They used to ask me in Canada the following question: “So what sport do you play”? I’d say, “Soccer”. They’d say, “Oh, the sport for sissies”!
I went on November 25, 2006 not too far away from Udine to see the Italy-Canada Jaguar Test rugby match, the last of the series. Italy trounced Canada 41-6. It was a nice occasion for me because it was the first time in 17 years that I’ve been living in Italy that I got to hear at a public event O Canada (the organisers of the match were very nice, they had the words to both anthems in the official program). This is perhaps my fourth rugby match so far after the other three in Rome.
When I came home I watched the DVD that I have on the All-Blacks. I’ve gotten to the point of having become totally nauseated with soccer (especially after this summer’s soccer scandal in Italy). I find rugby much more stimulating and more of a “man’s” sport than soccer, even though I don’t understand perfectly the rules (and the fans are terrific too: they cheer the other teams touche as well as substitutions. Italian soccer at least is simply plagued with idiotic fans). I also find rugby, along with many other sports, one of the few, unlike soccer, which you DON’T try to win based on deceit (such as going for goal in soccer and accidentally “tripping” in the penalty area, or provoking other players as Materazzi did in Germany).
I remember in Winnipeg that I had contemplated playing rugby until I saw a bumper sticker which read, “Give blood, play rugby”! I also recall a friend showing up at high school one day. He had a broken wrist. I asked what happened. He said, “Oh, I smashed a guy’s head during a rugby match”. I said, “But didn’t it hurt”? He: “Yeah, but I gave the guy 10 stitches”! A pity I didn’t play. I think I would have been rather good at the sport.
After having watched the All-Blacks and yesterday’s Italy-Canada match, I can only agree with the observation on sissies…(all pics by M. Rimati)
Yes, Mr. Top Gun himself, Tom Cruise, is about to get married for the third time to actress Katie Holmes, but not in Los Angeles or New York, but rather in the small town (pop. 12,000) of Bracciano, located about 35 kms north of Rome.
The town of Bracciano is located next to a lake and the two will be getting married (on November 18th, 2006) in the medieval Odescalchi Castle located in the centre of the town. Last night, November 16th, the couple hosted a dinner in a downtown restaurant in Rome. Some of the guests included Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith, Brooke Shields and Canada’s very own Jim Carrey. Some of the other guests who will be arriving for the wedding will include David and Posh Beckham, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Russell Crowe, John Travolta (flying his own jet by the way) and heart-throb George Clooney, voted just today as THE world’s sexiest man. One guest who won’t be invited (and I don’t personally know why he should in the first place) is U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Ronald Spogli.
Legend has it that Cruise-Holmes had a romantic “interlude” in Bracciano during a take or two of “Mission Impossible 3”, which was partly shot also in Rome. Bracciano’s castle isn’t new to these type of weddings. Previous newlyweds have also included: CNN’s envoy Christiane Amanpour and James Rubin (Madeleine Albright’s former spokesman), Roman singer Eros Ramazzotti and Michelle Hunzinker and Isabella Rossellini and Martin Scorsese (that marriage only lasted four years. Scorsese’s best man was Robert De Niro).
The folks in Bracciano are naturally getting rather excited to see Tom “Cruiz” (Italians are rather pitiful when it comes to pronouncing foreign names. Few can seem to pronounce his correctly. One banner in the town even reads the following: “A big cheers for a big event”!). The mayor of the town, Ms. Patrizia Riccioni, in order to offset the costs of having to pay the town cops their overtime wages during the extraordinary event, has rented a room in city hall (with a view on the motorcade) for 1,000 euros (for just three days). CNN, ABC, CBS and Sky News will all be there, as is every Tom, Dick and Antonio of the world of paparazzis. The “Ave Maria” will be instead sung by Italy’s very own Andrea Bocelli.
The castle itself has been rented to Mr. Cruise and his future missus for a cool 1.5 million euros. Mayor Riccioni, who has given the ok for the wedding to take place, has not though been invited herself to the event, but nevertheless is very, very happy for the incredible business that the Cruise-Holmes circus is bringing to her small town (30,000 fans are expected to descend upon Bracciano tomorrow and stores are loaded with every Cruise paraphernalia around). The mayor is also happy as her town beat out the Lake Como area in northern Italy for the wedding. Why pray tell? Because that’s not only where Mr. Clooney has his villa but rumours said that Cruise-Holmes would actually get married there instead of Bracciano.
The feudal castle is one of the nicest of Europe and dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries. There’s a wee bit of mystery and suspense surrounding the old castle: Isabella dei Medici, of the same famous Tuscan family, was murdered there when she was only 34 years of age by her husband, Paolo Giordano Orsini of Bracciano (he had fallen in love with another woman). Ghost experts say that Isabella still roams the halls of the castle! Hopefully, ghost Isabella will have pity for the newlyweds (Holmes’s father has worked out a deal that if the two divorce, his daughter will get a cool 30 million bucks!).
I have very fond memories of Bracciano as shortly after arriving in Rome at the end of 1989, I became good friends with an Italo-American by the name of Walt Bianchi. Walt’s folks had a really nice villa in Bracciano, and Walt would invite me over to do some swimming in the villa’s pool or a couple of rounds of tennis on the private court. I think I also stayed and slept there. Many a fine “brewskies” were drunk between me and Walt at his villa in Bracciano, contemplating by the poolside everything from life, women and the World Cup which took place in Italy during the summer of 1990 (Walt and I not only took in the opener in Milan between Argentina and Cameroon but also the final in Rome between W. Germany and Argentina). A toast therefore to the Cruises!
Five years ago we travelled to Spain, for me the second time. We landed in Barcelona, rented a car and then drove to Valencia, Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Toledo (I now know where the term “Holy Toledo” comes from!) and then to Madrid. We flew back to Rome from Madrid five days before 9/11. I saw all the landing procedure at Rome’s Fiumicino airport with the plane’s cockpit door wide open. So much for security back then.
When I was in Madrid I had the sense that not only was the city very vibrant but also the that mentality was somewhat opposite to the Italian one. Sure enough, I walked by a newsstand and there I saw an official poster of Madrid being a candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympics, eleven years before the event! I said to myself, “Unthinkable such a thing in Italy”. And one night in Madrid while attending a classical flamenco show, I chatted with a Spaniard next to me. He summed up the difference between Italy and Spain in the following manner: that Spaniards are more “Prussian” mentality-wise than Italians who are much more “Mediterranean”. In fact, Spain’s south is much more developed than Italy’s “Mezzogiorno” which is basically plagued by problems related to the mafia (the south of Italy could live just on tourism alone if it got its act together, but in certain parts of Sicily—I’ve been there twice—they don’t even have running water in the summertime!).
Sure enough, in the November 4th, 2006 edition of The Economist (my so-called “Bible”. I’ve been subscribing to the “best magazine written in the English language” for the last 15 years or so), there’s an article on Spain vs. Italy and how the former is slowly beating out the latter economically and politically-speaking (the article says that Spain’s economy is already as big as Canada’s—which together with Italy is also part of the G8). The article also goes on to say that Spain, “Overall, however, the economic success has produced a change in the public temperament of a country comparable only with that of Germany after the second world war…Now Spain has self-confidence on steroids…Its emergence as an equal to Italy and even France will give it a seat at the top table. If there is ever a core Europe or a pioneer group, Spain will be in it”. Conclusion: if Spain keeps up at this pace and if Italy does not get its act together (in a previous issue The Economist said that Italy’s recent growth rate has been “pathetic”) the flamenco will surely one day beat the tarantella!
