Let Them Eat Cake!

Instead of giving a toast just before the meal, the best man at my wedding asked if he could give his toast just before we cut the cake. It was an odd request, and it didn’t really matter to me — but more importantly, it didn’t matter to my wife — so we agreed. This is how he ended his toast:

Today is May 16, and you know that today is a special day for Patrick and Nadine. But what you may not know is that today is an important day in history — Marie Antionette was beheaded on May 16. So as she said, “Let them eat cake!”

With that, all guests were directed to the wonderful cake prepared by my wife’s high school friend, Kate Zuckerman, who, at the time, was the pastry chef at Chanterelle, a five-star restaurant in New York City.

All this talk of decapitation reminds me of a joke…

A priest, a rabbi and a mathematician are in the queue to be decapitated.

The priest’s head is put in the slot and the executioner pulls the lever. The blade moves a few inches but then stops before reaching the priest’s neck. The executioner raises the blade again and releases it, but again, it stops short of its target. The priest declares that the hand of God had intervened, so the executioner lets him go.

The rabbi’s head is then put in the slot. The executioner pulls the lever, the blade drops, but again it stops before reaching the rabbi’s neck. The executioner lets the rabbi go, assuming that God had intervened again.

The mathematician’s head is put in the slot. He looks upward and smiles.

“What are you so happy about?” the executioner asks.

“I figured out the problem,” says the mathematician. “A small pebble is blocking the path of the blade. If you remove the pebble, it should work just fine!”