I thought I had turned the corner on my monthly feature but I was wiped out Monday and on Tuesday I was invited to attend the Roger Daltrey concert (waiting for a photo). But today is officially Columbus Day so I’m going to bombard youse (not a typo) with several actual Italians.
First though, let me explain why I’m not going to bother with Columbus even though he is a source of great pride amongst Italians. Hell, government workers get the second Monday in October off for it which means he couldn’t have been completely evil as the politically correct revisionists have painted him. Seriously though, the reality is this…Christopher Columbus is a bit of an enigma and US primary school books are dead wrong about the man.
- Nobody knows what he looked like. He never had his portrait painted, therefore any image of him you see…FAKE.
- There are accounts from other crew members that he didn’t write Italian very well and he may have been from Portugal or Corsica, not Genoa. He may have also been a Jew who converted to avoid the Inquisition.
You can learn more about the mythology of Columbus from the awesome book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen.
Now to the Magliozzis!
These two brothers are another Italian foundation in NPR through their show Car Talk. When I was starting to listen more often, I found their show annoying. Besides, what kind of moron thinks his/her car could be diagnosed over the phone? A couple years later, I saw 60 Minutes do a story about them (I was living at my Grandma’s, it is an old people staple). I was wrong about the two, they do know cars because they run their own repair shop near Boston plus they’re both MIT graduates: I wouldn’t last a week there. The clincher to change my opinion was a segment they do called Stump the Chump. A caller describes a problem, they think it over really hard and give a solution. The caller follows up later to tell them and the audience if they were right. According to their site, they currently have a 67.8% success rate. Pretty impressive and I do computer/phone support for a living.
In closing, I make it no secret about how much I dislike Cars. To me it and its unnecessary sequel are weakest Pixar movies made. One bright spot was having Tom and Ray in Cars as Lightning McQueen’s original sponsors, probably the human equivalent of a rash cream or Prep H. I’m sure they were a hoot in the studio.
More can be learned about them here.