FRED AND FEDERICO

I suddenly got it!

Halloween night I was handing out candy while my wife and I watched Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers shake their booties in “Follow The Fleet”, a 1936 black and white dance/song/comedy bit of fluff, one of ten they made together. Federico Fellini would have been an impressionable 16 when that movie was made. I can imagine him, mouth agape, staring up at a glowing screen in semi-darkness.

My wife, years younger than me, loves Astaire movies too. It’s one small piece of the network that puts us, unenmeshed, together.

As you may know, Federico Fellini loved vaudeville and dancing, and he made a film called “Ginger and Fred” in 1986, exactly 50 years after “Follow The Fleet” was released. Suddenly, I saw the connection between Federico and Fred in a “Fleet” dance number aboard a ship with gaudy and fantastical backdrops, the kind of backdrops and fantasy you get in many a Fellini film. I saw the fantasy influence in Astaire’s dance numbers, the whole musical 30’s genre, which came through into Federico’s films. It was amazing to see it so clearly after all these years of loving musicals and loving Federico flicks, and the fantasy of the Astaire musical knocked me back in my seat. Wow and wonderful. You can see it spilling through into Woody Allen’s films too like in “Stardust Memories” and in Woody’s use of music in most all of his films, the same way Fellini uses music. It was a wonderful moment, making all those connections in the graying part of my life.


EUROPEANS HEALTHIER THAN AMERICANS

From an article in the October 28, 2004 Spokesman, I copy the following: “Northern Europeans are now two inches taller than Americans.... Seventy five years ago that wasn‘t the case. We’re falling behind.”

What!? Americans “falling behind” Europeans, falling behind in many measures of public health?! What can we make of that? Could it really mean that the European “socialistic medical system” is really better for the majority of citizens than America’s free enterprise system of medical distribution? Did Europe have any flu shot crisis? Why not? Perish the thought that Hillary was right way back when we had a chance to make medical care a universal right for all Americans. Way back before the Bushman bankrupted the country before it could put its surplus to good use to save lives rather than slaughter them in Iraq.


SCIENCE MAKES GOOD BEDFELLOWS

I’d like to point out that when it comes to peace on earth, it’s not religion that fosters it best, but science. Did you know that the Cassini spacecraft from NASA which is circling Saturn’s moon, Titan, is the joint venture of America’s NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency? Scientists have always been competitive when it comes to setting up experiments to try and get to the correct answers about the Cosmos, and peer review can really knock down a falsehood and deliver a hurting to a fellow scientist, but when it gets right down to it, scientists usually feel like comrades in a wonderful joint endeavor to get to the bottom of things in the Universe.

Please imagine clearly, as I can, what the world would be like if we’d just eliminate the fundamentalists in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Picture it! Where would the trouble be? A little in Africa, a little in the far East, but nothing too big, nothing as hellish and destructive as fundamentalism creates in the world. Fundamentalists are a troublesome and destructive lot. If you don’t believe me, look at their works. That’s how yee’ll know them.
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"I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio."
—Joan Rivers