A Slip Of The Lip
Hello World,
Happy Columbus Day weekend! And don't think that I can't hear all of the young people out there, and their name is legion, all scratching their heads and saying, "Who?" as if they can't imagine any reason to have a holiday named after a city in Ohio. Au contraire! (That's French for "If it's Tuesday, this must be India.") Although in modern times, Columbus has fallen victim to the "What have you done for us lately?" movement of revisionist history, in fact he might be considered its poster child, without him and his ilk of fearless explorers, the New World never would have been discovered, and then where would we be? It goes without saying that none of us would be here now, or if we were, we'd all be living in teepees and running gambling casinos. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Columbus changed all that in 1492, and so here we all are today, although no one seems to appreciate that any more. I for one refuse to be daunted by the nay-sayers, however, and if nothing else, I appreciate Columbus for giving us a day off on Monday, and not a moment too soon.
Last weekend we were at Mom's to help her celebrate her 84th birthday, which we did in fine style and glad of it. The birthday girl was pretty in pink, wearing a nice new outfit that was an early birthday gift from my sister, and it goes without saying, her Birthday Girl tiara with the shiny balloons and sparkles. We had lunch and looked at pictures, and later had dinner and birthday presents, followed by mini Italian pastries. A person might be forgiven for being concerned that this might be just too much wonderfulness for one individual, but fortunately, my Mom has always exhibited a very high threshold of wonderfulness, so she managed to take it all in stride. And believe me, I don't have to appeal to the video replay judge to state that a fine time was had by all.
Last week was also that magical time of year that Bill so often despairs of, when the convergence of sports seasons makes it possible for all three of his favorite local teams to lose on the same day. After the Mets had already clinched their division, they perhaps did not play their last games with the same intensity as previously, and meanwhile, the Rangers were playing pre-season games that were important for training, but not necessarily for winning. Of course, the Giants had no such excuses, but still found themselves overmatched on occasion, and it turned into some very discouraging days for the hometown sports fans, at least around our house. I think that if professional sports commissioners are not going to institute the "Saving Private Ryan" rule of local sports, then the least they can do is make sure that all of the teams in one city don't play on the same day. After all, it's not a matter of life and death, it's much more serious than that.
One interesting thing to come out of the hockey pre-season, where winning or losing is immaterial and even the stats are irrelevant, was that the Rangers played one of their games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and thus became the first professional ice hockey team to ever play there. You might be asking yourselves, if no one had ever played an ice hockey game there before, what the heck were they doing with a beautiful, full-sized genuine ice rink right in the middle of town for them to use? It turns out that they sent squads of volunteers from the various hockey teams around the league to help construct this rink inside a multi-purpose arena used for concerts and other events. This is not as easy as it sounds, because there has to be the right kind of floor, and then you need the right equipment and people who know how to make ice on top of it, plus construct boards and safety glass around it, in addition to the benches, scoreboards and penalty boxes as well. It's a whole big undertaking to create a hockey rink where there has never been one before, unlike football for instance, where you can just paint lines on a grassy field and stand up two goal-posts and be done with it. In between periods, they showed the Zamboni clearing the ice, and we realized that some team had to also send them a Zamboni, plus the driver, because they certainly wouldn't have had their own. It was an interesting idea in foreign relations, and I give the NHL a lot of credit for being willing to take on the challenge and giving the native people something different than they had ever seen before.
Speaking of foreign relations, we get this story from Bill about a trip he had made years ago to The Great White North --
====================================
I now have to bore you with my favorite High School French story. I took French for 4 years in High School and another 2 in my abortive attempt at college. So I got pretty good at it. In 1973, my family and I visited Quebec, LONG before the French Canadians became as hostile as they are now. I had actually looked forward to being able to really USE some of my French, but when we got there, everybody was, of course, bi-lingual. All the hotel people spoke excellent English and so we checked in. We went back to the room after dinner and realized we had forgotten to pack slippers. So I volunteered to go down to the concierge in the lobby and see if they had slippers.
I walked into the little shop and there was a nice young woman there smiling at me, so I said, “Hi. Do you carry slippers?” And she looked at me and said, “Pardon?” in that nasal, French way. “AH-HAH!” I thought to myself, “The NIGHT person only speaks French! This is my big chance!”
