Scrumps

In order to avoid completely wasting summer, I have decreed that we (the younger siblings and I) will plan one special activity every Friday.

Said I, "We can call them Phineas and Ferb Fridays!"

Baby Brother wanted to know why.

"Because" pause for dramatic buildup "we know what we're going to do those days!"

I swear that this statement was greeted with the chirruping of crickets, even though we were at Chik-Fil-A, an establishment not known for cricket infestations.

But I digress.

"We could also call them Funtime Fridays," I said, giving up. This name was much more satisfying to the general populace, if the return of normal conversation was any indication.

As part of our first Funtime Friday, we went to see Maleficent.

Why Maleficent? Well, Little Brother has a tendency to get obsessed with things. So many, many things. One thing that he is a little bit more obsessed with than others is Disney, and he's even a little bit more obsessed with Disney villains.

Little Brother was itching to see the movie, and Baby Brother wanted to see it because his big brother did. I had no desire to see it, but I got caught up in the excitement and ended up going anyways.

I walked into the movie theater feeling highly skeptical. The too-dramatic voiceover narration and bizarre background story that had nothing to do with Sleeping Beauty did nothing to appease said skepticism. However, after the baby was born and cursed, things took a turn for the better. I came out feeling suitably impressed.

I was quite disappointed, though, that this remake left out one of the best parts of Sleeping Beauty: the scrumps scene.

For those of you not familiar with Disney movies (did you even have a childhood?), the scrumps scene is where Aurora's dad King Stephan gets together with his old buddy King Hubert aka the father of Aurora's fiancé Phillip. These two kings are excited about their children's impending marriage, so to celebrate they drink a lot of wine and sing the scrumps song.

The scrumps song is played on a lute by a mute minstrel who is also drinking, and it goes like this:

Scrumps
Scrumps
Scruuuumps
And that's pretty much the whole song.

The two kings sing it over and over, getting drunker every time. First they're happy drunk and then they get mad drunk and then they're happy drunk again.

Even though I don't drink and I think we'd all be better off if nobody else drank either, I love the wackiness of this scene. Particularly because of the minstrel, who sneaks a glass or two between each chorus. He ends up getting so tipsy he fills his lute with wine and falls asleep the table, never to be seen in the movie again.

In twenty or so years when Disney decides to remake Sleeping Beauty once again from the viewpoint of a different character, I'm going to write and send them a screenplay about the tragic backstory of this guy from the scrumps scene and how he's completely misunderstood.

I think I'll call it Minstrel.