"MONDO CANE 2" "As we all know, the English deeply love England, family, weekends, the Queen, the tea, but most of all animals." "Among the 41 million British subjects, dogs are the most loved, pampered, and legally protected living beings." "The first Mondo Cane was prohibited in England, only because of those scenes that showed dogs as victims of human cruelty." "We reverently comply with the judgment of the English censor and, to prove our repentance, we offer him this almost bloodless new version." "This sequence is actually one of the few exceptions." "We shot it at a hospital in London, where every day tens of dogs undergo the removal of their vocal chords so that the surgeons can vivisect them without being disturbed by their yelps." "We have introduced this scene at the start so that the English censor may use, at his leisure, the surgical lancet." "By just one strike of the lancet, he will be able to amputate our film without causing any dog to yelp or curse the name of the filmmakers." "Yes, we must admit that in Italy a dog's life is a lot more frivolous and much less rewarding." "Whilst in England they have to cooperate with the world of science, in Italy they have to settle for cooperating with the world of fashion." "Emilio Federico Schubert, the famous Roman stylist, said that this year, a striped dress requires a striped dog, but it would be unforgivable to wear a polka dot dress without a polka dot dog." "Of course no hairdresser can give a dog the same rewards given to him by a surgeon, but that's life." "If some dogs are denied the privilege of losing their skin, some others have to settle for losing just their coat." "Losing your hair, here at Sant'Antimo, in the Aversa province, is very lucrative." "Now that wigs are back, they go for as much as 9 thousand liras a kilo." "A fortune that had been ignored for many centuries by the women of our underdeveloped south." "The increasing request of braids and straight hair that gets stuck in the comb, makes Aversa one the most combed Provinces of Italy, maybe of the world." "This is first quality hair and the American market, in particular, pays millions for the exceptional softness of its texture which is caused, it seems, by having grown on malnourished scalps with a high shortage of vitamins." "Nowhere else as in Sant'Antimo, where women pay off much better than sheep, the economy has boomed with such a loud blast." "Washed, skimmed, carded, boiled, pressed, bleached, and newly colored," "Sant'Antimo's hair ends up here, in one of the many American beauty institutes, at the lady's maintenance and spare parts department." "In America, where women work, wearing a wig is not a luxury or an oddity." "It's a social necessity." "The American woman cannot waste her time with her hairdresser." "She may, at most, send her head to him, but she'll leave the rest of herself at work." "It's 5 o'clock, an average day in an average office." "In this very moment, all over America, 24 million employees wear a wig simultaneously, eager to find, as fast as possible, the unmistakable signs of their womanhood." "Of the 8 million dollars of hair imported by the U.S." "From Italy every year, only a small percentage is bound to replant the old scalps of the Rothschild and Vanderbilt widows." "The largest locks of locks end up here, on the hundred heads of the American Medusa." "And here is an example of professional use of wigs." "In hundreds of nightclubs, the locks of hair from Sant'Antimo's women are the main fiction of these fake professionals of vice." "Since beautiful Coxinelle complied with her fatherhood instinct and married a good old boy, genuine produces are short." "One can only rely on unemployed businessmen, or even some retired colonel, provided they have some dark precedent, like having played in college the role of Desdemona or Sleeping Beauty." "To almost all of them, this is a shameful secret, known only to their wives, not to their children." "Still, sometimes to dress like a woman may be a manly business." "These kinds of scenes are rather frequent at the police stations of many American cities facing the social evil of sadists and sexual maniacs." "Padded, shaved, perfumed, powdered, dressed up, these palatable cops will work as decoy agents on the public benches or under the suburban lampposts." "Believe it or not, by strolling around on the sidewalks, they're able to get 4 to 6 sadists a night." "But as soon as they fondle within those soft laces, the suspects meet their match." "A statistic, secondary fact:" "Each of these unpredictable Venuses is propositioned each night some 30 times by sexually normal individuals, which really makes them very mad." "Mexican cops get very mad too when they miss the target, especially when they hurt someone." "It happens very rarely but it does happen." "The truth is, Mexicans have a rather original concept about death." "Look at the way they celebrate November 2." "Human skulls filled with chantilly cream, which, among all the desserts by the scoop, is the one that looks most like