Profiles in Confusion

My two favorite kinds of Facebook people are, first, the ones who change their profile pictures every two days. No, you haven’t transformed and you don’t look different and you are blocking the normal flow of narcissism with your needy bullshit. I get the feeling they are seeking out someone to say how handsome or gorgeous they are but what they generally get are reactions like:

“Wonderful. Where was that taken?”

“You are so funny. Call me.”

“Beautiful jacket. Is it new?”

“How’s your mom?”

The others are the youngsters who pose sexy duckfaced, with lots of studs and dangerous jewelry and thick makeup, brandishing guns, overly-obvious neck tats, badass expressions, threats and racism and obscenity and hatred on all of their posts and when I scroll down to learn more about them (as if) I see  their favorite movie is The Little Mermaid and their favorite books are Dr. Seuss and The Holy Bible. Don’t you just want to take them aside and explain shit? Me neither.

Nazi Zombie Child Molesters

“Gee, why do they bother to wear anything at all?”

“What’s happening to our society?”

“What do I tell my daughter?”

Those are some of the comments about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit that took place a few days ago, and all the fucked up fashions that made people question the state of the world. People on my social media “friends” list are pissed off, super confused, bemoaning the seeming deterioration of all that women have achieved. I gave away my TV a few years ago so that I wouldn’t have to watch this shit, but there it is, first thing I see on Google News, the NY Times, Facebook.
            Fashion is big business, corporate and corrupt as hell (sweatshops), and if designers and marketers could figure a way to cash in on torture, dismemberment or disease they would do it faster than an after-dinner purge by a 14-year-old methed-out model. I’m glad I don’t have kids who ask questions about this stuff. Do we stifle their freedom, judge them, control them, or let them do what they want and hope for the best? Fuck if I know. Cult of Personality, Pop culture, Capitalism, Narcissism. Don’t ask me.

Fashion designers are deified and artified, and dresses and shoes and $100,000 handbags are considered acceptable museum exhibits; my relationship to Art is muddled and confused. (I love Joan Didion, I dig her writing, but she has signed with Celine to become a “style icon” instead of one of the great essayists of our time. The fuck is a “style icon”?)

The good thing is that this display has helped me to put the Zombie thing in perspective. Zombies everywhere, right? Because Zombies are the new Nazis. Nazis and Zombies are both condemned and hated and feared by everyone. Zombies are fictional victims of fallout or plague, but too bad, they have degenerated and are disgusting brain-eaters and can be killed, murdered, decapitated, crushed, shot and slaughtered with impunity. Same with Nazis. Hated by all, a recent real-world history of horror and cruelty; vile, wicked cowards who ran in packs attacking the weak.

Child molesters, too. Yeah, yeah, I know, sick people with a perverse craving and a disease that probably can’t be cured. Zombies. Men (and a few women) who abuse the innocent and are selfish, sneaky and horrible. Like Nazis.

 Nazi Zombie Child Molesters.

Why can’t we add really rich people with little or no talent who have never worked and are famous and wealthy for nothing but their needy, borderline personalities and bad taste? Shouldn’t they be classified with Nazi Zombie Child Molesters? Instead, we make them celebrities and massively reward them for their shitty behavior, their bad attitudes, misogyny, racism, egotism and ignorance.

I’ll have to remember that as I applaud someone on The Walking Dead for crushing a Zombie’s skull or whenever Tarantino wipes out a batch of Nazis or the next time a child molester is arrested in a sting. Subversive filmmakers are perhaps softening us up, justifying the violent elimination of threats by using Nazi Zombie Child Molesters as stand-ins for useless mega-rich underachievers.

I wait impatiently for the angry mob to crash the next red carpet display of venality.

Probably not, though.

There will be more heated discussions about fashion and the best/worst dressed, highest paid, who is aging badly and botched celebrity plastic surgery.

I am seriously glad I don’t have children.

A Brand New Phone

There’s a lot of loose money floating around these days. 

A kid laughed at my phone last week.

