Friday, September 19, 2008

Pirate Jenny Day

According to many sources, none of them reliable, today is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." I don't care about that. But I do care, very much, about Lotte Lenya performing 'Pirate Jenny' in the film version of the Threepenny Opera, one of the greatest movie musical numbers of all time. If a silly non-holiday gives me an opportunity to post this wonderful clip, in which a cheap prostitute indulges in an gory reverie of laying waste to her city, so be it.





Now you gentlemen can wipe that smile off your face
'Cause every building in town is a flat one.
This whole fuckin' place will be down to the ground,
Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound,
And you yell, "Why do they spare that one?"
Yes, that's what you say:
"Why do they spare that one?"
All the night through, through the noise and to-do,
You wonder who is that person that lives up there?
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair.

And the ship, the black freighter
runs a flag up its masthead
and a cheer rings the air.

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