If I’m not mistaken, the above saying pertains to Naples. I’ve been there on several occasions, the first time going as far back as 1981. I was about to conclude my first-ever backpacking tour of Europe (I had started in Spain, went up to France and then down to Italy). I was with my then girlfriend Jennifer. We were both coming from Winnipeg to Europe. After Rome, we headed down to Naples and nearby Pompeii (for the very first time in my life I actually slept outside, but not in a tent but rather on the ground in a sleeping bag near the ruins. We did this because we couldn’t find a hotel/pension. I’ll never forget the name of the campground either, “Spartacus” (a very appropriate name for the area, indeed!), nor being eaten alive by the mosquitoes that night). Pompeii was really nice and evoked memories of Pink Floyd’s concert there. If my memory doesn’t fail me, we even went to the island of Capri, or “Capri’” with an accent on the “i” as Americans quite often mispronounce it. In order to do that, we had to go to Naples’ port, and, as everyone knows, most ports around the world are rather seedy in nature. I was somewhat worried until we saw a group of US marines coming towards us. Some looked like linebackers for the Green Bay Packers! As soon as they saw the Canadian flags on our backpacks though, they cheered us on. I certainly felt protected. Why on earth did they cheer us on? Because shortly before Canada’s Ambassador Ken Taylor (with the support of the CIA), had helped sneak out of Iran six US citizens during the hostage crisis in Tehran. To thank Canada for that gesture, many billboards in the US thanked the “Great White North” publicly. As someone had stated back then: “What the US couldn’t do with brawn (the helicopter pilots killed in the desert of Iran in the botched-up rescue attempt of the hostages by Jimmy Carter), the Canucks did with brains”! The other time in Naples was when on July 3rd, 1990, I was sitting DIRECTLY behind the penalty shootout goal at the San Paolo stadium. I was there for the semi-final match between Italy and Maradona’s Argentina. Argentina managed to eliminate Italy from the 1990 World Cup that night. It was also one of THE saddest days of my life (once back in Rome for two days I didn’t leave my house, that’s just how depressed I really was!). I’ve also been to Naples in more recent times and again to Capri. I’ve always enjoyed the city and its people who are more open and jovial than Romans in general. I’ve never had major problems either, even though I’ve never driven down (I’ve always taken the train) and nor have I walked around with massive and expensive watches on my wrist (Rolexes are hot stuff in Naples. They’ll rip them off your wrist as they whiz by you on their scooters when your sitting in your car at a red light). I recall that Oliviero Toscani, Benetton’s former photographer, once did a reportage on the city about 10 years ago. His conclusion? That nothing in the city works. This same sentiment has been recently evoked by one of Italy’s foremost authors, Giorgio Bocca. The title of one of his recent books is: “We are Naples”. But the Neapolitans nevertheless do seem to have a very “Carpe Diem” approach to life, even though many recently have been (literally) dropping like flies in the Camorra (one of Italy’s four mafias, the others being: Cosa Nostra, the ‘Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita) gang-land wars. High unemployment is one of the major causes as most young people can’t find good and honest jobs, so they gravitate to the Camorra which pays rather well for pushing drugs or wiping out opponents. A good Italo-American friend of mine used to work there for a major American bank. He told me that he’d work late and would come out to still find his car in the garage with the keys in the ignition plus the car radio, something totally unthinkable in Naples. The garage owner though was nowhere to be seen as he had gone home. How could this be possible? Because the garage owner was also a member of the Camorra, and if you truly loved life, you didn’t bother stealing the car of a customer of a Camorra member! On another occasion, while playing soccer on Sunday, my good friend had a young kid, clad in his Sunday-best clothes, advising him that someone had just stolen his spare tire from the trunk of his car. My friend was indeed most bewildered, checked out the trunk of his car and indeed the tire was gone. The kid looked at him and said, “But for 25 bucks I know how you can get it back”! My friend paid and got the tire back. It was as simple as that. Another interesting anecdote of the rather contorted way of thinking in Naples concerns a fellow who had his car radio stolen. He left