can i get a witness?

so i was just listening to a 'genius' mix on my ipod-- 'genius-ed' from steve miller band's "the joker". i am currently listening to grand funk railroad's "some kind of wonderful"-- a.k.a. "can i get a witness?" and it took me back to the days of henri anne's in providence... so while i have it on my mind, i'll share my story:

wintersession, 2005. space craft studio. we started eating lunch at henri anne's... which no longer exists... but we patroned for a while from our days at the BEB. so the sandwiches all have ridiculous names, such as the guilty, the not guilty, the defendant, the jury, the acquittal, etc... i can't remember them all but they were all really kind of corny-- i asked about it, and they said they were catering to the populus of lawyers in the area. so in addition to the regular sandwiches-- which i never really got because they were all meat (i opted for an egg sandwich or a muffin with a coffee), they had a special of the day... lo and behold, they served a DELICIOUS eggplant parmesean! let's say it was the wednesday special (i don't recall what day) but i told them i loved it and i was looking forward to next wednesday!

so all week (my studio pals can attest to this!) i can't stop talking about the sandwich. i loved it. THEN i come up with the BEST NAME EVER: the witness. i am so giddy i can't wait to tell them the next wednesday. so wednesday rolls around, and i walk down the street... and i see on the chalkboard that the daily special is the eggplant parmesean. so i walk in and tell them they have to name this sandwich the witness, and when people order it they must say/sing "can i get a witness?" the love my idea. now maybe i'm getting the details out of order... but they certainly posted this eggplant sandwich as "the witness".... then it turned south.

the following day andrew comes over to my desk with a mountain dew in his hand, and tells me that the daily special at henri anne's is hot ham and swiss with spicy mustard, or something like that... i said, "ok, i don't care-- i don't eat that." and then he looked me very seriously and said "they're calling it 'the witness'".

i marched on down to henri anne's to complain that 'the witness' ought to be reserved for the eggplant parm. they tried to flatter me by saying that it was such a clever idea, they had adopted it for every special... i still felt a little like they stole from me.

so from that day forth, the rotating daily special was called 'the witness'. that is, until henri anne's closed, which i am told was sometime in late 2006 or early 2007.

the end.