 miles, 'Stop the Porn, be Reborn, JOHN 3:3'.

Milemarker 243, 'DW's Adult Video Store, Fleshlights, Extenze Rise here!' Hilarious.

46 miles left... 'Forty-six legs of chicken on the plate, 46 legs of chicken, if g were to grab a leg, wolf it down, there'd be 45 legs of chicken left on the plate.' Delirium sets in.

Milemarker 200... Just a couple more miles. Then, the cruddy sign for Sam's appears on the horizon, like the White Castle sign for Harold & Kumar. Exit, skid around a few turns, park, enter.

The best country fried steak I have ever had. Brisket that falls off the fork and into my coronary arteries. Beans so soaked in butter that it's questionable whether the main ingredient is butter or beans. Fried chicken surprisingly subpar, but that's okay. Waitress gives me funny look. She probably thinks, 'Why is this China-man in East Texas?'

Then she asks, 'Would you like some fresh breh-ade?'

East Texas, where bread is a two-syllable word, and the food takes off 5 years off your life. Fair trade.

--

Deluxe, super-stupendous, superfluously supplicated commentary on the Surreptitiously Post-modern Imbued, Duplicitously Engaging, Rehashed re-release (if you were wondering, a 'rehashed re-release' is possibly redundant):

I'm sure my friend won't have any problems keeping his eyes to himself. And since his wife will be probably with him on their trips back to North Texas, it would behoove him to do so.

About the date, I didn't feel like writing anything about 9/11 on September 11th. I figured there would be plenty more people with better writing skills doing in memoriam pieces. And so I did what I do best: write a bit of comedy.

Brotherly Love Amongst Ourselves*

Dear Supernatural fans,

I’ve been dreading and fiending for this last season of Supernatural starring Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester and Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester. The first time I saw it a few years back, I thought it was a cheesy spoof of the Buffy and Angel series (David Boreanaz as a repentant vampire is a great premise): Every week, the two brothers would hunt down monsters and the eponymous supernatural.

Though after being sucked in by a few episodes with very hot actresses (Supernatural’s formula = 2 strapping guys, a baddie, and the inexorably smoking-hot damsel in distress), I began to love the story arc. Sure there were monster-of-the-week episodes a la Buffy et al, but most of the episodes revolved around a particular season’s theme. This season, that theme is the impending apocalypse inadvertently started by the two brothers. Oh, and hot girls; that’s this season’s theme too. Coincidentally, hot girls also happened to be a co-theme for seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4.

And did I mention hot girls? I did? It bears repeating though. Some memorable ones were Tricia Helfer, Sarah Shahi, Taylor Cole, Katie Cassidy, and Emmanuelle Vaugier (*swoon*).

Jared Padalecki is the stereotypical morose, tall, dark, and handsome, with a physique rivaling those of male strippers on the Vegas Strip**, while Jensen Ackles is the womanizer with the drop-dead gorgeous looks. Together, they travel around the country chasing down ‘bad sons-of-bitches’ and saving everyone they can. And they do it in a classic ’67 Impala tuned to old-school classic rock.

Each week is like a one-hour horror flick, replete with CGI effects, action, drama, and surprisingly tasteful humor. It blows my mind how the writers manage to be funny and scare you at the same time without it being too artificial. They’re just that damn good.

But CGI effects and hot girls aside, what keeps me coming back is the brother-brother relationship between Sam and Dean. Sam is the intellectual younger brother, bound for Stanford Law School when a horrible tragedy causes him to rejoin the ‘family business.’ Dean is his cool older brother who protects Sam as much as possible, even at the cost of his own [spoiler deleted]***. Their mother died when they were children, and their father raised them to be crazed paranormal hunters. Season 1 starts with their father missing, and so the only family they have left is each other.

If you love something, it is very likely that you see some of yourself in it. People love their mates because they find something akin to their own values; sure opposites attract, but the last time I checked, we don’t mate with primates. I love my Droid phone because it feels very utilitarian and business-like, though very deftly cool. I associate with loyal and honest people, because I consider myself loyal and honest. I enjoy classic novels because I aim to be classic. Etc.