a note on the car dashboard saying, “Please, spare me, they’ve just stolen my car radio”! He returned to find a piece of paper on the ground where his car once stood. The note read: “We’ve used your car to get your radio back”! Prime Minister Romano Prodi has been urged to send down to Naples the army in order to bring justice to the town. Apparently, there are parts of Naples where not only US military personnel are prohibited from entering (the NATO base is not too far away from Naples, in Bagnoli) but Italian law enforcement officials are also discouraged going there. I personally don’t know how the situation will be resolved because the Neapolitan mentality goes back a few centuries (the mentality in northern Italy is completely the opposite from what it is in Naples. Things that happen there are totally unthinkable in a town like Udine). All I do know is that it must have been totally amazing for a certain Diego Armando Maradona to have lived and played for Naples for eight years! Only someone with his kind of personality could have lasted in that type of environment, and only that type of environment could have allowed Maradona to do what he miraculously was able to do with Naples (two national titles plus a UEFA Cup victory). Club Naples, has he himself said, also helped him to become world champion in 1986. Marco Van Basten won his three Golden Ball awards while playing for AC Milan in the north. Ditto for the great Michel Platini when he played for Turin’s Juventus. I just couldn’t see the two surviving in Naples’ environment like I couldn’t have seen Maradona do the same in the somewhat “sterile” environments of both Milan and Turin, sterile compared to the chaotic atmosphere in Naples (former national goalkeeper and Fiorentina, Naples and Milan goalkeeper Giovanni Galli once told me that Maradona wouldn’t even bother showing up for practises, and yet he’d play and would play magnificently! That’s just how great he really was). So great was Maradona’s charisma on Neapolitans that some people in their homes would replace the effigy of the city’s patron saint, San Gennaro, with that of Don Diego. And one evening, when Naples won its first national “scudetto” title (the very first in 60 years!), kicking in the process both Milan and Juventus in the ass, someone had written the following on the outside wall of a Naples cemetery (directed obviously to those unfortunate laying inside): “You don’t know what you’ve just missed”! In conclusion, the following perhaps best sums up that “Carpe Diem” nature which is soooo embedded in the Neapolitan DNA. A fellow one day gets on a bus while smoking a cigarette. The bus driver looks at him and says, “Sir, can’t you see it’s forbidden to smoke on the bus”! The fellow looks at him rather startled and says: “But I’ve just had a coffee”! The driver: “Ah, sorry sir….”.
The cat does not look terribly perturbed by the Jack-O-Lantern! (pic by M. Rimati)
That's me, always on a highway to hell! (pic by M. Rimati)
Ahh, if only other countries around the world, including Iraq and North Korea, had the grave problems that Italy has, especially regarding urinals. Urinals? Yes, urinals, in Italy’s parliament of all places. It looks like the (less-than) very honourable Vladimir Luxuria, a “transgender” politician (as he/she likes to call him/herself), had some urinary problems the other day, so he/she calmly walked into the women’s washroom at Montecitorio (the name of the seat of the Italian government in Rome). But good’ol Vladimir wasn’t the only one in the washroom at the time: Elisabetta Gardini, the spokeswoman of the Forza Italia party (the party belonging to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) was also in the washroom merrily peeing away and thinking that she was in the company of other fellow female parliamentarians. When she exited the washroom stall she was apparently startled and horrified to find the honourable member of the Refounded Communist party doing the same thing. “Heaven forbid”, cried Ms. Gardini, claiming that she had been psychologically “raped” (at which point some of her female colleagues uttered that out there, there are women who are actually raped and face much graver problems than seeing a man/woman peeing). The debate now going on is whether or not to find Ms./Mr. Luxuria his/her own private potty, no doubt at the expense of Italians taxpayers. Now, if only Korea’s Kim had these same problems when facing the Americans at the negotiating table…