We were hanging out, I got a call, checked the ID and ignored it. He laughed at my (2 year old) phone.

Google glass ($1,500), Apple watch (starting at $550), IPad, Netflix, and Amazon for everything else? More? Yes. Phones. Always phones.

As of a month ago, I (valued customer) have an opportunity (!) via Verizon (fuck them) to upgrade (new term for selling your Soul) my oldschool clamshell folding, calls and voicemail-only telephone. Yep, for NO MONEY I can sign on for another 24 months, 2 years, end-of-the-world, and get my choice of great looking, impossible, app-rich, Droid, Nexus, Apple, Galaxy, cool-kid, bigger, badder, newer, personalizeable telephones with a shitload of connectivity, a million ringtones, eternal data packages, acres of storage and porn-in-my-pocket. The security sucks but I can call anyone, watch anything, listen to all the music ever recorded and I can make stupid self-centered videos while I keep track of my over-the-top workouts, arrange meetings, make pie-charts, convert metrics, find a Starbucks. I’m not a Luddite. I like my MacBook and I enjoy streaming TV and movies. And I already do all that other stuff; videos and music and pie charts.

And how much will all this latest bullshit cost me even with a free phone? Merely an additional (yes!) $1,200 a year for two (2) upgrades (not counting tax and indecipherable billing hoaxes), because I am married and we both should (fairness) have the same accessibility. Right? $1,200 is enough for round trip airfare to almost anywhere. And I have a 20-Euro Italian phone and a 40-Euro French phone (it’s got a radio) that I top off when I find myself in either of those technologically civilized countries and twenty euros-worth of time will last me almost a month because I don’t need a lot of the options. If I can’t find a special must-try popular restaurant I eat somewhere else. I ask people for directions and read train schedules and take pictures with a cheap-assed Canon camera that is (believe it) really easy to use, small as hell and no one has ever, ever eyed it with criminal intent. No one wants the outdated stuff I have so I get to keep it. $1,200 a year for maps, unlimited calling and texts, hotel reservations, movie times, museum floor plans, news, shopping and porn (rarely) (honest).

Family, friends, children, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends can be in constant contact, easy to reach, never away, never alone, available and responsive and isn’t that a clear definition of codependence?

I’m always here for you. Always. I love you so much I never want you to be out of my sight, out of my reach, out of my control. If you call and I don’t pick up or call you back or text within an allotted number of minutes, that means I don’t respect you. I’m probably having an affair and that’s a justification for your anger, sadness, jealousy, rage, stalking, vandalism.

As it is, I only get about one call a day and, if I must, I can text a simple “Yes” or “No” or “I don’t know” answer to most questions, no charge, with my crummy 2-year-old device. I don’t feel left out for not caring about the greatest innovation since sex and literacy.

 Seriously, though, I hope people are digging all the cool shit that’s available. Buy it, upgrade, download and activate. Text me and wait for a response.

And wait.

I might be in Paris.

Love Comes to Santo Spirito

Above is a photograph of one of the local the homeless guys taken from our window with a zoom lens. I won’t get that close. Ever. The little man in the blue hat who wanders about, drinks, hoots, screeches, mumbles and drools in Piazza Santo Spirito. The other drunks don’t hang out with him any longer because they all know, with their inebriate precognition and probably their sense of smell, that he’s going to be the next one to die.

The only cool thing about being a street drunk and a hopeless drug addict is that you never  have to spend time looking for a toilet. He’s polite though, always says “Buongiorno” when I shoo him away from our doorstep. I think he’s a sad, lonely man though.

Lonely? Oh damn. Wait. It’s almost Valentine’s Day again. It comes around about every six months because we can’t get enough of that hopeless, bullying, codependent, expensive, unnecessary, cynical holiday. Who doesn’t love “Love”? It’s a concept that is hard to understand or define, but even if you don’t feel “love” or make “love” or have “love” in your life, or you can’t clearly explain what it is and why you should be in it, you should acknowledge it or else you feel like an unpatriotic, atheistic, animal-hating lonely loser.