And I love Supernatural because its main theme of brotherly love mirrors my own relationship with my older brother. He is probably the coolest guy I know and became my role model when I lost faith in my father. I am the little brother he took care of when our parents were sometimes not emotionally or financially or physically there. And being brothers, he teased me incessantly, though he never tried to hurt me intentionally.

Whereas Dad selfishly and blindly pursued pipe dreams, my brother used his own money, the little that he had, to buy me school supplies and clothes when I was in high school. Whatever I needed, my brother would try to provide. It’s rare to see a perfect foil in real life; the hero and anti-hero only appear next to each other in fiction.

And the thing about Sam and Dean’s relationship is that though they never say it explicitly, you can tell by their actions that they love each other. And so it is with my brother.

You can watch the current season of Supernatural online here. The quality isn’t all that great though, but it’s good for catching the episodes that you missed when you’re working graveyards.

--

*an inside allusion

**this is not a first-hand observation

***I don’t want to ruin it for you

Night at Ra, Pt. 1

Dear stand-up eaters,

A few weeks back, I did the Happy Hour + Rockets game with my older brother and his friends. Usually, they go to Kona at the Galleria, but this time, they decided on Ra. It's nice to try new things, but you should probably avoid popular places on a Friday night.

Ra Sushi was packed like the Superdome after Katrina. It probably violated the maximum occupancy limit, but as it was an Asian place, the establishment ignores safety in quest for deeper profits.

After I scaled the stairs to get to the main dining floor, I found a mass of humanity trying to get a bite of Ra fish. There was a superfluous amount of attractive women who were attempting to upgrade to better boyfriends (by flaunting their assets), but were currently accompanied by the douche-bag starter model, the kind that emulate the Jersey Jagger Bomb faux-celebs.

I’m still refining my pick-up line. So far, I have ‘Hi, my name is g. I’m a doctor, and I make six figures. Do you want to get on this?’ (patent pending). It’s a work in progress. It currently has a zero success rate, but like the search for weapons of mass destruction, I swear that line will hit paydirt one day.

Being Asian, I don’t have the trouble of differentiating between groups of the yellow-skinned folk, and I spot my brother and his friends fairly quickly, as they were standing a little past the hostess’s station. Okay, so I guess instead of being like the rest of the suckers standing in the lobby, we’re going to have some Kirin beer while we wait at this area where there is an overhang that acted like a makeshift table.

I didn’t care as long as there’s a place to rest my drink. The server comes by with massive bottles of Kirin and delicate porcelain curved flutes of warm sake. Like good alcoholics, we pound some sake bombs and toast the Rockets good fortune against the Heat. Then another dude comes by with some plates of sushi. At this point, I became mildly confused, because as far as I know, sushi isn’t served dim sum-style where they wheel around carts, asking you what you want.

The confusion cleared up when one of the guys said that it was our order. There weren’t even chopsticks or napkins at the little overhang area, not to mention the lack of any kind of chairs or chair-like objects. Though we do look a little F-O-B, we’re decent enough to use utensils. Some of the guys shrugged, and grabbed the food-art with their thumbs and index fingers. I shrug too, and grabbed a pork dumpling.

The silverware and woodware and napkins came by later, but as we were well on our way to being so far gone, we ignored them for the most part. The alcohol coursed through bodies which weren’t well equipped to handle such poison (aldehyde dehydrogenase mutation which leads to poor metabolism and subsequent ‘Asian Flush’), and the already uninhibited became even more dis-inhibited.

One of the guys said to a group of fun black girls, ‘You know I like that dark meat, right? I’ll get you a bucket of fried chicken, but only on a Tuesday. 99-cent special at Popeyes. Nah mean*?’

As it turns out, you can say a lot of things if you can say it confidently and playfully. Rather than getting slapped, the guy got a bunch of laughs (along with him, not at him). One of the memorable things one of those girls said was, ‘Nuh uh, you couldn’t handle all this woman.’ Very true. I doubted if anyone could handle all of her.