brains." "Much requested by children, the uncle Judas dead bodies are real size marzipan dummies reproducing the ugly features of the traitor, hanging from the fig tree." "As it happens to all those who die violently," "Judas too has undergone an autopsy, so that, through the wide gash of his belly, one can enjoy the view of his bowels:" "Heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys are selling like crazy." "But soon, the toughest parts of the old scoundrel will be devoured also by public acclaim." "Mexico loves its own dead and hates Judas who dishonors the category." "With this very ancient rite, they rid themselves of an unpleasant neighbor in a clearly rational way." "The Mexican method to get rid of parasites is equally rational." "These bugs are extremely harmful to the agriculture." "The Mexicans like them alive, wrapped in tortillas and with a spread of hot salsa." "Pressing energetically these tasty omelets with one finger before putting them in one's mouth causes the bugs to give off that typical odor that makes the whole thing even more appetizing." "But the importance of the bugs in the national economy is not limited to nutrition." "Some jewelers have recently launched the fashion of the evening dress bug." "They cover it with small golden or platinum armor, studded with precious stones." "Once again, a soft stroke of the fingers causes the "jewel" to give off the same sharp odor that makes it even more charming." "Besides, decorating decorative animals is not a new fashion." "In New York, for instance, there are special jewelers for dogs, where the faithful woman's friend can find a collar, a leash, or even a pair of earrings for the reasonable amount of $20,000." "Make no mistake, the American women feel a totally particular kind of affection for their dogs." "Among the New York Times classified ads, it's not unusual to read an ad such as this:" ""Black poodle lost." "$5,000 reward for bringing back just his collar."" ""A collar of flowers in Honolulu for only $5,000."" "Says another ad in the same newspaper and promises, for that amount, 10 wild days under the sun of this magic island that will bring back youth and vigor." "Near the source of radioactive mud, the speaker is translating, for the wild tourists, an old Chinese saying, that goes: "Aloha, Athema, ha ha"" "According to the speaker, the translation of" ""Aloha, Athema, ha ha", a brief but wise Hawaiian saying, is:" "After her first half century of splendor, the white woman finds out that her skin is a little worn out, but she has hopes:" "For only $65, taxes included, the volcanic, radioactive mud of this blazing island will miraculously make the shining whiteness of her skin mesmerize again to her husband's astonished eyes." ""Aloha, Athema ha ba."" "This mud of a totally different nature is used by the women of the African Masai villages." "It's that organic, viscid, sticky mud that, in our areas, has a terrible reputation and is uneasy to mention." "But here it's used for all purposes:" "As fuel, construction material, disinfectant, purge, plaster for broken legs and, finally, when spread out on the roofs of the huts, at night, it gives off an aphrodisiac aroma that inspires and encourages" "the husbands' activity." "And the wives?" "Here they are, eating stones from the dried up riverbeds that they swallow with little sips of water." "They say that just one of these little stones, ingested with the new rising moon, has the power to make them sterile for one month." "We said that one stone is sufficient to make them sterile, but when the husbands go away on their hunting trips and leave the wives in their fragrant villages with the young men of their tribes, rising moon or not," "they rush down the valley and gorge themselves on them." "But the women of New Guinea must face the opposite problem." "If they want to find a husband, they need to prove to be able to give him a least one child." "Therefore, only at the end of a premarital training, which obviously can't be shorter than nine months, during an animated cocktail party, the bastard babies can meet momma's official fiancé." "They may look like one of those transient couples who, here in California, always carry their home with them." "But they are two rascals who, when things turn to worse, move from a State of the Union to another to fool the local law." "But, alas!" "Nowhere else in the world like in America these illegal houses need to show off so blatantly." "Constantly moving from one address to another, these whorehouses are never able to keep a date." "Meanwhile, without the moral support of a phone, the call girls play solitaire." "In America nothing is more sad than these merry ladies." "The small town young men have no vocation for the original sin and, even worse, they have no original vocation for sin." "In America, the management of marital effusions belongs to women." "The erotic energy, necessary to perpetuate the species, is produced by massive demonstrations of charm and sex appeal and it's nationalized." "The users are not