TV Reality

It's been a few years now since I worked in New York, and the Rome I worked in during the 70's has changed into another place. Living in an isolated Umbrian village of about 150 people, perhaps I'm out of touch with reality, i.e. the important things that go on in the world, although we do get to attend more funerals than most city dwellers do. Fortunately, we have the internet and Skype to keep in touch with people and happenings around the world. We also have satellite TV, which brings us another little window on the world. It's long been fashionable to disdain TV but, especially in the football off-season, I enjoy watching many of the shows, and have for years.

All my life, pundits on the right have complained of the liberal bias of the news media and Hollywood. They were right. After all, Edward R. Murrow was no Fascist sympathizer and one can fairly imagine his disdain for the Neo-Cons, were he around today. Unfortunately, he's not. For a time, I watched a large amount of cable TV news but increasingly, the cable channels seem more out of touch with reality than we are here in Acqualoreto.

Then there are the ”reality shows”. I haven't yet figured out why these shows are so named. Most seem to be elimination tournaments. Pseudo-celebrities pass their time trying to remain on a tropical island with other aspiring ”personalities”; other contestants aspire to work for Donald Trump, or be selected as a spouse, future model, fashion designer or bed partner. In others, people, hooked up to a lie detector, face embarrassing questions in front of their families, or attractive young people are challenged to put repulsive substances in their mouths and swallow. I suppose the common denominator, and plausible link to reality, is the competition of people willing to subject themselves to public humiliation for the prospect of winning money.

There are even too many comedy shows on television, but I'll have to pass on commenting on them since I've discovered that I'm allergic to laugh tracks, so for the most part, I'm left with the TV dramatic series.

Nearly all shows deal with crime, clearly the principal activity in the world. Murder is the favorite crime on TV, sometimes treated with a spectacular brutality, but more often with humor. The light hearted murder shows go back to before television, when crime magnets such as Sherlock Holmes and Mr. and Mrs. North had a merry time solving whodunits in books and movies. Over the years Ellery Queen, Hart to Hart and countless dozens of other TV series have mined this vein. One of my more recent favorites, Midsomer Murders, known in Italy as Inspector Barnaby, would appear to have depopulated all of southern England in its ten year run, but the characters and locales were delightful. My all-time favorite, Germany's Inspector Derrick, ran for twenty-four years, with just one writer, Herbert Reinecker, creating all 281 episodes. The series also furnished fascinating characters and locales around Munich. Horst Tappert, an ex-vaudeville song and dance man who played the Inspector, solved all those murders mostly by stalking the characters his intuition led him to suspect. The program featured little onscreen violence but a great deal of the darker side of human nature. In Italy, Terrence Hill, as Don Matteo, has been playing a parish priest in Gubbio for the past decade. The 144 episodes have, on average, included more than one homicide per show, which would appear to make scenic little Gubbio one of the most violent places on earth, with a murder rate exceeding that of the south of England, Detroit and Chicago combined.

The crime solvers have usually been private detectives or regular police but now and then a mystery writer gets into the act, as with Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) in Murder She Wrote, and currently Rick Castle (Nathan Fillion) in Castle. In addition to the FBI and the CIA, other specialized crime fighting units such as the NCIS, which may or may not exist in the real world, also see some action. Clearly, the world's preeminent profession, in the world of TV, is that of forensic medicine. While I do know one young man in that field, I never realized that he and his colleagues played such an important role in the war on crime. I believe it all started with Crossing Jordan, but they've spread to CSIs and NCISs all over the country, and now to Body of Proof. Even Inspector Barnaby and Castle went with the trend and got their own body disassemblers. Most of the corpse analyzer shows are similar, but one, CSI Miami, stands out. Not so much for its acting, writing or characters, but for its color. In my childhood, most color movies were in Technicolor, but if I remember correctly, Roy Rogers movies were shot in something called Trucolor, which featured everything in bright orange, with some contrasting aqua blue. These are the Miami Dolphins colors so it only seems right that a Miami crime show should replicate the old Trucolor hues, especially one starring the carrot-topped David Caruso.

In TV history, Dallas was the first show to take the continuing drama soap opera format to prime time. The format was upgraded by ER, which brought doctors to the forefront and good writers to the work behind the scenes. It also launched George Clooney's career. After years of ratings-boosting service, he faded into the sunset with his on-screen sweetheart Juliana Margulies. When ER finally ran out of juice, other medical shows like Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice followed, but their writers just couldn't seem to find much inspiration left in the clinical area, so those shows have triangulated between medicine, soap opera and soft-core porn. Other shows have taken a similar path but without the medicine. Sex and the City could be amusing; Desperate Housewives and Cougar Town a little less so, but then, there's no shortage of cheerfully lewd shows on SKY.

I've alluded to former complaints about the liberal bias in the media. Since the US lurched heavily to the right in recent decades, both the news shows and the entertainment shows have tried to accommodate the new public tastes. The past decade has brought us torture-as-entertainment shows including 24 and the various versions of NCIS. Although I've whole-heartedly embraced the lighter side of murder, I haven't yet adapted sufficiently to the new ethos to really enjoy 24.

