On this episode we were drinking a drink from the Tutto Italia restaurant at EPCOT Center. The drink was called a "Frizzante", and the name made me laugh.
"It sounds like Fozzie Bear's Italian cousin," I snickered as I sipped the Campari and Prosecco concoction. I then broke into my best Italian bear voice and started talking like the bear I pictured in my head.
I saw him as a fuzzy, lovable bear but with bushy eyebrows and a big mustache. The kind you would see on a pizza box.
Frizzante became an inside joke with some of the listeners and Dana, Bart and I.
Dana and I would often break into dueling Frizzante voices in public and in private. It cracked us both up. Despite neither of us having Italian last names, we both have Italian relatives and I grew up surrounded by people with Italian accents.
My mother is 100% Italian. She is the first of her family born in the United States. She speaks Italian fluidly and I never tire of hearing her talk in Italian with relatives.
I spent a whole lot of time with my Grandmother growing up. I idolized her. She was extremely witty and incredibly nice. She spoke in broken English with a variety of Italian words and phrases mixed in. It was very different than the "New York Italian" that most people I know think of. She didn't Americanize words by dropping the vowel at the end, she seemed to add vowels to the end of every word.
My Frizzante impression is mostly me trying to copy the way she spoke.
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| Photo of Guy Hutchinson |
Last year my friend Jon Eadler showed up at a Drunk On Disney event with a gift for me. It was a teddy bear that he had glued Frizzante Style eyebrows and mustache to. I love it. It sits on my desk and always cracks me up with it's absurd face. Something about a bear with human facial hair just cracks me up.
So the idea of Frizzante has been "a thing" since then. It wasn't until much later that I got the idea for a book that involved this silly bear.
A book that is already written and Captain Marvelous, Jorge Uribe, is currently illustrating.
I will tell you how that came together next time I post on here.