After a couple more sake bombs, I began feeling like I was in Vietnam, even though I’ve never been there.

me: ‘Damn. We eatin’ like we in Vietnam, all standin’ and squatin’ and sh*t.’

guy: ‘How you know what we ate like when we in Vietnam?’

me: ‘I saw some pictures on some travel ads. Looked like people be eatin’ and tryin’ to take a dump at the same time.’
--

After several more rounds of rice wine, we left of our own free will and on our own sets of legs; I was a bit surprised we hadn’t been kicked out. And we got to the game perfectly fine**, though I soon passed out on the seat as the Heat proceeded to pound on the Rockets.

--
*you know what I mean?
**there was a DD, natch

Tri, Try Harder

You must excuse me for yet another post about yet another woman, but this 2-part set was already typed up, and I’d hate for it to go to waste.
--

Dear follow-up readers,

...continued...

The pretty blonde did not have a ring, just as that gentleman had said. I need to improve my ring-spotting skills.

She came by the next night, and I remembered her name and her prescription not only because she was pretty, but because she was a troublemaker. People with any kind of insurance or attitude or other problems get that label, which means that I spent, or will have to spend extra effort on their prescriptions. Like in public schools, only the problem-children get any attention. Note to pharmacy goers, if you pitch a fuss, the pharmacy will take extra care of your prescriptions just because we want to limit the face-to-face time as much as possible.

Hers was a weird issue which I had figured out overnight using some knowledge and intuition. She was not impressed that I remembered her name; she is probably used to people going out of their way to know her name and fawning at her every desire.

I explained what had happened to her prescription the previous night, and she nodded reassuringly, confirming what I thought had happened.

Blonde 8.5: ‘Yea, I had left because I saw how busy you were. I wanted to give you a break.’

At some point in the will-call to register to signature capture, she glanced at my name tag.

Blonde 9.5: ‘That’s an interesting name. How do you pronounce that?’

I said my name, wishing that she would do the same. My wish was soon granted, but not in the way I had hoped.

Blonde 9.0: ‘Tri, try harder.’ A subtle grin appeared on her rose-colored lips.

‘Wow. I haven’t heard that since high school. You’re bringing back horrible memories.’

Blonde 9.3: ‘Oh, I’m sorry. High school sucked for everybody. But look where you’re at now.’

She continued her coy smile, as pretty girls are wont to do when they’re teasing you. She wasn’t really sorry.

Me: ‘Well actually, it wasn’t all that bad.’

At this point, I should have just reflected her smile and stopped talking. When I get nervous or flustered, I start talking random gibberish to fill the silences, and the stuff that comes out oftentimes isn’t favorable. So to try to impress this girl, I rambled on and on about AP tests and how I became a book hermit to get out of school a little quicker.

It was like a scene out of a chick flick where the nerd thinks that explaining the difference between speed and velocity* would somehow make him devastatingly irresistible to women.

I guess I had made some stupid comparison to jocks, and so to humor me, she said something like, ‘where are they [jocks] now?’ Thinking on that question, they are still probably scoring, but to a lesser extent (the player-hater side of me hopes so). Jocks are like American light beer: they're best when they’re fresh. I hope I’m like premium wine: better with age.

So after I had sufficiently stuffed both my feet in my mouth with talk of my nerd-dom, I ended with my customary, ‘Have a great night!’ The awkwardness was painful to endure on my end, though I’m sure she’s used to it because she has caused many a man to find himself speechless.

One thing I’ve learned in my interaction with people is to never read too much into things. You’re not that important for people to prepare themselves to talk to you. Most people just say the first thing that pops into their mind, and you should just take it at face value.

Was Blonde 9.7 (her score increased from 8.5 to 9.7 for teasing and humoring me) interested in me? No idea, but my bet would be on ‘no’. Face value: she asked how to pronounce my name and made a cutesy jest out of it.

As I grow less socially awkward, I hope I can parlay these very minor indicators of interest into some digits without violating HIPAA.