When I moved to the “Old Europe” (as Donald Rumsfeld once defined it) and Italy in 1989, I thought that I was going to live in a continent/country full of real “culture”, home to such luminaries as Da Vinci (the painter, not Dan Brown’s creation), Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. Instead, after nearly 17 years, what do I see? Wrestling on tv, reality shows, McDonald’s restaurants everywhere (followed by American-style fat asses too. The first one opened up in my home town of Winnipeg in 1968. The first McDonald’s which opened up in the tiny town of Udine was at the end of 1999. I give Italians a few generations and they’ll be obese as the Americans) and now, Halloween! Yes, even Halloween in Italy. The trend in Italy goes back to 1997/98. We can also thank the U.S. Embassy in Rome which has a press office that also feeds Italian media news bits if Italians have now jumped on the Halloween bandwagon. Add to this also places like “Rock Hard Café” which not only is conveniently located right in front of the Embassy in Rome but which also does its fair share of promoting anything related to American culture. American schools in Rome (such as John Cabot University and the American University, not to mention the American Overseas School) also are heavily involved in promoting Halloween. We have to also that while Italians in general don’t like America’s death penalty mentality or their foreign affairs (see Iraq for example) they will take anything almost anything from the U.S. hook, line and sinker, so there you have on October 31st Italians slightly going bonkers over a pagan feast (its apparent origins) but which they fail to understand how Halloween properly works. I used to go out for Halloween in Winnipeg when I was 5-6. Inevitably, Halloween coincided also with the very first snowfall and/or blizzard in Winnipeg. So here I was dressed like Frankenstein walking around in knee-high snow and freezing my tush off! This was some 42 years ago. The true concept of Halloween, at least the way I remember it in Canada, had nothing to do with pagan festivities or rites. On the one hand, it had to do with one important thing: going out and getting as much candy and lots of apples (which our mothers would convert into great apple pies! The city cops would also tell us to be careful as some nut would always try to stick razors in our apples so unfortunately we had to chuck them out, indeed a pity!) after we’d spend the entire evening going door-to-door and yelling at the top of our lungs, “Trick or Treat”! (the Italians have gotten the concept backwards and call it “Dolcetto o Scherzetto”—“Treat or Trick”!). The Italians on the other hand haven’t yet made it to going out and knocking on people’s doors. They like getting dressed up but have missed out on the true meaning of Halloween (the other one is just an excuse for university students to get dressed up, to go out and get pissed and to have a great time, like I used to do at university). It’s quite comical, as one can see from the pictures taken of store windows in Udine, how the Italians have jumped on the Halloween bandwagon (and for the last few years the Church inevitably always comes out and thunders against such an obscure festivity which is so foreign to Italian culture. “Experts” on the subject will also describe the way Halloween actually has its roots in Italy. No doubt some Italian in 1492 by the name of “Allo Weeno” kicked-off the entire thing in the New World just after landing with Columbus and the boys). Oh, and by the way, when the Italian media mentions Halloween across the Atlantic, 100% of the time, they’ll always mention the event in the U.S., but never in Canada (all pics by M. Rimati)!
Under the previous Berlusconi government, Forza Italia had come up with the less-than brilliant idea of finally building a bridge over the Strait of Messina, connecting once and for all the island of Sicily with the Italian mainland, in particular the Calabria region. The zillions of euros would have played directly into the hands of the local mafias (Cosa Nostra and the ‘Ndrangheta). The Prodi government has now apparently put a slab over that project once and for all, but not without a major price: some 150 million euros have now gone up in smoke in 35 years' worth of environmental, engineering and scientific studies. All the paperwork behind the research into the construction of the bridge weighs about 126 kilos! Not only that, but the jobs that would have been created from the project, 40,000 of them, have also gone up in smoke with Prodi’s decision of canning forever the bridge. The entire cost of the bridge would have been more or less 4.6 billion euros, money that no doubt could be better spent by providing Sicilians with running water during the summer months as well as proper highway links (such as the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway which has been under construction for several decades).
