It's big.It's bad. It's Italy.

After two days in Italy I'd already consumed: pasta, lamb, pig, boar, duck, breads both plain and with at least 5 different and separate toppings, chickpeas, potatoes, fried vegetables, grapes, watermelon, pastries (both breakfast and dessert), water, orange juice, beer (both alcoholic and non), a couple of different types of wine, brandy, and gelato.

Two days.

And I had seven to go.

I anticipated shopping for an entire new wardrobe while there. Not because of the fashion, but because I feared that by the end of my trip I would have no longer fit into the one I brought with me.

The good news is that, with a few exceptions(no place I went seemed to know how to cook potatoes), the food was every bit as excellent as you would expect. However, despite my mother's assertation that I was the member of the family most prone to culinary experimentation and to try new things there were still a few things I couldn't bring myself to order: the pigeon, the rabbit (although more on the grounds that I felt bad eating something that could conceivably have been someone's pet), and the dish that translated into English as "local young cock". Although the logical, non Beavis and Butthead, section of my brain cried fowl, I had by that point already seen too many of the anantomically correct male sculptures to feel entirely comfortable ordering it.
***
Rome is a city of antiquity, boasting buildings that are still being used today that are older than America as a nation. And its airport is no different. Leonardo da Vinci airport looks like a vision of the future created thirty years ago by those who may have forseen the human race living underground, no longer able to inhabit the planet's surface. The vaguely 70s-ish sci-fi I feels somehow both sprawling and claustrophobic. This would be our habitat, the last hope of humanity's continued existence, complete with all the sunglasses, gloves, and duty-free liquor one could ask for.

All in all, I could think of worse ways to live.

By contrast, Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, what I saw of it, was a pure delight.
Of course I say this because of the excessively VIP treatment they offer to those hard pressed by time to make their connecting flight. We were met at the gate by two airport employees who pulled aside everyone on the connecting flight, and hurried on to a van and driven around the tarmac to the terminal where our flight was leaving from. We were then rushed, VIP style, past the dozens upon dozens of people waiting to have their passports stamped, through the terminal, and once again past dozens and dozens more people waiting to go through security, to our gate.

While its more modern construction might not provide an ideal environment for the long haul when nuclear winter, asteroid, or whatever holocaust forces us below the planet's surface, it is a wonderful airport to be whisked through.

This antiquity is not confined to Rome however; it is evident everywhere we went. Italy is a generous mix of ancient and modern. The effect, however, is often one of walking around in a museum no matter where you are, especially in some of the smaller towns, such as San Gimignano. San Gimignano is a walled town famous for once having had something like 70 large towers; currently it is down to either 14 or 15. It was while walking around in San Gimignano that I realized that despite all the shops selling clothes and sunglasses and knives and touristy souvieners, and despite all the street hawkers selling fauxlex watches and knock-off handbags on the street, that people actually live here in this town. Full time. It is their home.

They live in a giant Epcot Center.

This is no less true, although less disorienting in the bigger cities; bigger cities everywhere will always have tourists. But in the smaller towns like San Gimignano or where we were staying in Tuscany, it was really jarring. I don't know if it's something I could deal with in my day-to-day life. I imagine going to my local small-town bank and having to stand behind someone asking in a foreign language if they could cash travelers checks, or walking to my corner store only to see people taking a picture in front of it.

I imagine that would suck.
***
Near the end of my vacation, on a Sunday afternoon, I am sitting in our rented apartment in Rome and flipping through the TV stations searching for some of those sexy and risqué European commercials I've heard so much about. There are 36 channels, 28 of which are fuzz, 4 of which are showing the same Formula One race, 2 of which are showing the same live music broadcast, 1 is showing movie trailers, and the last looks to be an infomercial for something that is either a limb massager or a tool for removing unwanted arm and leg fat. Either way, it is neither sexy nor risqué.

But the reason I am sitting here is because I've remembered what it is that I hated about vacationing with my family, and that is being in the car with them. Today they are taking a day trip to the Amalfi coast, which I've opted out of , because I feared that another six (or more) hours in the car with them would have led to my own fifteen minutes of fame in the form of a CNN spot about an American tourist's homicidal rampage.

Imagine a car full of six drivers, only one of whom is actually holding the steering wheel—admittedly, I was part of the problem, throwing my two cents into the multiple navigational arguments, until I decided that retreating into the safety of my iPod headphones was the course more beneficial to my sanity—and one of the drivers wasn't even human. Instead it was a GPS unit that my mother inexplicably named "Cinderella", and I secretly renamed "GPS Bitch". This electronic female voice would confidently offer directions in a monotone voice, expecting that we would follow them exactly. However, an Italian highway system that makes as much sense as an Escher painting made this hard to do. And whenever we would deviate from the directions she offered, which was often, she would be silent for a few seconds, then announce that she was "recalculating".

The typical trip has sounded something like this: "In point 3 miles take a right at Via de la Gobbeldygook and take a left"…Did she say right?"..."Left"..."Right"..."What does the map say?"..."You have it"…"No I don't"…"In point 1 mile take a right at Via de la Gobbeldygook and take a left"…"Peter, get over to the left"…"No, the right"…"Enter roundabout and make u-turn on to Via de la Gobbeldygook and take a left"…"I think that was it"…"We just passed it"…."Recalculating."

