It's been 28 days since my last post, and by now there's not much point in rehashing the 2020 presidential election. Let's just say that Donald J. Trump got his ass whupped--not bigly but definitively--and he's crying foul as we all knew he would. Without a shred of evidence, he and the Trump Chump, Rudy Giuliani, have embarked on a campaign of lies to discredit the election and to try and divide Americans even further, if that's possible. All this last ditch posturing is not going to keep Fat Bastard in the White House but, even so, it's not doing our democracy any good, either. 

In the meantime, Thanksgiving snuck up on us and I got cornbread stuffing mix instead of the stuff I usually use, and to make a long story short, it was completely fucking awful. I'm famous for my stuffing so that was a very painful experience. Luckily, there was no one here to eat it but C and me, and fortunately, we had turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie on hand to make up for that horror. I also polished off the Halloween candy that had been setting there screaming for me to eat it for lo these many weeks. 

I re-watched Federico Fellini's Amarcord and fell in love with it all over again. Really, how could I not? It's a fanciful, affectionate, enormously entertaining look back at Fellini's adolescence in the bustling town of Rimini (or at least the memory of Rimini constructed on the Cinecitta lot) during the 1930's, with the Fascist movement providing an uneasy backdrop. Filmed in 1973, Amarcord features Bruno Zanin (as Titta) standing in for a teen-age Fellini as he, his family and friends (and the townsfolk at large) go through a single season of love, lust, heartbreak, blizzards and various misadventures. Through it all, they perform a leisurely nightly promenade up and down Rimini's main street, smoking, gossiping, tipping hats, flirting, playing practical jokes, as the circle of life passes around and around. Titta is an exuberant youth, but everyone else in town is also generously imbued with that same  joie de vivre that makes Fellini's films so endearing. Whether gathered around the dining table of Titta's mother or making the nightly rounds in town, each and every character has their own role to play in the raucous, rambunctious drama of life unfolding. In a town like this, everyone feels like an eccentric to one degree or another, and while I'm at least one generation removed and a continent away, I am still able to spot Fellini's characters reflected in some of the folks I grew up with (Woody Allen did something vaguely similar on a less grand scale in Radio Days and Hannah and Her Sisters). The themes in Amarcord are universal and everlasting. It moves me to see the dinner table scenes because they remind me of childhood holidays at my great-grandmother's house in the 60's, when her seven children, and all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren crowded around the table, everyone reaching, grabbing, talking and laughing uproariously, creating a din that was probably audible on Main Street, on the other side of the park. Never mind that some of those people didn't particularly care for one another, and may have, in fact, loathed each other (it took awhile to dawn on me that I was not universally adored by my relatives), when we were at my great-grandmother's house, we were there as a big, rowdy family and, as such, pretended to like each other, even if it wasn't always the case. 

Fellini's 1963 film, 8 1/2, which I watched a couple of nights after Amarcord, is more problematic for me. It's a bona-fide classic, hailed by many, if not most, film critics as one of the ten best movies ever made. I don't hate it but that's about the most I can say for it, surprising since Fellini is one of my favorite film directors (along with Amarcord, I'd list La Dolce Vita and Satyricon among my 50 favorites of all time). Marcello Mastroianni channels Fellini in this biographical fantasy about a film director dealing with a creative block and various other anxieties at a luxury spa outside Rome. I've heard it said that if you love movies, you must love 8 1/2. Well, I don't. As much as I like Fellini's surrealistic presentation, the movie is too whimsical to be funny and too scattered to make me care about any of the characters. Guido (Mastroianni), in particular, is annoying as hell and seems incapable of making the simplest decisions. Of course, that's sort of the point of the movie, I guess, but it bored me shitless after awhile. Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee and uber-Goth girl Barbara Steele are among the large supporting cast of actresses on hand, as is Sandra Milo, who is reputed to have been Fellini's real-life mistress at the time. I also noticed that the Italian actress Rosella Falk (playing Anouk Aimee's bitchy best friend) looks a little like Greta Garbo, especially when she's laughing, which isn't often. And, oh, by the way, I really like the name Anouk. I'm thinking if I ever get another cat, I'll name it Anouk. On the other hand, if I get a dog I may name it Lars. Or maybe Agatha if it's a girl, after my Great Aunt Agatha (pronounced uh-GA-thuh) NOT Agatha (A-guh-thuh) as in Christie. 

I just overhead William Barr say the Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. And in other news, Ellen Page is now Elliott Page. FYI: I once had a dog named Elliott. Fact.