Call Me A Snob ...

... but honestly something isn't right about this!

12 decembre - Santa Giovanna Francesca Frémiot de Chantal

Lunedi Lunacy

All Hollow's eve is a very Anglo holiday and though it is slowly making inroads here in Italy there are still few trick or treaters and if children are going to wear fancy dress it is normally for Carnival in February or March. Having said that it does not stop the pastry shops and toy stores from pushing the North American concept of goblins and ghosties and things that go bump in the night.

My friend Jenn has two little goblins to dress up this year and I'm not sure what evil thoughts she had in mind but she had a rather disturbing link on Facebook last week. Probably the only thing worse than people who dress up their defenceless pets for Halloween are people who dress up their even more defenceless babies.

One thing you will never find on a restaurant menu here is Spaghetti and Meatballs - I mean why would you mix your primi and your secondi???? But this kid's parents had obviously been brought up on cans of Chef Boyardee. Well at least they didn't cover him in tomato sauce.


Just click on the photo for 49 more of the Creepiest Baby Halloween Costumes. For my money #35 and #34 are pretty creepy but #13 takes the cake.

18 ottobre - San Luca evangelista

I Wonder As I Wander

Rome is a city where you find yourself constantly looking up at the wonderful architecture and down to avoid stepping in doggie do - which will be the subject of a rant for another day - either way you are often confronted by strange sights that set you to wondering.
And I am wondering what these perfectly good pair - and notice they are a matched pair - of shoes was doing on the sidewalk on Via Mazzarino at three in the afternoon? There appeared to be nothing wrong with them - the heels were fine, straps intact and they even looked to be clean and recently polished. So why were they left there? It almost looks like some one had simple stepped out of them. And it did lead to a very bad Italian pun - Suole Abbandonate!

16 ottobre - San Gerardo Maiella

Strano... Molto Strano

Apparently there are some - gasping he clutches throat in horror - bare breasts of the female kind in the new production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman at the Metropolitan Opera. However the management has announced that the offending bosoms will not be shown in HD during the popular screenings in world cinemas next week but will be discreetly blacked out. Given that it is a live broadcast let it be hoped that there will be no "wardrobe malfunctions".

For some reason this little tidbit reminded me of a story a friend told me more than 30 years ago. Sally was a puppeteer and worked for the Krofft Brothers. Back in the 1960s they created a travelling show called Les Poupées de Paris. It was a success at two World Fairs and played around North America for several years. It was a marionette version of the Folies Bergere or Lido de Paris shows so popular in Las Vegas at the time. It had elaborate - waterfalls, ice rink, fireworks, revolving stage I mean elaborate - production numbers, big names voicing it - Pearl Bailey, Cyd Cherisse, Tony Martin, Bing Crosby, Liberace, Jayne Mansfield - and, of course, topless showgirls in the tradition of the great French revues.

Sally toured the United States with the show and worked the controls of three of the danseuses nues Pat, Toni and Rueby - all of the showgirls had English names another great tradition of the French Music Hall - as well as the Jayne Mansfield puppet. But in addition to controlling the puppets she had one task that she described - rightly so - as the most bizarre thing she had ever done in her life. Putting pasties on the puppets!

The laws in many of the cities they toured decreed that during matinee performances bare breasts of any sort must be covered. Thus every matinee day she would laboriously apply little tinsel stars to little wooden breasts and just as laboriously removing them for the evening performance. And so were the morals of places like San Fransisco (?) kept pristine and unsullied by exposure to wooden nipples.

Strano, molto strano!

06 decembre - San Niocla di Bari

Quote ... Unquote

I'm sorry Walter, Marco, Vin, Simonetta I love you all but Italians are hard to understand. I don't mean when they speak - I mean they are HARD to understand. Of course I am not the first straniero to make that observation - that was probably some poor Hun who had come down to conquer and found himself totally confused. The red tape, traffic and hysteria going on around him made it almost impossible to rape and plunder with even a modicum of Hunish efficiency!

