Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

At just about this exact time of year in 2011, we were preparing for a trip to Italy, and my Red Sox were sitting on top of a very comfortable lead in the race for the American League pennant. When we returned home two weeks later, the lead had vanished, and the Sox were gagging on chicken wings on their way to an ignominious collapse. Not to alarm my fellow BoSox fans, but we’re getting ready to travel to Italy again, and the Sox lead is looking uncomfortably fat.Uneasy as I may be about leaving them behind on their own, I must repeat that one of the things I truly love about travel abroad is the opportunity it affords to shut out all the American things that occupy one's mind on a daily basis. This year in particular, I’m not only looking forward to being blithely unaware for a few weeks of the Sox progression toward the post season, but more keenly getting a respite from watching the Mueller pot that never seemed to boil.    Until yesterday, of course…when finally we got to see some tiny bubbles boil ever so gently up from the bottom…like an upside down snow globe. Manafort and Cohen, the Con Man-in-Chief’s former campaign manager and personal lawyer, found guilty and pled guilty respectively in one glorious afternoon for Lady Justice, who’s got a legit claim to #MeToo.  There are still a few days left before we board our plane for Italy, and maybe Robert Mueller will give Lorna and me what we most want for a 50thanniversary present: a Trump indictment (or at least a red-hot, stinging report that spares no details.)If it doesn’t happen before we leave, I’ll be content to enjoy the news blackout. Italy, sadly, has nativistic, xenophobic troubles of its own, but this is where not really knowing the language helps. Not that I take that bizarre but typical American pride in only being able to speak English. I have been trying…as always. Leading up to this trip, for instance, I’ve immersed myself in Italian cinema…Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino , all of Fellini…most recently Bertolucci’s 1900. I learned that Bertolucci was unhappy with the title that was imposed on him. He called his film Novecento (Twentieth Century) because it was about the century. But marketing concerns that it would not translate well forced the change to 1900, which is totally misleading since the film doesn’t take place in 1900 and its story doesn’t even begin until 1908.But I digress. Donald Sutherland is the villain of Novecento, a black-shirted Fascist who manipulates a widow out of her home, rapes and murders a young boy, and ties a kitten to a wall and kills it by ramming it with his head. Sutherland’s character, none too subtly named Attila, is about as close to a big screen manifestation of Donald Trump as we’re likely to have for some time. And in his character’s demise, as depicted in the scene below, I can only imagine how happy I would be to return home after our sojourn and turn on MSNBC to see Trump’s demise playing out similarly on a continuous loop.  While on vacation, The Nob will continue to publish, featuring excerpts from my new upcoming novella Now Playing Black Panther. Arrivederci.