“Ahem. Pardonnez-moi [pardon me], I said. “Avez-vous des ..... [do you have ... ] um. Avez-vous des ..... “
Yes, after 6 years of French, I couldn't remember the word for “slippers!” All that work gone right down the drain! So what do I do? Improvise!
“Avez-vous des chausseurs de nuit?” I asked, combining “chausseurs,” shoes with “nuit,” “night” to make “night shoes.”
She looked at me like I had 5 heads and said, ‘Quoi?” [What?]
I said, “Uh, avez-vous des sabots de chambre de nuit?” which probably translates to “wooden shoes of the bedroom.”
Well, after about four of these idiotic combinations (“socks of the bedroom floor” might have been the best) the girl looked at me and said, “Pantouffles?”
PANTOUFFLES!!! You can bet I never forgot that word again! But I DID have the funny feeling the girl was just “busting my hump” (as they say in certain circles) and that later she and the other Concierges had a big laugh about it - in perfect English, of course!
====================================
Well, as so often happens, I just don't see anyway to improve upon that, try as I might.
Meanwhile, here in the Ministry of Disinformation, we pride ourselves on not only getting all of our facts wrong, but disseminating that erroneous information to an unsuspecting public. So anyone who was taking bets that they would soon spot me driving around town in a small silver Taurus with four doors and a spoiler, would be woefully misinformed, and hopefully did not bet more than they could afford to lose. Of course, being in the Ministry of Disinformation means never having to say you're sorry, but I regret any inconvenience that this discrepancy may have caused. I am pleased to report that the previous falsehood was only incorrect in that the vehicle in question is not silver, not a Taurus and does not have a spoiler. Well, three out of four isn't bad, and in fact, with a batting average like that, you could play left field for the New York Mets. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Right church, wrong pew, as they say in the apologia of literary errata. It turns out that the car that's up for grabs at our mechanic's is a cute navy blue Ford Escort with four doors and no spoiler, so I'm happy to clarify any misunderstandings there may have been on this issue. Although technically speaking, and in the strict interests of pin-point accuracy, it cannot be said that the car is up for grabs any longer, since I actually have the title and registration application in my hot little hands, so in that sense, its fate is sealed. And that being the case, since I won't be embarrassed to be seen driving it around, if you do see me, you don't have to pretend you don't know me.
Happy Columbus Day weekend! And don't think that I can't hear all of the young people out there, and their name is legion, all scratching their heads and saying, "Who?" as if they can't imagine any reason to have a holiday named after a city in Ohio. Au contraire! (That's French for "If it's Tuesday, this must be India.") Although in modern times, Columbus has fallen victim to the "What have you done for us lately?" movement of revisionist history, in fact he might be considered its poster child, without him and his ilk of fearless explorers, the New World never would have been discovered, and then where would we be? It goes without saying that none of us would be here now, or if we were, we'd all be living in teepees and running gambling casinos. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Columbus changed all that in 1492, and so here we all are today, although no one seems to appreciate that any more. I for one refuse to be daunted by the nay-sayers, however, and if nothing else, I appreciate Columbus for giving us a day off on Monday, and not a moment too soon.
Last weekend we were at Mom's to help her celebrate her 84th birthday, which we did in fine style and glad of it. The birthday girl was pretty in pink, wearing a nice new outfit that was an early birthday gift from my sister, and it goes without saying, her Birthday Girl tiara with the shiny balloons and sparkles. We had lunch and looked at pictures, and later had dinner and birthday presents, followed by mini Italian pastries. A person might be forgiven for being concerned that this might be just too much wonderfulness for one individual, but fortunately, my Mom has always exhibited a very high threshold of wonderfulness, so she managed to take it all in stride. And believe me, I don't have to appeal to the video replay judge to state that a fine time was had by all.
Last week was also that magical time of year that Bill so often despairs of, when the convergence of sports seasons makes it possible for all three of his favorite local teams to lose on the same day. After the Mets had already clinched their division, they perhaps did not play their last games with the same intensity as previously, and meanwhile, the Rangers were playing pre-season games that were important for training, but not necessarily for winning. Of course, the Giants had no such excuses, but still found themselves overmatched on occasion, and it turned into some very discouraging days for the hometown sports fans, at least around our house. I think that if professional sports commissioners are not going to institute the "Saving Private Ryan" rule of local sports, then the least they can do is make sure that all of the teams in one city don't play on the same day. After all, it's not a matter of life and death, it's much more serious than that.
