How are we doing over here? Need any refills? Thank you so much for choosing to celebrate your birthday with us. However, I understand you had some issues with the birthday song our staff just sang to you?

Please, accept my apology and also a free slice of our Bitchin’ Zingtown Fried Cheesecake™.

As you may know, Mildred and Patty Hill are the original writers of the everyday “Happy Birthday” song. And they are draconian when it comes to protecting their IP over a song that I guess took two people to write—even though the whole song only has five unique, non-name words. Nevertheless, chain restaurants like us are forced to write our own complicated and syncopated birthday songs for patrons like yourself.

Writing a birthday song is not easy. The Beatles were some of the best musicians to ever live. They wrote a birthday song, and it is absolute dog shit. So, you’ll understand if it takes people whose main job is to hawk Wicked Wanton Tacos™ and Mama Spankin’ Triple Cheese Nachos™ a couple of tries before we get the birthday song just right.

I can promise you, the next version of the song will have far fewer mentions of 9/11. Ideally, no more than one.

I can’t promise we’ll get down to no profanity in the next version, but we’ll do our best to reduce the amount of cursing and overt innuendo.

Wait, you’re counting “shit” as a cuss? What are we supposed to rhyme with “complimentary Nipple Twistin’ Queso Dip™?” I guess I’ll figure something out; I’m already going to have to get on RhymeZone to find a new rhyme for “bundt.”

I can ask the staff to tone down the gyrating but honestly, once they get into it, the music sort of takes over their soul.

I’ll take your note about the song being too long under consideration, but I’d also remind you that people love “Stairway to Heaven” and “American Pie” and our song is roughly the same length as those two songs played back-to-back.

The next time we do the song it probably won’t have any instrumental portions or solos. If it does have a solo, we will use something less annoying than the fifth-grade recorder Kevin from the kitchen played just now.

You know what? I take that back. If Kevin keeps practicing and gets more consistent, then the recorder solo can stay.

Oh, I would hardly call what you saw “nudity” or “pornographic movements.” I think what you saw was pretty tasteful and artistic. The Supreme Court said they “know pornography when they see it,” and the Supreme Court, as far as I can tell, wasn’t here to see anything. Ipso facto, what you saw was fine.

No, you know what? I take it all back. The song absolutely bangs.

If you want quiet ambiance, upscale dishes, and quick birthday songs, you’d go to Delfano’s down the street. But you come here for… well, I don’t know exactly why you come here. But this song represents the soul of the restaurant: a place that bravely fuses Americanized Mexican flavors with Americanized Asian flavors and also has pasta for some reason.

So go ahead, tell everyone you’re never coming back. Have a fancy dinner next year at Delfano’s. But we both know, as you’re choking down those soy-glazed carrots and listening to their pathetic, eight-second birthday “song,” you’ll wish you were back here. You’ll wish you were seven minutes into our birthday song, the staff gesticulating and ripping open their shirts having just finished the fifth verse, the one that mentions Al Qaeda trying and failing to take down our Tower of Scrotum Slappin’ Onion Rings™, as Kevin hangs upside down from the light over the pool table and absolutely melts everyone’s face with the entire solo from “Free Bird” played on his recorder.