--
*speed is distance per time and is scalar, whereas velocity is displacement per time and is a vector; velocity takes into account the initial and final position of an object. Example: if you made a complete revolution around the earth in an hour, your velocity would be 0 m/s, because your initial and final position would be the same. In contrast, your speed would be a value larger than the number of Charlie Sheen's horizontal tango partners, which is a lot.

The Wise Man

Dear joke-tellers,

So a priest, a blonde, an old guy, and a rabbi walk into a pharmacy. The priest says to the pharmacist, ‘I know you dispense Plan B, but everyone can be forgiven.’

Then the priest sees the blonde and again addresses the pharmacist, ‘You can be forgiven for your next couple thoughts as well.’

‘What?’ The pharmacist was confused, but then sees the blonde and grins involuntarily. ‘Oh, thanks.’

The rabbi said some things too, but since I’m not Jewish, I’ll have to refrain from saying something possibly non-PC.

The priest and rabbi leave, thus ending a bad joke.
--

There were some issues with the blonde’s prescription, as is likely to happen in a pharmacy which obeys Murphy’s Law to perfection. It was a Friday, but instead of people getting their groove on with their paychecks and paid companions, they wanted to keep the pharmacist (moi) company, though their presence was like that of bad in-laws who think you stole their son/daughter.

As there was a line of customers and several waiters (and not the kind that could have served me the adult beverage--single malt scotch--I so desperately needed), I used one of my patented delay tactics, ‘There were some issues with the prescription (such as I haven’t had 2 seconds of peace since I’ve been here to fill it), but I’ll get to yours next if you give me but 5 minutes.’ I hoped she didn’t have a watch.

So she left, but more people in the store started queuing up like it was the evacuation out of Houston when Hurricane Rita graced the third coast. One of the customers asked another guy, ‘What’s the fuss all about?’ The other dude responded, ‘I don’t know, but since there are a lot of people here, it must be important.’ And they both proceeded to honk their horns and wondered why it took so damn long (11 hours+) to get out of Houston and why it takes someone more than a minute to lick and stick* a prescription.

But the next gentleman in line, a bespectacled sage with adroit eyes, was quite understanding and made a comment which made me smile.

‘You know, I wouldn’t have minded if you had taken time to fill that blonde’s prescription.’

I laughed. ‘I think she’s married. I’m sure I saw a ring.’ It seems that all the women who frequent the pharmacy who are even just somewhat attractive are the ones who sport a shiny bauble on the left ring finger. And so I’ve just stopped trying to spot the circlet of death.

The elderly gentleman paid for his prescription and then let a coy grin slide to the left-most edge of his lips from the expertly hidden, sex-filled part of the brain that all males possess, no matter how old. ‘No, she didn’t have a ring. Trust me, son.’ He winked and was gone.

That little interchange got me through the rest of the night, but the blonde did not return, much to my chagrin and dismay.

But she did come back the next evening...

To be continued…

--
*in the olden days, prescription labels had to be licked to activate the adhesive, hence the phrase, ‘lick and stick’. In the modern era, ‘lick and stick’ has come to mean other things entirely unrelated to pharmacy practice.

The Writing Bit

One of the things I wanted to avoid with this blog that I didn't avoid in my last one was that I was going to be less negative concerning my family. I had gone through the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), but it seemed like I kept reverting back to the anger stage time and time again when I think about my past. My goal for writing a memoir, which may never be published, is that I can finally put that part of my life on paper and get past it. Though as I sit now in my Dallas apartment with my family and my history 300 miles away, I am starting to grow numb from the literal and figurative distance of my present self from my formative self. And I'm starting to grow numb from this cold weather. It should be against Texas law to have the weather be anywhere near freezing!

And I've started to write the memoir many a time, but I eventually get to a sticking point: I can't express fully my thoughts as a 6-year old in the Caribbean without stealing the Joyce's technique in Portrait of an Artist whereby he writes as if he was the child in his earliest memory. If my memoir were to be a satire, then sure, I could blatantly copy all of the great artists' techniques and say that it was an homage and a poke at the dreariness of my development. But I don't wish my memoir to be a satire. I don't wish my story to be nothing but a comedy. Comedy is created as an antithesis, a foil to tragedy, hence the comedy & tragedy juxtaposition. Comedy was my defense against the hopelessness I saw as my future. But when the hopelessness was abolished by the light of epiphany, the comedy still remained. Hence all the jokes and puns and sexual innuendos you see in my blog and writing today.