allowed to consume it randomly." "Their flux is regulated by an automatic meter that works only on weekends, or for some great charity events." "This is, indeed, a great charity event." "As it's well known, the last Parisian fashion has failed to promote hats." "Consequently, the market for American hats is shrinking." "Well brought up ladies inquire, are moved, and organized, then they get together and demonstrate." "They go around with such headgear that, if they don't quite encourage the hat fashion, they surely attract the people's attention over the gravity of the situation." "Against the oncoming crisis, sex helps too." "Rhythmettes and Majorettes kick their legs up on the presidential stand of the committee for the rescuing of the hat, while some girls, selected among the local good society, sell kisses to help the families of the unemployed hatters." "One kiss, $5." "Three kisses $10." "The kisses are real, perfect, guaranteed, sterilized, like the products of the supermarket." "One kiss $5." "Three kisses $10." "What is a kiss?" "A pink parenthesis surrounding the word "dollar"." "What's a parenthesis?" "It's $2 wrapped around the word "love"." "What is love?" "It's a dollar with a capital "D"." "What is an automatic restaurant?" "It's a place for lonely men, on the day their wives are busy rescuing hats." "It's a kind of wailing wall for widowers of lunch made up of many small burial niches and under each niche there's a tablet with the name of the food that lies there." "One can also try to identify the food through the peephole but it's not advisable." "On one side of each grave, where there should be flowers, there is a slit where one drops a dollar." "Finally, if you have chosen a steak, you'll get a slice of apple pie." "And this is an automatic highway." "Do you want to go, let's say, to Los Angeles?" "Drop a token in the right box and, "thank you very much", you'll end up in the morgue." "It's rush hour. 10 cars by the second on six lanes." "600 cars by the minute." "Speed limit: 50 miles, 85 kilometers, an hour." "7 traffic signals every hundred meters, seventy for each kilometer, one dead and 4 injured per hour for each mile," "10 dead and 40 injured every 10 hours for 100 miles, 100 dead and 400 injured every 100 hours for 1000 miles." "But there are no precise statistical reports about episodes of hysteria or craziness after driving" "24 hours in hell." "Still, we have to acknowledge that in America, for the thunders of hysteria and craziness, there is a good lightning-rod." "In these quiet motels, far from the big traffic jam, there's more and more of these projection rooms where the motorist, survivor of the war of the nerves, can relive, on the screen, the tough battles of the day" "and indulge in some reactions that the police would consider inappropriate." "They call them psychological decompression rooms, where for $1.50, the motorist is entitled to a first row seat and six pounds of rotten tomatoes, which is the amount the American psychologist considered sufficient for a good decompression." "The collective hysteria of this crowd that twists and shouts in a deconsecrated" "Cilento's church cannot be ascribed to the intense traffic of this small village hidden down in a valley and secluded for centuries." "Hysteria is the germ of craziness that nests in all men forever." "Scientists and popular imagination gave it difficult or picturesque names." "They tried to identify the causes with scientific methods or the resources of black magic." "Science, for instance, calls these people" ""the tremulous" and ascribes their convulsions to a lack of proteins." "But the people call them "tarantolati", which means:" "Bitten by the tarantula, since to them the tarantula is the incarnation of the devil." "Be it proteins or tarantulas, here they are, with their anguish, their fear, their helpless fury." "What do they scream about?" "Nothing that makes any sense." "What do they want?" "Nothing any human being may ask." "What does their recurrent madness mean?" "Nothing more than the universal madness means when we hate, love, adore, kill, when we curse and when we pray." "Pathetic in his craziness, or tragic in his humbleness, man is always a shy actor showing his amazement and when he tortures his flesh, playing a role condemned even by the church, he desperately awaits an applause from heaven." "For years, at Villachira de Franca, in Portugal, an act of absurd humbleness keeps defying the Bishop's prohibition." "The image of a Saint will soon climb these steps that the believers are washing with their bleeding tongues." "Every Good Saturday morning, at Cucullo, in the Abruzzi, hundreds of believers, young and old, ill or whole, have pulled the chain of this bell for centuries to express their jubilation." "Recently their new priest wanted to abolish it, but the whole village revolted and threatened to desert the church." "At Pobra Do Caraminal, in Southern Spain, it's a usual custom to buy one's own coffin well in advance and take part in a sort of funeral dress