Monday, March 17, 2008

the rose might actually smell less sweet ...

This past Friday night, Manda and I went to the ballet. It was my Valentine's Day present to her, a pair of tickets to go see the San Francisco Ballet's Tribute to Jerome Robbins (20th century choreographer). The show was great - a double-shot of Leonard Bernstein and some Chopin thrown in to mix it up a bit. Great dancers, great orchestra, great set design. I really love Bernstein's "West Side Story Suite," but I only know it in an orchestral sense. It was great to see it performed live with dancers and singers.

Funny thing about the dancers, though. Bit of backstory: Amanda and I are one of the few couples that I know who actually sit through all of the credits when we go to the movies. I can't remember if we've always done it, or if it comes from the respectful practice of doing so when attending film screenings presented by Lucasfilm. Anyway, as respectful as we are, we tend to sit there and look for people with weird names so that we can then call the other person that name.

"You're Geefwee Boedoe." Etc. Very mature game, we know.

Anyway, irrepressibly cultured as we are, Amanda and I were looking through the program for the ballet and trying to find ridiculous names to call each other. That's when we discovered that one of the guys in the ballet is named Tiit Helimets.

That's right. Tit Helmets.

At best, his name sounds like "tight helmets." At worst, he's named after these puppies.

Poor guy. It's always fascinating when someone from a foreign culture has a name that is just so staggeringly unfortunate in a different culture. A friend once told me about a foreign exchange student from Vietnam who went to his high school. Her name was Bich Ho. That's like going to England with the name John Thomas. Or going to Ireland with the name Douchey O'Dickcheese.

Okay, maybe it's not like that last one.

3 comments:

rooni said...

This is the part where I have to tell you that I was actually looking through the program to learn about the dancers. I just stumbled on the Tiit Helimets tragedy.

BTW, I typo'd *stumbled as both stumpled and stumbpled before I got it right. So, FYI, you're stumpled.

Anonymous said...

Bich Ho... ironically we had someone in jail this last month with that name... ironically she was in for prostitution. True story.

Anonymous said...

I met a girl who was in the SF ballet when I got in for GDC this year. She was on my shuttle ride from the airport to my hotel. While I don't remember her name, it was not interesting enough for you to still be reading this comment.