Heading to Turin’s International Book Fair tomorrow for the launch of a tome on the history of YouTube (”YouTube: La Storia”), with the author Glauco Benigni, ace entertainment journalist Alessandra Comazzi of daily La Stampa, RAI multimedia guru Renato Parancandolo and, uh, me (nervous, anyone? Just a leeetle). Where & When: May 8, noon, Palco RAI. Come up and say hi if you attend.
The inaugural day looks like it’ll be charged with drama (this is Italy after all) with President Napolitano expected to give an opening speech affirming special guest country Israel’s right to exist that has critics lining up.
Thought this poster advertising a friendly soccer match in Milan between Tibet and Padania (supporters of Italy’s thuggish Northern League party) was some sort of Sambuca-induced hallucination.
But authoritative Italian daily Corriere della Sera reports the game is the real deal.
Billed as an event where “for two peoples seeking freedom” compete, it’s not clear whether there’s an actual soccer team from Tibet (though there were some fellow exiles when the Dalai Lama spoke here in December, it’s hard to imagine where they’d come up with 11 good men for sport), it’s an interesting publicity move for the Padanians, who are in an entirely different kind of struggle to get recognized as a land.
The political party just won a nice chunk of support in recent elections, but it’s predicted they’ll have to tone down the usual rants against foreigners and secession from Rome to fit in. It’s not the first extra-political event they’ve created, after all they did invent the Miss Secessionist beauty pageant, currently in its 10th year.
Info:
No entrance fee but door donations go to Tibetan Children’s Villages, an organization founded by the Dalai Lama’s sister.
Wednesday, May 7, 8:45 p.m.
Civic Arena, Parco Sempione
Milan
If Italians are trying hard to get what they need, economy-wise, at least they’re having good sex.
Italians are among the top orgasmers worldwide, tied for first place with Spain and Mexico, enjoying the big wow 66 percent of the time they have sex, according to the Durex Sexual Wellbeing survey. The global average? A measly 48%.
It may be a question of slow sex — a little like the slow food concept — that
helps Italians do it better.
Italians who declare themselves fully satisfied with the intensity of their orgasms spend nearly twice as much (an average of seven minutes) on foreplay compared to under 4 minutes, globally.
Some 44% of Italians who reach orgasm regularly said they’d like to spend more quality time with partners, as opposed to a 38% global average.
The condom company’s yearly poll, which asks 26,000 people in 26 countries about life between the sheets, also found, however that Italy’s Casanovas are still not quite satisfied, with only 64% stating they’re fulfilled by their sex lives.
The survey also confirmed that home-bound Italian mamma’s boys and girls still favor Fiat sex (not surprising if you have followed the “Love Park” saga), 82% have had sex in the car.
Not to be outdone by New York, a restaurant in Italy’s fashion capital has opted to equip the menu with calorie counts.
The American initiative, already weighed down by an appeal, would only cover restaurant chains. But the Ristorante Romani, which voluntarily decided to list just how many calories the risotto alla milanese packs is an upscale, family-run venue in the city’s historic center.
“It’s a question of transparency and propriety,” owner Maria Ciaramella told newspapers. “It’s also the best way to meet the needs of our customers — both men and women — who will soon have to face the dreaded swimsuit test.”
To do it right, the restaurant brought in Italian dietitian to the stars Nicola Sorrentino. His outside expertise means there will be no flubbing on exactly how much the tortelloni with scampi, figs served with a “cascade of flowers” (edible? do those count as carbs or protein?) may bulge from your bikini.
Other items under scrutiny include linguini with lobster and cherry tomatoes, risotto alla pescatora and Chateaubriand with potatoes. It’s hard to imagine the truly diet-conscious even glancing at dessert items such as tiramisu, torta della nonna and the house specialty, a killer Neopolitan ricotta cake (pastiera alla napoletana).
With prices hovering around 45 euro a head ($70) sans vino, I haven’t been there since the dot-com boomlet allowed me to entertain clients on the company tab, but have heard that last year’s slight makeover has made the place even more comfortably old-school than it was. Image courtesy Ristorante Romani.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” in Milan got a multimedia makeover thanks to British director Peter Greenaway.
Visitors will see the ravaged Renaissance masterpiece in a new way with lights, voices, sounds and images layering over the work, centering around the moment when Christ announces the betrayal of one of the apostles.