rehearsal." "But if during the parade they keep the horizontal posture requested by the circumstance, once in the church, they rise again to thank heaven for having preserved their live." "Every Good Saturday morning at Sarsina, in Apulia, the traditional "Affruntata" takes place." "The "Affruntata" is the statue of the Virgin trying to avoid the believers who demand that she removes her black dress because her son has risen again." "But the Virgin is doubtful, while the crowd screams, she runs back and forth with maternal amazement." "But she finally complies and drops her mournful coat, cheered by a storming applause." "All over India, in the Taifusian days, fakirs perform stoical and choreographic exploits." "The more their body is pierced, tortured, wounded, humiliated, the more complete their victory over pain." "The better man was able to overcome his pain, the sooner he was able to defeat his flesh." "The way that leads to the Indian Nirvana is a long burning trail to be crossed barefoot." "Nirvana is not Paradise." "It's the ultimate end to pain, the only essence of life, in which man, ceases to suffer, ceases to exist." "Walking on fire, the Indians don't intend to make a spectacle of their pain or to offer it to the divinity." "On the contrary, he wants not to suffer, that is, he no longer wants to be painfully alive." "Because life is pain and it's every man's duty to try to get rid of it." "That's why Saigon, where life is pain, is today, as never before, a city where life is tragic." "In its silent and empty streets, one can sense a cry of revolt that no crowd could ever express." "The temples and pagodas that the army tried to destroy have multiplied into these eloquent ruins harboring the silent amazement of millions of Buddhists offended by the sacrilege." "Everywhere, fences and trestles, useless in this solitude, are ready to face the violence that will not take place because it doesn't exist." "From up above, President Diem dominates and controls an empty city." "At the police check point on Boulevard Pasteur, a sign informs the journalists that it's prohibited to take photographs and transgressors will be punished under the martial law." "The troops that the President has just drafted and the policemen, wearing fatigues, control the streets near the American embassy which the authorities suspect of sheltering two acclaimed monks who escaped a raid." "The sentinels are ordered to search all approaching cars and to shoot at anybody who attempts to avoid being checked." "The destiny of the city is decided beyond this barrier of barbed wire." "President Diem and his counselor Nu have taken on full power." "But in the war against the Buddhist," "Madame Nu is the only person in charge." "All over Viet Nam, the monks suspected of belonging to the defense committee are arrested." "These images are unbelievable." "But even more unbelievable is the fact that, after 2,500 years, with the creation of a committee the Buddhists contradicted themselves." "When his disciples asked him to become the community's chief, Buddha answered:" ""May each of us obey his own conscience and seek no other shelter but himself."" "If now they have deserted that shelter and risk to betray the spirit of the master, there is only one explanation:" "The most gentle of men have been overwhelmed by the deepest despair." "Only in jails and concentration camps, threatened by the guns, do they seem to regain their lost faith in the ancient creed." "If you respond to hatred with hatred, said Buddha, hatred will never end." "They no longer fight in the street." "They sit down and let their hair be cut to show solidarity with their priests." "Now, they will confront the helmets of Diem with their shaved skulls." "Many of them will enter the monasteries in search of the lost truth which teaches how to create our inner silence and listen to it, how to kill desire and passion to enjoy the perfect gladness of the fading flame." "The revolt of the Buddhists in Saigon followed the first public suicide of last May 11, when the monk Ching Thien Dien demonstrated with a terrible act that Buddha himself would condemn, that in order to fight any form of persecution with equal arms," "even Buddhism needs martyrs." "They were beautiful, superb, elegant, bright and light snowflakes." "Livingstone used to say:" ""The Masai, the Kikuyu, the Samburu, the Watussi are dark men with white souls."" "Each evening, at dusk, I see them soaring over me, filling the sky with ancient, endless flights." "The white Flamingos of the Magadi lake have always lived here." "In all the African continent, they have chosen only these shores to breed and prosper." "Then, years ago the English built a factory of soda that dumped tons of poisoning waste into these waters." "The eggs rot, the chicks die after a pitiful agony." "The adults now fly higher and higher through the African sky until they disappear." "Another unusual aspect of the war declared by mankind on birds, since the beginning, is offered by the Chinese in Singapore." "The birds fighting