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February 2008 archives
Milan's first public catwalk offered even average Giovannis a Right Said Fred moment.
Last Friday night in the heart of this business-like city -- the stock exchange -- anyone could strut their stuff on a runway.
Out of fashion but on the runway...
Called "Out of Fashion" (fuorimoda) it was one of the few events during women's fashion week open to a public more likely to get hit in the head by Naomi Campell's flying cell phone than invited to a hot show or glam after party.
The community catwalk is the latest attempt to make fashion week more palatable for locals who are pushed out of taxis and find all decent restaurants booked by Pradamatons who disdain carbohydrates.
Past tries -- a big screen broadcasting the shows for schmucks heading down into the metro, a contest for the most elegantly-dressed local -- have met with less favor than stilettos at the beach.
Out of Fashion, though, was another timely happening from non-profit association Esterni, whose penchant for organizing urban fun and games runs from the Couch Potato Strike (bring your remote control, get in free) and taking back normally unused spaces during design week for al fresco lounging and DJ sets.
This time, model citizens paid 5 euros to walk the public gauntlet -- accompanied by a minimal techno DJ set -- thus gaining admission to a "back stage" party in the square.
For courage, they were given anonymizing white jumpsuits (though you can see the hip young things hardly needed it). After walking the walk, they were encouraged to behave like famous mannequin counterparts, namely drinking and swapping clothes.
In a week when all we saw were inadvertently comical anti-anorexia initiatives and clothes we would never wear, it was a much needed runway moment.
Last November, the oft-maligned and overworked people who sort the mail for Lombardy decided they were as mad as hell and not going to take it any more.
They went on strike, letting snowdrifts of correspondence pile up in warehouses on the outskirts of Milan.
But for some reason, they didn't tell anyone. So instead of politely announcing a strike -- this is usually done well in advance and also contained to a few hours -- they stopped working and let the butterfly effect hit Italy's hardest-working region.
Some 200 tons of letters, bills, packages piled up before anyone realized that things weren't quite business as usual.
This is how I found myself in early February with the cell phone company threatening to cut off service because the credit card linked to the account had expired.
In the mean time, the bank had mailed a new credit card. And then another letter asking why I hadn't yet activated the card. I still haven't seen either of them.
No one has ever had much faith in the Italian postal system, I certainly have had my travails. But even though this time an Amazon Christmas shipment and another package had gone missing, it didn't seem out of the ordinary.
Mind you, there is no expression in italiano for "the check is in the mail," because no one puts anything of value in an envelope here.
You pay your bills at the post office (for a fee) or have them debited from your bank account (for a fee) and payments are almost always deposited directly.
And if moving my bank account from one branch to another when I changed neighborhoods didn't mean closing it (for a fee) and re-opening it (another fee) I would've probably been in my local branch to pay quarterly taxes or to wire money and the clerk would've likely warned me about the expiring card and given me a new one.
How did I find out that my telephonic lifeline was about to be cut off? The phone company sent a cryptic SMS which required two 45-minute calls, on my eurodime, to figure out what the problem was.
It took the better part of a workday to straighten it out, with an in-person visit across town to the bank, a fax to the phone company plus two more follow-up calls and an email.
The mail workers, appeased by a promise to hire more staff, are back to sorting the post again.
I know because a bill the phone company sent me in the meantime -- that will have to be paid at the post office since the debit didn't come through in time -- arrived yesterday.
The laws of cause and effect are peculiar and intricate, but they always catch up to you.
Though I was knee deep in fried treats last Tuesday and about 6,000 miles from California, I still voted in the Democratic primary.
Probably before you did, thanks to the time difference. As I wrote last week for Wired, Expat Dems cast a preference online, for the first time ever, instead of just sending absentee ballots that never get counted.
Democrats Abroad reckons that by now 20,000 party members abroad have voted (today's the last day for overseas e-votes); the expat bloc brings what may be a tie-breaking 22 delegates to the August convention.
The party woke up to the fact that the democratic diaspora exists and, though these scattered citizens have often opted to live without dryers, Walmart and beef jerky, they do want to vote. (Republicans Abroad opted out of the RNC and can't gather primary votes).
I voted for the first time in all my years abroad in the 2004 presidential elections.
Friends warned me it was like a heavy gym session on the day of a party: it won't make any difference, but you feel better about yourself for having made the effort.
Each state has different rules, time tables, procedures for requesting an absentee ballot, all of which must be deciphered months in advance.
Sometimes, the ballot and instructions arrive on time, more often they are waylaid by U.S. officials clueless about postage outside borders and proverbially lousy postal systems abroad.
Back then, I exercised my right at a faux Cajun restaurant in the fashionable Brera district. Polling stations on foreign soil often have a convivial air (Barcelona's Mardi Gras/Super Tuesday mash-up or New Delhi's restaurant get-together) but are unable to guarantee that votes will actually be counted. (Though if you're not interested in privacy or accuracy, one does have the option of faxing the vote in).
I clinked the ice around in a Negroni sbagliato, voted on a piece of paper, handed it to some guy who put it in an envelope and promised that the mail would go through the consulate system and thus, my voice would be heard.
The next morning listening to the outcome on the radio, I could be heard sniffing "whatever!" into my cappuccino.
Online voting definitely gets my vote, though the security is no where near perfect. It's still better than no vote at all.
There were some kinks in the registration process -- after which I still couldn't tell whether I had signed up for online voting or not -- and then a cryptic email that said I could vote anytime from GMT + 13 onwards from February 5th. (Basically, when the day turned in the farthest outpost, Jakarta, voting commenced).
Lori Steele, from the optimistically-named Everyone Counts which runs the e-primaries, told me that some states are already considering going digital for November.
It's the kind of empowerment that just might convince some of us it is time to come back home.
Today is not Super Tuesday. It's "Fat Tuesday," well, it is for anyone living outside the U.S. electoral tunnel.
Although Italians are following the primaries with all the morbid interest of a soap opera -- since their own government fell and the goings-on are all too dramatic -- they do have festive food in mind right now.
The problem with Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras in modern times is that all of the super-special treats that you're only supposed to gorge on during Carnival before buttoning up into Lent are readily available anyway.
Sicilian cannoli, for example, once used to only latch on to your thighs (with the chocolate chips ably reproducing themselves in cellulite) during this festive period. Other specialties, many once regional now national, can be found months before hand.
Shortly after Christmas, I spied with alarm a sign in a bakery announcing "early chiacchiere," which is the way out-of-season produce is hailed in the markets.
Now, I love pastry strips (baked or fried) with powdered sugar (the modern, heart-stopping variant: drizzled in chocolate) as much as the next person, but if I can eat them for more than a week, I'm in trouble.
The Italian food calendar was generous when the country was populated by starving peasants, now it's punishing. With all the treats crowded together on a calendar, maintaining one's bella figura is about as easy as keeping an Italian off a cell phone.
Even if one wanted to abide by Lent privations (and with the low number of practicing Catholics, who actually does?) the market is against them.
Farmer's association Coldiretti estimates that Italians will spend 120 million euros ($177 million) in Carnival sweets this year, that's 20 tons of apple fritters (frittelle di mele), struffoli, chiacchiere etc.
These fatten-you-up treats tend to be fried, for that same reason they tend to be bought rather than made at home. With this much business, it's no wonder that after Fat Tuesday, they'll still be beckoning Italians from bakery windows.
And by the time the colombe cakes and chocolate eggs come along for Easter, there's a chance that Italians will be patching together a new government then and can start really worrying about the next U.S. president.
