pop culture archives
For centuries, bigwigs have paid for paintings, having their portraits slipped in beside the saints for posterity while average locals filled in anonymously for color.
In Pisa, land of the leaning tower, the Archbishop monsignor Alessandro Plotti and Friends of Pisa Monuments and Museums Association recently decided that it was time for tax-paying citizens to participate, once again, in art.
Public casting sessions were held to find the 250 average Giovannis who will strike a pose for a fresco cycle recounting the life of Pisa's patron saint, San Ranieri. The 160 sq. meter opus (about 1,700 square feet) will decorate the church of St. Vito, where the protector of travelers is said to have died in 1161.
Naturally, there a few roles set aside for notable locals. Newspaper editor Francesco Carrassi will star as the monk who converts a barely 19-year-old Ranieri from music-loving scamp into a penitent, hairshirt-sporting holy man, played by Pisan actor Roberto Farnesi. (A familiar face for Americans used to admiring him as the drool-producing chef in English-language Barilla ads).
Other cameos include fencing champs Salvatore Sanzo and Simone Vanni while boxer Dario Cicchello will help row a boat with the saint inside ashore; the mayor, Archbishop, culture councilor and head of the "Friends" association have already started posing.
It'd be kind of nice to see the odd bluetooth ear piece or cell phone for a touch of modernity, but artist Luca Battini has assured that he'll produce a classical fresco, using only traditional techniques.
Locals will be wearing vintage, if not properly ancient, garb used in two Franco Zeffirelli films (loaned by costume archive Fondazione Cerratelli, headed by the director) namely Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Brother Son, Sister Moon (1972) on the early life of St. Francis of Assisi.
The painting process will take three years, the fly-on-the-wall would like to know how frenetic modern types fare in those endless, silent sittings.
Even dispiriting quantities of rain couldn't put a damper on Milan Design Week: there were a record 100,000 visitors, up 20% over last year, and news reports of traffic jams, crammed parking lots and taxi lines backed up into the fair building caused organizers to extend opening times by two hours.
Where Fashion Week mostly stumbles to get locals involved, Design Week delivers by whipping up a collective hysteria for chairs, lamps and free drinks. (A few quick photos of mine, here.)
There were 380 events and installations open to the general public about town, called Fuori Salone, I kicked off the week (which despite the title lasts five days) by viewing Peter Greenaway's multi-media take on The Last Supper. (If you happen this way before May 4, it's worth scratching your head at).
Economic gloom and doom seem a long way away from huge crowds fueled by free Red Bull, Nastro Azzurro and Campari. This year in the hip Tortona zone, perusers were required to get entry badges in exchange for an email address.
On Sunday afternoon, I became number 69,125 along with whole families and those cute, loved-up couples one notices then silently despises. Projects ranged from Andrea Branzi's Living Kitchen, a compact unit with bed, bike stand, shelves, desk and fridge, to a prototype from a trio of local design students for an iron-toaster.
Still, there are some notable differences for those with a little memory of what past editions were like.
Most of the showrooms in my neighborhood played it all too safe, the space that once had design students helping anyone who walked in off the street craft cool retro toys, this year showcased just one very expensive set of Japanese bathroom fixtures.
I ducked into some other spaces to find them dedicated to carpet (as common in Italy as beef jerky) or shelves. Corso Como, mecca for fashionistas, displayed a rather tame collection of Egg chairs. My favorite venue, an ex-pelota court, was home again to Established & Sons but most of the designs looked familiar from past seasons, the real crowd-draw was the addition of a full bar instead of just free beer.
Fair organizers report that despite foreign competition, the Italian furnishing sector exported 2.3 billion euros a year, up 9% from 2007 and 19,5% from 2005.
As long as the lounging is chic, the crowds will come even if it rains copiously for almost five days in a row.
Move over Duff beer: a red wine called "without bitterness" with a small part in a successful sitcom found a producer and debuts this week at Italy's premier wine fair, Vinitaly.
It first had a fictional cameo on "I Cesaroni," (The Cesaronis) a prime-time show airing on former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's flagship Canale 5.
It is one of a few modern shows about blended families with a Romeo-Juliet twist (like "Turkish for Beginners") -- just think "The Brady Bunch" with a little step-incest to spice things up.
Most of the actors are familiar faces -- the kind that crop up in cell-phone ads and it shows -- and while I'm not an especial fan of the rom-com there's something to be said for what may be the first TV show with a vino tie-in.
The grape got into the act in an episode that aired mid-March where gruff uncle Cesare and patriarch Giulio team up to buy a small vineyard, after a small lottery win.
