Leapfrogging on last week's journey into the depths of wine product, The Wife pointed me to an ad she remembered from her youth. In it, Urban Folk are urged to combine their own brand of wine product with grapefruit juice. Take a peek.



Yes, Thunderbird--renowned as the booze of choice for hobos, derelicts, and hopeless alcoholics--mixes well with grapefruit juice. Just pour it straight down the neck of the bottle. You know, just like all normal, non-transient people do. And make sure you shake it up nice and long. That's not gonna spray everywhere the second you take your thumb out of the opening.

This ad hails from the difficult childhood of Ethnic Ads. Some time in the 70s, companies finally figured out that black people bought stuff and thus merited their own targeted advertising. But since they also didn't figure black people merited actual jobs at these agencies, you got spots like the weird, quasi-racist one you see above.

Despite being the official sponsor of the DTs, Thunderbird was once considered classy enough to have James Mason for a spokesman. Yes, the star of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lolita, and Heaven Can Wait, shilling for the booze whose very name screams Hey buddy, got some change? Although if you look at his filmography, it's not too much of a stretch. Apparently Mr. Mason once guested on several episodes of something called Schlitz Playhouse. Of particular note, their performance of Paint Your Wagon (With Vomit).



All this talk of premium malt beverages reminded me of one of the worst ads I've ever seen. This ran in the early-to-mid 90s. It opened on a city street, obviously meant to look "ghetto". And if that wasn't a big enough cue, the viewer was also treated to a thugged-out guy sitting in a recliner, in the middle of said street. Next to his chair, a bucket of ice.

THUG: Some people, they take the bull by the horns...

[Cut to footage of rodeo rider. Cut back.]

THUG: But round my way, there's only one way to grab the bull...

[Reaches into ice bucket, pulls out bottle of Bull Malt Liquor.]

THUG:...by the neck...

[Thug yanks recliner lever so the leg rest pops up. After very long pause:]

THUG: CHILLLLLLLLLLLL....

I couldn't believe this thing ever aired. It was so racist and almost fear-mongering, I figured it was either written by the KKK or Lee Atwater.

I scoured the Internets for this all last night, to no avail. (I'm pretty sure I have it on a VHS tape somewhere, as I'm almost positive it ran during a late night showing of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I have neither the time nor the stamina to search for it at this time.) Then I tweeted and facebooked about it, hoping folks might no what I was talking about.

No dice, but tweeter DonCheech did point me to this ad, which was in the same category of racisosity. All this ad for Schlitz Malt Liquor needs is someone shuffling off at the end, croaking "Feets don't fail me now!"



Of course, the gold standard of malt liquor commercials were the smooth moves laid on by one Mr. Billy Dee Williams when he shilled for Colt 45 in the 80s. I shan't post any of those ads, but I will show you this clip from the AMAZING Looney Tunes 50th Anniversary Special that ran in 1985. In it, various celebrities spoke of Bugs, Daffy, et al as if they were real actors they'd worked with (Bill Murray's segments were especially transcendent).

In this clip, Billy Dee is clearly playing off of his Colt 45 ad persona. His little hand gestures and quiet smiles at the cacophonous music of Carl Stalling is a triumph of understatement.

Tony, I would like you come to my "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington. Albert Pujols will be a guest of honor and it would be great if you could introduce him.
Gee, I don't know, Glenn. As a public figure, I have to be careful what I associate myself with. I usually shy away from politics.
Don't worry, Tony this is a completely apolitical event.
Really? Sarah Palin is speaking at it.
She's not a politician anymore--she resigned the guberna...gubernavit....she's not governor anymore, remember?
And it's taking place on the exact same date in the exact same place as Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and you said your goal for this event is to "reclaim the civil rights movement".
Civil rights aren't a political issue, Tony--they're a human issue. All American citizens should have the right to live and work the way they choose. That's an issue that transcends politics, wouldn't you agree?
I suppose so.
And so is the right to hoard gold for the impending cash-less economic system the radical socialists in the quote-unquote Democratic party plan to foist on America by the year 2013.
That sounds kind of political.
Oh, it's definitely not. Because the Democrats insist on absolute separation of church and state, and the liberal fascists in the Obama administration are bent on removing religion from every imaginable public sphere. So if we believe in God, we ipso facto cannot be political, in their eyes! You believe in God, don't you, Tony?
I'm not really religious, but I guess I believe in God.
Good! You'll need to pray to that god when the new world order tries to brand your babies with a UPC-type symbol so the one-world government can track them at all times.
Why do you think that's going to happen?
/pulls out chalkboard with Rube Goldergian swirl of arrows
Wow, that is convincing. But you swear this isn't political.
Not in the least. Though we may all grab pitchforks and march on the White House and attempt to overthrow the government by sheer force of will. Not sure; we're gonna play it by ear.
Sounds like a blast. Will there be vegetarian meal options offered at this event?
Excuse me?
Will there be vegetarian meal options? Because I'm a vegetarian.
YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!
/ Body Snatchers-esque screech

