Hot Time-Summer in the City

Each June, Italy pulls out all the stops when it comes to providing the plebes with ‘panem et circensis’ and seriously, there’s no better place to be in terms of backdrops for your sensational events.  New York in the summer means concerts & Shakespeare in the park, street artists, picnics in Central Park.  But the boot – well, ‘lo fa la scarpa’ – meaning, gives it a run for its money as well…It’s as if the entire boot will burst its laces so full up with cool events for all and sundry.  Following is a brief recap of my last few weeks, with some ideas of what to look for should you be looking for fun in the sun.

My month really kicked in when the pool opened in Monteleone.  Life in the Lazio environs is filled with much more than lazy days under the olive trees.  Farmers markets (where, near Rieti you can buy a goat or sheep if they happen to catch your fancy), horseback riding, and “Sagre” fêting every type of food across every tiny town (mushrooms, pasta, sausage, you name it --one of my favorites, 'Sagra of the Spaghetti all'Amatriciana, held fittingly in its birthplace, Amatrice) keep everyone sated yet always hungry for more.  In Rome, the pool near the Colosseum opened in the “All’ombra del Colosseo” in a place that at night turns into a cabaret, music fest, and bar area as well.

While at the Colosseum, I treated friends & relatives to the Rome Rewind show nearby, but this summer's highlight is the show on Nero – while plans are underway for its restoration, sponsored by the Todd’s shoe company.  On Rome's Isola Tiberina, you can catch an outdoor movie, have drinks on bean bag chairs, or listen to music here and there – come autumn, you will truly miss nights out with the river roaring by you.

We held our Professional Woman’s Assoc year end party on the terraces of what will now host The Wine Club at via Veneto's Hotel Baglioni.  The view is something to behold as you enter, but elsewhere on the terrace, you lose the views completely.  I didn’t really care as I was busy cutting the immense sacher torte having been voted ‘Woman of the Year’! 

Dinners out under the stars have taken me to a few terrific places (see my last post for my fish extravaganza), but one of my favorites still remains the terrace of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna  (near Villa Borghese).  Other terraces worth the hefty price tags include the rooftop of the Hotel 47 (right by the Bocca della Verità), the top of the Hotel Minerva (Pantheon), and the Wine Academy overlooking the Spanish Steps run by the nearby Hassler Hotel. 

As for the most magnificent terrace of all, but whose views you should take in on a full stomach as the food offering is crummy at best, is on the Castel Sant’Angelo.  Summers there used to mean music, night life, comedians, jugglers, cabaret, and fun for kids…It unfortunately proved to be too excellent an enterprise and was put to an end last year for no apparent reason [Reason given: wear & tear on the monument but alas 6 months later there was talk of turning it into a gigantic theme park so go figure].  
Hot off the press: The Castle will be open on Saturday nights (like many Roman museums until 1am, with Tuesdays & Sundays openings of hidden places (like the dungeons), and Wednesdays & Sundays, readings, music, & theatre taking place.

A quick jaunt to Florence brought me to enjoy the New York University's Villa La Pietra campus year end affair, including a theatrical performance in the gardens followed by a buffet and concert by Italy’s most talented jazz pianist, Marco Fumo, playing a repertoire of all the Scott Joplin greats (& more).  Set in a grotto and overlooking all of Florence, it just couldn’t get better than that.

That is, until I found myself racing back to Rome to attend the inauguration of the site that once seated the Temple of Hercules in Tivoli.  We were treated to a video reconstruction of the site brought to us by Piero Angela, my favorite TV presenter for all things ancient, a musical ensemble of Tarantella while we (tried) to eat – the catering dis-organization left a lousy taste in your mouth – followed by a concert by one of Italy’s top folklore guitarists, Eugenio Bennato.  All with a stunning view of all of Rome and Lazio below, and a sunset that seemed to have been carried across by Mercury himself.

The night after, we had to go one better - so ran with friends down to the Pino Daniele – Eric Clapton concert in lovely Salerno.  Welcomed into the stands by the locals, listening to thousands sing along or chanting PI-NO! and going wild over Clapton’s “Cocaine”, pretty soon we were all dancing, passing beers, and having a generally excellent time.  Staying just outside of Naples, we recovered with a day at the beach and the southern hospitality of friends who fed us a perfect leisurely lunch at – 3pm!

Next up:  Fourth of July celebrations, the magnificent fireworks displays of the Feast Day of Rome's Patron Saints, Peter & Paul (June 29th) and in Venice, the Redentore, and of course Umbria Jazz in Perugia.  Music festivals, outdoor jazz concerts in Villa Celemontana,  the Casa del Jazz, Villa Ada (world music), and pretty much every other park across the country.

If my summer keeps going at this pace I don’t know if I’ll make it to the fall. 

Berlusconi fiddles while Rome burns...

And, if Nero had been alive by the time the Flavian Amphitheatre had been built, well, this is very much what it may have looked like. Granted, there's not much to go up in smoke today, but...this video is by far the best video on youtube, although you don't see the orange - and very realistic flames- from this temporary art installation in Rome. Why temporary? You'd think after all the trouble of putting up these things, they'd keep it going for awhile...After all, Rome wasn't burnt in a day...




I absolutely love the Colosseum as a monument of all times. It used to be lit up green every so often -- but, unlike the Empire State Building - it was lit up that way whenever America killed a death row inmate. Personally, and considering that one woman is killed every three days in Italy by her lover - husband or ex, I always thought they should be lighting it up pink just about every three days...and then, hope it would be temporary.

