Words and Thoughts: Beff Bergwignon, and a Tiger
Hello again, alleged readers! What is beef bourguignon, and how do you pronounce it? I read it all the time, on account of the fact that it is listed as a menu item for the fancy restaurant on the back of the flyer that I have taped to the window in the office break room. The other side of the flyer has a Shen-Yun advertisement, and from what I can tell that’s a travelling martial-arts magic show. There are only four things that are cooler than a martial-arts magic show:
- Two martial-arts magic shows
- A magic martial-arts show
- Tigers
- Ronnie James Dio, of the band “Dio,” doing wheelies
Operating on the assumption that none of the four cooler options are immediately available to my coworkers and me, I feel it is my duty to inform them of the opportunity to go to the Shen Yun thing. They have probably never seen a Shen Yun advertisement, but ol’ Stav here is here to help!
Anyway, back to this beef bourguignon business. Bergwignon? It has to be pronounced bergwignon. But when I ask people, “What is bergwignon?”, they have no idea. And when I try to bring them over to the flyer, they tell me they don’t want to go see Shen Yun, which is stupid, because who doesn’t want to see a martial-arts magic show? But I suppose seeking bergwignon answers from people stupid enough to not want to go to Shen Yun truly is a fool’s errand.
Where is the accent on bergwignon? BERgwignon? BerGWIGnon? What is its relation to beff? Ugh, see? It’s so nonsensical, now I’m misspelling “beef” as “beff”. Here I am sounding like a real idiot: “Beff”.
“Oh yes, I’d like to start with a beff bergwignon please, oh no thank you, you don’t need to put a lemon wedge in that.” Oh Stav, you’d sure be the laughingstock of the fancy restaurant on the back of the Shen Yun ad if you said “beff”.
Beff.
Anyway, to take my mind off all the Shen Yun excitement at work, I decided to go see a movie on my lunch break. I ended up seeing Twisters. Being the sequel to Twister, I very much expected Helen Hunt to team up with a tornado that had travelled back in time to help her fight all of the tornadoes from the first movie to prevent the tornadoes from taking over the earth in a fictionalized version of the year 2029.
Alas, there was no Helen Hunt, there was no time travel. There wasn’t even Alan Ruck. What a waste of a lunch break. I mean, I’m not telling you not to see “Twisters”, but just more like, don’t expect cinematic excellence.
If it were up to me, Twisters would’ve starred Alan Ruck as Ronnie James Dio, doing wheelies, to distract the tornadoes so that Helen Hunt, and the tornado from the first movie, could fight off all the other tornadoes with a combination of martial-arts and magic, at least twice, and thereby saving the present, and the future.
There might also be a tiger.
