His writing is something to savor and enjoy, paragraph by paragraph, as you move from the subject he is ostensibly writing about, to all manner of related history, personal asides, and truths of life and culture.

Aldo Buzzi (pronounced “Boot-see”) is an urbane raconteur whose slim, brilliant volumes are mostly available only in Italian.  His books are sometimes classified — as booksellers and marketers are wont to do — as “food writing” or “travel writing”, but the brilliance of the prose — witty, arch, breezily erudite, and very funny — winds up transcending these genres.

Three have been translated into English: The Perfect Egg in 2005, (L’uovo alla kok, 1979), Journey to the Land of the Flies in 1996 (Viaggio in Terra de mosche e altri viaggi, 1994), and A Weakness for Almost Everything in 2006 (Un debole per quasi tutto, 2006) .

Oddly, and inspirationally, Buzzi’s wrote his first book, Quando la pantera rugge, at age 62.  He was first published in English when the New Yorker magazine ran his (long) short story Chekov in Sondrio in 1992.  Buzzi was then 82.

For the first 60 years of his life, Buzzi was set designer, costume designer, and, occasionally, on the scriptwriting team for various movies, mostly with director Alberto Latuada, and, early on, with Federico Fellini.  Trying to find the rather obscure films on which he has writing credit, most notably (if you are an Italian film buff) L’imprevisto (The Unexpected, 1961), is impossible in the US.

The reportedly quirky documentary he directed and co-wrote, America Pagana (1995) promises “a mystical journey to the land of the feathered serpent” — Mayan Mexico.  [If any reader has access to a copy of this documentary, please e-mail me.]

Aldo Buzzi passed away last October (2009) at age 99.  In Parliamo d’Altro he wrote:

“Quello che si prova a 95 anni è quello che si provava anni fa a 85. E quello che si proverà, fra un po’ d’anni, a 105″

“What we try to do at age 95, is what we tried to do at age 85, and what we will be trying to do, a few years later, at age 105.”

Along with a body of marvelous writing, a memorable lesson:  Success is no impediment to trying again.

There’s a bit less smiling going on these days, and it seems our taste for cuteness has also gone sour.

Fluffy and playful, the internet’s LOLCats spent the holidays posing for staged photos on the living room floor, mangling toilet paper rolls and the English language. Now copies of the doe-eyed holiday book “I Can Haz Cheeseburger“ fills Borders bargain-bin at $1.98 begging you to it home.

Stocks are down, and we’re taking it out on the kitty. Enter “Fuck You, Penguin“. A site that unleashes accusatory vitriol on animals we used to think were cute.

Gazelles are “desperate for affection”, the endangered booby a “blue-footed sleaze”, and “overhyped” cranes are “the mortgage-backed securities of the animal world”. In general these animals all conspire to use mindless cuteness to annoy and endanger humans “hop by excruciating hop.”

The creator of the site, a Boston writer who goes by the name of bza, tells me he is under contract to Random House to produce a “F*** You, Penguin” book, using mostly material from the web site, for publication in Fall 2009. If two points make a line, then Cute Overload makes it a trend. Cute Overload tries to be sick of fluffy kitties, F-U-P succeeds — and is much funnier.

Both sites are becoming hugely popular. As of today, F-U Penguin has 11,700 fans on Facebook, about 5000 Twitter followers, and shows strong page visit growth in Alexa.

Look for the book to be a recession best-seller this Christmas.

It takes blood, machismo, and a bit of a snarl. Then you have a movie catchphrase that men can rally around. The title of the 2007 Oscar-winning movie “There Will Be Blood” is turning out to be the “Say hello to my little friend” of this decade.

This newish favorite macho-meme assigns a hardcore intensity and cruel severity reminiscent of the ruthless main character, oilman Daniel Plainview, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Let’s take a look at some recent usage just in the New York Times:

Straight usage:
“There Will Be Blood” Maureen Dowd on nomination battles between Clinton and Obama (Feb 2008)
“There Will Be Blood” Steven Davidoff on ominous signs of an impending financial meltdown (Sept 2008)
“There Will Be Blood” Nicholas Kristoff on the ongoing armed conflict in Sudan (Mar 2008)
Extended usage:
“There Will Be Blood and Musical Chairs” Stu Hackel’s NYT hockey blog “Slap Shot”
Turn of phrase:
“There Will Be Floods” Alex Prud’homme on continuing levee breaches in the New Orleans area.
“There Will Be Extravagance” Janet Maslin on Bryan Burrough’s book about Texas oil money (Feb 2009)
“There Will Be Bagels” Jennifer Lee in the New York Times on the availability of bagels in Utah.

The most popular children’s show in Gaza has a bouncy xylophone-driven soundtrack, but bunnies and other fluffy-fun lead-characters are dying more gruesomely and frequently than on the Sopranos.

The latest casualty is Assud the Bunny, a six-foot-tall smiling pink rabbit with big ears and a dancy gait who wants to “finish off the Jews and eat them“. After a year of teaching numbers, the alphabet, and a bit of debatable Middle East history, Assud the Bunny threw himself in front of an Israeli missile in his final episode yesterday. On his deathbed he invited a little girl in a headscarf to “remember him as a martyr.”

Assud the Bunny is no stranger to tragedy. He took over as host of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” from his cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who was martyred in February 2008 by starving himself to death in front of millions of adoring viewers and his improbably human on-screen family.

Nahoul the Bee hosted the show for seven months, teaching children, among other things, how to annoy cats by swinging them around by the tail and letting go, and how to rile lions in the Gaza zoo by pelting them with stones.

The first host of the show was Farfour the Mouse, who encouraged children to drink milk and listen to their parents. Farfour also led youngsters on the show in songs about the AK-47 and led in an accompanying dance that included shouldering and firing motions with imaginary rifles.

In his final episode (June 2007), Farfour the Mouse was quite graphically punched/stabbed by actors playing Israeli officials. A young teenage girl appears afterwards and gives a martyr’s eulogy that is part teen-fan and part peer-encouragement.

But its not all fun and games at Gaza children’s television.

After “Tommorrow’s Pioneers,” a stark panel discussion is on. The “panel” is of children ages 9 to 13, and the show is hosted by a calm and smiling adult questioner. He asks questions of the children:

Host: “Do you think its natural to … blow your self up?”
Sabrine (age 17, by phone): “Yes! It’s our right!”

Host: “Martyrdom. Do you think it’s a beautiful thing?”
Walla (age 11, at table): “Yes it’s a beautiful thing. Who wouldn’t yearn for paradise?”

Host: “Would you agree with that?”
Yussra (age 11, at table): “Palestinian youth are not like other youth … they choose martyrdom.”

The children respond in a uniformly excited smiling manner, eager to please the questioner.

Even Fatah (the Palestinian party that control the West Bank of Palestine) has condemned these programs — especially the latter talk show (if parroting dogma can be called talking) that is so obviously and explicitly designed to cause children to believe life is simply an opportunity for a useful death.

Useful to Hamas, that is.

Samian is a popular (if you are in Québec) Algonquin-language rapper, who blends the themes of “first nations” (indiginous peoples) issues into his music.

The music is great, his message is important and unique. His music videos have often been, well, terrible. Finally, a very good video worthy of his music and message.

link: Samian’s bio from Voir Québec (French)