An aside: I've noticed that the better comedians started out with a sucky life.

And I guess the other sticking point I've experienced is that I feel the writing isn't good enough. My thoughts run rampant when I'm thinking about the actual events of my past. But a memoir is not supposed to be a chronicling of events, a history book of one's life. I believe it to be a selection of the more salient points of one's life intended to provide some message, as cliched as it sounds. The actual person and the actual events should be secondary to the feel-good message. But as a narcissist of the nth degree, I must insist that I should be the thing that matters most in a story of my own life.

One good thing that I've learned from writing this blog is that I've grown less wearied about my frequent use of the word 'I'. When I began writing the stereotypical 'Dear Diary' or 'Dear Journal' entries as a youth, I would become incensed at my predilection to begin a sentence with 'I'. Though this blog is decidedly in a first person point of view, the writing has grown to be more than a collection of simple sentences starting with 'I' followed by a verb and some objects and other choice words which form a predicate. 'I', though it remains a majority of the subjects of my sentences, it is by no means the only subject.

Being a solution-oriented, type-AAA kind of guy, I've devised solutions to my sticking points. I will start from my time in Brooklyn when I was around 12. This should be infinitely easier to write about because some of my most painful memories come from that time, and it wasn't just because of being an overweight nerd who was forced to endure puberty in a foreign place with an entirely new set of friends (though that did pretty much suck).

And the second sticking point, about how my writing isn't good enough? Well I guess the readers of my blog will have to endure my non-comedic writing as well. I guess I might have to supplant my weekly musings on women because as my friend very pithily put it, 'You need to get laid!' As my alma mater's motto goes, 'In Time.' But I fear that there's not enough time for all that I want... Mortality is a mother[expletive deleted].

This Week at the North Pole

g-Style Table of Contents

Tue, Jan 26 - Senior Rings

A discussion about the not-so-cool dying trend of guys with class rings. Also a defense of the superficial.

'I am simply stating that people develop preconceived notions because of a generalized perception of truth, which may or may not be ultimately true.'

Wed, Jan 27 - The Finger Snap

The celebration of an archaic yet still extant gesture amongst peeps of various ilk. Also included is a quote from Romeo et Juliet, but it isn't my favorite line: O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? (II, 2, 976)*.

'I haven’t grown to think that this is childish just yet, though I do try to keep my finger snaps private as much as possible.'

Thu, Jan 28 - Shopper at Walmart - m4w - 22

A missed connections (a la craigslist) stylized entry where I caught a girl do a stereotypical guy move.

"'I had passed you while going to electronics the first time and you looked at my face, and then you did the thing that most guys normally do, that is look down and check the package.'"

Fri, Jan 29 - Do You Know This Song?

An homage to my favorite group from the South: UGK. I was frustrated that I couldn't find one of their songs.

'There’s nothing like Pimp C’s nasty lyricism ('Take it off, chick, bend over, let me see it...') which are rapped country-style in tune to some bad-ass old-school beat.'

Sat, Jan 30 - I'sa Playa

I find the title of the track, but I start to realize that I am not entirely of the opinion of the rappers. Is it misogynistic to listen to misogynistic music?

'How can I be the man I want to be when I listen to music which are not of my values?'

Sun, Jan 31 - SPIDER: In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of

A comparison of temperature control in the Northeast vs Down South. Also a brief exposition of my time in NYC.

'Apartments with central temperature start at 2 million, because the ones that cost 1 million are still 600 sq foot sh-tholes.'

--

Thoughts that didn't quite make the cut to be blog entries:

Welcome new readers! If you would kindly click the 'Follow' button you see to your right, you will very happily appease my ego, which has grown quite large over the years, hence the massive melon-sized head. If you wish, you can also have my somewhat daily blogs delivered to your email compliments of Feedburner, which you also see on the right hand side. It works; I tried it myself.