in this cage are two musical blackbirds, a specimen that is about to disappear." "The feeling that pushes them to the mortal combat is not an inborn sense of revolt, but a kind of occasional hatred, produced by the breeders with a pretty basic method." "For weeks, they keep the birds in two separate but very close cages and while one of the two is abundantly fed, the other is almost starved to death." "Naturally, the birds will not fight a very friendly match and it's taken for granted that the weakest of the two will be the first to die." "But the Chinese audience doesn't care." "They follow the fight not as a sport, but to see the great spectacle of death, provided it'll be cruel and, most of all, slow." "It would seem impossible to have two small fish fight in a fishbowl, but the Chinese can do it." "They discovered that a certain kind of fish that live in the rice fields, when immersed in a solution of fermented camphor and water, become affected by a kind of madness that force them to fight to death." "This kind of spectacle is chiefly dedicated to kids, who follow attentively the phases of the fight, and wait for that great ending that always enchants the Chinese people:" "The triumph of death." "One people that currently numbers over 500 million." "This aquarium is bigger and so are the fish." "But we are in America, where everything is more voluminous." "It's the Marineland pool, in Honolulu, where a swimmer enacts a fight with a shark." "He starts by crossing himself and faces danger." "The sharks have been fed abundantly to avert any temptation and the audience follows attentively the phases of the fight, waiting for that great ending that forever, at all ages, fascinates the American people:" "The triumph of life." "One people that currently numbers only 300 millions." "20 years ago there were 2,000 Elbogo, today, only 50 are left." "They only live in one village, on the eastern shores of the Lake Victoria." "Their territory, as big as a province, is arid and desolated." "Their only food is crocodile meat, which they capture at the source of the river." "It's white meat that eases hunger and doesn't taste too bad." "The problem is that eating crocodile every day kills the seed of life in the men." "Still, today too, at the village, they eat crocodile." "Presently the Elbogo are just a small, sterile and resigned tribe whose hunger and no variety of food have doomed to extinction." "In the last 30 years, at the village only one child was born:" "Their last, fragile hope." "His name is Siba, he's 7 years old." "Today is an exceptional day for him." "The fishermen came back with a big fish, all for him." "Because Siba, in order to grow healthy and strong and have many children in the future, must not eat crocodile every day." "It's one of those large carps that seem to be made of gold and are rarely caught." "It'll be all his for a whole week and no one will claim even the smallest piece of it." "Still, Siba is sad." "He's a lonely little boy unable to share the joy of such a wonderful fish." "But in our world, where we don't eat crocodile every day, women has always been the biggest business of all times." "Take, for instance, pulp fiction books." "You'd think they sell for what's inside?" "Not a chance." "They sell for what's outside." "This is a big American studio that specializes in photos for pulp fiction books." "The recipe is always the same." "Take a girl, al dente, if you can, cut her in small pieces, let her brown lightly and serve her cold, bleeding rare." "Slavery has been abolished all over the world, as the late Hammarskjöld wrote two years ago when he was the UN Secretary-General." "The infamous slave markets are only a sad memory of long ago." "True." "Except for this one." "We discovered it, risking our life, between Aden and Mukalla, on the coasts of the Red Sea." "These girls are Somali, Ragandi, Nanda," "Kikuyu." "All of them are between 12 and 16." "They cost somewhere near 1/2 million liras each and before they get old in the oriental whorehouses, they will yield 20 times more." "We are sorry for referring to the U.N. Again, but we have something to add." "We have the testimony of this English officer," "Lieutenant Marlon Steel, from the 3rd district of the Maridi's military police." "On May 6, they arrested, in Kivu, five slave dealers, guilty of using these tools of torture on the Bakudu kids so they can beg and evoke the people's pity with their deformed bodies." "We feel pain and outrage for lingering on the images of this terrible document." "This is also painful and outrageous for this young" "English officer performing the inspection." "But that's his duty." "To you, to us, to the whole world that calls itself civilized and feels at peace with itself and with God, this is a screaming indictment." "Yes, if we use so many expressions like "dog's life"," ""dog's weather," "to die like a dog" and, most of all, "dog's world", there must be a reason." "Look at this poor dog, tied up to a post, under the scorching dog's heat." "You know what they want from