NEW YORK--FOX News chairman Roger Ailes denied that the network bore any responsibility for the burglary of the Ames, Iowa home of Frank Smith on Sunday. The denial came despite the fact that for the last two weeks, several FOX News hosts had wondered aloud if Smith's house should be broken into.

"We are simply reporting the news," Ailes told reporters. "The debate over whether or not to ransack Mr. Smith's house is raging right now, and we would be remiss in our duties as journalists if we didn't discuss this issue on our programs."

Critics charge that FOX News is virtually the only network to treat the potential burglarizing of Mr. Smith's house as a political issue. They also note that even fewer news organizations have given detailed instructions on how the house might be broken into.

For instance, the morning show Fox and Friends broadcast from outside Smith's home, making note of exactly when he left for work and how long he'd be there. Glenn Beck sketched out a detailed schematic on his chalkboard, pinpointing the house's major entry points and where some of the more valuable items could be located. Sean Hannity and guest Newt Gingrich discussed at length the shift schedules of the local police department, noting when law enforcement would be least equipped to respond to an emergency.

"Go back and look at the tapes," a defensive Bill O'Reilly insisted. "Nobody on this network has ever said Smith's house should be broken into. We're just talking about what everyone else is talking about! Oh, by the way, he doesn't lock his garage either. And sometimes he'll leave the keys to his Civic in one of the drawers of his tool bench."

Other news networks have been measured in their criticism. "On the one hand, FOX News clearly baited the public, then tried to act innocent," said CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. "You could even make a case that some of their on-air personalities could be charged as accessories to this crime. On the other hand, we have to pretend there's another side to this issue for some reason."

The incident is similar to one from 2005, when FOX News devoted a week of programming to giving out several thousand social security numbers, while debating exactly what could be done with them.

• Think President Obama is a Muslim
• Don't believe in the letter Q
• Suspect the U.S. Army faked the landing at Normandy
• Fear eating grapes can "turn ya queer"
• Pray to Jesus nightly to give them their own hoverboard
  
• Want Justin Bieber to be appointed Dictator for Life
• Ask their minister, every Sunday, if a fish can become born again
• Refuse to recognize the month of October
• Wish there were more items with badly drawn Calvins peeing on things they don't like
  
• Actively fantasize about Herman Munster
• Participated in a protest against the author of Bloom County, for reasons they can't remember
• Think it would be cool to be Swamp Thing for like, a day
  
• Have at least thought about punching a duck
• Once shoveled pudding in their mouths with a fork and felt really weird about it
• Can't decide if David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is an ambitious but flawed attempt at constructing a sweeping nigh-Proustian epic or a titanic achievement of modern literature that shall be studied for centuries to come
• Have eaten more than one battery
  

I believe that hate, like love, is within all of us, and that we have a need to hate as much as we have a need to love. It can be a cleansing, cathartic emotion, as long as it is expressed in a healthy, non-violent fashion.

Assuming this is true, why do we hate certain things? Is it nature or nurture? Would you hate the same things you hate if you were born in Morocco, or Bavaria, or Upper Mongolia?

I can't answer that for certain. My gut feeling is that there are certain things I would not hate if I came from a different background, simply because I wouldn't care about them. My vitriol for Chipper Jones and Roger Clemens would probably be diminished if I was born in Sri Lanka and had no interest in baseball.

But there are other things I am certain I would hate no matter what, because they are so eminently hateable, they transcend culture, race, and creed. I shall discuss one of them today.

