tea

For about three hours, Dwight Yoakam sat at a conference table with a glass of iced tea and two smartphones in front of him, his mind abuzz with details.

Jurado swirled around a Rooibos tea bag with a tag read, “Your Actions Prove Your Greatness.”

Judges have struggled even to define how copyright infringement principles apply to technology that doesn’t output exact copies of copyrighted works but “mimics” them — rather like how the beverage machine in Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” delivered “a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”

He has a similar aw-shucks, genial manner — easy to laugh and quick to offer a cup of tea — that belies the strange hive of imagery buzzing inside his head.

And I really ought to extol the graciously ironic handling of “Chrysanthemum Tea,” one of those oh-so-clever Sondheim numbers that spans enormous dramatic territory in a manner so catchy that the song seems to gallop.