him?" "To bring on rain." "This is the sacrifice offered to the Rain God during the long droughts, by the Nandi, in the equatorial Africa." "Sudan is an eternally thirsty African region." "On a territory of about 80 thousand hectares, it only rains one month a year." "The few dewdrops that fall overnight on the large leaves of these plants are a treasure that the women pick up with a trembling hand." "The water festival in Brussels, under the Mannequin Pisse." "They say that the girls who drink from this incontinent character's so called faucet will get married within the year and will have at least 8 children." "The water festival goes on through the night at the "Urinal", a fashionable spot whose name doesn't need to be explained." "Truthful to the good taste of the event, the strippers are wrapped in "pink toilet paper."" "The spirit of Mannequin Pisse flies through the sprinkles." "The paper melts, while the water pours down gurgling through the toilet drain." "The allegory is complete." "There are no metaphors here." "These are cows in the real sense of the word and this is a service station for their wash and lube." "Americans are a practical people and don't give a damn about our European skepticism." "To them, a cow is a machine to produce milk, therefore it has to be well lubricated." "They would even put them in evening dresses if that provided a few more liters." "America trusts cows so much that last year it shipped 300 of them to the Elmolo region, a depressed area in the heart of Africa, on the southern banks of lake Rudolf, where cows were, till then, unknown." "Morally speaking, it was undoubtedly a commendable initiative." "But in practice, the Americans overlooked the fact that cows, in spite of their tails, don't have the same organic structure as crocodiles and they need to eat grass to survive." "Last year there were 300 cows, but now, over half of them have starved to death." "The others survive by eating the algae gathered by the Elmolos, thanks to their tiresome immersions into the lake." "But when the wind doesn't allow the cows to pasture in the lake, the women must pick up, leaf after leaf, their meager forage throughout this desolate stony ground." "A hard job, unknown before the arrival of the cows." "Poor Elmolos!" "They still don't know that 500 sheep are coming from Australia!" "Meanwhile, the indigenous of Sukarno made a similar kind of mess in New Guinea." "In conformity with the UN deliberation to encourage the sense of politics among their tribe, especially in the wake of the elections, they started to deliver a government supportive newspaper in the villages." "This is similar to the cows' story because these indigenous are illiterate." "Nonetheless, even though sending newspapers to the illiterate seems a little too optimistic during the elections, we can't deny that, in New Guinea as well, political chatters end up, one way or the other," "meeting the real goal they are written for:" "To blow smoke in the eyes of the constituency." "Elections or not, every Sunday afternoon the famous Hyde Park in London fills up with aspiring advocates who promise a lot to the people in a particularly embellished language." "Each man must have a rose, each woman a jasmine." "Each boy a tulip." "Turn the world into a garden." "Total your neighbors houses and plant flowers on their land." "Flowers of every color:" "White, red, black, green, large and small." "But Hyde Park heard worse than that, during the centuries of traditional tolerance for the English wandering politics." "I speak to all of you white men who are listening." "The era of the blacks oppressing the whites in slavery is over." "You white men must have the same rights we have!" "Do not think you are inferior to the blacks for the only reason that you're white, is that clear?" "Yes!" "So, white man, why don't you rebel?" "Because I'm a poor red!" "And whose fault is it?" "The government's, your honor." "When the English seem to discover inside of them the germ of the political vocation, they come here, in search of an audience." "Even if the audience consists of one individual waiting for the bus, they call him "people"" "and yell their political recipe at him." "Usually the people shrug and move on, yet sometimes, here too, someone is taken seriously, and earns a seat at the Parliament." "This man speaks so highly about "Perfumes."" "Don't you smell the stench of vice?" "Don't you smell the stench of sin?" "Wash your dirty souls and free them with a purifying bath." "Don't remain nailed to the earth, raise your heads." "Raise your heads, do you hear me, people?" "Raise your heads!" "Raise your heads!" "Men, turn away your eyes from us women." "Our body, full of lust, is your tomb." "I've been working for six months to prepare this speech I wrote for the masses." "What are the masses?" "Who put them so down below?" "Who messed with the masses so massively?" "They massively obey the bosses of masses." "The masses are a mess." "Some go to the Mass, some others just miss it." "After the space, we must