faccio cose, vedo gente

There is some kind of cultural prejudice against people that skate in Italy. I remember a few afternoons in San Diego spent running on the strands in front of the beach, where you can experience all the social imagination of Americans: couples running and pulling a stroller, guys in their 20s or 30s doing acrobatics on bikes half of their body size, and in general people riding all kind of devices-with-wheels, including roller-blades.

And that’s the kernel of the debate: my mum, and with her all the people that live in my small village (with some exceptions in my aunts) believe that people closer to 30 than to 20 should not ride roller blades. Apparently, it’s childish, ridiculous… uhm… are italian people more judgmental than americans? Or do they have just a different parameters in judgments?

To add more spice, when I was getting ready to go, my mother decided to threaten me if I’d came back with wounds: the italian portare sfiga. And uhm, besides the fact that I’m not an ace on roller blades, everything went fine except when I fell down and I put my right thumb in a wrong position against the sidewalk. Result? Many levels of skin left on the ground, together with some good blood.

I had to leave my training field and go back home, where I ended up covered in names by mummy: there are no good areas for skating! You’re out of train! I told you! You never listen to me! Blah blah blah… This is a public call: anybody wants to help me becoming an ace on roller blades?

Technorati Tags: Facts, Italy, lang:en, Personal, Usa

Non andare via/ma se proprio devi andare

Sai come si dice/va’, e sii felice

Mina Anna Mazzini

I smell of smoke. I take my t-shirt between my thumb and second finger and I pull it to my nose. It smells. I have to go two years in the past to smell the same. When I was in Bologna.

Tonite I saw A. In the same place we were last time, for his birthday. The last time we met. What happened after that is simple to describe: silence. Take a piece of blank paper and look at it: it’s as void as that.

There’s no point in being secretive. A is Alex, and the place is Flicks, a gay bar in Hillcrest, a neighborhood of San Diego. To be even more honest, A. is first Alex, then Anthony, two disasters in a row. And today - by accident - I talked to both. But what follows is about the first.

I was at Flicks with a couple of friends: Francisco and Justin. There was good conversation, good times and one dollar drinks. After two hours I was talking about my impressions on Washington DC and Justin leaves.

It’s only me and Francisco, ready for the third drink, laughing and chilling. And suddenly - like a vision - A. is here. A equals Alex. And I’m not dreaming, damn me. Couldn’t I just be in bed, sleeping, concentrating of a ideal perfect WIWIWIG life where What I Want Is What I Get?

Walking towards the patio, where he is standing, is not really helpful. But I wanted to say hi so much, I felt like hammers were beating my back to move that way. And I’m there. And he’s there. And I look at him. And he smiles at me.

It’s bizarre. I say: how you doing? Careful that I’m tipsy and he starts telling me that he has recently been caught drunk driving, or DUI (Driving Under influence). And I start thinking about destiny, and jokes.

Do you know, silly, that that night, that last night the police pulled me over, and gave me a fine, while I was driving towards your house to bring you a present - while you weren’t there - for which I never had a thank you in response? They tried with all their strength to accuse me of drunk driving, but they failed.

So the only answer to his sentence was: I have a funny story about being caught drunk driving, but I won’t tell you. Have you any idea, crazy little boy, that I’ve been paying $148 that night just for bringing you a present that you were even unable to read the dedication? And I did that for nothing, which is what I got in return? You crazy wonderful person with the sensitivity of a broken chair? Sigh.

I’ll keep the story for me. I’ll just smile and be nice to him. And I’ll just tell Francisco, to get some empathy. And I’ll tell you, affectionate or casual readers, that I frankly don’t know what to expect from people. At least here in California. What does keep me here?

I have no answer and I just dream about a surreal, impalpable, invisible connection that the poet Ugo Foscolo called the “corrispondenza d’amorosi sensi” (mutual exchange of love sensations) between me and a perfect counterpart. Damn idealism!

But at the very very end what I hate most is the awful sensation of being mocked by the destiny. It’s unnecessary. And for somebody that, when I leave, is ready to hug me and kiss my neck and leave me in that unknown limbo where good and bad melt together.

Technorati Tags: Facts, lang:en

I was supposed to find out some famous italian music to celebrate my beloved country in the International Week celebration at UCSD. At the very beginning nobody subscribed to represent Italy so I took responsibility for the dirty job.

Feeling representative like a portion of spaghetti with meatballs (to help you understand the metaphor, they don’t exists in Italy, you make them with ragù sauce, not meatballs!), I decided to go to the internet and download some music from there (can I write that or will I have the police at my place tomorrow?).

Unfortunately some peer-to-peer networks don’t provide the results you were expecting for, just a bunch of fake porn titles. But sometimes the results can be surprisingly close to some piece of truth; let’s take a look to some of them!

• Dadaumpa: famous italian song sung by two twin sisters wiith very long legs in the sixties. The search result: sister lesbian love
• Fausto Leali: kinda not very good looking italian guy famous for its very rough voice. The search result: ugly clit close up
• Matia Bazar: group of singers (both male and female) with love troubles between each other. The search result: couple gets taped having sex by neighbor
• Toto Cutugno: he sings l’italiano, but this doesn’t make a stallion of him. the search result: the best italian handjob
• Anna Oxa: she married a sinister contractor from the eastern Europe. The search result: men purchase escort and share
• Caterina Caselli: a famous italian singer in the sixties, not a producer. The search result: greatest baseball catch in history

P.S.: I found a link to a funny italian story
while I was searching infos about the marriage of Toto Cutugno… is he married?

Technorati Tags: Humor, lang:en, Musica

When I was a little boy, I used to laugh with my neighbor with this little joke: there are two houses separated by a bush of roses. One of the guys is spraying a pesticide when his neighbor comes over and asks: “what are you doing?”. He answers: “Well, I’m spraying the bush”. “Is that against bugs?”. “No, it’s against elephants!”. And the other: “But elephants are in Africa!”. The guy then sprays in the air, looks at the neighbor and says: “Powerful, huh?”

That’s what, in Italy, we call British Humor: something that makes you smile, not really laughing noisily. But coming back from UCSD on the shuttle with my british roommate Anna, we started debating on this particular topic, and telling her the joke above, she didn’t pick it up. When I asked her for an example of British Humor, she jumped: Fawlty Towers!

Unsatisfied by her answer, I started talking with the guy right next to me, this guy from the east coast that I interrupted while he was reading a book. I asked him if he believed in the idea of a British Humor, and to give me an example: he came out with this example again, Fawlty Towers!

At the same time he defined the british humor as a bit raunchy, a thing that kinda disappointed Anna. They started debating on this, without a precise conclusion. At the very very end, though, when the shuttle arrived at the stop, the guy jumped off and passed from sight: did we scare him?

At home, I added to my Netflix queue the whole series of Fawlty Towers, so that I can have an idea of what they’re talking about. But as of right now… there’s no way to connect to their website and there’s still no definition! Help is welcome!

Technorati Tags: Humor, lang:en, Personal

god moaning is not a blasfemy, just a nice salutation with the typical New Yorker accent.

.:lost in translation::4

the first time i was *really* confused was with the question what’s up that doesn’t have a proper equivalent in italian. It’s similar to cosa c’é, but this is closer to what’s going on so I wasn’t able to find a direct translation. Americans love to abbreviate in wazzup or even sup to help international students in matching to the original language.

What makes wazzup a very particular question is that the range of answer can be totally unpredictable: from “hi there” to “I’m ok” to “just chilling” to “good times” to “nothing”, which makes the situation even worse. What does tuKa do with a wazzup? He just tries whatever answer to one of these question: “how are you?”, “what’s going on?”, “how is it going?” and “what’s wrong?”… jeopardyyyyy

.:facts::3 >> .:shopping::1

Yesterday I bought this t-shirt for 9$ at Buffalo Exchange, then I discovered that the same t-shirt was 6$ at Urban Outfitters. Fortunately, it was out of stock there