I'll give you an example of what I mean: our neighbour on the first floor can barely bring himself to say buon giorno and tends to hustle the children along if he sees us coming - now that may be a combination of us being stranieri and omosessuale. Yet the other evening when we had a power failure and discovered that there was no way to open the front gates he patiently explained about the key for the back gate, was indignant that we didn't have one - this was not right the Embassy should have given us one, what would we do if there was an accident we could be trapped in the compound - and trotted down the long back lane way to open it for us. This morning it was back to a curt nod and a muttered greeting!

But then as Beppe Severgnini explains in La Bella Figura in an emergency Italians come through! Severgnini's explanation of the Italian character is highly recommended reading for anyone visiting Italy and mandatory for anyone planning to live here. He addresses many of those questions that have been puzzling us stranieri since the first Gaul gawked in wonder at the Colesseo.

Take traffic and parking! Though he's talking specifically about the parking situation in Napoli, he could be addressing the Sunday morning circling for a spot near the door at IKEA here at Porta di Roma.

Italian motorists must - not "like to," not "want to," not "beg to," but absolutely must - park right next to their destination, with no thought for the consequences. It's true all over the country, but here in Naples, under pressure from the lack of space, stimulated by uphill gradients, and excited by the descents, drivers seem particularly creative.

Anyone arriving by car expects to park outside the front door. A couple of hundred meters away there may be a huge free parking lot, but that's irrelevant. Leaving the car there would be an admission of defeat. Our car user circles like a shark awaiting the moment to strike. If the individual concerned thinks he or she is important - a title that many in Naples like to acquire in the course of a brief, solitary award ceremonies - then irritation increases. Status is inversely proportional to the distance between destination and parking space. The closer the car the more important the driver.

And I think he may have come up with an explanation for that Mercedes that has been parked on a nearby street for the past six months. You may recall I wrote about it in September. Yes its still sitting there but that sticky mess of figs has dried up and is now covered by a lovely autumnal arrangement of dead leaves.



Severgnini's possible explanation? Again he's talking about Napoli but it could be Roma and it could be that Mercedes owner.

There's another category of motorists that deserve examination here in Naples. I'm taking about the Potential Driver, who has found a parking space - improbable, improvised or just plain impermissible - and has not intention of giving it up. This driver gets around on foot, on a scooter, or on public transport, defying the ticket inspectors and muggers. But the car stays where it is. Every so often, he dusts the vehicle off. Why should he move it? A car is a form of reassurance, proof of prosperity, and a place to listen to the radio or store wine. No one around here has ever parked so close to home before. The neighbours know this, and observe in admiration.

La Bella Figura
Beppe Severgnini

The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group

Well of course, why didn't I think of that: once you've got a good spot why give it up? Makes sense doesn't it?

Okay even Severgnini can't always give reasons that make sense to us Huns - hey we are in Italy - but he makes a good stab at it. And its entertaining reading!

26 novembre - Sant'Umile da Bisignano

What the Hell Were They Thinking?

This is a full length ad in the Diesel store window in Barcelona:


Am I alone in not understanding exactly what clientele Diesel is aiming at?

Arrogant young men who enjoy demeaning over the hill boxers?

Any other ideas? Please let me know.

26 marzo - Santa Lucia Filippini

Lunedi Lunacy

I honestly hope that I don't become one of those hoarders, the way my friend Speck's elderly neighbour was, but I have my doubts and fears. As we unpacked boxes - some of which had not been opened when we first arrived last year - I am finding things... such things... strange forgotten things.

On Saturday I asked if anyone could identify what the heck these two things are and what you would do with them. Laurent bought them in Beijing - they sell them everywhere and the tourists - over 60s especially, hmmmm - buy them up like crazy. So what the heck are they anyway???

Why they're PEEPEE BOYS, of course! Yes that's right, PEEPEE BOYS and here's what they do:



Though the whole thing leaves me puzzled Laurent always says 1.3 billion Chinese can't be wrong.

29 settembre - San Michele e angeli

The March of the Ants

One of the ladies from the cleaning crew came running into the kitchen on Thursday and proclaimed: Dottore! ci sono formiche nello studio! First I love it when they call me "Dottore" and second the word "formiche" had a familiar ring to it. In response to my raised eyebrows she made a spray motion and sound and said: DDT!

