Woman. Legend. Blog. - American cynicism. Russian fatalism. Nutella.

I am writing this post because I have been Wronged by the Internet.

You know how there are sometimes memes that dig up “a really cool video from 1963?” and then everyone starts passing it around and acting like it’s the greatest thing since LOLcats? Well, [

I am writing this post because I have been Wronged by the Internet.

You know how there are sometimes memes that dig up “a really cool video from 1963?” and then everyone starts passing it around and acting like it’s the greatest thing since LOLcats? Well,](http://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/gibberish-rock-song.html) Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano and it’s been making its way around Teh Webz and all these people are like, “Oh my gosh, what a cool concept! This guy is crazy! How could anyone come up with that!” And, “Oh! Some Italian guy did it. Wonder who he is”

Only the sexiest man alive. And in my top five list of musicians. (Vladimir Vystosky is number one). Also, I totally knew about Adriano Celentano first. Why? It’s required by Russian law that every child born between 1960 and present day know about the awesomeness that is Adriano Celentano, along with any and every singer that appeared in Italy on stage during the 1970s.

This mandate proved to be an unfortunate course of action for me because I was constantly made fun of by my friends. One day as I was waiting for the bus after school, my friend asked me what I was listening to on my CD player. “Felicita,” I told her brightly. “What, ” she asked with the same expression as if I had told her I was listening to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of the Universe on audiobook.

“Felicita,” I said,

“Oh,” she said, and, after two minutes of squinting into my headphones, shyed away from me as if I were leprous.

From then on, I kept my Italians to myself. When I was 14 or 15, I started listening to our Celentano “Best of CD” with an intensity that can only be matched by my love for Nutella. I memorized a majority of the CD, including my favorite songs, “Il Tuo Bacio Come Un Rock”

and, based off the American, “Preghero”

You get the picture. I was 64 years old at 15.

I had no idea what any of these songs meant until I started going so Italian-crazy that I started teaching myself Italian in 11th grade. It helped that it was at that point that I acquired an Italian-American boyfriend and I went to great lengths to convince him that he should also learn Italian, because, he didn’t know his own mother language? said the girl who wouldn’t learn Hebrew for two more years.

I am writing this post because I have been Wronged by the Internet.

You know how there are sometimes memes that dig up “a really cool video from 1963?” and then everyone starts passing it around and acting like it’s the greatest thing since LOLcats? Well, [

I am writing this post because I have been Wronged by the Internet.

“Felicita,” I said,

“Oh,” she said, and, after two minutes of squinting into my headphones, shyed away from me as if I were leprous.

and, based off the American, “Preghero”

You get the picture. I was 64 years old at 15.

And, as I was driving him crazy, we were also reading A Farewell to Arms in English class, and I fell in love with Italy all over again. I would listen to Preghero over and over in the dark in my room before I went to bed at night and imagine Frederick Henry all warring it up in the Abruzzo and being called Tenente all over the place, as well as the landscapes of World War II Italy, placing him firmly in my list of Hot Fictional Guys, although not above Mercutio of Romeo and Juliette or](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_%28novel%29) (God. I can’t believe I ever emerged from nerddom to get married. And don’t even get me started on my Hot Dead Guys list, in which Alexander Hamilton was the foxiest of the Federalists.)

The zenith of my hyesteria was reached when a bunch of Italian artists from the 70s came to perform at Atlantic City, specifically for the Russian-speaking immigrants from New York and Philadelphia. Obviously I begged my parents to go, and, obviously, I was the only one under 40. But I had a blast. And, although Celentano couldn’t make it because he has this thing where he doesn’t fly anywhere, they still played some of his music, and I was extremely happy.

So, basically, Celentano was a central figure in my growing up, even though I took a lot of crap for it, kind of like Jews have always taken a lot of crap for being Jews even though they always only believed in one god.

So, Celentano is my thing. Not yours, Internet, not yours. You didn’t have to hide your Azzurro when your friends asked you what you were listening to and tell them Blink 182 and you didn’t have to hide your CDs the way some people hide porn when you had people over and you didn’t not tell your friends that what you did last weekend was compile a mix tape of Celentano and Toto Cutugno songs you thought would fit Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley’s relationship because the idea of having an affair in Milan seemed cooler than having a slurpie at the mall.

Now, apologize and give me my Adriano back.

And, get off my lawn.