More subtle right-wing inroads have come with Ayn Rand-inspired heroes such as Dr. House. Played brilliantly by Hugh Laurie, the British actor who was famous as the effete Bertie Wooster in the P.G. Wodehouse inspired series, Jeeves and Wooster, Dr. House is an egocentric, lame genius devoid of respect for rules, laws, feelings or etiquette. He perseveres to cure the most exotic illnesses heretofore unknown to man. Superman with a crutch! Despite the unreality of both the health care available and the excesses of the protagonist, the show usually manages to be entertaining.

Successful shows tend to be cloned and Lie To Me tries to build on the success of Dr. House. Another interesting British actor, Tim Roth as Dr Cal Lightman, hobbles around with the gait of a chimpanzee, though no explanation of this deformity is forthcoming, other than the unspoken desire to emulate Dr. House. His superhuman talent is to be able to tell if people are lying or telling the truth by looking at their faces, and this elite skill has earned him a huge cutting edge office and a bevy of doting beauties who put up with his crude ways and his House-like disavowal of law and manners. Among the adoring women is his partner, played by Kelli Williams, fresh from her role as the partner and wife of the creepy Bobby in The Practice. She risks being typecast as the abused partner. I prefer this show to Dr. House, mainly because the women are better looking, but the plots are also more imaginative. Too bad that Dr. Lightman's gorgeous ex-wife, Jennifer Beals, has moved to Chicago to be Police Commissioner on another new series, Chicago Code. The latter show seems to be yet another copycat, emulating Detroit 1-8-7, and it may turn out to be better than the one it copies. Both have a nice gritty feel to them and provide balanced accommodation to the prejudices of the left and right wing segments of the audience; racial equality on one hand and a healthy disregard for the niceties of the law on the other.

After crimefighters and doctors, the next most prominent TV profession would be lawyers. If the doctors and police tend to be the darlings of the right, we liberals tend to favor the lawyer shows. Series like The Defenders, The Practice, Boston Law and more recently, The Guardian and Raising the Bar (Avvocati a New York in Italy) have fairly regularly espoused a liberal democratic set of values. The Guardian, an otherwise interesting show, suffered by having a terminally unsympathetic character in the lead role, while Raising the Bar, which tempered its idealism with a strong infusion of cynicism, was a wonderful antidote to Fox News, and just too good to last. Now that George Clooney has come out of TV exile to sell coffee and Campari in Italy, his former ER love, Julianna Margulies has come back to star in The Good Wife as a lawyer married to a jailed Chicago politician. The shadowy side of the profession is on view here too but, again, the hearts of the protagonists are in the right place, even if other body parts tend to wander.

I love all these shows but my favorite of the genre had to be Judge John Deed. Half a century ago when I applied to law school, I didn't know where it would lead. It didn't lead anywhere, as I switched to architecture at the eleventh hour, but had I joined that oft-maligned profession, I couldn't have imagined a more appealing role model than the Porsche-driving, womanizing judge, played by Martin Shaw, who was always defending the underdogs from the corrupt powers of the establishment. This wonderfully produced, very British show, wasn't around for long, possibly because the suspension of disbelief was challenged by the odd circumstance that in every case that the judge presided over, the establishment villains were represented by his ex-wife, now married to the corrupt Minister of Justice, while the defense attorney for the put-upon victims always turned out to be his on-again, off-again girlfriend Jo Mills, played by the lovely Jenny Seagrove. She was often assisted by the Judge's law student daughter, which provided yet more conflicts of affection.

Many other professions have shown up as series protagonists. We've seen teachers, soldiers, undertakers, bartenders, priests, mafiosi and for six years, Patricia Arquette has appeared as a cuddly mom with supernatural powers in Medium, helping the DA to find serial killers. If the protagonists are interesting and/or appealing, and the writing is good, plausibility is no prerequisite for success.

I realize that salesmen, engineers, teachers and factory workers are also all underrepresented as key players, but what about architects? Not counting those home improvement shows like Extreme Makeover-Home Edition, how many series protagonists have been architects? One! Yes, there was one. Charles Bronson played Paul Kersey in the Death Wish movies and TV series. He stalked and killed dangerous street criminals before Rudy Giuliani even thought of becoming mayor of New York City. Despite the usual correctness of my political leanings, I was always fond of Charles Bronson in those movies, perhaps because of his no-nonsense manner, or maybe it was just the exciting novelty of seeing an architect as protagonist. But that was then and this is now. It's time for Death Wish XX. Street crime no longer is the dominating preoccupation it was in the 70's. The ten year-old fear factor of terrorism is wearing a little thin. Let's see a new crusading architect taking on the real villains of the day, bankrupting the banksters, and entrapping those corrupt mid-western governors. The Justice Department has given up on prosecuting our war criminals and the bought Supreme Court justices, so how about leaving it to a renegade architect on TV. If a medium is the last line of defense against serial killers, why can't an architect combat the oligarchs and their lackeys? So far, the urgent task of going after white collar criminals has been left mostly to Neal Caffery, a semi-reformed con-man, working with the FBI, on White Collar. There's a bit of a con-man in every successful architect, so why not have one join the battle. Just make him charismatic, with a beautiful girlfriend, or vice-versa, and keep the writing taut.

