It's a cute ad, part of the new "Luck is an Attitude" campaign to push Martini on a younger generation. The aggressively flirtatious nature of Italian culture may rub some the wrong way, but it's actually pretty common there. I like the way Gianni keeps re-syching with his more passive self so that the day never really diverges except in sexiness and fun. And the vintage Italian film style and music certainly fit the brand.
The most infectious tune ever written was apparently revisited in the new Muppet Movie (which I have yet to see) but I recall it best from the golden age of Sesame Street:
Slate tracked down the original song to, of all places, a 1968 Italian soft-core movie called Sweden: Heaven and Hell by Luigi Scattini.
From Amazon: "Edmund Purdom narrates a pseudo-documentary about sexuality in Sweden. It shows contraceptives for teen girls, lesbian nightclubs, wife swapping, porno movies, biker gangs, and Walpurgis Night celebrations. It also examines Sweden's purported drug, drinking and suicide problems. It features the original appearance of the Piero Umiliani's nonsense song 'Mah Nà Mah Nà' which was later popularized by 'Sesame Street' and 'The Muppet Show'"
Piero Umiliani, according to Wikipedia, "composed the scores for many exploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s, covering genres such as spaghetti western, Eurospy, Giallo, and soft sex films. Although not as widely regarded as, for example, Ennio Morricone or Riz Ortolani, he helped form the style of the typical European 1960s and 1970s jazz influenced film soundtrack, that later experienced a revival in films such as Kill Bill, and "Crepuscolo Sul Mare" in Ocean's Twelve."
In other words, he may be the most awesome composer you've never heard of. But Henson heard it when it briefly charted on US radio, and gave it eternal life.
Here's the original clip. It is pretty uncontroversial.
Not quite as outrageous as Sinead's attack, but still newsworthy.
According to their Livejournal (via Google Translate):
"Alexandra Shevchenko, past the police and security services, made her way into the center of the Vatican in St. Peter's Square and staged topless just share during Sunday Mass under the balcony of the Pope, deploying a banner reading 'Freedom for women.'
In this way, activists protested the papal patriarchal propaganda manipulated by the medieval idea of a woman's social and cultural mission. Condemnation of the use of contraceptives, the international ban on the abortion lobby, the correction of clothing and appearance of women, the ban on women in the ordained - a fetid belch a witch hunt. Sexist policies Vatican has its downside in the form of a wave of sexual crimes committed by clergy against children and women. The women's movement FEMEN favor of a free woman, devoid of prejudice, despising all forms of patriarchal slavery, blatant of which was and remains a church!
FEMEN caused panic among Vatican intelligence. Journalists were brutally dispersed, the Italian journalists dutifully adopted a ban on shooting, and were not only arrested the activist movement FEMEN, but also a journalist from Australia. The promoters of the movement had more than four hours in the Roman police, and only under pressure from the media escaped deportation."
Originally from Ukraine, FEMEN are on a tour of Europe to promote women's rights and stick it to the man.
Weirdness, pretentiousness, awesomeness and lots and lots of nudity — for the 20th anniversary of this particular outreach, the Lavazza coffee company serves up everything you would expect of an Italian calendar.
According to PopSop, Lavazza asked 12 photographers who had shot its previous editions to take self-portraits.
L'albero di Fecondità ("the tree of fertility") is a fascinating piece of medieval art history and/or political propaganda that was unexpectedly uncovered in the central town fountain of Massa Marittima, Tuscany, at the turn of this century.
If you click to enlarge the image. you'll note something rather odd about the fruits of this tree:
Yeah, that's right. It's a penis tree. Uncovered during restorations, it was hailed as a glimpse into the medieval world of political insult (note the German eagles — then representing the Holy Roman Empire and its Ghibelline faction) in flight, while a group of women look on. The women have also been interpreted as witches performing a ritual in which severed male members were placed in birds' nests. Yeah, mediaeval artists were weird.
When first discovered, the fresco lay underneath a layer of whitewash, and the penises had been plastered over with inoffensive flowers. But that was not to be the last indignity the work was to suffer.
This summer, after years of restoration, the fertility tree was re-opened to the public. Art historians were not impressed. The restoration team were accused of fading out the phalluses, and in some cases, gelding them:
Chief restorer Giuseppe Gavazzi denied there had been any intention to remove the penises that have disappeared and said: 'It's possible that the aggressive nature of the chemicals used made them disappear.
'It was not a deliberate act. People have to remember that the fresco was already in a very poor condition when we started work on it and the restoration was carried out accordingly.
It's difficult to find "after" photos online, but La Nazione had this screencap:
