O Mio Babbino Caro: Rerun

[This post might be the first one I did specifically to entertain that I thought was funny myself. It's all true, of course. And FYI, yeast cops are the guys who are supposed to be checking the expiration date of yeast packages on grocery shelves and who, sadly, are often less than diligent. -- The Management]

[And be sure to follow the RealPlayer link on the page with the tuba score. I don't know whether to laugh or cry... -- The Management]

Recently, on an “I Have $20, I’m The King of the Fucking World” day, I went to sit in a bar and have a beer and chat with the bartender, a good friend of mine. While she was busy serving customers, I was thinking strangely and humming the aria “O Mio Babbino Caro” under my breath. If you’re not familiar with the aria (and you probably are, if not by name), it is sung by a soprano, and has a very strong high note in one of the first lines. Now, it happens that my vocal range is about one octave, located somewhere in a land between bass and baritone that music forgot, but I hum away as best I can. It is a beautiful aria, at least as Sarah Brightman sings it.

At any rate, as I was so engaged, I caught a woman sitting near to me at the bar glancing my way several times with a sort of half-smile on her face. “Of course she’s thinking about flirting with me, who could resist?” I thought. “I am, after all, the KFW.” Suddenly I realized that, as I was humming the aria to myself, every time I valiantly reached for the strong high note in the first line I had been making this eerie, strangled, quavering noise in my throat out loud. From the woman’s point of view, here was some middle-aged guy sitting in a bar, staring into space and making periodic bleating noises. No wonder she was looking at me; it’s a wonder she didn’t call the yeast cops. Maybe she thought I had downloaded a ringer for my cell phone called “Rat Terriers Being Neutered” and that I was getting lots of calls.

Incidentally, I recently went online to look up the lyrics of the aforementioned aria. In the process, I ran across a web page that was a reproduction of the score for “O Mio Babbino Caro”, arranged for solo tuba or euphonium. I decided then and there that I want to date a woman who thinks that this web page is hilariously funny. I am, however, not expecting the woman at the bar to be applying for the position any time soon. I’m sure she’s still waiting for the yeast cops to show up.

-- Hulles