Have You A Bell Bottom?

I thought weird translations were reserved for Asia, but apparently I'm wrong. This one appeared on a billboard (which I think was advertising pants...) with 5 naked men facing away from the camera. A large black line covered their buttocks, and in the line was written "Have you a bell bottom?" This isn't Engrish - it's Ingrese. My personal favorite was during some commercial on la telivisione, when this message appeared in large, happy letters: FUN YOU SPACE MONKEY! (I'm still working on that one...)

Then again, I'll bet my Italian is pretty warped at the moment. All I can really say right now is 'good, yes, I (don't) understand, okay, how's it going/it's going okay, thunder, and bubble' (bene, si, (non) ho capito, allora (which can basically mean anything you want it to), va bene, tuoni, e bolla). Molto helpful, I know (bubble really comes in useful in a pinch...). Oh yeah, and I know stocazzo, which is apparently a very very bad word, though no one will say what it means. I feel that it would not be prudent to go around saying it very often....

I must sound a bit retarded when I try to piece together sentences but at the moment it's a great achievement every time I'm able to say something that makes at least a little sense, such as "there are many trees" (ci sono molti alberi), or "I eat slowly" (io mangio lentamente). It's funny, though - I've been here less than a week, and already I speak more Italian than I ever spoke Spanish, which I studied for, what was it.... 8 years? That does give me hope, though! I may really be fluent-ish by December! And the people here are so helpful! If I have trouble with a verb, they'll conjugate it for me until I remember io through loro; if I mangle Italian horribly they still try so hard to understand, and they help me along as I try to say things.

If you're ever in Italy, there's only one word you need to know, and that is "molto." If someone gives you food and asks something or other, all you have to say is "molto," because they're asking you if it's good or if you like it or something along those lines. It doesn't matter how many times you've had the same meal, everyone wants to know if you like it every time every five bites. In basically every situation, people ask "is it pretty?" "Do you like it?" "Are you happy?" and "molto" works in every case. And in a pinch, you can just spout off "bene, bene, bella, bene, bello!" till your head spins.