Roadside Hazards

The other day my wife signed for a heavy piece of registered mail addressed to me from the Municipal Police of Todi.  Opening it with some trepidation, I discovered that three months earlier, a speed measuring device (Velox) had clocked and photographed me going 74 km/h (considered 69 km/h with the benefit of the doubt discount) in a 50km/h zone right in front of Tuder Green, a gardening shop in Ponterio we’ve frequented since it opened about three decades ago.  Although someone did tell me about this speed trap, the warning apparently came too late.

In the ten years since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the world has been taken over by an obsessive need for a sense of safety and security, no matter at what cost.  Thus, we now need to strip off half our clothes at airports and surrender our rights regarding illegal searches and seizures.  The other noteworthy event of the past decade was the economic collapse, often referred to as “the great recession”, which has also spread from the US to the rest of the world.  Just which of these two phenomena is responsible for the recent speed control craze isn’t clear.  It may be both, but from the size of the fine (€177) and the number of these machines cropping up, it looks like some municipal authorities think they’ve discovered a foolproof way to overcome the budget crisis.  As wonderful a place as Italy is, it isn’t perfect.  A certain percentage of Italians still suffer from that post WW II syndrome “if the Americans do it, we have to do it too”, a malady that has led to the widespread diffusion of problems such as heroin addition, obesity, urban sprawl, SUVs and now, a drivers license points system.

In fairness to the Italian police, I must point out that, unlike their American counterparts who seem to take pleasure in trapping unsuspecting motorists from hidden outposts, our defenders of public safety put warning signs and flashing lights on the speed traps.  The idea seems to be to make you slow down rather than to cull the quicker drivers from the herd.

If you live in Italy or you’re thinking of visiting and driving here, there are a few things you should know about Italian speed limits.  They’re never posted; they’re seldom enforced (until now), and they are mostly unrelated to the reality of either the road conditions or the actual speeds at which people drive.  There are four basic speed limits in Italy: 130 km/h on the autostrade, 110 on the superstrade, i.e. limited access four lane highways, 90 on country roads and 50 in towns and cities.  Virtually none of these are ever indicated by signs, with the exception of the 50 km/h limit in towns.  You’re supposed to know them.  However, there are many little round signs with limits that take precedence over the standard limits for certain tracts.  I’ve always assumed them to be friendly warnings, applicable as if written in miles, not kilometers per hour.  If you’re on a country road and a sign indicates curves ahead with a “50” sign, a reasonable interpretation is that a safe speed on the curve will be 50 mph rather than the 31.25 mph that the law actually requires.  Until now, this has worked out just fine, but there is one area of occasional conflict.  As noted, the speed limit on country roads is 90.  Italy is a densely populated country and there are few roads along which no houses are built.  Indeed, most country roads are built on what were originally paths that connected isolated houses.

Last week, in returning home from Perugia, my ultra conservative wife suggested, as usual, that instead of taking the superstrada E45, we take the country road along the crest of the hills through Marsciano.  She despises fast roads, along with airplanes, trains and virtually any mode of transport faster than walking.  Once again, I acquiesced to her request since the back road, while slower, is scenic and more pleasant.  Just off this country road, new residential compounds have been littering up the countryside and it seems the local authorities have decided that this entire thirty-kilometer stretch now consists of towns.  Velox machines have sprouted up faster than mushrooms or wild asparagus this spring.  We counted about ten or twelve of them in this stretch.  The road hasn’t changed.  It’s still a country road with a few houses along it, but it’s now one long speed trap, virtually unusable to go anywhere.  Even my speed-hating wife kept exclaiming, “This is sick!”

Although we noted several years ago that western Lazio is longer safe to drive through, the first sign of this ominous trend appeared in Umbria around the start of the year when one of these Velox machines was conspicuously placed a few hundred meters before a long smooth curve just below Ilci, about eight km north of Todi on E45.  The speed limit on the road is 110 and traffic normally moves along at an average of 120.  The curve sweeps through a change of direction of about 90 degrees and, judging from the number of lights, signs and reflectors lining it, one can suppose that a few people have gone off the road here over the years.  Nevertheless, the curve is easily and safely negotiable at 120 km/h by any vehicle capable of passing the required motor vehicle inspection.  The curve has been assigned a 90 km/h limit.  We now have the spectacle of drivers on the straight stretch of road before the curve jamming on their brakes when they see the device ahead and provoking panic stops by out-of-town drivers unaware of the trap.  How long before the first massive multi-vehicle pile-up?

While many of my peers have taken up golf, I’ve always considered driving as my preferred sport.  It doesn’t burn many calories but then, riding around in a golf cart doesn’t either, and both activities give one the opportunity to develop eye/hand coordination while viewing the better scenery that is out there.  Over the years, my cars have mostly been modest family sedans but in the mix there were two Porsches and a Mini DeTommaso, which provided some of the most joyful moments of my life.  Although it has yet to attain the status of golfers’ paradise, for a century Italy has been the world’s Mecca to people who love to drive.  I realize that some of you will dispute that, but the joy of driving isn’t about rules, cruise control, tranquility or safety.

My ninety-seven year old step-mother has taught me that with time one must renounce certain habits and pleasures and just accept life for what it still offers.  She’s given up Caribbean cruises as too fatiguing, although she did relapse for one final cruise, and recently she’s accepted her doctor’s advice to renounce her daily mood enhancing afternoon martini.  Ironically, she still drives.  