The Cesare character's signature line is "che amarezza" (what bitterness) so it's fitting that the once-fictional wine was given a name, "Senz'Amarezza" that means it didn't leave a bad taste. While it's not the first time fiction crosses the line in Italy (the Nepotism game show comes to mind), at least this is positive product placement.
Respected family-run winery Cantina Cerquetta, producers since 1793, liked the idea so much they created an IGT blend of Merlot and San Giovese and a white Frascati, proving that real life sometimes goes down even smoother than fiction.
Italian middle school teacher Anna Ciriani had a hobby the PTA was never going to like: known as Madameweb, she starred in a number of erotic videos online. She's been suspended, but isn't giving up -- and is gaining support from those who say a teacher's personal life shouldn't matter.
The interesting thing about this Internet-based case: you'll have hard time locating the offending smut. Well, at least I did. There are a few teasing frames from a performance last month at the Venus-Berlin international porn fair -- she purportedly rides on the city's metro while taking her clothes off, much to the amusement of the commuters -- Cirani looking mischievous with her hands on the sides (holding up? pulling down?) of a straining white tube top.
Apparently, you have to be 14 or under to have the right kind of mad Google skills to ferret the goods out. Giving new meaning to the phrase "hot for teacher" it was her own students who outed her first, printing up nude images of her and wallpapering school bathrooms with them.
A teacher in the northeastern town of Pordenone, Cirani's habiliment and comportment on school grounds were said to be "impeccably professional," which makes one wonder how the kids unearthed her double life.
Youtube her nickname today and, instead of the porn, you'll find an invitation to comment on "how the internet has changed your life," and, for the media to constructively make use of these opinions in addition to the day's usual "prickly" hard news.
Cirani, according to news reports, hasn't renounced her profession, plans to contest her suspension and is now teaching Italian to foreigners. It may be, however, that her hobby takes her elsewhere.
After some search-engine fu, I found her forum (needless to say, NSFW), and it must not just be me having a hard time locating it, since the most people on it at once were 1,716 when the news broke.
In case one doubts if it's her or not, the site title is "Porno Prof of Pordenone," in English and the last messages on the forum express her gratitude for support -- and details about upcoming erotic appearances around Italy. There have been reports of petitions to reinstate her at the school but if one had to choose between teaching literature to pre-teens or getting paid to undress, it's easy to see where one wouldn't mind telling the PTA to take the job and shove it.
As the days get shorter, the chestnuts more abundant and a couple of religious holidays leave long weekends leading up to the two-week extravaganza that is Italian Christmas, the media turns its attention to 2008 calendars.
Continue reading "Italian Days" »
Jailed mafia bosses in Italy have been glued to their sets for a six-part fictionalized account of modern mob life in Sicily.
Not that far from where I sit on the couch watching "Il Capo dei Capi" (boss of bosses), 76-year-old uber mobster Totò Riina also watches his life pass by on the small screen in Milan's maximum security prison Opera.
Continue reading "True Crime: the Mafia Movie Mobsters Love" »
Italians are often thought to wear their hearts on their sleeves, now an enterprising headhunter wants them to wear resumes emblazoned on their chests.
Massimo Rosa, who has two decades of experience in the hr biz, invented the "Curriculum T-shirt." And patented the idea, he's so sure of its marketability, said to already have fans outside Italy.
Continue reading "Italians Try on T-Shirt Resume" »
Even after 680 years, Dante still rocks. Italians have a special rapport with the stubborn poet, considered the first to standardize the mother tongue: over the last few years, his "Divine Comedy" has been reborn -- instead of just a text Italians spend years memorizing in high school -- as entertainment for all ages.
Continue reading "Dante Goes Disco" »
Italians take beauty seriously. Looking good with the attendant finery is one of the things that distinguishes them from tracksuit-wearing sloughs who favor strange notions like comfort over aesthetics.
Not surprising, then, that national beauty pageant Miss Italia lavishes itself over four, yes four, nights in prime time on state broadcaster RAI's flagship station Raiuno.
Continue reading "Miss Italia's About Face" »
In the late 80s, Italy had a strip game show called "Colpo Grosso" where right answers rewarded players (and the audience) with brief flashes from bikinied beauties and buff dudes. If the contestants got it wrong, they had to take it off, much to the bemusement of viewers at home.
Continue reading "Italians Undress for Success" »
Epiphanies can happen in strange places. A weekday, noon, in a borrowed, darkened apartment. I was funneling the last bit of tanned flesh of a writer friend of mine into a black corset while a photographer waited in the bedroom.
That's when it hit me.
There's a three-letter word for what editors really want: Art.
Continue reading "Show & Tell" »
Focaccia: a cushy, slightly oily slab of carbohydrate goodness. Topped with cherry tomatoes, olives or onions it makes pizza fall flat and is one of the few foods with that special license to be eaten on Italian streets while still retaining one's dignity.
