For her birthday her mother and her mother’s new husband told Goldilocks that she could have anything she wanted.
“Feh!” whined Goldilocks, “That’s what I always get!”
What Goldilocks wanted this year was to have the most fabulously spectacular, birthday party ever; something like nothing she or any of her friends had ever had before.
Goldilocks announced that she wanted a very loud tenor to sing at her party. Now, Goldilocks didn’t know much about tenors, but she did know that no one she knew had ever had one sing at their birthday party.
Mother’s new husband, who had connections in the music business, commissioned a cantata for the occasion but Goldilocks insisted on casting the tenor herself.
She had her people put an ad in Daily Variety and on craigslist.
“Wanted . . .” the ad read, “. . . very loud tenor to sing at fabulously spectacular birthday party. Must bring down the house!”
On the day of the auditions, a line of tenors wound around the castle grounds and zigzagged halfway down the hill.
One after another the tenors came in, belted out an aria and left their head shots.
And one after another Goldilocks told them, “Thank you. Next!”
By late afternoon, there were only three tenors left.
“Hmmm,” thought Goldilocks, looking over the trio, “This one’s too fat. He’ll eat all the foie gras. And that one just hasn’t got, I don’t know, je ne sais quois. And that guy,” said Goldilocks, squinting at the third tenor, who was holding a leaf-blower, “Looks a lot like the gardener.”
No, none of them was just right.
Suddenly, Goldilocks got an idea.
She had all three tenors stand close together and told them to sing the same note as loudly as they could, all at the same time, and to hold it for as long as they could.
And on her cue . . .
“Okay, boys! Hit it!”
. . . they did.
As the trio boomed and bellowed, the chandeliers shivered, the tiles trembled and the walls wobbled. The whole castle quaked and there came a thunderous roar from under the floor.
The castle rocked this way and that, then toppled over and crashed down the hill into the valley below, leaving a terrible mess and tying up cross-town traffic something awful.
Sure enough, the three tenors had brought down the house.
With the castle now at the bottom of the hill, Goldilocks had her birthday party catered by a take-out Chinese joint which, while not fabulous or spectacular, was something that she and her friends had never done before.
Moral: People who live in cantilevered castles shouldn’t cast cantatas.