conquer the time." "My government will destroy all the watches." "Why only the watches?" "Let's kill the time, instead." "But destroying watches is not enough." "Watchmakers might make more clocks!" "Kill the time!" "You must avoid temptation." "I will destroy the watchmakers!" "Plant lots of flowers!" "... to kill the time!" "Give them water!" " Do you smell the stench?" " Water the cyclamens!" "Horrible stench of sin!" "Plant violets!" "The stench!" "Lots of mimosas!" " They smell good!" " Do you smell the stench?" " They smell good!" " No!" "Undoubtedly, politics can often highly elevate their representatives." "Take Thomas Jefferson, for instance, who ended his career at an altitude of fifty feet." "Every year, in early summer," "America reenacts, with this historical performance at Tombstone, the most glorious pages of her history." "The most shining pioneers of modern democracy, like Jesse the Bandit, Joe the Ripper, Bloody Jim, or the killers of the O.K. Corral, et cetera, come back to life, or rather, to death," "on the very stage of their epic deeds." "The men's pride and the kids instinct for imitation are the gems of this magic program, even though this year, the show is missing some of the most famous lynching of black men." "The grand finale is always the happiest moment." "Tombstone, America, is where peace triumphs over violence." "No more shooting in Tombstone." "Tombstone, in English, means "grave"." "Anyway, everything is preset in the best way." "All you have to do is chose, according to your taste or your means." "From $100 to $20,000." "This Los Angeles store makes credit deals too." "Their slogan:" ""Die now, pay tomorrow"" "has been very successful." "When you reach the age to have a stroke, you go to the store with your future widow and choose." "She's always the one who chooses." "Usually, the one who also chooses is a clerk, who is about the husband's size." "After her 4th or 5th widowhood, she's now an expert and teaches in a college." "Her students are future gravediggers, embalmers, restorers of the state of California." "These fake human heads, worn out by the stress of modern life, are made of synthetic materials and all of them are men's heads." "In America, a woman is immortal and her departure is not contemplated." "At the age of only 84, Mrs. Agatha Connie Russel passed away in her Pasadena house." "It's something no one was prepared for and it caught everybody by surprise." "Nonetheless, thanks to the embalmer's job," "Mrs. Russel is still there, sitting stiffly on her couch, making sure the guests have fun with the appropriate sadness." "Maybe today Mrs. Agatha looks a little more tolerant than usual with her husband who, after one too many, lets himself go to a sort of behavior that Mrs. Agatha would have never granted him." "Meanwhile, during the funeral cocktail offered to the family's friends who gathered around the dear embalmed body, the guests drink the prescribed amount of whisky and tears:" "One tear for each glass." "OK, we are on the other face of the earth, but do we have a reason to be cheerful?" "Let's face it, we have also struggled for a whole year." "Why should a silly pretext like the carnival be sufficient to suddenly make us so happy?" "The thing is, for months, we have done nothing but being harassed and now it's time for us to get even." "Tomorrow, the newspapers will say, with one of their cliché expressions that the crowd was having a fit of collective madness." "Please!" "This is not collective madness!" "This is a security valve that starts whistling just when the boiler is about to explode." "The newspapers will also report "some unpleasant incident caused by the usual hoodlums."" "Well, yes." "We are those hoodlums." "But do you know how many we are?" "Tens, hundreds of millions." "Damn it!" "Why don't we have a flag?" "Luckily so, in our South there still are nice young men who can express their exuberance in accordance with order and legality." "In spite of any gossip, these are the roosters of our South." "At midnight they will wisely go to bed with their cockiness." "The girls already went to bed with the chickens" "which gives this landscape an unusual atmosphere of peace and quiet." "It's a springtime Sunday morning." "The quiet people of Vaturi, a Sardinian village that looks like a nowhere land, are heading to the main square to attend the traditional recital of the "hard heads"." "They think that the people from Vaturi have the hardest heads of the entire island." "The village is proud of this acknowledgment, which implies some sort of supremacy." "So every year they intend to keep reaffirming with some kind of little Olympiad, which can even offer some thrills." "To avoid more unpleasant fractures, this year, the participants are required to have their heads examined at the hospital before using them." "Silence, now." "And let's start." "EVERYBODY ON THE PIAZZA" "You see?" "They made it." "To hit your head against a wall with the supreme intent of breaking your head and the wall is a manly act in which we believe