One interesting thing to come out of the hockey pre-season, where winning or losing is immaterial and even the stats are irrelevant, was that the Rangers played one of their games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and thus became the first professional ice hockey team to ever play there. You might be asking yourselves, if no one had ever played an ice hockey game there before, what the heck were they doing with a beautiful, full-sized genuine ice rink right in the middle of town for them to use? It turns out that they sent squads of volunteers from the various hockey teams around the league to help construct this rink inside a multi-purpose arena used for concerts and other events. This is not as easy as it sounds, because there has to be the right kind of floor, and then you need the right equipment and people who know how to make ice on top of it, plus construct boards and safety glass around it, in addition to the benches, scoreboards and penalty boxes as well. It's a whole big undertaking to create a hockey rink where there has never been one before, unlike football for instance, where you can just paint lines on a grassy field and stand up two goal-posts and be done with it. In between periods, they showed the Zamboni clearing the ice, and we realized that some team had to also send them a Zamboni, plus the driver, because they certainly wouldn't have had their own. It was an interesting idea in foreign relations, and I give the NHL a lot of credit for being willing to take on the challenge and giving the native people something different than they had ever seen before.
Speaking of foreign relations, we get this story from Bill about a trip he had made years ago to The Great White North --
====================================
I now have to bore you with my favorite High School French story. I took French for 4 years in High School and another 2 in my abortive attempt at college. So I got pretty good at it. In 1973, my family and I visited Quebec, LONG before the French Canadians became as hostile as they are now. I had actually looked forward to being able to really USE some of my French, but when we got there, everybody was, of course, bi-lingual. All the hotel people spoke excellent English and so we checked in. We went back to the room after dinner and realized we had forgotten to pack slippers. So I volunteered to go down to the concierge in the lobby and see if they had slippers.
I walked into the little shop and there was a nice young woman there smiling at me, so I said, “Hi. Do you carry slippers?” And she looked at me and said, “Pardon?” in that nasal, French way. “AH-HAH!” I thought to myself, “The NIGHT person only speaks French! This is my big chance!”
“Ahem. Pardonnez-moi [pardon me], I said. “Avez-vous des ..... [do you have ... ] um. Avez-vous des ..... “
Yes, after 6 years of French, I couldn't remember the word for “slippers!” All that work gone right down the drain! So what do I do? Improvise!
“Avez-vous des chausseurs de nuit?” I asked, combining “chausseurs,” shoes with “nuit,” “night” to make “night shoes.”
She looked at me like I had 5 heads and said, ‘Quoi?” [What?]
I said, “Uh, avez-vous des sabots de chambre de nuit?” which probably translates to “wooden shoes of the bedroom.”
Well, after about four of these idiotic combinations (“socks of the bedroom floor” might have been the best) the girl looked at me and said, “Pantouffles?”
PANTOUFFLES!!! You can bet I never forgot that word again! But I DID have the funny feeling the girl was just “busting my hump” (as they say in certain circles) and that later she and the other Concierges had a big laugh about it - in perfect English, of course!
====================================
Well, as so often happens, I just don't see anyway to improve upon that, try as I might.
Meanwhile, here in the Ministry of Disinformation, we pride ourselves on not only getting all of our facts wrong, but disseminating that erroneous information to an unsuspecting public. So anyone who was taking bets that they would soon spot me driving around town in a small silver Taurus with four doors and a spoiler, would be woefully misinformed, and hopefully did not bet more than they could afford to lose. Of course, being in the Ministry of Disinformation means never having to say you're sorry, but I regret any inconvenience that this discrepancy may have caused. I am pleased to report that the previous falsehood was only incorrect in that the vehicle in question is not silver, not a Taurus and does not have a spoiler. Well, three out of four isn't bad, and in fact, with a batting average like that, you could play left field for the New York Mets. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Right church, wrong pew, as they say in the apologia of literary errata. It turns out that the car that's up for grabs at our mechanic's is a cute navy blue Ford Escort with four doors and no spoiler, so I'm happy to clarify any misunderstandings there may have been on this issue. Although technically speaking, and in the strict interests of pin-point accuracy, it cannot be said that the car is up for grabs any longer, since I actually have the title and registration application in my hot little hands, so in that sense, its fate is sealed. And that being the case, since I won't be embarrassed to be seen driving it around, if you do see me, you don't have to pretend you don't know me.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 1:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home