The Boss came, he sang and he conquered all of us! What to say about Bruce Springsteen’s concert at the Villa Manin, located a mere 15 kms or so from Udine? Simply fantastic! Out of the 148 concerts I’ve seen so far I’d this performance in the top 10. Indeed a tremendous honour for the folks in Udine and Friuli to have hosted such a magnificent performer. Menacing clouds the day before and the day of the concert threatened those 10,000 fans with a good downpour. Instead, Bruce’s great charisma spared us all the rain as the stars even came out for the concert. Bruce was joined on stage by “only” 17 terrific musicians, including his wife Patti Scialfa who has also been part of Bruce’s legendary E Street Band (which, in total honesty, I did not personally miss last night as his “Seeger Session Band” was simply superb) and violinist Soozie Tyrell who was part of his 2003 world tour. After his “Born in the USA” concert in 1984 in Toronto and his epic world tour 3 years ago in Florence (3.5 hour concert with a record 3 encores), The Boss ONCE again outdid himself with a wonderful performance of old tunes by Pete Seeger. He began at 9 pm on the dot and ended at 11.30 pm with about 20 songs or so, including “The River” and “My City of Ruin” in honour of 9/11 plus naturally songs from his latest work with the Seeger Band, in particular “Jacob’s Ladder”. Forget hearing “Born in the USA” or “Born to Run”, this was Springsteen singing perhaps the roots of his own music (mixed in with some old Irish ballads). One of the concluding songs was everyone’s favourite (even for Italians), “When the saints come marching in”. His band members? You name it, he had them: banjo, tuba, horns, fiddles, drums and even washboards! I had stated publicly that when you go see a Tina Turner or Springsteen concert and you’ve spent a lot of bucks/euros, you come away very, very satisfied for the money you’ve spent. This is once again confirmed with Bruce’s performance last nite. And oh, another thing, both he and Paul McCartney REALLY know how to work an audience (Bruce is now 57 years old). At one point he yelled out in perfect Italian: “Udine e’ anche famosa per la grappa, ma dov’e’”? He repeated this about 3 or 4 times. Finally, after the 5th time he repeated the same phrase, a roadie came out on stage with a bottle of grappa and glasses! Seeing that in this part of Italy they make some mighty fine grappa, the crowd naturally went wild. And there was Bruce serving grappa to all his band members. Upon conclusion of the concert, I said to some friends: “Gee, I wonder if the grappa he had was the Nonino version”? Just as I said it, Mrs. Gianola Nonino, of the same grappa distillery, passed right under my nose with her husband. I only presume that The Boss, no doubt a drinker in his life of some fine Jack Daniel’s whiskey, no doubt probably appreciated a crate or two of Nonino grappa, considered by many one of the finest grappas in all of Italy (all pics by M. Rimati)!
Shootings part II: yesterday I had reported in my blog that there is no doubt the odd Italian (and American) who has probably now said that Canada is becoming more and more like the States after the shooting in Montréal (even though I suspect that the one main difference with the US is after this shooting the Canadians will clamp down even harder on weapons). Well, the latest comes from Naples, just yesterday. A 43 year-old engineer from Québec who’s based in Algeria was walking around the city centre with his missus after a nice day spent in Capri when he (thought) heard firecrackers going off. He noticed a burning sensation in his leg, and then fell to the ground. What he thought was a firecracker was in reality a stray bullet that had landed in his leg: he had been yet another victim (he survived though) of stray fire between Camorra gang members. On more than one occasion innocent bystanders have been killed, including children. The last major incident involving Canadians occurred just a few months ago with a Canadian diplomat stationed in Vienna: he was robbed at the Naples train station, murdered and dumped in a sewer. The honorary consul in Naples now wants to put online a warning to Canadian tourists to be cautious when visiting Naples (a few weeks ago a poor American tourist fought off some muggers only to find the family members of the muggers come not to HIS rescue but to the muggers’ rescue!). Giorgio Bocca, one of Italy’s senior authors, recently came out with a book called, “Napoli siamo noi”. In one episode, he tells of a journalist who called the police because there was ruckus going on in her street and she couldn’t sleep. The cops never came. So she called again. They finally came. Well, as a punishment, the day after, local Camorra members literally “devastated” all the cars parked on her street!
It’s funny, or should I say sad, that the Italian media usually talks about Canada in a negative sense: I’m referring to the American-style shooting in a college in Montréal on September 13, 2006. If it’s not that the Italian media will talk about the yearly seal hunt in eastern Canada! Very rarely though will we read up on the virtues of Canada.