Who wouldn't rather eat that than McDonald's? No so long ago, Italians thought that pre-fab food would have the better of local specialities. When the first golden arches opened in Rome in the late 80s, Carlo Petrini launched the Slow Food movement in an attempt to save Italian cuisine.
Continue reading "Slow Food on the Silver Screen" »
You have to wonder about people who call in and dedicate songs on the radio. I always do. Why would a sane person dial in to make sure "Always a Woman" goes out to Sharon on her third anniversary?
Alas, the mafia made great use of this inane pastime: coded messages.
Continue reading "Mafia's Latest Weapon: Pop Songs" »
It's a defining moment: the Vatican is canonizing four saints at once and you're sent to cover it.
Just as you're winding up Roman Plate of Pasta No. 1, some scumbag snatches your purse.
Which, unfortunately, had goods (cash, jewelry) in it worth about $9,000 -- as we learn from a story published by the journalist's employer.
Continue reading "Reporters As News" »
Roman youth are festooning a lamppost on Ponte Milvio with padlocks, then throwing keys into the Tiber as a symbol of eternal love, thanks to a popular teen potboiler novel-cum-movie called Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo(Three Meters Above The Sky).
These symbolic ties that bind won't last forever, though. First they were stolen (some cynical soul apparently sold them for scrap) and, more recently, on April 13 the post buckled under the weight of these hefty promises.
Enter the virtual version, where lovers put locks up on a photo of the lampost.
Continue reading "Italy's Love Locks Go Virtual" »
Pssst! Have I got a deal for you: buy landlocked property near the Italian Riviera today and global warming will bring the beach to your door in about 15 years.
Sound too good -- or too bizarre -- to be true? Of course it is. Still, kudos to MTV Italia for launching an awareness campaign so meticulously cheesy it seemed real.
You don't have to understand Italian to get it: just watch the helpful demo as the waters of the Adriatic rush about four miles inward to adorable hamlet Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna. And presto: cheap beachfront housing.
Continue reading "Global Warming Real Estate" »
Police recently busted a pirate ring in Southern Italy headed by the local sacristan.
It could only happen in Naples, kingdom of furbi, that the guy in charge of looking after medieval Anjou graves would have an illegal sideline.
Continue reading "Skip Confession, Get Pirate Movies" »
Italy gave birth to the term paparazzo. Or at least Federico Fellini did: he named the jostling photographers in "La Dolce Vita" after a school chum nicknamed "mosquito" or paparazzo in dialect.
So it's not surprising that Italians are mesmerized by the trial of 11 particularly sleazy snappers.
The most prominent one is Fabrizio Corona, owner of a photo agency, said to have extorted money from celebrities to keep compromising photos out of the press and who allegedly ran a prostitution ring with starlets or would-be starlets whose clients include prominent businessmen and soccer stars.
Continue reading "Italians Mesmerized by Paparazzo-gate" »
Like most people, I'm not an omnivore when it comes to new technology. More of a picky vegetarian: I may set my laundry out to dry thanks to an SMS alert or scan my own groceries just to see what happens, but it really depends.
Continue reading "Second Life Extreme Makeover" »
Here's the thing: infomercials, rather like porn, shouldn't have plots. No one wants that from either.
The infomercial public slouches there under the drool-producing spell of completely unnecessary but often ingenious doo-hickeys.
Who hasn't spent the occasional foggy Saturday afternoon lost in reverie over the Ab Swing sales pitch by "Bold and Beautiful" star Hunter Tylo?
But like porn, infomercials have always understood well enough what the customer wants: Plots are for other genres, like Jane Austen adaptations.
Not anymore.
Leave it to one of the Italian networks founded by Silvio Berlusconi, Rete 4, to devise a sit-com infomercial.
Or should that be sit-commercial? Perhaps ad-fiction, commercial drama or advert-serial.
Continue reading "Infomercial With a Plot" »
Two 30-something Italian journalists recently published a relationship manual to analyze Latin lotharios through their text messages.
Called "SMS: Super Men Only," it breaks down the male texting flora and fauna into 14 categories, including Peter Pan, with his "come away with me" short messages or Wily E. Coyote, thumbing like mad behind his wife's back, or the super puppy dog, a man who just needs a little (quick, abbreviated) affection.
Continue reading "UR 2 smth: Understanding Men Thru Text Messages" »
I owe Nicole Kidman a lot. If it weren't for her, Italians might still think I'm a man. Well, OK, not after meeting me but sometimes via email. Or maybe if they saw my name on a "when you were out" phone message. Not fun.
When Nicole started becoming famous, Italians learned there was another variant on their own Nicola (Nicholas, pronounced "knee-COla"), Nicoletta (feminine version) and Nicola (the English woman's name, pronounced "NICK-ola").