Others have urged me to seek the positive side of things, and while this goes against my genetic make-up, I will try to make the effort.  Possibly Italy can overcome all the local government revenue shortfalls with the new Velox windfalls.  The safety crusade may help to limit urban sprawl in that lovely countryside between Perugia and Marsciano, since there will be no way for people living in those new developments to get to work on time.  With a major reduction in driving, I may be able to coax another five or ten years, or whatever is needed, out of my 18 year old Peugeot.  Failing that, instead of seeking one of those low mileage used Minis or Alfa Giulias that I’ve been lusting after, I may be able to settle for an Ape.  For those unfamiliar with the Ape, it’s a little three-wheeled truck, seating two and powered by a lawn mower engine, that country folk use to transport bottled water, beehives and gas bombole.  They drive drivers of four-wheel vehicles mad but when everyone is driving at the speed of an Ape, the stigma will be gone.

The authorities have taken other measures to assure our safety.  In the past, roadside grass was cut down early and late in the spring.  Wildflowers grow happily here and from April through June, poppies line the sides of the roads as well as proliferating in the fields, creating a real distraction to drivers who should be concentrating on the road.  A better way has been found.  Instead of the early cutting of the grass, it’s simply sprayed with herbicide, which turns the grass to a sort of strawberry blond color and retards further growth.  Not only does this limit the distraction of the wildflowers, but it also saves on government manpower.



Finally, I’m happy to report that here in Acqualoreto we’ve come upon a way to cut down on speed without resorting to heavy fines or expensive electronic devices.  Two years ago, the five kilometer road from Acqualoreto down to the river road was in deplorable condition.  After many complaints about the potholes, the Comune finally repaved the worst stretches of the road.  The road seemed almost new, allowing us to get down to the valley in practically no time at all.  Then, early this year, the road started to heave.  It seems as if some mysterious power in the earth wanted to collaborate with the authorities to slow things down.  It’s better
than Velox.  The Comune has rushed in with more and more speed limit signs, first 30, then 20, finally 10.  Apparently they have no signs indicating 0 but there are signs indicating that traffic can proceed in only one direction at a time, one of those rare times that the road signs reflect reality.

Who knows where all this will lead?  Personal changes tend to become irreversible so I’m afraid my days of pleasure driving are over.  Societal changes, on the other hand, come and go like the tides, so some day Italy may return to a semblance of normality.  Will roving bands of disgruntled young men brandishing tire irons destroy the electronic Big Brothers faster than they can be replaced?  I rather doubt it.  Italians have become as passive as Americans.  Just as when government workers, who are prohibited from striking, shut down most activity by “working to rules”, I can envision Italians organizing to “drive below limits”.  This will bring the economy to a screeching halt and force an easing of policy.  

Meanwhile, I think we’ll look for a garden shop in a safer neighborhood.

Georgia On My Mind

During the fifties, Arthur Godfrey, who was on everybody’s radio in the morning, was promoting Miami Beach non-stop.  After Carl Fisher, nobody, with the possible exception of Morris Lapidus, did more to stimulate the growth and success of Miami Beach. 

When I was a kid in New Jersey, we didn’t take a lot of vacations, but a few times my parents got fed up with the cold winters to the point where we took Godfrey’s advice and fled to Florida.  Being gentiles of modest means, we went to Miami, not Miami Beach, and we rented rooms in a place near the Brickell Bridge.  We went by car, by train and by airplane so there may have been three such trips in all.  Getting out of the NJ cold was wonderful and Florida was a pretty enough place but I don’t recall being overly impressed by Miami.  This was before Castro so the food was white bread fare, more reminiscent of Minneapolis than Havana, with the one culinary novelty of note being key lime pie.  The beaches looked better than ours did but swimming in the warm, calm water offered none of the thrill of battling the surf at the Jersey shore.  My fondest memory of Miami was seeing a statuesque blond drive up to Crandon Park on Key Biscayne in a Jaguar XK-120 and recline to sun herself in a white and blue bikini just a few feet away from us.  She must have been German.  Nothing like that had been seen on American beaches in those days.

Flying to Florida in a Lockheed Constellation was an exciting new adventure, about as comfortable as flying is today.  The twenty-six hour train trip was also a new adventure, but as we were sitting in a crowded railroad coach for that long, it was not the trip’s highlight.  The best way to go to Florida was by car.

In the pre-interstate days you actually went through cities and towns.  I recall going through places like Petersburg, Virginia and Rocky Mount, North Carolina, birthplace of Thelonious Monk, though I hadn’t heard of him then and I suspect few people in Rocky Mount had either.  My father was a traditionalist who stopped for three meals a day and started looking for a place to stay around 4:30 or 5:00, while it wasn’t yet dark.  That made it at least a three-day trip each way.  With age I’ve come to appreciate his approach, but at the time, I was appalled.  Perhaps it was the seed of filial rebellion, planted then, which a decade later led to thirty-hour non-stop trips from Virginia to Florida and from Oklahoma to Virginia.  It may have affected my brother even more.  At an age when some people consider giving up driving altogether, he embarks on twenty-hour solo pilgrimages to the Buffett Shrine in Omaha every year.