It’s 3.57 in the morning, Saturday, August 19th. I don’t feel like sleeping much (for obvious reasons). I’m in the splendid little town of Udine. On Aug. 7th, the day after Madonna’s concert in Rome, I came up to Udine to see how my mother was. Udine had been hit by an incredible heat wave (on July 21st it was 39 degrees Celcius). My father would pass me the phone talk to my mother. We didn’t chat about Lebanon or things like that because for the last 3 or 4 years she was in the phase of senile dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease. At one pt though, her voice sounded like it came from the grave. I asked my dad what was wrong. He said she was tired. I thought that it was more than just being tired. Dani and I were to have gone on the 20th to Greece on vacation. I thought that it would be a good idea to come up first to check things out. Glad I did. She was in pitiful condition. Thanks to a cousin doctor of mine, we rushed her to the emergency ward. From there, she was transferred to another ward.
My father in the meantime was hit my a severe case of sciatica. This impeded him from being able to go to the hospital to see my mother, which I gladly did twice per day. She basically lost between 6 to 7 litres of water, or 6-7 kilos of water. Her sodium level was at around 176 when for anyone normal it’s around 145. Instead of blood in her veins she basically had molasses. The dehydration was quite a lot for someone who had turned 80 in July (three yrs ago 15,000 elderly people died in France due to the massive heat wave that hit Europe). On Friday he finally managed, with great difficulty, to come to the hospital to see his wife. My mother was on intravenous, as well as being fed that way (she had gotten too weak to be fed via the mouth). She wasn’t doing that well. I had decided Friday nite, alone (Dani was taking care of her step-mother near Rome) to go catch an outdoor movie, just to wind down a bit. As I watching a Korean thriller, I kept on looking at the stars above, thinking for some strange reason that my mother wouldn’t come out of this all that well. I came home, spoke with Dani on the phone, and was reading when around midnight the phone rang. At first, I thought it was Dani. Instead, it was the hospital, advising me that the situation had gotten worse. I rushed out, again alone at 1 am in the morning, to find my mother on oxygen and with a fever of 38.2. The doctor, an Argentine immigrant with whom I got to speak Spanish with, told me that the situation had plummeted substantially. I was holding her hand, also whispering in her ear that “Com’on mom, you’ve survived the bombings over Udine 60 yrs ago not to mention German occupation and two (yes two) tumours (colon and breast), you’re not going to let a little water kill you”! At 1.41 am, with the doctor and three very professional nurses by her side, my mother left us. I don’t know exactly how to describe being physically next to someone as they (literally) breathe their last breath. It comes at greater and greater intervals. The doctor at one pt removed the oxygen, knowing I guess very well that there was little that could be done for her. One nurse said that she reacted in some way when I showed up. I guess she was happy that her "Marietto" (as I had been called for many yrs) was there for her. It was the least I could do after 12 days of going back and forth to feed her and to check up on her. I was glad that the day before my dad had managed—after 50 yrs of marriage—to have seen her and kissed her. While driving back to the hospital with the clothes necessary for her funeral, I thought how odd and ironic life really can be: she had been there 47 yrs ago when she brought me into this world and I, 47 yrs later, was with her when she left this world.
She had been an oustanding mother and wife (me with my mother in slightly better times).