It’s OK to be alone. Better than some relationships. There is nothing wrong with being sane and comfortable in your own head and content in solitude. Who hasn’t been in a relationship, in love, but couldn’t wait for the other person to go away for a couple of days? Don’t lie.

This morning I read that a lot of people who are alone buy presents for their pets on Valentine’s Day. Think about that. It’s not enough that they completely control the trapped dog or fish or lizard and squeeze it for every last drop of delusional impossible human emotion, but they also transfer the abstraction of “love” onto the creature and buy it a gift to show it how much they care. I don’t think it’s sexual; it’s just another form of codependence and it might even be pure and sweet and generous. Dog doesn’t know, cat can’t give a crap, fish has a brain the size of a BB and isn’t smiling when you drop that extra flake of treat in its bowl. It’s lost its little mind, swimming in tight circles. The rictus of near death disguised as a grateful smile.

The good news for all solitary celebrants is that it is easy to see how other people’s relationships are progressing. If you participate in social media, check out the posts of your friends who are married, coupled up, partnered. If you see the phrases Love of My Life, Soulmate, or Heart’s Desire, that relationship is on the rocks. If there are lots of old pix of the happy couple on their wedding day (Happiest Day of Her/His Life), or if she is sitting down and he is standing behind her, manly and protective, with his arm draped possessively around her neck, it’s over and she may be in jeopardy.

The key to breaking the code for proclamations of love is:

The more sentimental and gushy, the more desperate and forcefully the commitment is declared, then the more deeply troubled is the partnership. You don’t have to believe me, but in a few years go back through your messages and check to see how many of those Soulmates are still gazing dumbstruck and adoring into each other’s eyes.

The drunken guy is hollering again. Is he shouting out his love for the crazy woman across the piazza who walks in circles cursing at the top of her lungs for an hour every afternoon?  I wonder if they have plans for V-day? Buy a bottle and bellow incoherently, together? Soulmates. 

Hats and Sunglasses

The Missing Penis

Everything erodes; people and creations decompose. Nothing lasts forever, and that is the way it should be, however an infrastructure as old and as vital as Italy’s has to be maintained. Buildings have to be remodeled and repurposed to keep up with the effects of time, increases in population and wartime destruction. The Fiorentini still cross the Arno on half a dozen reconstructed bridges. They shop in small botteghe and they meander through the ancient backstreets; they visit banks, museums and churches that have been modified and renovated.

Paintings and sculptures also degenerate. Over the past several centuries most of the great canvases have been repainted, or “restored”, by different artists and experts and that they continue to look as fresh and vivid as the day they were affixed to a wall in the Palazzo Vecchio, five hundred years ago. They are bright and crisp but they are no longer the individual efforts of Salviati or Carracci or Giotto. The artists had important patrons, the Catholic Church and Italian noble families championed them, and their paintings are hanging in all the museums of the world. They are a delight to behold and some can be life changing. But those paintings are now collaborations by committees of artists, curators, administrators and politicians.

The master’s underlying theme is intact, the drapery and backgrounds are reminiscent of the original intentions, but the colors are a bit too intense, the faces are too similar and the shading is not quite right. There is a notion that the masterpieces are too valuable to be left to the vagaries of age and weather. The degenerative processes of time and moisture and light must be stopped. So, the paintings and sculptures are restored and repaired on an ongoing basis. Some of the attempts at refurbishing have been devastating, but the art is also very popular and the museums know who puts the pesto on their pasta and they keep the valuable creations in a perfectly preserved, unnatural and artificial condition. Who the hell wants to travel all the way to the Uffizi and see a deteriorating Botticelli? Who would pay fourteen euros to see Venus without her magnificent beauty?

“Momma, where is that man’s penis?”

At least I think that’s what the kid said. My Italian is coming along, but they speak so fast. I was thinking the same thing, though.

