The Neapolitan brute named Zion, also known as the Genny Savastano of Debaser, with a gun-shaped babà, while playing the mandolin ‘n’ coppa o’ Vesuvio, has been threatening me for days because he wants me to write about his first gay love, that is, the Gabibbo. I’ll oblige him, even though it seems that other delightful Debaser individuals also want me to write about him: the two Sardinian bandits Puddu and Malloreddus, aka Stanlio and Iside (the latter has taken poor Faust’o hostage in a nuraghe on the slopes of the Gennargentù) and my fellow citizen Confaloni, also known as the Vallanzasca of Bovisa. So I oblige everyone (including Withor, who has just removed the Edoardo Bennato holy card from his car and replaced it with his brother Eugenio’s; DannyRose, who, rumor has it, was spotted front row at a Ligabue concert trying to strip in the middle of the crowd; and the Bot, who found love and happiness in the arms of G, ready to lull him to sleep with a shrill yodel; not to mention others, true Gabibbo fans, like Fabriguitar, or Pier Paolo Farina 00, as well as the legendary Cofas, also known as the Nosferatu of the Dark Web, and MacMaranza, Mr. Eighties, also known as "Dame ‘n’ ombra de vin").

As I was saying, the Gabibbo. So, let’s immediately clarify that the Gabibbo is a southerner. What? you’ll say, he’s from Liguria. But you know absolutely nothing, you wretches. Ricci Antonio, born in Albenga, a little town on the Ligurian coast about thirty kilometers from Sanremo (where the reviewer parked his rear for 17 long summers), aside from the homonymous plains and the small airfield of Villanova d'Albenga (the hamlet where Paolo Villaggio was born), saw the birth of the aforementioned Ricci, the inventor of “Striscia la Notizia” and other cults, and he drew inspiration for the Gabibbo’s character from a puppet from a well-known American college we couldn’t care less about. But more interestingly, the name—where does Gabibbo come from? It derives from “Habib,” an Arabic word that means “Beloved,” but the Genoese used it, many decades ago, to indicate those who didn’t live in Liguria, who came from elsewhere (in particular the dockers from the port of Massaua) and it’s, in effect, the forerunner of the term “terrone” [southerner]. So, if someone calls you terrone be offended, but if they call you Gabibbo it’s even worse. I’m copying from Wikipedia, and may Friulian MacMaranza confirm:

“The term originated after the mid 1800s, when the Genoese shipowner Raffaele Rubattino purchased for 15,000 thalers the Bay of Assab in Eritrea (1869) and made it the base of his Red Sea trade. ‘Cabibbo’ or ‘cabibo’ are similarly used in Julian dialects (Triestino, Bisiaco), and Venetian, in which the word ‘terrone’ remained almost unknown until its diffusion via television (cf. dialect dictionaries of Trieste and Bisiaco): here too, the maritime vocation of Trieste helped spread the term.”

The Gabibbo speaks Ligurian: Besugo (that is, dumb), Belandi, abbesugato, and so on. Becoming known on TV in the early ‘90s, someone thought it best to turn him into a singer, and compared to him, Gigi D’Alessio seems like Mozart. And so we saw him involved in a series of songs that would shape the collective imagination of us ‘90s and early 2000s kids. There are some things I’ll never forget, and if you have, you’re real Gabibbi.

The first fanfare came in 1990 with “Ti spacco la faccia” (“I’ll smash your face in”). Oh man, it sold a ton and was the eleventh best-selling single of the year in Italy. Why, how come, since when, why oh why, it’s easy to explain. These little songs were then remixed in club versions and, especially in the summer, blasted at full volume in every seaside tourist spot in the Belpaese (and boy was it great). Basically, in 1990, when there were still some juke-boxes scattered here and there, you could switch between listening to “Vattene amore” and “Ti spacco la faccia” (if anyone feels nostalgic for those days, I’ll really smash your face in). The song was hallucinogenic, like a lysergic flash, in which our hero went after those who pretended to be rich (or actually were) and liked to flaunt their wealth, basically today’s influencers, though we didn’t know it then. I mean, if I met one of these influencers I’d gladly smash their face in. Read for yourselves, skeptics:

You got a face-lift with a leasing
You get drunk on saunas
You’ve got branded underwear
I like you
You’ve got twenty credit cards
And you’re renovating a country house
Mea, I like you…
I’ll smash your face in!

You’re a beautiful top model
You’ve got an SUV in the city
You’ve got a satellite dish
I like you
You’ve got a mobile phone
You down herbal teas and kiss me by fax
Mea, I like you…
I’ll smash your face in!

Then there was “My name is Gabibbo”, where Gabibbo tried to charm the women by pretending to be a playboy, and got mad at anyone who called him a puppet (“Puppet me? Puppet you”). Oh, I should mention that Gabibbo wasn’t alone. (Ah, you really don’t know anything, do you—I have to explain it all). So, Gabibbo is married, in fact there’s a Gabibba (she appeared in a few episodes of “Paperissima” thirty years ago) and he even has kids, the Gabibbini. Anyway, here’s the link to the best Italian Youtuber, Yotobi, who will explain everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8PV9FtvqU

The Gabibbo’s hits are endless—honestly, do you want me to tell you all of them now? Besides, it seems that Boss Zion has come down from Vesuvius, doesn’t care about Gabibbo anymore (maybe he’ll ask me for a review on Rockfeller the crow, who also made records) and I’m getting tired. Go listen to them yourselves, but what memories. I mean, Gabibbo was a philosopher, he caught onto all the fads of the moment. For example, in 1996 D’Alema’s “Fu Fu Dance” craze exploded, and Gabibbo made a song about it, then he hummed a monstrous hit about garbage (la rumenta, as they say in Genoese), and sticking it to the old and useless Heraclitus, he comes straight out and reveals his Panta Rei:

“Everything comes and everything goes in the trash,” and you’re still there studying philosophy?

The Gabibbo’s voice has never been just one—unfortunately some have passed away and today, persistently, Lorenzo Beccati carries on the mantle. But Gabibbo by now is just a saying, he doesn’t have the TV presence he did twenty years ago, and many young people today don’t even know him. Plus, he doesn’t even work as a reporter anymore (on “Striscia la Notizia,” years ago, there was the segment “Dillo al Gabibbo”—if you had any kind of problem he would intervene and solve it), but he could still be useful. In a world ruled by terror and wars, why not appoint Gabibbo to the prestigious position of Foreign Minister, instead of that big chard Tajani. Imagine it: we send him around to mediate between Netanyahu and Putin.

“Will you stop exterminating people in Gaza?”; “No”; “Mea, I’ll smash your face in.”

“Will you stop bombing Ukraine?”; “No”; “Belandi, besugo d’un besugo, I’ll smash your face in.”

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