with all our support." "Heroic people of our depressed and underdeveloped South, who run to your dining table at the rhythm of your southern drums, anonymous crowd that finally awoke and without wearing the helmet of Scipio, have broken your head, you are all of us!" "Yes, I admit it, I am not very intelligent, but I'm able to do many, many things and I have lots of things in my mind." "Things I..." "I can do." "I think I can make it 'cause I feel I'm strong, I have strong... muscles." "So I admit it." "I'm not real intelligent but the fact is... when I was a kid, couldn't... couldn't go, 'cause I had little..." "I had something else..." "We cannot expect much more from a southern aspiring actor after the tough trial of the shutters." "But this crowd that, in a small southern town, wants at all cost a movie audition, without giving us the joy of exceptional discoveries, has nonetheless confirmed that in these areas people have an unusual tendency to hit one's head against" "something hard, be it shutters or cameras." "Lonely Heart." "Take one!" "What life is this?" "Always sad, always lonely." "Without any comfort, with no one to help me, to tell me a nice word." "L..." "I can't, I can't go on like this." "Many times I tried to find somebody, a person to get along with, I mean a friend, a friend for my heart." "So, what's left for me to do?" "Mind your own business!" " No." "Try to be angry." " Mind your own business!" "Sarcastic." "Mind your own business!" " I'm smart, you know?" " Mean it!" " I'm smart, you know?" " I said:" "Mean it!" "I'm smart, you know?" " Mean it!" " I am smart, you know?" " Ok, cool, now." " I am smart, you know?" "22." "Take one!" "Carlo, Vincenzo and Franco sent me... they screwed me up!" "Carlo stole my cattle, my sheep, my horses, my cows." "But Franco stole my love that I love so much..." "The Vampire." "Take 11 I" "I was finally able to kill my uncle Giovanni, but... but what shall I do with his body?" "To keep it at home is not possible." "Sooner or later they'll smell the stench." "Seventeen!" "And what did you prepare for us?" "The scene at the hospital with a dramatic ending." "Where am I?" "I'm in a hospital room." "What happened?" "Oh, I see my friends!" "Franco, Arturo, Giovanni!" "Mariol What happened?" "Oh, now I remember!" "Oh, yesterday, the bus!" "..." "Yes, I'm coming to help you." "Yes!" "Oh, my God, my legs are failing..." "Clapping!" "Take two!" "And why do you want to be an actor?" "Because I like to travel, I like women, I like money." "I like to travel across all Provinces, especially Castevetrano, in the Agrigento Province, the Trapani province because I'm from" "Montallegro, in the Agrigento Province," "I'm Sicilian and I..." "I want to travel because..." "I like women, I want to find blond women, beautiful women, 'cause I'm tired of being in Sicily." "They're all rednecks, derelicts, they're all..." "Oh holy knife, get rusty in my heart and make me die." "God, who joined our hands, before they belonged to another, with this very hand will hit my heart!" " Bravo!" " Thirteen!" "What is your piece de resistance?" " Love at the station." " Go on, then." "Bruna, please, don't leave." "I won't do that thing again." "Conductor, please stop the train!" "Thank you, conductor." "She was my greatest love." "There are many ways to act on a stage, but the way chosen by Achilles Gropulus, a Greek artist in search of fame in Paris, is the one we definitely like the least." "Surrounded by an atmosphere so phony you can smell it from a mile away, the brave Achilles performs a kind of painting that he defines as "stomatic", which, in spite of what we see, doesn't mean stomach sickening," "but mouth painting, from Greek "stoma" for mouth." "He also created all the terms meant to name all the ingredients of his stomach-sickening minestrone." "The horrid hogwash he obtains by mixing the colors in his mouth is called" ""Divine Vomitus of the Master"." "These poor wretches who keeps jumping until they spit it on the canvas are the Stomatitis." "This is the "stomatary" which, make no mistake, doesn't mean spittoon, but "surface hosting the spits being spit by the stomatitis."" "And the final work, once accomplished, is completed by the Master's stomach-sickening signature." "Here's another one." "He has been ordered to make ten paintings to illustrate the German edition of Divine Comedy and he's preparing the sketches in the right atmosphere." "But this time the thing is more serious:" "This is the German Horst Sonnering, the same who won the Gunther prize for painters in 1958." "Alas?" "What happened to the sacred respect for art?" "Of the 9 Muses, 8 are slapped in the face daily." "There's still some respect for the 9th one:" "Music." "Today, thank God, a concert is still a concert!" "Nobody, as yet, has ever slapped music on its face." "Do you hear them?" "They want an encore." "We know that too:" "Encores should never be granted." "But when the audience claps and asks for an extra dose, how can one, in this dog's world, refuse to give the other cheek?"