אַ ניקל פֿאַר זיי, אַ ניקל פֿאַר מיר

[sovay]

Apparently I can no longer re-toast myself a signature half pastrami, half corned beef sandwich from Mamaleh's without spending the rest of the evening singing the same-named hit from a 1917 American Yiddish musical. The Folksbiene never seems to have revived it and if the rest of the score was as catchy, they really should. (I am charmed that the composer clearly found the nickel conceit tempting enough to revisit in a later show, but that line quoted about the First Lady, didn't I just ask the twentieth century to stay where we left it?)

At the other end of the musical spectrum, spatch maintains it is not American-normal to be able to sing the Holst setting of "In the Bleak Midwinter," which until last night I had assumed was just such seasonal wallpaper that I had absorbed it by unavoidable dint of Christmas—it's one of the carols I can't remember learning, unlike others which have identifiable vectors in generally movies, madrigals, or folk LPs. Opinions?

Thanks to lunisolar snapback, Hanukkah like every other holiday this year seems to have sprung up out of nowhere, but we managed to get hold of candles last night and tomorrow will engage in the mitzvah of last-minute cleaning the menorah.

P.S. I fell down a slight rabbit hole of Bruce Adler and now feel I have spent an evening at a Yiddish vaudeville house on the Lower East Side circa 1926.

Comments

[umadoshi]

a signature half pastrami, half corned beef sandwich

My brain is trying to simultaneously picture this as a two-layered sandwich with both meats on the whole thing and as a single-layered sandwich with one meat per half. Clearly, I must ask which it is.

I sort of grew up aware of "In the Bleak Midwinter" without really singing it or learning the words, and then when I started more regularly putting Christmas music on in the last several years it became more familiar, since it's on at least a few of the albums I listen to. But for some reason, this year the lyric "if I were a wise man, I would do my part" hit me hard...with hilarity. ("If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb"--fine and good! "I would do my part"--hilariously vague.) So naturally I've been intermittently earwormed with it.

[sovay]

My brain is trying to simultaneously picture this as a two-layered sandwich with both meats on the whole thing and as a single-layered sandwich with one meat per half. Clearly, I must ask which it is.

Hee. It's double-layered; it's a a quite thick sandwich. But I like the image of it being deli-polarized.

But for some reason, this year the lyric "if I were a wise man, I would do my part" hit me hard...with hilarity. ("If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb"--fine and good! "I would do my part"--hilariously vague.) So naturally I've been intermittently earwormed with it.

Fair! Not one of Rossetti's more lyrically shining moments. (I would bet almost anything it resulted from working backward from the last line, but there were other rhymes.)