Greenaway’s film was intended to run on top of Leonardo’s original fresco, but although the project has been hyped for months, the Italian government woke up a few days ago and forbade any such artistic happening given the extreme fragility of the work.
Instead, the film projects over a life-size copy of the fresco at the Sala dei Cariatidi, normally closed to the public, in Palazzo Reale near the Duomo. I elbowed my way into the press preview today, where the video is projected over a convincing replica of the fresco — thanks to an extremely high-res digital photo — while the room is divided by a long white table with white plates, cups and bread similar to the one in the artwork.
Viewers are sandwiched between the fresco and a back wall where up-close fragments of the fragile painting and portraits play across a screen — leading to a tennis-game effect since it’s impossible to know where to be look during the 15 or so minutes of the piece. (My friend and I both missed the final moment before the writing comes up on the wall because we were looking in the wrong direction. If you know how it ends, please email me.)
Though the experience would improve dramatically following a glass or two of Chianti, it is worth a gander, especially for the dramatic use of back lighting which seems to make the painting move towards viewers.
This is the latest in a trio of Greenaway’s projects in Italy — he “peopled” a newly-restored palace, the Venaria Reale, with 200 HDTV short films and used the same multimedia approach to enliven Milan’s recently inaugurated Design Museum.
If you go:Palazzo Reale
April 16–May 4
Admission every 20 minutes, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. €5.
From the Duomo, walk all the way through the courtyard and up the huge stone staircase on the left. You’ll have to walk through part of the Canova exhibit to get there, there are combined tickets if you want to see both.
Accurate, timely tsunami alert systems have proved more elusive than the Loch Ness Monster, but a new prototype testing the waters in the Atlantic may change that.
Three-ton Geostar (Geophysical and Oceanographic Station for Abyssal Research), set down about 150 kilometers off the coast of Portugal in the Gulf of Cadiz, will monitor movement and water pressure until the end of 2008.
Geostar squats 3,200 meters below the surface on a site known for tectonic twinges — the epicenter of the 1755 Great Lisbon Quake and resulting tsunami — where researchers expect at least three or four small seismic events during testing.
Milan police have put the glittering booty from a million-dollar jewelry heist online in hopes of catching the thieves. February 24, masked bandits busted into Damiani jewelers as employees were getting ready for a VIP bling fest.
Platinum rings with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires are among the 50 stolen pieces from the store in central Corso Magenta after masked thieves dug a hole in the brick wall of the neighboring palazzo to get at the goods.
So yeah, if someone just gave you an unexpected (and unexpectedly large) token of appreciation, this would be the time to raise an eyebrow and contact Milan police at squadramobile.mi@poliziadistato.it , or just ogle the hot merchandise here.
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.
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.
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. More at Spot-On.
An international design competition aimed at religious objects has extended the deadline until April 4 in hopes of getting more entries.
Called “deisign” (God-sign), promoted by the diocese of Cuneo and part of Torino’s year-long stint as World Design Capital, the competition aims to enhance and promote all spiritual, cultural, historical and emotional expressions of holy Catholic symbols.
The Torino Design Capital site says winning entries will demonstrate “a careful eye on the past for the forms of religious art over the centuries converses with the future and with other cultures through the present, involving contemporary expression.”
So nudge yourself beyond the bad English on the official site (”similarly a papery or cd-rom or dvd-rom will be predisposed for every elaborate”) and get cracking with those chalices, baptismal fonts, robes and crucifixes.
Prizes are mentioned — but sans details — as is a public show. Of course, eternal rewards are a given.
Not many bespectacled, mild-mannered politicos get rallied with a Village People tribute. Here in Milan, supporters of Walter Veltroni, former mayor of Rome and rival to Silvio Berlusconi, shot a video for YouTube on a 65 euro budget (about $100) to the tune of “YMCA.” (NB: It’s since been removed for copyright violation, but searching “I’m PD” should bring up a mushroom copy).
Everyday supporters star: a mom and daughter in the Castello Sforzesco park, a bartender — a nod to the hardworking city’s aperitif ritual — an old guy on a bocce court, a kid on a scooter outside the hall of justice and a soccer team.
Though slightly-off tune grammatically ( the refrain “I am PD” partially in English means “I am Democratic Party,” referring to Veltroni’s party), you got to hand it to them for overall catchiness.