Formiche - of course - ants. We have ants in the den. Well its not such a big problem and could wait until I could get to a hardware store. However that night as I sat writing yesterday's post I glanced down at the floor and saw half a peanut... and it was moving across the floor.



It must have fallen under the computer table while I has having crodino and nibbles in the afternoon - and by the time I caught it on this rather blurry video an army of ants had moved it a good five feet towards their nest. How exactly they were going to get it through the crack under the baseboard I'm not sure but given the team work they'd shown so far all things seem possible.

06 settembre - Sant'Umberto

Long Term Parking

Our new neighbourhood is made up of a mixture of residential villas, old villas that have been turned into office space and the odd religious compound. Because the offices - mostly.. shudder... lawyers - predominate daytime parking is an nightmare. But in the evening the streets are almost empty - for Rome! And what nightfall reveals is the number of cars that are parked "long term!"

Apparently there is some sort of strange law here that stops the police from towing cars that have been parked in the same spot for lengthy (six to 12 months) periods of time. Near our old apartment there were five or six cars parked on the street covered in dirt and debris, tires flat and in one case windows open that were there when we arrived and were still there when we left one year later. The same thing occurs here in our new neighbourhood and probably in all neighbourhoods around town.

This SUV - the license plates are not EU so it might belong to someone at the Embassy of Côte d'Ivoire across the street - has obviously been parked here for some time. There is at least one previous harvest of figs (sweet, green, juicy, sticky figs) dotting its surface and no doubt doing a real number on the paint job.

I love figs but I can't imagine the elbow grease needed to clean up that mess.

05 settembre - Beata Madre Teresa di Calcutta

The Magnatic Anita Ekberg

There can be few more iconic scenes in world cinema than Anita Ekberg's plunge into the Trevi Fountain - and few more beautiful images than Ekberg eyes closed, head thrown back as Marcello Mastroianni traces her features in the air. Apparently the sequence was shot on a cold March night and Ekberg stood for hours without a complaint. But Mastroianni had to wear a wetsuit and consume a bottle of vodka before he could do the scene.



And talk about serendipity, as today's update our friends at Italian Notebook have posted a lovely photo essay on the Trevi Fountain.

And - how's this for a tie in - the La Dolce Vita fridge magnet will be on its way shortly to our blog buddy and brilliant cartoonist Speck. All of the comments gave "good" explanations and a few were actually logical but I think hers was the one I'd use to explain it to that hot leather number Jeff was talking about.

If you turn it slightly clockwise, you will clearly see it is a reminder that there should be no farting by exclamation points in this room at any time.

There is a danger that said farts could be ignited by smoking materials and cause an explosion.

So, if you don't have any punctuation marks with digestive difficulties around, fire up a nice cigar.

And Sling would a lovely "My Mom went to the Vatican and all she got me was a Papal Blessing!" ashtray do instead?

01 settembre - Sant' Egidio abate

Ah.... OK!

We've checked into a hotel for a few days while the furniture and all our "stuff" is being moved to the new apartment. The Mercure is your standard chain hotel - not much (as in NO) character or charm but the bed is comfortable and its near to everything. As always we requested and got a non-smoking room, then where greeted by this little desk accessory????

I'm at a total loss to figure that one out. I'll be more than happy to send a La Dolce Vita (that's the Fellini film with Anita Ekberg looking chesty and Marcello Mastroianni looking pop-eyed at Anita looking chesty) fridge magnet to anyone would can come up with a good explanation. Notice that's "good" not logical! And no this is not an attempt to get rid of stuff, I actually bought it today in a tourist trap local store.

27 agosto - San Giuseppe Calasantius

Strano... Molto Strano

I've often mentioned the shrines - mostly 13th-17th century iconic images of Saints, the Virgin Mary being the most popular - that dot the walls of houses here. Sunday afternoon we were wandering the streets near Piazza dell'Orlogio with Betty Jean, Sarah, Steve and Joe after a very good Sunday lunch - Terrine of Zucchini flower, roast lamb, rosemary potatoes and melon - and Joe drew our attention to a more recent addition to the shrine scene.

I'm not sure if that old radio behind the BVM and St Joseph plays music but I have a feeling the Baby Jesus could have fun playing Zoom Zoom with those model cars.

14 agosto - San Massimiliano