We caught a few breaks in the clouds just as we arrived at the cemetery and avoided any downpours. We put some flowers on Andrew's grave and my Grandma & Grandpa Sanders' grave and Grandpa Jack and Grandma Kate's grave. Cemeteries always look so nice the weekend of Memorial Day! Anna gathered pine cones and arranged them on Andrew's grave (a tradition she has done since she was 2 yrs old after we moved back to Utah).
For lunch, we voted for Pizza. I remember that Tony's Pizza was always the best pizza in Ogden during High School, but last year after Daniel's final lacrosse game, we stopped and ate and decided it wasn't very good (or at least our tastes had changed from what we remembered it to be.) I remember a place called Ligori's that opened just before we moved away and was started by someone who used to be affiliated with Tony's and their pizza was very similar. We decided to give it a try. We were seated in a section of the restaurant beside a large wall mural of a scene in Venice, Italy. After we ordered our pizza, we all sat looking at the mural and became intrigued by a banner in the mural that was hanging from the bridge.
The banner said "Le Ventzia Possibili." We all sat there looking at it trying to figure out what it meant and even asked the waitress (who was very disinterested in her job as a waitress and couldn't care less what it meant). We tried to use our background in French (Sara), Spanish (Becky) and Portuguese (Troy) to try and decipher what it could mean. We got "possibili" as "probably" or "probable" in some form, but were a bit perplexed about the "Ventzia" We sent a text to Google to try and figure it out, but it came back with nothing. We connected to the web and searched, but there was no immediate translation. So we started coming up with possible word forms: Vinte means 20 in some languages; Vento means "wind" in some languages; so we ultimately decided that "Le Ventzia Possibili" means: "Its probably Windy" or "Its probably a 20th [celebration of something?]" We kind of laughed about it and then started noticing that the mural, while very fitting for a small, quaint pizzeria trying to be a bit more elegant, had some really weird perspective and scale issues with elements of the painting.
Our favorite was a portion off to the side (right by our table) that shows a man standing by a table, but with his foot about 8-10' away on the side of the building. (Also notice that the first floor windows are about 10-12' off the ground--we decided this was a building for really tall people to duck in if it gets windy--which apparently is a real possibility!)
Here is a close-up of the man with his foot on the table. He must really have a long left leg to be able to reach all the way over the building corner in back of him!
If you ever need us to critique a cheesy wall mural, please let us know. We are happy to offer our services!
P.S. After checking several sources and asking several people that speak Italian, no one believes that Ventzia is a word in Italian. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. There has got to be a better translation than "It's probably windy!"
8 comments:
This is so great because I was a waitress at Ligori's for most of my college years (if you were indeed at the Ogden location), and I never even noticed those made up words, but what I did notice was the mural on the other side (that may have been painted over) that also had a lovely Italian city with a nice bridge only the reflection in the water was of a nice tree filled meadow (even though there was no meadow elsewhere). I am assuming the same artist did the mural you saw. Ohhh Ligoris, the times we shared.
Don't know the translation, but you can come critique the mural at the Payson Mi Rancherito. We went last week and it was hideous. The horse was bigger than the cabin, and a "special" horse at that. I love ligoris!!!
You should blog more cool things that the fam does together and less about the boring corn which will be eaten by bugs by the end of the season anyway. In any case, thanks for a fun day!
so, i lurk on your blog from time to time because i'm nancy's sister. this particular post has forced me to comment.
nancy only worked at ligoris because I worked there first for six years (hey, tips aren't a bad way to pay for a teenagers wanderlust) and when i was leaving for my mission, i informed Ted (the guy who managed Tony's for like 30 years and then got fired so he started his own restaurant and called me and asked if i wanted to work at it) that nancy would be my replacement.
i watched the guy paint this mural. he was a sad little man and would work very sporadically. he had coke bottle glasses but he was actually native italian, so i think his sign must have actually meant something. maybe some kind of a celebration? we could not help but laugh at the strange perspectives. so terrible and made no sense.
but here is something interesting. most of the people in the painting are real and many of them are workers. the owner, ted ligori, is in the painting. the people that did the initial funding are in the boat in the river. the painter (can't remember his name) told me to bring a photo and he'd add me. i decided not to be memorialized that way.
a sad thing, though...the guy that has his leg up in the wrong spot is my friend, Red. he worked as a cook at ligori's as a second job at night. one weekend he was driving with a friend and the car got rear-ended. it wasn't a bad accident, you'd think, but his headrest wasn't right and his neck was snapped and he died immediately. it was very sad for all of us at ligoris. the painter came in one night and added him to the beloved mural. not good artistic perspective, but nice idea none-the-less.
Shannon
I feel like an idot now! Maybe I should just stick to blogging about corn!
corn...I need pictures of this week's progress! I'm going through withdrawals!
sorry. didn't want to make you feel like an idiot! i just thought this post might be a good time to come out of lurk-dom and say hello since it brought forth a lot of memories. trust me, we had a lot of good laughs at mural, wondering how he could be quite talented on the one hand and completely have such terrible perspective on the other!
Thanks, Perla. I still feel bad for joking about a sad situation. And I'm happy to have you come out of lurkdom. I'm sorry to say, however, that I'm not that interesting or as talented as my sister in writing (even though I had your Dad in a writing class in college---he can only do so much with what he's given). I mean if corn is the most interesting thing about me, that should tell you something.
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