And, more importantly, they’ve injected a series of “go vote” (vota) into this version. Though the country’s known for very high voter turnout, apathy has been an issue in these snap elections, with popular figures inciting people not to bother going to the polls. Anyway, it beats the pants off Berlusconi’s candidate kit.
A celebrated Renaissance statue is getting an extreme makeover in public thanks to a laser modded from the medical field.
Tourists mill about a frescoed room as Donatello’s “David,” saucily clad in only a hat and sandals, lies belly up on wooden supports in Florence’s Bargello Museum.
Since starting work in June 2007, restorer Ludovica Nicolai has already liberated his left side from a dark, opaque patina lavished over the bronze in the late 1700s.
A portable neodymium YAG laser donated by El. En. — similar to those commonly used in glaucoma surgery or to zap spider veins — performs much of the magic.
Possibly the only thing more off-putting than an exhibit dedicated to shit is an interactive exhibit dedicated to shit.
Excrement is at the center of a show at the Museum of Natural History in Trento called “La Cacca, History of the Unmentionable” on until March 28.
“We’re using shit from the animal world to teach kids about ecology,” said museum director Michele Lanzinger. “Our intent was to and to teach about their digestive processes, looking into the differences in species, lifestyle and diet and possible alternative uses for organic waste.”
A part of the exhibit, curated by zoologist Osvaldo Negra, features animal feces with signs encouraging visitors to guess from which beast it came from.
Kids aged 4-12 get guided tours geared to their age level, visits also feature a “shit treasure hunt” and snack featuring chocolate goodies.
Milan’s mercurial culture councilor Vittorio Sgarbi had threatened to put on a shit show — instead we’ve got some nude photo exhibits to stir up controversy - interesting that Trento had to courage to it.
A young Italian woman swooned over a replica of Antonio Canova’s “Venus and Adonis” statue on display at a tourism fair.
Francesca Fraticelli burst into tears, then fainted after admiring the adoring glance of Venus and the gelid grace of the plaster copy — though hard to compare to the original 1795 work in marble — brought out to attract visitors to the Canova museum. (The finished version is housed in Geneva).
Fraticelli, who has a degree in art history, works as cultural attaché for the province of Chieti in the Abruzzo region. Luca Zaia, president of the Canova Foundation, helped her get back on her feet and escorted away from the statue. The next day, revived and perky looking with red-framed glasses, she nonetheless told Italian television news that she would avoid testing her mettle by looking at the statue again.
Symptoms including dizziness, palpitations and shaking normally associated with Stendhal Syndrome — first studied by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini — are often reserved for foreigners unused to seeing so many beautiful treasures crowded together possibly also suffering from heat and the after-effects of a gelato high.
Like to test whether Italian art can produce a good fainting spell? Milan’s Palazzo Reale hosts a Canova exhibit with statues on loan from the Hermitage (including the much-awaited “The Three Graces“) until June 2.
Take a model, not a super skinny one, and chuck her in a bathtub full of spaghetti sprinkled with tomatoes and basil. That’s an anti-anorexia message, right?
This is the latest lip service to the toothpick model scare as Milan buckles down (or up) for Women’s Fashion Week, which runs from Feb. 16-23, latest images from Milano Moda Donna here, calendar in PDF here.
The brainchild of up-and-coming designers Dario Di Bella and Giovanni Premoli, the stunt had the placet of city officials, who have previously made noise about losing the stick figures lurching down catwalks in Italy’s fashion capital.
“There’s no reason fashion models have to be a size four,” Dario Di Bella, who works for label Premoli, told Italian papers. “It wouldn’t change anything about the way the clothes look or the overall image of our brand. “
Rental mannequins on show for the almost-naked lunch were size eights, as will be the ones doing their little turns on the “young designers for young people” catwalk February 20, organized by the city, where Premoli will also show. No word about what happened to the pounds and pounds of unwanted pasta used to make the weighty statement.
Italian singles, tired of being in the shadows for St. Valentine’s day celebrations, have proclaimed their own saint and feast day.
After all the hearts-and-flowers nonsense is over, the unattached fete themselves on February 15, the feast day of San Faustino.
The idea launched in 2002 by three single friends who formed a “Single Pride Association,” in which cross-dressing mascot Platinette crowned a “Single of the Year.” It stood for day of awareness of the ’status single’ with a special focus on the problems and discrimination faced by people who are not married.
Since then, the association and its portal are no longer — leaving San Faustino in the hands of club owners and lonely hearts agencies who organize speed dating nights from Sicily to Milan.
Still, singles couldn’t hope for a better protector.
Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci, who worked in Milan for 17 years, inspired 2008 Carnival festivities here.
The best part? A huge confetti-making machine in Via Mercante. It takes old newspapers and turns them into free packs of coriandoli (”confetti” in Italian means almond candies used as wedding, birth or graduation favors) for the kids.
Inspired by his machines (like the wooden models in the Tech & Science museum here), it theatrically shreds newspapers then whooshes them up a clear chute. They are packaged and sent down through another chute outside, where a young lad in costume hands them out.
Italy’s most stylish city celebrates Carnival fashionably late. Milan follows its own calendar, according to the Ambrosian Rite (named after patron St. Ambrose), so the party ends here on Saturday (”sabato grasso,” fat Saturday) and Lent starts on Sunday.
Saturday’s parade (floats, bands, etc) starts at 3 p.m. (from Via Palestro) and the festivities carry on after it winds up in Piazza Duomo ending with an acrobat/dance/fireworks extravaganza that starts at 10:30 p.m..
Keep an eye out for silly-string slinging teens and costumed tots; clubs are the way to go for adults who want to dress up.
More Carnival celebrations around Italy here and, in Italian,here .
MILAN, Italy — For the first time, Democrats living abroad from Auckland to Ontario are voting over the internet in a global primary. And a few states may allow expatriate voters to vote online in the general election come November.
For now, expat voters will, in effect, add an extra state to this year’s Democratic National Convention. These voters without borders will elect 22 delegates, weighing in with about as much influence as Montana or South Dakota.
Voting is currently open only to Democrats. Republicans Abroad split off from the Republican National Committee and can hold neither in-person nor internet votes in the primaries. For the estimated 6 million Americans who live overseas, red tape and the vagaries of far-flung postal systems leave traditional paper absentee ballots with all the accuracy of a message in a bottle.
Americans abroad requested nearly a million ballots in 2006 elections, but only about a third were cast or counted, according to a government report.
More from Nicole Martinelli at Wired News.
A building code infraction of five inches closed Italy’s parking lot of love, about two weeks after it opened.
Instead of accepting the usual DIY certificate of the layout, inspectors took tape measure in hand to check out Luna Parking, in Bagnolo Cremasco about 25 miles southeast of Milan.
Turns out that although the 38 semi-covered stalls were fine, the distance between the security booth and the entrance wall is five inches too narrow. While they were at it, they discovered the bathroom signs were too high.
So they closed the place down.
Unusually precise Italian bureaucracy?
More likely that local Catholics, who staged a church vigil for park-n-ride sinners before the grand opening, had their prayers answered.
This is the latest safe place for nookie to shut down.
Marco Donarini, out €300,000 euros for the faulty lot of love, told papers he found the episode “incredible.”
When the confetti starts a flying for Carnival in Venice today, organizers hope costumed party goers will make the folks at home jealous by posting photos, blog accounts and videos from the just-launched Wi-Fi network.
Aspiring Michelangelos will have to hold the charcoal: artist models have put back on their clothes to protest working conditions. In a note sent to news agency ANSA, unions representing these workers decry the “precariousness” of these jobs.
Live artist models were once state employees but over the last eight years they’ve become freelance workers striking a pose on yearly contracts.
Traditionally a job for the young, broke and shameless, only in a country “founded on work” do professional posers expect a job for life.
The protest may be worth a few pics: a “performance” at Rome’s Sapienza University, in the square in front of the Faculty of Letters at 9:30 a.m., Jan. 17.
The Via Flaminia once brought nobles and notables to their pleasure palaces outside Rome. Today, though, it’s covered in palazzi and clogged with buses and scooters, a virtual version of the road can be visited thanks to researchers who digitalized 4.45 million acres of terrain.
Hosted at the Museum of the Diocletian Baths, the virtual museum lets four visitors at a time take on avatars (and 3D glasses) for a stroll through ancient Rome. Sights include Livia’s palace, the Milvian Bridge on the Tiber River and infamous farmhouse Malborghetto.
With a cost of over $1.1 million, the project employed team of 20 made up of archaeologists, architects and tech experts.
There isn’t much to see online, yet, but not to worry: a Second Life community is soon to come.
Despite protests, Italy’s first paid parking lot of love is open for business.
Luna Parking, in Bagnolo Cremasco about 25 miles southeast of Milan, lies on a state road known for a florid prostitution business and vicinity to night clubs.
It’s the latest in a series of al fresco havens for Italian lovers, many of whom stay at home well into their 30s. The first one opened back in 2003 in Leonardo’s birthplace, Vinci, as a free, well-lit place for nookie set up by the local government.The market is hot and heavy — outdoor passion in Italy can be risky business in more ways than one — but the idea has never caught on because Catholic officials protest vociferously every time someone tries to open one.
An entrepreneur was set to launch a lover’s lane complete with privacy stalls Valentine’s day 2007, but authorities shut him down over nebulous “building code issues” before anyone could even neck in a Lancia there.
This latest effort is by far is the most expensive and elaborate variation on the theme. It costs €10 (about $14.50) for 90 minutes in a private covered box — enough time to perfect maneuvers around the gear shift for most — plus there are bathrooms and even snack machines.
A group of locals, who were unable to prevent the contested grand opening, spent the last night of 2007 in a prayer vigil “to redress the damages of the sex trade.”
About 300 years ago, the Venaria Reale was a vast pleasure estate, a jewel in the crown of opulent Savoy residences surrounding Turin.
The Baroque palace, stables, gardens and hunting reserve (235 acres), built by Duke Carlo Emanuele II of Savoy, were so magnificent that a local proverb claimed that leaving Turin without visiting Venaria was like “seeing the mother but not the daughter.”
For the last two centuries, though, the town of Venaria, seven and a half miles north of Turin, had witnessed the steady deterioration of the estate, which was erected in part as a demonstration of the power of the House of Savoy.
By the time the region of Piedmont embarked on an eight-year, $300 million restoration in 1999, the estate had been collecting dust for so long that even some Italians mispronounced the name (it’s ven-ah-REE-uh). Full story by zoomata’s Nicole Martinelli in The New York Times.
Truck drivers demanding government subsidies to meet rising fuel costs mean closed gas stations and empty shelves in pharmacies and grocery stores across Italy.
Strikers are vowing not to hit the roads again until December 14, but three days into the protest, my local supermarket in Milan already looks like the scene of wartime famine: there was no fresh fruit or vegetables and only a few half pints of milk left.
Strikes in Italy are a frequent nuisance but generally polite — sure, you may have to re-arrange a few appointments or leave work early but you’re still going to be able to get on with it.
But as Bloomberg reports, things are different this time around: The strike will cost food producers 200 million euros ($294 million) a day because of delays in the delivery of milk, fruit, vegetables and meat, according to the Italian agricultural association. Pharmacists warned yesterday that they may run out of medicine.
Touch Italians and food, though, and things suddenly become serious.
The canals and narrow streets of Venice have long been known to breed romance, but for the first time 60,000 people will seal the reputation of Italy’s most romantic city by kissing on New Year’s eve.
Called LoVe 2008 (the VE = stands for Venice), it’s the brainchild of Marco Balich, a Venetian known for a deft hand at video clips and as the executive producer for the 2006 Turin Olympics.
Casanova, La Serenissima’s poster child for the more debauched side of love, would probably sneer at the event. Organizers are casting for 100 camera-ready couples (a multi-ethnic assortment of the young, attractive and straight?) to be immortalized as they kiss at midnight.
Still, it does give people milling around in St. Mark’s square other to do than ogle each other and set off fireworks.
According to news reports, it’ll work like this: at 10:45 p.m. on December 31, 200 kissing couples will kick off the lip action. At 11 p.m., everyone does a practice lip-smack. At 11:45, another trial kiss (who said Italians don’t take romance seriously?) followed by a countdown accompanied by a “medley of love songs.” Twenty seconds into 2008, the collective kiss.
Heading to Turin’s International Book Fair tomorrow for the launch of a tome on the history of YouTube (”YouTube: La Storia”), with the author Glauco Benigni, ace entertainment journalist Alessandra Comazzi of daily La Stampa, RAI multimedia guru Renato Parancandolo and, uh, me (nervous, anyone? Just a leeetle).
Comment »