Where have all the penises gone? There is evidence of missing anatomy and absent digits on all the statuary. Fingers, noses, heads, and penises. Anything that sticks out, up and away is liable to be broken off after a thousand years. Most noses are replaced; lean in close and you can see the hairline cracks where they’ve been mortared. Fingers are added in the same way. Heads? Yes, they are replenished. There is a statue in the Michelangelo room at the Uffizi that has had at least two and possibly three different heads. She looks OK though, reclining luxuriously in her diaphanous robes, at rest, with a thin dark strip around her neck that shows where the most recent noggin has been fastened. And why not? There are, apparently, plenty of heads and fingers and noses lying around.

Are they out of penises? Because penises are left the hell off. You lose your cock, you are right out of luck boyo. Don’t come begging at the back door of the Uffizi, the Bargello, the Opera della Duomo. No dick for you, Giuseppe. Why? What can anyone have against penises? Is there a malicious Catholic cult that has rejected the phallus?  Don’t we love penises? Nearly everyone loves a good penis, even an average one; men, women, children, old and young. It’s a nice, comical, mysterious part of the body that responds to stimulation whether real or imagined. But if it gets knocked off, broken, chipped away, eroded or hammered down? Get out of here. Nothing for you. If you lose your nose, fine, we fix that right up. Your finger’s absent? Well, how are you going to hold on to your panini, your wine, your penis? We have to repair that. And we have a crap-load of craniums waiting in the back room, no worries. But, oh my, you’ve gone and wrecked your wick? Ah, peccato, Pisano, no substitutes. We reject your request. One to a customer. We have standards that go back to antiquity and you can thank the Pope or the Council of Trent or the Victorians, Saint Jerome or Saint Theresa or Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows. Some busybody agreed that we would no longer honor the missing member. As you wander through museums, admiring the extraordinary work of the masters, questioning the restorations and repairs, don’t dwell too long on the ambiguities of the absent knob. It’s another of the great Christian Mysteries like the Eucharist or Virgin Birth.

“Momma, where is that man’s penis?”

“Shut up. No one knows. Be good or that will happen to you.”

You have to love the Catholics.

Florence, Italy, January 2015

This week's photos. Waking up, screwing around, going out, coming home, settling down, learning to use the appliances.

Living Room in our apartment on Piazza Santo Spirito. An old convent/monastery attached to the basilica. It is rumored, and I hope this is true, that there was a morgue here and Michelangelo used to come here to study the cadavers. Fourteen foot ceilings.

 One of the weird paintings in the apartment. This child (boy/girl) stares at me, eyes following. I'm sure that as soon as he/she finished posing he/she strangled the dove. Dig the shoes, though.

 
Piazza Santo Spirito from living room window. Picturesque after a light rain, which drove the drunks inside. No problems though. Coffee shop right across the piazza for daily Italian lessons, friendly barista and cold, detached cashier girl.

The Duomo in the distance as seen from the Palazzo Pitti.

 
The mural on the inside of the Duomo. All the big names plus the condemned. Started by Vasari, finished by Zuccaro in 1579. Last year you couldn't get inside the church there were so many tourists. In January, we are almost alone and can take all the time we want. Nice.

 
The inlaid stone floor beneath the dome.

This man is taking measurements for a restoration of the Bronzino in SS. Annunziata. It's an important church, still very active, full of great art that has been overlooked. They are funding a restoration of frescoes and the great paintings. Bronzino is becoming this year's favorite.

Typical street in the Oltrarno, our neighborhood. Lots of graffiti (Gentrification is Class Warfare, Fuck Authority). I appreciate it and there is good food and coffee up there. I try not to post pix of food, but the tagliatelle and mussels had 27 mussels, fresh pasta and a buttery broth. I will do that again, thank you.

 
Everywhere in the world. Je Suis Charlie. This place sells cooking apparel.

 
For all the diabetics, alcoholics, junkies, addicts and people with sugar issues. Glad I'm not smoking ganga. Today. My goal weight is 300 lbs.

 
The first of many selfies. Be prepared. I call this one Polyphemus in Italy, Part I.  The fact that the camera matches my shirt was an accident, but it pulls the picture together nicely.