First, some background: The 1980s gave us many, many bad things, one of which was the proliferation of Wine Product. Not wine, but not not-wine, either. This led in turn to the Wine Product commercial, which came in varying shades of horrible.

For instance, the Bruce Willis Seagram's ads, made at the height of his popularity and ubiquity. I hesitate to even call them bad because, as is the case with pretty much everything he's ever done, Bruce seems so self-conscious of his own smug brand of douchery. His every smirk silently communicates, I know this is all bullshit. I almost have to admire him.

These ads, however, are not the focus of this post (and probably deserve their own analysis, which we may get to at a future date). The commercial I have in mind belongs to a different category of Wine Product, the kind that actually tried to masquerade as wine.

Back in the 80s, you still couldn't advertise straight-up, non-beer booze on TV. But you could run ads for this type of alcoholic beverage. The kind of cheap, wine-esque swill you still see in supermarkets and bodegas.

The affordability of these products was never emphasized in any way. In fact, the bottlers went to great lengths to insist that their stuff was enjoyed by jet setting glitterati. Remember, this was the same era as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, when people actually watched a show that did nothing but remind them how many wonderful things they could never have. (Jesus, the 80s were gross.)

A prime example: This ad for Riunite, in which rich young things ski down the slopes grabbing bottles of Riunite as they slalom, on their way to a mountaintop barbecue.



Even as a kid, ads like this angered me. There was something so venal about trying to sell something so cheap (in several senses of the word) as a ticket to affluence to the poor slobs who could afford no better. And in retrospect, it seems even more gross, as the 80s were the decade when the American working class took its last gasp before a slow extinction.

But this Riunite commercial isn't the object of my hatred. There was one ad that stood out, one that filled me with an absolute, undying, white hot hatred I still have to this day. 

Truth be told, I couldn't even remember what product this was for, until I tweeted about it yesterday and received a link from WFMU's own Evan "Funk" Davies (who can be heard tonight and every Wednesday at 9pm). Turns out, it was a commercial for Harvey's Bristol Cream, and it is every bit as infuriating as I remember.

There are many, many things to hate about this ad. The jingle is terrible. The weird, contrapuntal spoken word duet part in the middle of said jingle ("upper crrrrusty!") is nauseating. And the guests at the party look like a second grader's idea of Rich Fancy People. But what really pushes my feelings into the realm of Super Hate is the last line, and the Patrick Bateman-esque bastard who says it, in his fake Pierce Brosnan accent.

The last line of this ad has rung in my head for the last 20+ years. Just hearing it is like a boxing bell, making me jump up with my fists clenched, ready to start swinging. If I ever found the man who uttered it--or better yet, the ad wizard who wrote it--I would pummel this man with all my might, and I would not stop until someone pulled me off him.

Here it is, folks. Brace yourselves.



"Your palace or mine." Ugh. Go die, Anonymous Smug Guy.

I've already tweeted about this, and Facebooked it, and mouth-talked it. But on the off chance you have yet to see this masterpiece, here 'tis: the video for Ted Leo's "Bottled in Cork", directed by Tom Scharpling, starring Paul F. Tompkins, Julie Klausner, John Hodgman, and a slew of other awesome folk, as they bring Ted to the Great White Way in his musical The Brutalist Bricks! (No Refunds).


Sharp-eyed WFMU-ophiles may spot Terre T, AP Mike, Therese, and some other righteous people. Fortunately for your eyes, you can not see me.

Ya see, I volunteered to be in the crowd scene (brag), but the shoot time got moved up to 4pm, when I would have still been at work. I toyed with the idea of sneaking out early to make the scene, but my German half demanded that keep my nose to the grindstone. (My Irish half was totally down with splitting work and giving everyone the finger as I left.)

Thus, I was denied a shot at rock n' roll immortality.* And a month later, I was let go from this job. There's a lesson in there somewhere, though I'm not quite sure what it is.

*Actually, I may have already achieved rock n' roll immortality, since my enormous bald head can be briefly seen in crowd shots in the following concert films: Fugazi's Instrument, The Make-Up's Blue Is Beautiful, and the aforementioned Mr. Leo's Dirty Old Town. If you can find those movies and spot me in them, you win absolutely nothing.