Ciao mom,
Mario
Italy’s largest disco was by far in Rome on August 6th! That’s what the mood was like for Ms. Ciccone’s concert at Rome’s Olympic stadium. Some 70,000 people where there, including Puff Daddy (or P. Diddy or P. Whiffy or whatever the man’s name is), Lenny Kravitz, Pedro Almodovar and even Penelope Cruz (with my binoculars I managed to see the first three people as they came into the VIP stands). The stage was set up horizontally in the south curve. We were on the opposite side in the north curve. The pics were taken with a Nikon D70 digital camera and with a 70-300 mm zoom with no flash and no tripod. The evening opened with a well-known DJ who really got the house rocking. Nice to see the kids going crazy. I thought of two things: how Elvis would have been proud (kids just wanna have fun and dance to good music) and how the poor Lebanese kids would have wanted to be present that night rather than hiding from the bombs. He played for an hour. Madonna came on around 9:45 or so and played for two hours. No encores though and no good-byes, that’s apparently how she ends every show. She must have changed about 5 times and had some great dancers with her. And yes, she did come out on a crucifix and wearing a crown made up of spines. No doubt the Vatican probably didn’t appreciate the gesture (her press officer even went as far as to invite Pope Ratzinger to the concert! American-style freedom of the press taken a wee bit too far!). The screen behind her showed images of Africans and their plight with Aids. She sang one of my favourites, “Ray of Light”, and others such as “Music”, “La Isla Bonita” and “Live to Tell”. She actually opened with a Donna Summers hit, “I Feel Love”. The concert ended with “Hung Up”. On the eve of her 48th b.day on August 16th, I must say Madonna was in splendid shape. Unlike Tina Turner, Madonna’s show was more “theatrical” in nature. Turner I think has a much better voice than Madonna. Nevertheless, a young Ciccone left Michigan one fine day on a plane for New York. The first time away from home, the first time in NY and the first time on a plane. She arrived with only 35 dollars in her pocket and lived for a period in misery without asking anyone for help. She’s now sold some 250 million records and is by far THE best female performer in the world. What is also amazing is the following day I had to take a train. I went to the Termini station to buy my newspapers. The main ones were all sold-out. I asked why? “The Madonna effect”!, was the answer from the news seller. Seems like everyone wanted to see the commentaries on her “crucifixion" (all pics by M. Rimati)!
Italians have the (very) nasty habit of usually abandoning each summer before going on vacation up to 100,000 cats, dogs, serpents, birds, you name it. The last publicity regards abandoning dogs. The ad says: “Abandon only the city”, with a dog clearly visible in the rear view mirror. And then Italians break Canadians’ balls over the yearly seal hunt (pic by M. Rimati)?
An Italian journalist was in Vienna a few weeks ago covering the Billy Joel concert there. He said his performance was fantastic. I agree whole heartedly with his observation: Joel was simply great at Telecom Italia’s 4th free concert right in front of Rome’s Coliseum (after Paul McCartney, Simon&Garfunkel and Elton John) on July 31st. But Joel wasn’t the only treat: Canada’s Bryan Adams got things rolling with a 50 minute performance right in front of a multi-colored Coliseum. He opened up with “So Far So Good” and followed with “I Need Somebody”, “Run To You”, “18 Till I Die”, “Looks Good On Me” and “Summer of ‘69” which nearly brought down the ancient Flavian Amphitheatre (the Coliseum’s real name). Adams was in a great mood as he practically dove into the crowd under the stage, taking pictures of himself on a small digital camera amongst fluttering Canadian flags.
Joel? Put it this way, what song DIDN’T he play? You name it, he played it: “Angry Young Man”, “My Life”, “Love You Just The Way You Are”, “The Entertainer”, “Honesty”, “Zanzibar”, “New York State Of Mind”, “Uptown Girl”, “Innocent Man”, “Big Shot”, “In The Middle Of The Night”, “Only The Good Die Young” and “Italian Restaurant”. He played for nearly 2 hours. Another treat for the over 300,000 people present was the duet for his encore with Adams. They alternated one hit each, Joel’s “You May Be Right” and perhaps my favourite Adams song, “Cuts Like A Knife”! The grand finale was left up to Joel for his one and only last encore, “Piano Man”. It was an indeed “hot” night again at the Coliseum, and not just because of the humidity and 30+ Celsius temperatures, but because of two wonderful performers on stage. As we all began to exist the area and the roadies began dismantling the huge stage poised right in front of the Coliseum, the soundtrack to “Gladiator” began blaring out. Indeed a most appropriate sound for the particular atmosphere (all pics by M. Rimati).