I know, France is just over the Alps but until La Kidman became an international household word, there just weren't any well-known Nicoles around. Because it's a French name, the Italian pronunciation is a full-bodied "knee-coal," but at least we all know I'm a girl.
Anyway, the actress with whom I gladly share a first name is now starring in a series of charming, vaguely retro-style ads set in Rome for Sky Italia. Naturally, a beautiful Hollywood star turning up to shoot commercials in the artfully crumbling palazzi of the Testaccio area created a suitably noisy clamor, with locals making demands for more money and generally not acting in a charming manner.
Continue reading "Nicole's Italian Accent" »
Take a deep, satisfied breath. Artistic license has been preserved even if it offends the motherland. A modern "art" installation with a toilet sound whooshing away over the Italian national anthem has been reinstated in the Tyrol museum hosting the exhibit.
After protests had it suspended, a judge decided it wasn't an offense to an emblem of the nation.
I was visiting Bolzano (home of the bathroom brouhaha) and felt compelled to make a trip to the talked-about toilet.
There was one problem: The controversial work of art doesn't actually involve a toilet. No loo, lav or even a lone bidet. It's just a tape-recording.
Half flush: the "toilet" installation (speakers in corner)
The untitled installation, part of an exhibit called "Group Therapy," consists of four speakers and a motion sensor. When you open the main door of Museion (Bolzano's modern art museum), it triggers a full flush. Over the gurgling, it sounds like someone taps an empty plastic paint can more or less to Mameli's Hymn, Italy's national anthem.
News reports of the installation and the two-bit controversy imitated a particularly bad game of "telephone" claiming a toilet had been sequestered. That sounds funny (imagine the carabinieri ordered to remove it) and serious (so offensive it warranted removal) at the same time.
Continue reading "Italian Toilet Art Flushes On" »
It's good to know there's always work for out-of-power politicians. Take Silvio Berlusconi who was ousted in March after a record five years on the bucking mechanical bull that is the Italian parliament.
He's still working hard to get his voice heard in government. But since he's not Premier anymore, the shaking of his little fist and the imperious stack of his cuban heels just don't have the same impact they once did.
Continue reading "Life after Politics" »
Hundreds of Italians crammed into a museum in Milan the other night to hear David Lynch talk about transcendental meditation.
Guards braced the big glass doors to keep people outside. For the lucky who had sardined into the Triennale but wouldn't fit into the gaping conference room (never, never try to stand in line with Italians), organizers had to set up a separate screen outside to broadcast proceedings to the overflow.
Continue reading "Sharon Stone Factor" »
"The Devil Wears Prada" is 109 minutes of product placement, starting with the title.
The thing is, it isn't annoying. When plucky, fashion-proof heroine Andy reveals her ignorance by asking a caller how to spell "Gabbana," we all laughed. (No, the movie's not out yet in Italy, but we expats have our secret channels).
Continue reading "Prada Placement" »
Watching the Italian soccer team, also known as the azzurri or blues, play against the U.S. team while in New York was an eye-opener.
Well, it was more about trying to prop those eyelids open for 90 minutes. There are a million places to see the games in New York, just about every bar has a few soccer shirts or a poster flagging World Cup watchers in from the street.
Continue reading "Italian blues in New York" »
There is a lot to say about Pope Benedict XVI. He has taken the top off the popemobile, done away with the papal tiara, visited Auschwitz and taken a much harder line on contraception and same-sex marriage.
My question is: will he ever be popular enough to become an air freshener?
Continue reading "The Smell of Sancity: Pope Air Freshener" »
Everyone could use some good music to get psyched up for work.
If you're a low-level mafioso in Sicily, music from "The Godfather" is just the thing.
Continue reading ""Godfather" theme inspires Italian mobsters" »
Right. Gearing up for the World Cup in Germany in June.
Soccer, folks.
You know, that sport the *rest* of the planet cares about.
What's the big deal?
Teams from 32 countries, seven million fans and 40,000 prostitutes make for a sort of month-long, mega Super Bowl. That's the World Cup.
Continue reading "World Cup Theme: "Da Da Da"" »
Sooner or later, it had to happen: a reality show on a Catholic TV network.
In Italy's "The Mooch" (lo scroccone), the host gets himself invited to a family dinner.
The moocher in question is Danny Milano, a DJ with a Pee-Wee Herman flattop and nose stud, who created the program. Now in its third season, this new kind of dinner theater airs on Telechiara, a 15-year-old network run by the Bishop's office of the Triveneto region, the Northeast of Italy.
Continue reading "Feed Thy Neighbor: Italy's Catholic Reality Show" »