This video is, quite obviously, a play on the trend of musicals based on a particular band's/artist's oeuvre--particularly ones that don't quite gel with traditional Broadway mores. Like, oh, I don't know, let's just say Green Day. So I assume, anyway. Because there is no way in hell I will ever see any of these quote-unquote musicals without the aid of hard drugs and harnesses.

Especially after seeing this clip someone tweeted earlier today (forgive me for forgetting who, whoever you are), which comes from the Bob Dylan musical. Hey, remember when there was a Bob Dylan musical? No? You're lucky.

Cheez-Its are the world's best snack food. It's been proven by science. You may have a different opinion about this, but your opinion is wrong.

Not those blasphemous alternate flavors, though, like ranch and barbecue. Please, don't insult the Cheez-Its legacy by even mentioning those in the same breath with real, original Cheez-Its. Those "improvements" are like hanging a velvet clown painting in the Taj Mahal, or sticking truck nutz onto the back of a Lamborghini. Perfection needs no enhancements, and Cheez-Its are perfection.

Like most deeply held beliefs, this conviction was bequeathed to me by my forefathers. My grampa wasa Cheez-Its fanatic. He liked nothing better on a lazy Sunday than to sit in his recliner, eat Cheez-Its, and watch golf. He always had an ENORMOUS box of Cheez-Its that seemed like it was half my size.

Since he lived next door to me, I was provided ample opportunities to invite myself over and partake of this bounty. My mom didn't really have snacks in the house (for either nutritional or economic reasons, I'm not sure), so Grampa's house was like an island of snacking anarchy. All I had to do was ask once, and I had carte blanche to dip into his Cheez-Its supply any time I wanted.

And if there was a family party at his house, which there often was, forget it. The Cheez-Its would just be out there in huge Tupperware bowls. I didn't even have to ask permission to gorge myself! It was an orgy of unnaturally orange indulgence.

I even dipped Cheez-Its in Coke once, just to see how they would taste. The verdict: slightly sweet and soggy. I could fill a book with the crimes against food I committed at these family get-togethers, once all the pretzels and chips and soda and dips were laid out. Don't judge me. It was an experimental era, a time of tumultuous change...

You know how awesome Cheez-Its are? They barely advertise. Once in a blue moon, you will see a commercial for Cheez-Its, or a page in a magazine. Why? They don't need to advertise. Why would you need to run a 30-second spot for HEAVEN ITSELF?!

That may be why the Cheez-It box has remained virtually unchanged all these years. The color scheme is the same, the font is the same, even the little Cheez-It mosaic in the background is the same. If ain't broke, don't fix it, and there's nothing broken about Cheez-Its.

One item has been altered since I was a kid, however. The back of the box used to have several delightful suggestions about how you could spice up an ordinary meal with Cheez-Its. Drop them in your tomato soup! Place them lovingly next to a sandwich, or maybe even put them in your sandwich!

But the most intriguing suggestion called for using Cheez-Its to bread chicken cutlets. They even showed a picture of a chicken cutlet, radioactive orange, with jagged peaks of ex-crackers protruding from its surface.

This seemed like a no-brainer to me. I loved chicken cutlets and I loved Cheez-Its. Deductive reasoning dictates that I would double-plus love Cheez-Its-covered chicken cutlets. Unfortunately, my mother was not keen on the idea, and lacking any cooking ability of my own, the experiment went unconsummated.

Then, last week, The Wife texted me at work to say we were having chicken cutlets for dinner. This is a common item in the Meal Rotation (mainly because we can cut them up and tell The Baby they're chicken nuggets), but for whatever reason, the mention of "cutlets" brought back Proustian memories of the back of the Cheez-Its box.

ME: OOOH! Can you make chicken cutlets with Cheez-Its, like you used to see on the back of the box?

WIFE: ....Why?

ME: Because I always wanted to try it.

WIFE: If you can find me a recipe, sure.

This inspired a wild google chase, trying to find said recipe. But the internets gave me nothing. Nothing! A lot of people apparently make fried chicken with Cheez-Its, but that's not what I was looking for. Fried chicken?! You people must be mad! Your quest is crazy and mine is not for many complicated reasons I can't get into just now!

So I emailed The Wife and told her to just forget this crazy scheme, but when I got home, she had actually done it! She'd made chicken cutlets with Cheez-Its breading, and there they sat, glowing on the kitchen countertop, finally ready to be eaten. It was a moment that, subconsciously, I'd been waiting for my entire life.

