If I had to sing for my supper, I'd likely starve to death.
It is a well known fact that I could not even carry a tune in a 4 quart sauce pan.
On another particularly hot Dallas day, I declared I am not going to cook dinner tonight, we will go out. We decided on Napoli's, where the proprietor proudly proclaims he is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Profanity. He claims to have grown up in Texas, but speaks with an obvious Brooklyn tongue. Go figure.
We were nearing the end of our dinner, when this proprietor begged for the attention of everyone in the room, he wanted us all to tune up and get ready to sing a hearty Happy Birthday to one of his patrons, Mario. And he announced there would be a piece of cheese cake for anyone who could belt out the "Happy Birthday Song" in Italiano. Well, I don't know Italian and as mentioned I certainly can not sing. So what is going to stop me from getting a piece of free cheese cake? In my mind, nothing. Nothing at all. Here goes nothing:
Festum litim tibi, Festum litim tibi, Festim Litim mi pisano, Festum litim tibi!
My embarassed wife immediately corrects me as she hisses under the napkin she has thrown over her head to hide her face, "That's Latin - not Italian!! I can't take you anywhere!" [As if I don't know the difference between the two]. The proprietor looks somewhat bemuddled at me as I croak out the words and then sadly shakes his head, "Nice try my friend, but it wasn't close". At least he did not critique my untrained voice and add, "Beside you are a terrible singer". He then led the room in an English version and lit the candle on birthday boy Mario's dessert.
He then came to our table with a smile, and I admitted, I don't know Italian, but I though I would sing in Latin like the Romans did, as it could be argued that the Romans were Italians, and so the language that they sang in could therefore be considered Italian. He proclaimed, "I am a man of my word. I'm gonna tell ya what I'm gonna do for you. I'm gonna give ya a half a piece of my cheese cake - do you want it to go or for here?" I asked for it "to go" and he waved his hand at the onlooking kitchen staff, and it was done. A man of his word.
Now, you may ask; Do you know Latin? The answer is basically no. Or as they say in Latin America, "No". But as a graduate student in geology, I did organize and preside as Bishop Usher for the Earth's 5,987th Birthday Party in the grad student lounge. Bishop Usher (an Irish Bishop from the 16th Century - or maybe the 15th?) is famous for his calculations (mis)using the Book of Genesis and the genealogy and years recorded there in, to arrive at the date of the Earth's creation. The Bishop declared the earth was created on October 23, 4004 BC at 10:00 AM. I have to admire the good Bishop's ardent scholarly work, especially for 600 years ago. But also have to point out the sad first misstep in treating the truth in Genesis as what we would now call scientific natural history. Anyway, I, as Bishop Usher with cardboard mitre hat and Jacob staff in hand, had someone more erudite than myself, translate the Happy Birthday lyrics into Latin for all of us to sing at 10 AM.
Festum Litim Tibi Mater Terra is what I remember to this day.
As Arthur, King of the Britons tells us in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "You have know these sorts of things when you're a king you know". Likewise for Bishops and those bold diners that want to take a stab at a free cheese cake when the opportunity arises.
Ciao!
It is a well known fact that I could not even carry a tune in a 4 quart sauce pan.
On another particularly hot Dallas day, I declared I am not going to cook dinner tonight, we will go out. We decided on Napoli's, where the proprietor proudly proclaims he is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Profanity. He claims to have grown up in Texas, but speaks with an obvious Brooklyn tongue. Go figure.
We were nearing the end of our dinner, when this proprietor begged for the attention of everyone in the room, he wanted us all to tune up and get ready to sing a hearty Happy Birthday to one of his patrons, Mario. And he announced there would be a piece of cheese cake for anyone who could belt out the "Happy Birthday Song" in Italiano. Well, I don't know Italian and as mentioned I certainly can not sing. So what is going to stop me from getting a piece of free cheese cake? In my mind, nothing. Nothing at all. Here goes nothing:
Festum litim tibi, Festum litim tibi, Festim Litim mi pisano, Festum litim tibi!
My embarassed wife immediately corrects me as she hisses under the napkin she has thrown over her head to hide her face, "That's Latin - not Italian!! I can't take you anywhere!" [As if I don't know the difference between the two]. The proprietor looks somewhat bemuddled at me as I croak out the words and then sadly shakes his head, "Nice try my friend, but it wasn't close". At least he did not critique my untrained voice and add, "Beside you are a terrible singer". He then led the room in an English version and lit the candle on birthday boy Mario's dessert.
He then came to our table with a smile, and I admitted, I don't know Italian, but I though I would sing in Latin like the Romans did, as it could be argued that the Romans were Italians, and so the language that they sang in could therefore be considered Italian. He proclaimed, "I am a man of my word. I'm gonna tell ya what I'm gonna do for you. I'm gonna give ya a half a piece of my cheese cake - do you want it to go or for here?" I asked for it "to go" and he waved his hand at the onlooking kitchen staff, and it was done. A man of his word.
Now, you may ask; Do you know Latin? The answer is basically no. Or as they say in Latin America, "No". But as a graduate student in geology, I did organize and preside as Bishop Usher for the Earth's 5,987th Birthday Party in the grad student lounge. Bishop Usher (an Irish Bishop from the 16th Century - or maybe the 15th?) is famous for his calculations (mis)using the Book of Genesis and the genealogy and years recorded there in, to arrive at the date of the Earth's creation. The Bishop declared the earth was created on October 23, 4004 BC at 10:00 AM. I have to admire the good Bishop's ardent scholarly work, especially for 600 years ago. But also have to point out the sad first misstep in treating the truth in Genesis as what we would now call scientific natural history. Anyway, I, as Bishop Usher with cardboard mitre hat and Jacob staff in hand, had someone more erudite than myself, translate the Happy Birthday lyrics into Latin for all of us to sing at 10 AM.
Festum Litim Tibi Mater Terra is what I remember to this day.
As Arthur, King of the Britons tells us in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "You have know these sorts of things when you're a king you know". Likewise for Bishops and those bold diners that want to take a stab at a free cheese cake when the opportunity arises.
Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment