Just what is that?
Hasenfeffer means “rabbit stew” in German if I’m not mistaking. I could very well be mistaken though 
“Hasenpfeffer” = “rabbit pepper”, but close enough. I think it’s basically a stew. IIRC - it’s been a long time since I took Deutsch.
I always wondered if I was hearing that stupid thing correctly. “No,” I thought, “They can’t be saying that.” I was sure it had to be a Mondagreen.
“Cook! Where’s my hassenpfeffer?”
“Coming right up, your worshipful majestiness!” (Or some such.)
From a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Yes, hassenpfeffer is a rabbit stew.
Now, http://www.hassenpfeffer.com, I have no idea what that is.
RR
Judging by the thread title, I think this question is about Lavern and Shirley rather than Bugs Bunny. I didn’t like that show enough to worry much about what the heck they were saying. “Shlaveel. Shlavoggel. Hotsenfeff incorporated!” Whatever. Someone probably cared enough to look it up and will step in here shortly.
…piping in on a Laverne and freaking Shirley thread, the shame of it all…
I think they said “Schlameel, schlamozzle” which sounds vaguely Yiddish IMO.
Yeeash!
Schlemiel and Schlemazel. They’re the names for two types of klutzes. There’s a witty way to tell between them that I can’t recall. Yes, it’s Yiddish.
The chant is obviously chosen for the sound of the words – it doesn’t make much sense. But it suggests that whoever made it up didn’t speak German or Yiddish. I suspect they made it up for the series, but for all I know this was a legitimate part of someon’e 1950s or 1960s childhood.
I thought it was supposed to be a nonsense name of a company
“Schlemiel, Schlemazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated.” (The CEO is John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt) I think it’s also a the pun of schlemiel (the guy who spills soup on someone), schlemazel (the guy who gets soup spilled on him) and, well, rabbit stew.
Maybe the folks in the Cafe Society would know better.
::goes to fridge for milk and Pepsi::
45ACP has the definitions of a schlemiel and a schlemazel down pretty accurately. But, in order to fit the meter of the song, it was,
“One two three four five six seven eight
Schlemiel, schlemazel—hasenpfef-incorporated”
The final “-fer” would have thrown it one syllable over . . .
From http://www.classic-tv.com/themesongs/lyrics.html#1970
Spelling on Schlemiel and Hasenpfeffer to match the previous postings.
Well, TVClassic.com is wrong, wrong wrong. It may have been WRITTEN as “Hasenpfeffer Incorporated,” but the Misses Williams and Marshall PRONOUNCED it “Hasenpfef-Incorporated.”
Artistic license, no doubt.
No doubt. Obviously [Strother Martin]What we have here is (a?) failure to communicate[/Strother Martin]
It’s just all mooshed together in a whiny, nasally, Yankeetalk–maybe only Lenny and Squiggy really knew what they were talking about. It is interesting that the song’s co-writer, Charles Fox, was born in the Bronx in 1940. Perhaps this was a popular rhyme from his neighborhood in the early '40s.
Perhaps closer to “Hasenpfeff’rIncorporated.”
Being from Milwaukee, this whole thread makes me cringe. BTW, I agree with rowrrbazzle about the pronunciation.
I don’t remember ever hearing “one” through “four.” My recollection of that rhyme have it starting “five, six, seven, eight.”
This whole thing was meant as a joke on poor old Neil Armstrong. The original wording was:
“Schlemiel, schlemazel, one small step for’a’man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Misses Williams and Marshall screwed up the line even worse than Mr. Armstrong, and that’s where we get the “Hasenpfeffer Incorporated.”
I also agree with rowrrbazzle regarding the pronounciation.
Anyone know their way around a bumper of Private Stock?
It’s a fiiiine malt liquor, made by a brewery called Haffenreffer, and it appears to be designed to make people do exactly the sorts of stupid things that only characters on a totally contrived spin-off television show have a reasonable chance of surviving.
Add a few 40’s of the Haffenreffer’s, a dash of Metallica’s Master of Puppets, a vague memory of television reruns, and a train trellis, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for total disaster, as I myself once witnessed.
Anyway, I have always since wondered if that opening sequence to L&S was an oblique reference to Private Stock. I’m rather glad to learn that it is not.