On this trip we drove from Rome to Chianti in Tuscany, via Assisi; from Chianti to Florence; from Chianti to Pisa, via side trips to San Gimignano and to the Amedei chocolate factory in Revel, which was closed to the public because they were busy making, (supposedly), the best chocolate in the world); from Chianti to Venice, via Bologna; and from Venice back to Rome, via Sienna.

I think after all that a little alone time outside of the car was well-deserved.
***
It is surreal to fly thousands of miles around the world, only to be standing in St. Mark's square in Venice listening to a live orchestra playing the movie score to Once Upon a Time in the West. Granted the concert was a celebration of the works of Ennio Morricone, an Italian composer, (and the film was written and directed by Italians), but hearing such a recognizable theme from such an unquestionably American film genre threw me for a bit of a loop at first.

I don't know why it should have though. What I've noticed from my short time here is that Italians appear to have an odd popular musical palate, consisting largely of 80s pop and Coldplay. (The one awesome exception being at dinner one night. We were dining outside at a restaurant overlooking a wine festival that included a live band that eventually performed a version, in Italian, of Knights in White Satin by the Moody Blues.) Perhaps the save all the inspiration for the artwork, since there sure seems to be a lot of it.

But here is my confession: I couldn't care less about it. At least not in the form of paintings, sculptures, etc. This was a recurring thought as I toured through the Uffizi museum in Florence. Out front of the museum is a piazza filled with street performers, gelato eating tourists, and a number of anatomatically correct naked male sculptures, including a replica of Michelangelo's famous David, which I dubbed "The Dave". Inside are hundreds of paintings that are approximately 75% representations of the Madonna with child, the birth of Christ, the adoration of the Magi, temptation of Christ, death of Christ, first poop of Christ, etc. It was while walking through room after room of these paintings pointing out to myself which figures in the paintings were giving the "Did you fart?" look to another that I realized that classics or not, they just left me kind of cold. I feel like somewhat of ashamed saying it, like I must have some sort of personal deficiency, but this type of representation of art really does nothing for me. I did, however, enjoy the room dedicated to ancient chess boards and writings and theories, as well as the room of sculptures I called the "Go Long" room, as all of the pieces looked to me like football players calling for a pass from their QB or celebrating some kind of touchdown dance.

As I sit here writing this, I'm struck by a thought however: if all great art is subject to personal interpretation, than perhaps I did enjoy it. Just in my own special way.

The Tale of the Dinner Party

It had come to my attention last week that I had not really done much grilling this summer. The past few summers I'd invite people over at least a few times, throw some food on the grill, and do some serious eating. This summer...not so much.

So I decided to rectify that by doing the grilling thing over the weekend. I sent out an email to some people, and started thinking of ideas. I was considering a pork loin recipe I found online.

However as the week went along, more and more people expressed interest in participating. Now, from past years my experience has been that you invite however many people anticipating that only a certain percentage will show up. That's how the math usually works. This time around, the percentage of interested parties was over 100. How does that work, you ask? There were additional invites after the first round as the subject came up with other people. At the highest count, it looked like a possible 15 people showing up.

Oddly enough this caused a little bit of a panic to set in. Mainly for two reasons. 1) The pork loin I had considered making was only good for maybe 4-5 people and 2) My apartment is big, but not that big; where the hell was everyone going to sit?

As far as issue #1, well basically I just rushed into a frenzy of inactivity, which included the inability to make any decisions. My first thought was to switch the menu to burgers. Kind of standard fare, right? That's why I didn't want to do it. But I slowly started to warm to it, thinking I could make pretty massive examples of burgers, like R.F. O'Sullivan style. Massive meat bombs. Get all the right fixin's. And maybe I could cook up a little bacon beforehand for bacon cheeseburgers. OK, sounds good. But then some potential guests suggested that they had Omaha Steak burgers and could contribute.

Well, damn, if someone else wants to bring some emat, I can't say no. So now what?

Waiting until Sunday morning (the day of the now termed Dinner Party) I decided to go with an old favorite. Sure, I'd only made it once before, but people seemed to dig it. Stuffed chicken. Here's the deal. Get some chicken breasts, the thicker the better. Cut them open, and stuff them full of peppers, onions, and bacon. Insert a couple of toothpicks to help keep them shut and throw them on the grill. When cooked, sprinkle a little cheese on top. Once melted, remove and eat. Mmmm.

I complimented this with a macaroni and cheese dish I'd been wanting to try since I saw it prepared on BBQ Univeristy with Steven Raichlen. (Who, if you've never seen the show, reminds me a lot of Bob Ross, except instead of making paintings, makes BBQ.) The mac n' cheese calls for not just macaroni and cheese (cheddar), but also corn, onions, garlic (which I forgot), red and yellow peppers, as well as some other ingredients that I didn't have. I'm always a little apprehensive about making my friends guinea pigs when I try out something new---especially when that something new calls for boiling milk until it thickens into a sauce; for some reason I always feel that if you do that wrong, the milke might turn poisonous or something; don't ask me why, I don't know---but it turned out quite well.

Then, my roommate made a nice spinach, tomato, and mozzarella salad to go along with it and we were pretty much ready to roll.

Also included in the eating was some Italian bread and butter, Matt brought over some burgers, Maria brought some banging chocolate chip cookies, and some Italian cookies/desserts my roommmate and her boyfriend picked up at Bob's.

So we were not wanting for food.

As for issue number 2, some of the people that said they would try to make it, ended up not being able to. No biggie, that always happens. Even still, we managed to shoehorn 10 people into the apartment without much problem.

All in all, I judge it a rousing success.

And the best part?....leftovers.