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Why Do I Feel as If I’m in a Fellini Film?
In the mid-’70s I moved to Columbus for a new job and to begin graduate studies at Ohio State. I hadn’t been there for more than a few weeks when I became the recipient (as it turned out, the victim) of a “fix-up”. When I picked up my date, I asked her if she would like to see a movie. (I had already determined that I wanted to see the new Jack Nicholson flick, Chinatown.) She didn’t hesitate, “Oh, I’d just love to go to the Fellini festival that’s showing.” I immediately froze; I hoped that she was just jerking my chain. No such luck. I smiled around my teeth and replied, “Oh yeah, that’ll be fine”.
I had already suffered through a Fellini film (“Satyricon”) during an art appreciation class that I had taken as an undergraduate. I had vowed then to never see another one. Now, I know that here at Ricochet, we have some first-class film aficionados and, I suspect, some Fellini fans. That’s fine. However, for me, I’ll pass.
On this occasion, however, I simply accepted my fate and drove to a small theater near the OSU campus that specialized in foreign films. During the drive, my date told me that she was a graduate student in Library Science. I wished (to myself) that she had been a Physical Education major. The movie, Amarcord, was just as dreadful as I thought it would be. I feigned interest in both the movie and my date and chalked the evening off as a mistake.
I had put both movies out of my mind until January the 20th of this year; the day Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became the President of the United States of America. Since then, I’ve had the feeling that I’m in a horrible Fellini movie.
Each time I see and hear Joe Biden I want to close my eyes and turn away but it has become increasingly difficult. As I watched him falling up the steps of Air Force One, I kept thinking over and over again, “I laughed at Gerald Ford when he fell down the steps of Air Force One, but this guy?” How in the hell can someone fall up a set of steps? As it’s turned out, this scene has become a metaphor for his entire administration.
As I watched the Vice President of the United States give her lesson (?) to those students (?) all I could think of was Shari Lewis. All that was needed was Lamp Chop (or some other puppet) for the Vice Presiden’s “lesson”. After she finished, the words “a heartbeat from the presidency” kept resonating through my mind.
I go through stores and see empty shelves while huge ships sit off harbors, unable to discharge their cargo. I turn on the TV to watch the Secretary of Transportation being interviewed and hear him talk excitedly about becoming a mother.
I see the news about China testing a new hypersonic weapon that could conceivably destroy my country. Then I read about the Secretary of Commerce saying that, “Robust commercial engagement will help to mitigate any potential tensions (with China)“. Then, as if to mock me, she went on to state, “there’s no point in talking about decoupling (our economy from China’s)“.
I look at the rest of Biden’s cabinet and see that each one is like Biden; utterly corrupt and incompetent. Certainly, no administration has been as hostile to America’s interests as this one.
Each time Biden or one of his minions make an announcement, it makes no more sense than the graffiti-covered wall at the beginning of Satyricon. I try to look away but, for me, it’s impossible. I can’t look away as my country is being destroyed.
At times, I’m able to temporarily put this idiocy aside. Living in a rural area, as I do, I’m still able to look at the beauty of nature and even be transported back to a time when my nation didn’t suffer from these doofuses.
However, it seems that these “sanity breaks” don’t last very long. Another day; another absurdity coming out of Washington, D.C.
This is one Fellini film that I can’t wait to see come to an end.
Published in General
Nooooo.
Did you know there are people who apparently thought that when Captain America hands Nick Fury $10 near the start of Avengers it’s because Cap thinks he’s tipping the help because Fury is black?
Doc Walker is or was a DC area sports commentator, and a very good one. One day during an interview long after the Washington Bullets had changed their name, an interviewee pointed out to him in jest that he was covering a basketball team named after the top position in a notorious white supremacist group. “I have a race card I have totally overlooked,” he exclaimed.
Yeah, love how the cashiers at supermarkets are “protected” behind plexiglass shields, while they touch and handle dozens of people’s groceries every shift.
We live in the stupidest timeline.
But the plexiglass salespeople are happy!
I’m happy that where I live, most places never put up those things, and a couple that did have taken them down. Still waiting on the Post Office, and Family Dollar.
Who is Fellini? Sorry, only watch Eastwood, WWII/Viet Nam stuff or James Bond movies. Crab we got through Viet Nam. Somehow I think we can survive Slow Joe. But maybe I am too much of an optimist like Jerry G. If I have time will try to dial up a Fellini movie on Netflix. Any suggestions?
@navyjag, I wouldn’t wish a Fellini film on my worst enemy. Maybe someone else here at Ricochet could recommend one.
Okay, so Fellini is really a kind of pasta. The whole Fellini Film thing is this massive practical joke Italians have been playing on the rest of the world. Started with a reel of ‘what not to do’ being shown during a work lunch, some foreigner was told it was a Fellini Film, and it took on a life of its own.
It’s similar to the confusion that stemmed from another person asking the name of the airport in Rome while in the smoking area of the cafe….
I Vitelloni