But when I took that first bite, I realized that this was a dream that was best left unfulfilled. The food wasn't bad, just weird. The Cheez-Its and the chicken did not mix. They were not united as one meal, but remained two separate food items. I tasted the Cheez-Its and the meat separately, as if they were two opposite charged magnets that could not touch one another.

And the Cheez-Its half of the equation didn't come through the cooking process too well. Some of the crust was soggy, other parts slightly charred. It reminded me of The Simpsons where Lisa attempts to make fish sticks. ("They're burnt on the outside, but still frozen on the inside, so it evens out!") Since my wife is normally an amazing cook, I knew the blame lay squarely on the ingredients. This was a union that was never meant to be.

I thanked The Wife for giving it a shot and promised I would never make her cook this again. She in turn thanked me for promising that.

The lesson here is that pursuing things you really wanted as a kid is kinda stupid and will inevitably lead to disappointment. Except for that palace of Cheez-Its I plan on building, because that will totally happen and make me happy forever and ever.

This weekend, while visiting relatives in New Jersey, I spotted something in the wild I have not seen in many a year. In a supermarket parking lot, I saw a boy about 10 or 11 years old, and he had a rattail. Not a little one either, but a HUGE rattail that extended past his shoulder blades.

I was overcome by a precocious douche-chill.

I had very few deeply held convictions as a child--at least when it came to important stuff. Most kids don't. Despite how children are portrayed in the media, very, very few of them have strong beliefs about Big Issues. You know those kids you see in TV shows who are committed to saving the environment or organize bake sales to rebuild an historical landmark? They don't exist.

However, kids do feel strongly about dumb things, like the superiority of one line of toys over a nearly identical one. Or they can be 100 percent convinced that kids from a certain town, or part of a town, or even the other side of the street, are dumber than them. As for Kid-Me, there were a few things I firmly, unequivocally believed in, and one of them was this: If you had a rattail, you were a dirtbag.

One of many reasons why I've never understood 80s nostalgia (other than the fact that it was a terrifying time to be a kid) is that the fashions were horrendous. It amazes me that, when confronted by these trends, most people didn't throw up their hands and say, Are you fucking kidding me? Shoulder pads. Pastel blazers with rolled-up sleeves. Acid-washed jeans. Any one of these items should brand a decade beyond redemption, and yet within a ten-year span, we got all of these things (and worse).

Even among this haystack of horror, the rattail stands out as the fetid pin it is. Because while those other fashion statements were simply awful, the rattail told the whole world that the wearer himself was awful. To me, even as a kid, I thought having a rattail meant you were a bad person liable to do bad things to other people. Because in order to have a rattail, you'd have to want your hair to look like that. And Jesus God Almighty, what normal person would want that?

I've held childish biases about certain things and places in my life, as I'm sure we all have. But in my journey through life, I've come across actual humans possessing characteristics I formerly mocked. I've realized that just because someone comes from Place X or looks like Thing Y, they're still human. I've relinquished the unfair prejudices of my youth.

All but one: The rattail. Because as a kid, I interacted with kids with rattails on a far-too-often basis, and they were invariably dirtbags. The kinda kids who would try to force you to do their homework under threat of violence, or dump a bag of pencil shavings on your head, or key the teacher's car. Every kid I ever met who had a rattail was a rotten kid, and I will guarantee every single one of them right now is either having lunch at a strip club buffet or doing time for some meth-related offense.

I'll say the same for the kid I saw in the parking lot in New Jersey. So help me god, he had beady eyes. He looked like he was scanning the ground for rocks, so he could chuck one through someone's back windshield. He walked like a dirtbag, with his arms bent slightly, Popeye-style, just so he could be ready to punch something at a moment's notice. He looked like the kind of kid who's a little too jazzed to dissect frogs in science class.

My question is, Is this just me? Am I just a rattail-ophobe, or is my prejudice justified?

I'm sorry if people were offended by my comments during a recent Nationals game. Apparently I said something about some mouthy broads who were sitting behind the plate and people got all snippy about it. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been so shocked these ladies could talk during the whole game. Doesn't matter where a woman is, the ballpark or the beauty parlor--chances are she's got her big yap open. Am I right, fellas?