I woke up this morning, and the thermostat read 50! Not Celsius, but Fahrenheit, the temperature scale of the greatest country in the world. So what if nearly everyone else uses Celsius? They're just wrong, because as a rule, Americans are always right! Cue up Proud to be an American. Sorry, that's a bit of North Texas brainwashing for you.

I thought about using Calculus to calculate the rate of temperature change in my apartment, but realized it would be incredibly nerdy of me. I'm pretty sure it is possible to do so. If you're thinking about the numerous variables like the 1 millimeter thick insulation or the shoddy non-weather-proofed windows, then that would be very intelligent observations. My answer to that? Simply bundle all non-critical variables into a catchall 'C', for constant, assuming that all those variables are constant. The actual contribution of each variable doesn't matter; you're simply concerned about the effect of all the variables in relation to the temperature. Physics and Calculus are very beautiful, elegant, and paradoxical sciences: though they analyze some things in such minutiae, they're remarkable at ignoring a bunch of other things. I think I would have liked being an astrophysicist, since I enjoy talking about things that matter not a bit to the rest of society. I apologize for the headache.

I have such a crush (mostly platonic) for Colbie Caillat. I don't know, but I think I may be fallin for you... She reminds me of Sheryl Crow. The music video is a bit wrong as it would purport that supplication works. It doesn't (reference: 22 years of my life).

I've stylized my name to be the lowercase 'g'. So if you ever see a book signing event and see just a lowercase 'g', well then that would be moi (still working on my French in desperate hope of meeting Melanie Laurent).

The bits about my night out 2 weeks ago at Ra Sushi: those are en-route. I'm still working on them, because they're bound to be packed with pretty heady stuff, as deep and philosophical as I am (which is to say, not so much).

Darkness Consumes You. That is the title of my book about my entering into the PUA (pick-up artist) society after reading The Game by Neil Strauss. I'm starting to believe that the stuff works; I've already come up with some openers and routines which I will field test on my next break. Unfortunately, as I am a private person (when it comes to personal relationships), you won't hear anything about it. Darkness Consumes You won't sell, because the topic (the not-so-secret PUA society) is played out.

My Droid phone is draining all my free time. When I see it's green LED light flashing, I have no recourse but to satiate my curiosity, even though I know it's just another email from Buy.com, Overstock.com, or Amazon.com. The bundled Facebook app isn't helping either.

A friend from NYC tagged me as an MIA in her 6th grade class pic. The problem with that is I was still in Houston in 6th grade. It was a pleasant picture (because I wasn't in it) nonetheless, and a few of my acquaintances added me on FB. If you're reading this, Hello!

I've come to the realization that I'm a degenerate, but I'm proud of it. I've forgone video games and women and society and alcohol just to get to this point: a doctor (of pharmacy) at 22. I'm cashing in my chips and walking out of the casino while I still can. Maybe in a different life, things would be different, but as I can't travel between parallel universes, you're stuck with this version of me.

It is extraordinary how a week can fly by without a person doing anything productive. And it takes a a very smart person to realize that wasting time is a decidedly delightful choice. If you haven't done it, try sleeping for 16-24 hours straight, and you'll understand what I mean. The REM-ing is magical. (When you wake up after 8 hours or so, just visualize a hot summer afternoon in Madrid or a cool breezy dusk on the French Riviera, and fall gently back to sleep).

Did I mention Melanie Laurent? I think I have, but I'll talk about her again. She has officially supplanted Marisa Miller as the object of my idolatry. Oh if I could but tap into the French bastardry of my ancestry. Those blue eyes... Were that I never saw her face in Inglourious Basterds...

No need to roll your eyes or make a face of disgust at the last paragraph. As always, I am just kidding.

And finally, don't place glasses of water on the carpet when you can't find a coaster (or are too lazy to look for one). Otherwise, you might relive the wet carpet feeling you felt post-Hurricane Rita when the wind nearly blew your roof off. 'Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.'**

--

*I forgot how to cite literature that isn't in NEJM or JAMA or Arch Intern Med. I'll relearn eventually.

**Douglas Adams