I didn’t see much on those express trips but I certainly did riding with my parents.  The road paving, painting and signs changed from one state to the next but otherwise, Virginia and North Carolina looked much the same.  In South
Carolina the green tobacco country gave way to swamps full of trees covered in Spanish moss.  The two-lane road, raised about ten feet from the swamp, seemed to go on endlessly through this fascinatingly eerie landscape.  The monotony was broken occasionally by the sight of a rusting school bus abandoned in the ditch, or by billboards advising that it was only 100 miles to Stuckey’s.  These were repeated every twenty-five miles or so until finally the Stuckey’s would come briefly into view.  They sold pecan pralines, Confederate flags, fireworks, gasoline and God knows what else.  Crossing into Georgia the lane markings changed back to yellow but the swamp and the Stuckey’s provided continuity.  I think it was in Georgia that the tread delaminated on my father’s snow tires.  Those tires are wonderful in NJ.  They just aren’t the best choice for driving to Florida.  We made it to a little town where I vaguely remember a bunch of large red-faced men in bib overalls sitting around looking at the car full of Yankees and discussing what should be done.  We weren’t too sure just how soon or if we’d get to resume our trip but new tires were eventually acquired and we were on our way.

Besides the major Stuckey’s emporiums, it seemed that nearly every little crossroad or settlement would have a place called The Dixie Pig.  It was not a chain.  The need for a barbecue sandwich place was universal and the spirit of SC/GA so homogenized that they were all named the Dixie Pig.  I’m surprised that no one, to my knowledge, has started a chain of Dixie Pigs.  They were to South Carolina and Georgia what Original Ray’s has become to NYC.

Many of those little clearings in the swamp would also have a motel or two and to this day I remember seeing pigs grazing in front of some of those plain long buildings, as if waiting for the occupants to come out and throw them some scraps. 

That was Georgia about sixty years ago.  I doubt that I’d recognize it today.  The Dixie Pigs have probably all been replaced by Burger King or KFC and by now the pigs live in industrial compounds.  But here in Umbria, down by the river, grazing at the edge of our local no-name gas station, we have a whole bunch of unrestrained pigs.  With old trucks and cars parked at the end of the lot next to a rotting wooden storage shack, the scene could be old time Georgia, except for the hills, and except for the fact that these aren’t really pigs.  They’re the result of the mating of pigs and wild boars.  They live down along the banks of the Tiber, occasionally coming up to play with the owner of the gas station.  He chases them down the hill and they chase him back up again, stopping to let him rub their snouts.  Out of town motorists are probably just as surprised as those Yankees were, driving through Georgia.

I’m adding another picture having nothing to do with pigs, except that, like the free range pigs, this one, depicting winter’s end, raises my spirits.

Reflections on the Superbowl

The United States may be more divided now than at any time since the Civil War; red and blue, rich and poor, hawk and dove, etc, but the division isn’t all that simple.  Oligarchs have recruited unemployed former members of the middle class to promote campaigns against public services while well-off academics try to mobilize the inert masses to speak up for their own interests.  In a break from this life and death struggle, we’ve just witnessed Superbowl Sunday, the National Football League’s main event, an update on the old Roman tradition of bread and circuses to keep the unruly plebes under control.

President Obama, vilified as a foreign-born, fascistic communist Muslim by the right, and dismissed as the second coming of Neville Chamberlain by some of us on the left, perseveres in trying to bring harmony to his divided constituency.  Prior to the game on Superbowl Sunday, in a move as dramatic as Nixon’s going to China, he went to Fox News, to be interviewed by arch-nemesis Bill O’Reilly.  Throughout the interview Obama remained supernaturally affable while Mr. O’Reilly managed to suppress his bile.  If the President can tame O’Reilly, perhaps he really can unite the country after all.

 The image of the NFL took a few hits, starting some days before the game when Denver running back Lawrence Maloney got his mug shot posted all over the internet following his arrest for carrying a gun while high on drugs.  Then came the problems at the game, which was played this year at Jerry Jones’ new $1.2 billion plutocrats’ pleasure palace in Arlington, Texas, where the city fathers were persuaded to finance $325M of the cost through bond issues and local sales tax increases.  The stadium has all the electronic bells and whistles imaginable but it just lacked seats for 1250 people who had paid $800. per ticket to get in.  A class action suit has been filed by some of these people for $5 million, proving that indeed, this is America’s game.  During the game, the artificial turf turned out to be abnormally slippery, leading to a few injuries, but there’s still no word on any possible legal action in that regard.