Look, I know many women love baseball. And it's not just so's they can see a tight pair of polyester pants giftwrap Dib's beautiful package. Lots of female types honestly love this game. That's how great baseball is--even a buncha dumb skirts can dig it!

I love baseball because it's a game that appeals to everyone. Just look at how many Spanish guys play it! They couldn't be further away from American, but there's something about the game that just speaks to them. In some kinda hybrid English-Mexican-y language, I guess.

And you got Chinese guys like Ichiro who come over here to play it, too. You don't see them guys playing football, do ya? Probably cuz they'd get crushed to death by the linebackers. I could see an Oriental guy play punter or kicker, maybe. But they don't--they play baseball. I think I've made my point.

Speakin' of which, here's this joke I heard from Bob Carpenter. Why did Ichiro bat in the first inning, then bat again in the fourth? Cuz an hour later, he was hungry again! Get it? 

How universal is the sport of baseball? I've even seen an Indian guy at a game once. Swear to god!

The problem with you guys is you're too PC. Lighten up, wouldja? I don't get upset when people make jokes about washed-up unfunny ex-jocks, do I? Because people do. Constantly. Right to my face. Oh sure, I cry when I go home, but that doesn't mean I'm offended. Just deeply wounded.

Who can say what forces shape us? We are the often the prisoners of our times. One's future could be shaped by simply being at the right place at the right time--or the wrong place at the wrong time. Have you ever thought about what might have influenced your life if you were born during a different age? The Renaissance? The Civil War? The Great Depression? Who can say what heights you may have climbed, or to what depths you may have sunk?

Me, I haven't thought about this conundrum much, because I was born during the Age of Advertising, and thus have a miniscule attention span. I've said this many, many times here at Scratchbomb, but I have been immensely influenced by commercials. I feel like they've rattled in my brain my entire life. Anyone who says they are not influenced in any way by ads is deluded or lying.

When you're a kid, you find many things funny that you don't as an adult. Specifically, other people. Adults won't just laugh in random people's faces, but kids will. They can laugh for hours about somebody they see in the street with a weird haircut or dumb hat on. And if the same person also says something weird, in a weird voice, forget it.

I was reminded of this cruel fact of kid-hood when Joe Randazzo of the Onion tweeted a link to this commercial for Polly-O string cheese (the most needless and unasked for food innovation of all time until pancakes and sausage on a stick). This ad ran for roughly 8 billion years during my childhood, but despite its ubiquity, me and my brothers always found it funny. Always.

Why? Because of the wizened old man who says NUTHIN? The way he said this, combined with his wrinkly face--he looks like a slightly melted candle, or a shar pei--was comedy gold to us.



If you're seeing this for the first time, or were not as struck by it as I was as a kid, I don't expect you to think it's funny. I wouldn't either, if I hadn't spent my entire childhood laughing at it.

Watching this ad an adult, I am struck by a few things.

• Check out the odd posters hanging from the wall, that almost give it a Sedelmaier feel. I particularly like the one that bizarrely reads NO SCREAMING.
• The guy behind the counter who yells at the old wrinkly man calls him "Shimmy". Obviously, he was trying to say "Jimmy" and failed. But Polly-O wasn't gonna shell out for more than one take or overdubbing in post. So there it sits, "Shimmy". My brothers and I found this quite hysterical. HIS NAME IS SHIMMY! WHOSE NAME IS SHIMMY?!
  
• Is cheese really the best part of the pizza, as this ad insists? That's a matter of opinion, of course. But I think I'd rather have a whole slice of pizza than any one individual part of it. I like pizza, but I never get the craving to drink a cup of a tomato sauce on its own. In fact, cheese is probably the worst part of the pizza, nutritionally speaking.
  
• I now realize that all Polly-O string cheese really did was make it acceptable for you to chomp down on a huge chunk of fattening mozzarella at lunchtime. It's like having individually wrapped pudding cups filled with foie gras.
• At the end of the ad, the kids taste the string cheese and give it glowing praise in foreign languages. But only the first kid says something in Italian ("Bellissimo!"). The last two say French expressions. ("Magnifique!" and "C'est si bon!") C'mon, Polly-O, you're making mozzarella and you don't know the difference between Italian and French? Your handlebar-mustachioed ancestors are spinning in their graves.