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With a torch up on the rocks, you are a miracle
Tonight ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I had dessert at Finale. (We'd continued our tradition of dinner at Christopher's, but left in search of chocolate-ier things; also, I couldn't stand any more reproachful staring from the cocktail I'd had to abandon. It was made with Moxie, some anise-flavored bitters, muddled lemon, and ginger liqueur and somehow managed to be terrible. On looking up Fernet Branca, actually, the mystery is solved.) When our drinks came, he asked if it was Harpo Marx who had the story about being told the proper way to drink brandy—pace yourself with an ice cube in one hand, wait for it to melt before taking the next sip, repeat; "it'll keep you glowing all night." (I couldn't remember off the top of my head, but the answer is yes.) We weren't, of course, convinced that this was the ideal approach to brandy, unless you wanted to spend the evening with one hand freezing wet and the other full of liquor you couldn't drink. "It'd make a great comedy routine, though," I said.
And he was on the instant an anxious man with a handful of too slowly melting ice, looking longingly at his brandy and helplessly at his watch and hopelessly at the ice cubes—melting none the faster for being shuffled around like worry beads or surreptitiously huffed on like dice—in all ways a man thwarted by fancy-sounding advice and fate and nothing in his hands (on his wrist, on the tabletop) but air.
Yeah.
derspatchel and I had dessert at Finale. (We'd continued our tradition of dinner at Christopher's, but left in search of chocolate-ier things; also, I couldn't stand any more reproachful staring from the cocktail I'd had to abandon. It was made with Moxie, some anise-flavored bitters, muddled lemon, and ginger liqueur and somehow managed to be terrible. On looking up Fernet Branca, actually, the mystery is solved.) When our drinks came, he asked if it was Harpo Marx who had the story about being told the proper way to drink brandy—pace yourself with an ice cube in one hand, wait for it to melt before taking the next sip, repeat; "it'll keep you glowing all night." (I couldn't remember off the top of my head, but the answer is yes.) We weren't, of course, convinced that this was the ideal approach to brandy, unless you wanted to spend the evening with one hand freezing wet and the other full of liquor you couldn't drink. "It'd make a great comedy routine, though," I said.And he was on the instant an anxious man with a handful of too slowly melting ice, looking longingly at his brandy and helplessly at his watch and hopelessly at the ice cubes—melting none the faster for being shuffled around like worry beads or surreptitiously huffed on like dice—in all ways a man thwarted by fancy-sounding advice and fate and nothing in his hands (on his wrist, on the tabletop) but air.
Yeah.
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Nine
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Didn't you come to The Big Broadcast of 1954? Am I hallucinating running into you on line for tickets?
yeah. Magic.
Silent, of course. But not Harpo, because nothing exploded.
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Erm. Pass.
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You see!
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It's probably good there's one!
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Hah. Thank you!
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(I couldn't think what else to do with the stuff and we didn't have any CLR in the apartment.)
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This feels very Runyonesque to me, but maybe it's the blowing on the (d)ice aspect.
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Oh, well, if only she'd told me that!
. . . I had never heard of fernet. I asked the waiter. She said it tasted like licorice. I thought, all right, aniseed, that should work out. I was not sufficiently advised of its other properties!
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I suspect I was thinking of "Luck Be a Lady" at the back of that image—Guys and Dolls has been on and off in my head for months now—but
(That is the correct icon.)
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Please take this comment as a formal commission, someday, for "Fugue for Seventy-Six Trombones."
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Nine
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The "25% of the US Fernet consumption in San Francisco" statistic is one I see cited often; I have no idea where that comes from, though. It generally seems to be offered as an excuse or justification, rather than evidence of the wonders of peer pressure. For the medicinal effects, Underberg is less revolting. ...Wikipedia has led me off toward Gammel Dansk, which I always envision as the toothless, aged frighteningly healthy Scandinavian not-retired-herring-fisherman great-grandfather of this family of imbibables. He never gets a cold, because no one can stand to be around him long enough to give him one.
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*snerk*
See, "angelica, star anise, nutmeg, anise, ginger, laurel, gentian, Seville orange and cinnamon" sounds quite drinkable to me. I like bitters. Becherovka was great. Fernet was like discovering what Prohibition-era writers really meant when they talked about a bootleg liquor's bathtub finish. There was a slaty aftertaste I couldn't even blame on the Moxie.
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Hee!
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Character actors are like that.
Fugue for Seventy-Six Trombones
Harold Hill:
I got the proof in hand
You're going to have a band
With the brass and woodwinds I have planned
Trombones, trombones, these boys will have to have trombones,
And everybody loves trombones, trombones, trombones!
(Marcellus starts singing his part at this time, while Harold continues:)
Trombones, trombones, a band's got to have trombones,
And everybody loves trombones, trombones, trombones!
Marcellus:
That's Harold Hill all right,
He has an appetite
For making trouble when the price is right
Sells bands, sells bands, he goes around and sells boys' bands
And it's a scam like any other scam, boys' bands,
Boys' bands
And it's from Harold Hill
That they are smartin' still
All along Rock Island in the state of Ill.
Trombones! Trombones! These boys all have to have trombones?
He'll say they should buy trombones - trombones - trombones.
(I say he's) Harold Hill! I got the proof right here.
Marion:
Oh he'll be none of mine, I won't fall for his line,
I won't be a sorry girl who waits and pines,
No chance, no chance, I won't give him half a chance
His whole band couldn't make me dance, no chance, no chance!
They say it's assinine, for someone in my line
To be independent and not inclined
To love, to love, to surrender myself to love,
When I'm ready to fall in love, in love, I'll know my love.
And though I'm not inclined, I find I must opine
That his speech and manners are quite refined
But crass, still crass, the man's a snake in the grass.
It's assinine! I've got the proof right here!
Marcellus:
There are no big trombones, all capped with steel and chrome
No beauty of the double belled euphone'
How grand! How grand!
They're the cream of every famous band
Except there isn't going to be a band,
No band. No band!
Just wait a minute, there,
I've got this journal where
It records that he'll vanish into thin air,
There's proof, there's proof,
Hey! Let me show you all the proof!
Incontrovertable proof!
The proof! The proof!
I say, I know this man, and the band's a scam
I've got all the proof here in my hand
It's a scam! I've got the proof right here!
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You are a genius.
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I'm glad you like it. As I said, I have some doubts about the quality of the scansion and how it would sound sung in three voices, but since I didn't have recording gear, or two extra people handy, I haven't had a chance to test it yet.