Italia.it or Italia NOT it?

P.J. O’Rourke, acclaimed author and Economist for Rolling Stone Magazine, once remarked that there are three ways to spend money:

1) YOU spend YOUR own money – and therefore, search out the best deals, price compare, get the best quality for the lowest price.

2) SOMEONE ELSE spends YOUR money – and here, he says, it’s like an ex-wife with your credit cards. Spends with wild abandon, but within the card limits (hopefully) or until she’s cut off.

3) SOMEONE ELSE spends SOMEONE ELSE’S money – an absolute free-for-all, no price controls, no checks, no limits, a case of pigs feeding at the trough. This, is Government Spending.

And, while this is applicable across all governments in all nations, it’s especially true for Despot Dictators and the Bush Administration at War. But it’s the Italians who really add that touch of color and drama to their spending. While Americans lament a $78 hammer, the Neapolitans once gave funds (through that seemingly bottomless pit of EU money) to two guys to set up a ‘modeling school’ (read, whorehouse, with owner-employee discounts). But I digress.

Last week, with all the hullaboo surrounding the huge piles of trash overflow and the Italian government (note: terms interchangeable), a small item missed most radars:

Italy’s incredible website, www.Italia.it built to promote -- as the government is wont to say -- “our petrolium”, was shut down. Given that Italy has so much going for it, it doesn’t really need promotion as a tourist destination, long as the Colosseum is standing and Tuscany doesn’t go coop, but, again, I digress. See article here.

The site’s closure wouldn’t be much to remark about, if it weren’t for the 58 million euro – that is not a typo - $85 million they put aside to make it. Now, I know there are exceptional websites out there. Some companies spend lots on them.
What would be a good benchmark for a really terrific website? $500,000? $1.5M? We’re not talking the making and running of Google Search Engines here. I'm sure there are even better templates than what they came up with.
In fact, the site boldly boasting, In Italian and English!!!! was most distinct for being totally impressive – in how fast you wanted to navigate off of it. What else would you expect from a government-run website?

But this domain, in real terms, was bigger than Nero’s Domus Aurea, his golden palace which once covered over 2/3 of the entire city.

Once again, the very people who this bad management affects, the honest Italian taxpayers, should be rampaging through the streets calling for the Technology Minister's head...did I mention - in a feat Dick Cheney would be proud of - he gave the contract to an IBM subsidiary? If I remember correctly, he once ran IBM].
If this ‘sacking of the treasury’ happened in Asia, the guy would have committed hari-kari by now. But instead, it gets just a brief mention on page 17. People simply shrug their shoulders, knowing that, just like the ‘modeling agency’, it’s just part & parcel with bad governance and ‘business as usual’.

And while Nero’s domain went down in history as the biggest, most incredibly outrageous waste of money, all for the glory of one megalomaniac, I for one, would like to submit an entry in Wikipedia that in 2007, history repeated itself.

Firemen, Firefighters & Fires in Italy

I have a neighbor that I secretly admire (well, okay, lust after). He’s a Fireman (with a capital F). And he came right out of Central Casting. He is such a dark-haired hunk that I’ve often thought about setting fire to my apartment just so I can get him to come over. Each day, I see him come and go, off to work. But sometimes, I just can’t help but think that he must have been so totally disappointed to have passed all his endurance tests and exams and whatnot, only to be sitting around the Firehouse with absolutely nothing to do, day in and day out.

I mean, Italy is nothing like America, where they build their houses out of (flammable) wood. Here, I think the biggest excitement is undoubtedly gas leaks - of which there are many - since we all use the gas lines for heating and cooking. And, top it off with none of that ‘cat up a tree’ that is the very fabric of American life, well… In Italy, the cats are free to roam, or they were intentionally abandoned up that tree and so no fretful owner is going to see to it that they get back down. In short, there hasn’t been a major fire since Nero’s day.

Now, I may be a bit hard on our Fireman, because there are huge, life-threatening brush fires raging throughout the peninsula, some nearly right up to my door (no, I didn’t light ‘em, I swear). And a few years back, the sets of Ancient Rome burnt down (again) at Cinecittà. So, I’m certain they have lots of fires, actually, to put out.
It’s just that in the city, Firemen and Fire trucks and all that are just not a part of civic life. I don’t know, but, I wonder if elementary school kids get to even visit a fire station here in Italy and slide down that tube…I think the kids would wonder where the heck they’d been taken and why. And, come to think of it, I don’t even know the word for Fire Truck (as I was searching in google images for an appropriate shot).

This is so much so, that I was quite taken aback the other day when I saw my first full-fledged Italian fire truck come roaring by. Sure, I’ve seen the little Fiats and mini-vans with the writing FIREMEN on the sides (okay, I can translate that to a more appealing Fire Brigade in honor of my cute neighbor), but really. Quite compact, to careen through the tiniest of Roman roads, at first, I thought it was a huge metal garbage truck with a siren and windows. Here was a row of gorgeous guys, arms out the windows looking a lot like the keystone cops in their very strange (for me) aluminum-sided fire truck.
It careened around the corner, tilting almost entirely on one set of wheels, and for a moment I thought that I had stepped into an excellent Richard Scary children’s book. Except, it wasn’t entirely red. Oh well, you can’t have everything.