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Ray's Yttrium Pool Table Tuesday, June 22, 2004 • read strip Viewing 38 comments:

The Pepsi-can lamp on the phonebook nightstand littered with condom trash...classic. I love how Ray's abalone deal is all channeling Henry Hill from Goodfellas, all paranoid and glancing up at the black helicopters in the sky and neurotically wiping his nose.

Not to mention trying to cook all the while.

The cops always strike when you're trying to cook a fancy meal. I swear to God, it's like telemarketers when you sit down to have a nice meal.

Imagine that double-team. Dad gets busted as a coke mule while he's trying to sear up some pork shoulder, and then while everyone's trying to cope and they try and slice one little bit off with a trembling knife some nasal, twangy fuck calls asking if you want to change your long-distance plan.

"Twangy fuck" is a gorgeous turn of phrase.

I am just tipsy enough to admit that I have a man-crush on spinynorman.

I'm just now going back through the archives and reading the comments for the first time... and I have to admit I have a rather big girl-crush on spinynorman.

Littered with foils and spoils, you mean.

hey is that a reference??? great reference!!!!!!

The yttrium pool table so incredibly makes it.

The Yttrium pool table that has such as a gyroscopic levelling system.

How much fun would that be to go mad rutty on?

i can't chubby this enough...39-Y fo sho.

Well thank you kindly, not least since you declared my new arch-enemy your personal hero not so long ago.
I guess you're just a generally nice sort of person.

That said, I've just realised that the post I made 2 years ago really sucked. I'd have lamed my own post if I could...

The irony is that nobody else has .

o_0;

A comment left by epicurus was marked lame too many times and excluded. (marked lame by rhymesforkids, Taidje_Khan, Zem)

I don't think anyone frequently talks about Yttrium pool tables. You can probably count the number of times you have talked about Yttrium pool tables on one hand including the above post.

Dude don't play like you know me. You have no fucking idea about Yttrium pool tables in my life.

You must have some pretty wicked sack to be talkin' to me that way, epicurus!

Let's put it this way- he has Polonium balls on his Yttrium table, and uses graphite rods to keep from melting the neighborhood down to China.

Don't make him pull a rod, man. Don't do it.

Ray has bought his abalone from such a shady character that the Feds are now watching him.

A comment left by tttt was marked lame too many times and excluded. (marked lame by tekende, Deusoma, Siah, sumisueme)

I love Molly's smile in the first panel. It is the smile of ownership.

"That beautiful man is mine, and I damn well earned him."

I hope to one day look to my right and see that same smile, yes.

Everybody likes to come to Ray's house and grill up some exotic, possibly illegal, meats.

Molly is new here and doesn't understand that being Ray's friend is like watching a kid ride his bicycle into a telephone pole over and over.

Being Ray's friend means every situation is a gladiator; it is either disastrous or glorious.

An Yttrium pool table would be silvery in colour and shimmer pink in the light. (source: Wikipedia ).

That's pretty damn pimp. Apart from its carcinogenic properties, so don't eat tamales off it, y'mind.

Fortunately, when farts land on yttrium, they form a reusable skin.

What in the goddamn would you use them for in the first place, let alone re use?

It is an in-joke

For this is the Internet!

ray mentioned it twice it was so important

Something tells me that Onstad started typing in that second panel, realized he'd already said that in panel one, and just went with it anyway.

yeah, i'll buy that.

I mentioned this!

Government conspiracies are such a rad (and completely true) topic.

Today. Today is the day I finally understood the last panel. I had always taken it as Ray being worried that the grill was going to explode and possibly shoot a fireball high enough to hit the helicopter. I think I had never realized that the word abalone was in there and that abalone is a type of bird. Man. I feel so dumb, and yet so smart at the same time.

It's not a bird, it's a type of sea snail that was heavily overhunted since it's delicious. California has hell of restrictions on catching any, let alone selling it.

Well, fuck. You have dulled my triumph, sir, but I have been educated.

Essentially Ray is cooking illegal dinner and a therefore a little jumpy about the eye in the sky.

The strip following this one cuts to an aerial view such as one might enjoy from a helicopter looking down on Ray's estate (see panel three, next page) so at first I thought this was going to be a whole thing, but then it never materialized.

Ray in this comic is like a friend of mine. Dude would always call when my girlfriend and I were about to be getting mad rutty. These phone calls always went like this : "Hey man what´re you doing?"
"Well my girlfriend´s over, and..."
"That´s cool. Why don´t you come here? We could watch a dvd and stuff. Would be fun"
"I much rather would not..."
"Ah come on. Don´t be a dick"