While I didn’t miss a single playoff game, here in Italy we were mostly spared the hype leading up to the big game.  The PR may have been scripted by Linda McMahon, formerly of World Wrestling Entertainment and the Connecticut gubernatorial race, since a clear division emerged between the good guys and the bad guys.  We Americans prefer to keep those distinctions sharp.  Some even prefer to cheer on the villains, proof of which lies in the large fan base of the Oakland Raiders.  In this contest, Pittsburgh wore the black hats.  Their role was established by two factors; their non-acceptance of the new NFL campaign to limit head injuries, and their quarterback.  Green Bay has embraced the policy and their players reportedly urged their QB, the ever patient Aaron Rogers, to take care of his health first and foremost.  James Harrison, a much larger Sonny Liston clone who leads the league in fines for illegal helmet to helmet hits, anchors the Steelers’ defense.  He wondered aloud if he was supposed to provide pillows for QBs and wide receivers that he was about to smash to the ground. Both quarterbacks have missed games due to concussions, but Ben Roethesberger of the Steelers also sat out a four game suspension for conduct deemed unbecoming to the NFL.  Although all charges were dropped by the civil authorities, he was alleged to have sexually assaulted women in Nevada and Georgia.  I admit to confusion about terminology these days.  When female employees of defense contractors in Iraq are physically forced to submit to sexual acts by their bosses or co-workers, the term used by the media is “sexual assault”, but when a Julian Assange has sex with a half asleep woman who has invited him to her bed, he is charged with “rape”.  Maybe Ben was just telling off-color jokes.  In any case, the Steelers, or the NFL, decided that they just couldn’t let him play on as if nothing had happened.

American jails and prisons hold a larger percentage of the nation’s population than any other country and they are disproportionately occupied by black and Hispanic people.  NFL players are now 70% or more non-white and, ironically, many of them, of whatever race, are decorated with gangland tattoos and grotesque haircuts, making them virtually indistinguishable from inmates of our high security prisons.  I suppose a ferocious image is considered helpful, given the nature of their work, but I say ironically because these young men are our elite, the perfect exemplars of the natural selection advocated by the Objectivist Social Darwinism of our leaders, under the thrall of Ayn Rand over the past three decades.  The players are among the nation’s wealthiest young men, and deservedly so.  Just as the US has its current minimum wage of $7.25/hour, which yields $15,080 per year over fifty-two forty-hour weeks, the NFL has a minimum wage for players of $310,000.  That’s for rookies.  The scale slides up over ten years to about double that.  Of course the stars get more.  A good cornerback can make $10M/year.  Still, the minimum is only a little over twenty times the national minimum wage, on the low side compared to the ratio of average corporate CEO remuneration to that of the average worker, a factor currently pegged at 263 or 300, depending on where you get your figures.  How many CEOs go through the years of competition and elaborate natural selection that these players survive?

The big game eventually got started, but not before a painfully long pre-game show.  Lea Michel from the popular TV show Glee, the one in which high school outsiders are empowered by singing updated Abba style pop, wailed an overwrought version of America the Beautiful.  Some of the players looked pained, while others, perhaps unaware that this wasn’t the National Anthem, held their hands over their hearts, just as Coach had told them to.  They didn’t have to wait long.  As soon as Lea Michel had declared America beautiful, Christina Aguilera came out and assassinated the National Anthem.  Had she nailed it, it might have been tabbed a crucifixion, but she flubbed the words.  Anyway, The Star Spangled Banner is a political, not a religious song, so this was no ordinary killing, but rather an assassination of a national symbol.  Nobody died here but her act was witnessed by more people than Jared Loughner’s attack on a flesh and blood representative of the government and none of those present even tried to subdue her.  Perhaps they were all still busy looking for those missing seats.  The end of the song was almost drowned out by the flyover of four F-16 fighter jets.  Perhaps the pilots could have taken her out with napalm but it all happened so fast, and the collateral damage would have been on a par with nine years’ efforts in Iraq.  Besides, the roof was closed.  The crowd inside could see the flyover, estimated to cost the Navy $450,000, only on the giant TV monitors.

The game eventually got started, but after battling through the earlier play-off games with brilliant performances, both teams played below form.  Big Bad Ben threw two interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown.  Green Bay took a big early lead, which could have turned into a rout, except that GB receivers kept dropping passes.  Pittsburgh would make a comeback but not until I broke a tooth on unpopped popcorn and the interminable halftime show had ended.

This year’s halftime show, the first of the post-literate generation, featured The Black Eyed Peas singing numbers such as Boom Boom Pow and Pump it.  Tricked out in enough black leather to start an S&M emporium, they had the difficult task of merging the super patriot militaristic spirit of the day with the feel of gangsta rap.  The voluptuous blond in the group, Fergie, sounded as if this was the first time she’d ever ventured out of a very isolated inner-city black ghetto.  Her affectation was hardly a new gimmick.  White singers and instrumentalists have been imitating black musicians more talented than themselves for at least a century.  In fairness, I should also note that legions of singers, from Minnesota to Liverpool, have spent their lives trying to sound like they grew up somewhere between Nashville and Memphis.  Both of these trends should have run their course by now.  Given that we’re living through a painfully reactionary era, one reasonable consolation might be to have singers trying to imitate Noel Coward or Cole Porter, i.e. going back in history seven decades rather than seven millennia.

When the game resumed, Pittsburgh’s third quarter resurgence got moving but petered out late in the game and the good guys from Green Bay held on to win by a touchdown.

All in all, it’s been a good year for the NFL.  Close races and lots of tight games, and more importantly, good play-off games with the exception of the finale.  Next year remains behind a cloud.  The owners and the players go into the off-season without a labor agreement and a showdown between the billionaires and the millionaires is shaping up.  The players may follow John Galt’s example and withhold their services with a strike, but at the moment the more likely scenario is a lock-out by the owners who are keen to get a larger slice of the expanding pie.  Who will win this epic struggle of elites?  We don’t know.  Both groups have a lot to lose.  Meanwhile, the third element in the picture, we the audience, i.e. the drones, may just have to watch hockey next season, or take up bocce.

