Last night was the penultimate episode of the final season of The Sopranos and it was shocking. I suppose I felt things were going seriously sour for la famiglia a couple of weeks back when “Cristofeeerrrr” whacked his AA Law & Order scriptwriter confidante in his own apartment in what seemed like a very reasonable argument.
Then last night - BAM! In the final 5 minutes the disgruntled NY mob emptied a few rounds of lead into Robert Baccalieri, Jr. AKA Bobby Baccalà while he was buying a model train, Silvio is in the hospital, unconscious, with a few rounds himself caught in his car outside the Bada Bing, and Tony is in a temporary “safehouse” waiting for the inevitable in a sheetless bed with a shotgun & memories as company. Tony’s looking like a man reconciled to fate now. I don’t think I am yet, though. I refuse to believe this is the last chapter ever, much less coming to a close.
Baccalà means salt cod in Italian. It is also slang for idiot. This fact doesn’t appear in Mark Kurlansky’s excellent “Cod, A Biography of a Fish that Changed the World”, though other cod derived expressions do. The French word for cod, morue, came to mean prostitute, but the Danish word for cod, torsk, also means fool colloquially.
I wonder if the idiot part comes from being a fish out of water and how did the Danish and Italian meaning align rather than the French?
Bobby seemed a bit gormless in the earlier episodes, but he was faithful and sensitive. Bobby didn’t come across as a baccalà in the last couple of seasons – he got his nickname before he even married Janice. He even said wise things, albeit in a quiet & simple way.
I knew many "baccalàs" growing up. There was Johnny “Baccalà” & Tony “The Baccalà”.
This was all through my Pa, of course. With the nickname “Ringo”, this is no surprise.
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8 comments:
"This blog does not allow anonymous comments"...
So I hope Santa Cleopatra is Nonymous enough for yez!
I must admit I don't like signing on to any more websites which make me fill out a form before I can Do Stuff there. I always lie about the information that I put in. I assume most people do. I wonder what 'they' use all that fake information for? Presumably for predicting how best to run this crappy dying world hellbent on free markets and global destruction...
Good, so I'm glad that's working then...
It was almost worth losing Bobby to get that final scene of the train running around, and then off, the rails. And for his next-to-last words (or thereabouts):
"Imagine riding in that club car, sipping on a Negroni".
Ooh, now I might have to go out and buy some gin, Campari and M. Rosso!
It's warm enough. And I haven't really got my summer drinks cabinet at all stocked yet. I was going to start with rum cocktails. Get a really good rum (after taste-testing at Kato's Hula Bula Bar), some Triple Sec and loads of fruit, and make some daiquiris to scoff while wondering what other bottles to stick in the bar.
But in honour of Bobby, I just might have to get a bag of oranges and do the Negroni thing! Piacerebbe alla Contessa un Negroni? Va be', aspett un'attimo!
Now, is this the appropriate place to discuss the intellectual property of this blog? Can I copyright my comments? Does it matter? Why isn't this an email? Etc.
I guess you'll have time to explain all that once you're hunkered down in Macau ... or have you started this blog precisely because you don't think you'll have any time at all so you won't be able to send any individual emails?
Coz I do empathise with that conundrum.
I dipped my toe into MySpace recently, and took it out again. It seems to offer a labour-saving way of communicating with all your 'friends' at once. But in the end you just have to check out all of their MySpaces as well, don't you?
It's good for pictures, but. I guess. But so is Flickr, I'm told.
Hmmmm. Ok, nuff musings. I hope nobody, in the course of commenting on your Bobby post, gives away what happens in the final episode. Coz I've already declined to watch a burnt DVD of the final ep because the sound was out of synch, and I don't want to spoil the full impact.
Until next week then, La Mia Sopranofila! Oh, e buon compleanno! Ci parleremo presto, e sto aspettandoti quest'estate con grande gioia! Ci avremo un sacco di divertimenti. Bacioni abbraccioni
Baccala' : s.m. ... 2 (fig.) persona magra, persona allampanata, acciuga, chiodo, stecco 3 (fig.) stupido, sciocco, babbeo, bietolone, salame, cetriolo, carciofo, merlo, oca, allocco, barbagianni.
Mi piace molto il modo in cui vari esseri viventi diventono sinonimi per diverse caratteristiche in diverse lingue. Carciofo! Hai mai chiamato qualcuno "Artichoke!"? Forse quando piccola? Usando una specie di parolacce tradotta? Proviamolo! La prossima volta un tuo amico dice qualcosa asinina, chiamalo "Artichoke" e guarda la reazione.
O forse "Cucumber!", "Blackbird!", "(Tawny) Owl!" or "Johnbeard!" ... che, come ho appena letto nel vocabolario, e' infatti un'altra specie di gufo o allocco o civetta; da 'barba' (=zio) + 'gianni' (giovanni). Huh?
Le parole! I Soprano! I Negroni!
O! Prima che io dimentica... Hai visto (l'abbiamo visto insieme a Melbourne, forse?) il dvd del episodio dei Soprano nel quale e' assassinato Adriana? Con il commentario di Drea Di Matteo? Lei e' cosi' carina! Puoi sentire nel suo tono di voce il sentimento "They Killed Adriana! ... e io, Drea, spero che tutti loro muoiano in un vasco di fiamme!" ... o qualcosa di quel tipo..
In ogni caso, voglio dire che Non E' Finito I Soprano, perche' e' sempre possibile guardare tutti gli episodi di nuovo, dal primo al ottantaseiesimo (now there's a tricky ordinal!), attraverso il magico del dvd. Facciamolo!
Hard act to follow
It's got me stumped....
Damn, I didn't even get to read those two comments that were deleted. Is that fair? What's the protocol? I'm new at this.
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