Repeal the Repeal

For two centuries homosexuals have been dismissed from the American Armed Services when their homosexual activities or proclivities came to light.  Generals argued that the presence of such people in the barracks would be damaging to troop morale, and some have continued these arguments right up to the present.  President Clinton, who strongly believed that one's sexual preferences were none of anybody else’s business, negotiated a compromise called Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, whereby if nobody said anything about their sexual preferences, the military wouldn’t say or do anything either.  Under pressure by groups of homosexual soldiers wanting to participate in gay pride parades in uniform, President Obama camouflaged his catastrophic cave-in on tax cuts by trumpeting the successful repeal of D.A.D.T. only a day or two later.  With government coffers ravaged by billions of dollars of new unfunded tax cuts, the last thing we need is to open up our military to a wider recruitment pool.

I’m not sure anyone has refuted the generals’ arguments convincingly enough to overturn a policy which has stood since the dawn of the Republic, thus I propose a bold new option.  Two centuries of defending our liberties and keeping us safe are enough.  Heterosexuals, stop the macho posing and gun fixations!  Take some time to smell the roses!  Let our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have a chance to defend the country, unfettered by concerns about morale in the showers.  They’ve been deprived of their chance to become heroes for too long.

We currently have about 1.4 million men and women serving in the armed forces of a country with a population around 307 million (adjusted to 276 million for a partial exclusion of gays to arrive at an effective recruiting base.)  This gives us a ratio of active duty military personnel per 1000 citizens of about 4.56, although other published statistics indicate a figure of 5.1.  Assuming a homosexual rate of 15% in the population at large*, we have a potential recruiting base of about 46,000,000, which, applying the current ratio of military to general population, would yield a totally gay military of between 210,000 and 235,000. This may seem a little small but our weapons are more advanced and our armed forces would still be nearly as large as the active duty forces of France, Germany and the UK, about the same as Japan, and significantly larger than those of Italy or Greece.  All of those countries, just like the US, appear to be less vulnerable to military invasion than to threats from within (primarily from banksters and brain-dead politicians).

The GOP is now clamoring for budget reductions but none of the deficit hawks has come up with a plan this efficacious.  Upon redimensioning our military resources, we could no longer indefinitely sustain wars started to pre-empt energy supplies or assuage presidential neuroses.  Our Army, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force couldn’t possibly utilize the vast array of weapons currently under development so we’d have to cut back these programs or just continue selling them to other warlike regimes around the world.  For better or worse we could no longer occupy 135 of the world’s 192 countries.  The merger of gay pride with our traditional militaristic fervor will produce an awesome fighting force, with new elite units such as the Stonewall Regiment being formed.  Such mergers and subsequent downsizing of the workforce are in the mainstream of the American values we seek to defend. 

To be sure, implementation of the new policy would involve some inconvenience.   The sudden addition of hundreds of thousands battle-hardened veterans to the ranks of the unemployed could result in some collateral damage, but we’re a resilient people.  The strong would survive.  Less onerous side effects would include the cancellation of current TV shows such as Army Wives and their immediate transfer into syndication to take their place in history alongside Happy Days.

This being the Age of Obama, we’re not unmindful of the need to have a fall back position ready at the time of the presentation of any proposal.  We’re ready with an effective compromise right now.  While it would limit the inherent savings of the scheme, it could none the less appeal to the corporate funded Members of Congress of both parties.  If our proposal (which unlike some of theirs, doesn’t advocate killing or torturing anyone) should be deemed too rash by our elected leaders, we can apply our proposal to only one of the five service branches.  Given that it has already been infiltrated and taken over by radical, religious fundamentalists, hell-bent on subverting the Constitution and installing a theocracy, the Air Force would be the clear choice to apply a thorough house cleaning.  The instant redundancy of all our Air Force personnel would flood the market with pilots, thus destroying the airline pilots’ union and restoring our airlines to profitability.  How many Senators could say no to that?

While deficit reduction would be the principle beneficiary of the new policy, there would be secondary benefits.  For example, it would force some of the more homophobic members of Congress, Senators such as Cornyn and Imhofe, and Representatives like Pete Sessions, who also happen to be among the most fierce proponents of war to resolve all foreign policy issues, to reexamine their priorities and values.  Many of these Senators and Congressmen are absolute believers in American exceptionalism, seeing the country as the natural (and sometimes God’s chosen) leader of the world.  It’s time for American ingenuity to take another extraordinary step to keep America solvent and to keep its boot off the necks of the unexceptional people of the world.

* The 15% estimate is higher than most published figures, except in San Francisco, but it’s close to that in Boston, Seattle, Atlanta and Minneapolis.  However, if the actual percentage is lower, the budgetary benefits and demilitarization would only improve.  If ultimately, the recruiting base proved too small for our national defense, the Air Force conversion would remain a viable policy option.

Giving Thanks

On 22 August 22nd, 1958, while bar hopping in lower Manhattan with a friend from college, I stopped in at the Five Spot Café on Cooper Square to hear Thelonious Monk.  I was already a jazz enthusiast but I’d never seen nor heard anything like Monk.  He played his own compositions featuring strange chords and infectious rhythms.  While the other members of his quartet played their solos, he’d get up and shuffle around in a little dance, seemingly oblivious to everything but the music.  I subsequently went to hear Monk in many other places such as The Jazz Gallery, Town Hall, Randall’s Island and even Central Park.  His records began to dominate my record collection.  When I was introduced to printmaking, my first woodcut was of Monk.  I've drawn and painted musicians for years but the most compelling image for me was always Monk.  When Michelangelo painted The Creation of Adam, he depicted God as a muscular man with a long gray beard.  Were I to undertake such a project, I could just as easily imagine God as a well-dressed, stocky black man in a strange hat dancing around a piano where he has just established the rhythm.

On a recent trip to England I was able to pick up a copy of a new biography, Thelonious Monk, The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D. G. Kelley.  It’s a massive, scholarly dissertation, which took Mr. Kelley fourteen years to research and write.  Monk’s life is documented from his family origins in North Carolina through his death in 1982 in twenty-nine heavily footnoted chapters.  Just the acknowledgements of assistance in the book’s preparation take seven pages.

What emerges is a story of total dedication to music, with more than its share of tragedy, yet laced with humor.  Monk was a funny man and humor is there in much of his playing and comments.  He suffered from what has come to be known as bi-polar disorder, yet his playing was prolific, even if his recording was not.  Monk left school at sixteen to play in local clubs in his San Juan Hill neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side.  Apart from touring the country for two years as pianist for a woman evangelist, he continued that pattern until he was hired as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem at the start of 1941.  It was his first regular job and he was twenty-three.  There he learned from older musicians and taught the younger ones.  When bebop took off after the war, musicians he had played with, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, started becoming famous and had steady work, both at clubs and in recording studios.  That eluded Monk until the fifties.  Known and revered by the jazz community, Monk really only came to the wider public after getting a long engagement at the Five Spot in 1957.

Several themes permeate the book, beyond or behind the music: the women in his life; the effects of drugs and racism in the environment, and the irony that his long delayed success and critical acclaim never brought him the financial rewards that would have been expected.

Thelonious, who was named after his father, was supported, physically, morally and financially by three women in his life.  His mother Barbara took her three children to New York when Thelonious was four years old to get them out of the poisonous, racist atmosphere of North Carolina.  She raised him amidst considerable adversity and helped support him through many lean years.  He married Nellie Smith, the sister of his best friend, in 1948.  Nellie was his wife, closest companion and mother of his two children, personal manager and chief caregiver until his death in 1982.  However, through most of his career he had a patron and friend in Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a Rothschild heiress.  Monk met her in Paris on his first European tour in 1954.  She had married Baron Jules de Koenigswarter in 1935 and had two children before the war and three more after it.  Both Nica and her husband were decorated war heroes but following the war, the Baron became a career diplomat.  She grew bored with the diplomatic routine and they separated.  Her love of jazz took her to New York City where, to the chagrin of the management, her suite at the Stanhope Hotel became a second home to jazz musicians.  Charlie Parker died there, and two decades later, her house on the Palisades, overlooking mid-town Manhattan, became Monk’s home for the last nine years of his life.

Monk’s life and career spanned a period of extreme racial turmoil.  His mother took him out of the south, but San Juan Hill was not without its own racial tensions, and the young Thelonious had to fight his way to and from school.  His oft-cited moodiness may have been a symptom of his manic-depressive imbalance but the frequent reports of racially motivated killings contributed to it.  Monk played many benefit concerts for civil rights groups but he didn’t talk about it much.  He was scheduled for a Time Magazine cover story on Nov.28th, 1963. His image was replaced by that of President Johnson, following the November 22nd assassination of JFK.   The Time cover story would eventually appear three months later.

Drugs surrounded him.  He lost a nephew and countless friends and colleagues to drug overdoses.  At times, Monk was the only member of his quartet not addicted to heroin.  While he escaped addiction, his career was hindered by his arrest and thirty days of jail time in 1948 for possession of marijuana.  That cost him his cabaret card and the ability to play in NYC jazz clubs for a decade.

Time had written its cover story and Monk had a successful 12 city tour of Europe to introduce his first record for Columbia, Monk’s gross income reached $78,680.  However, after deducting travel and recording expenses, salaries, commissions and taxes, he was left with a net of $33,055.  Despite continuing to tour and play fairly regularly, that net had declined to $17,735 in 1966, not really a princely sum for a musician acclaimed around the world.  It got worse from there on.  His last recording date was in 1972.  In 1973 he withdrew to Nica’s house and only rarely played in public after that.  Two concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1976 were his last public performances.

Reading through the stories of a vast number of musicians whose lives were cut short by drugs brought up some personal thoughts.  In Gay Talese’s book on his Sicilian roots, Unto The Sons, the story of how the Sicilian Mafia facilitated the way for American troops to move through Sicily and up the Italian peninsula is illuminated.  It’s well known that the Mafia collaborated with the US Government to keep the Communist Party out of power in post-war Italy.  What is less well documented is the theory that some part of the government conspired with the Mafia to sedate the frustrated black masses in American cities through the supply of massive amounts of heroin.

People, and young people in particular, are incredibly influenced by peer pressure and by what’s going on around them.    When Monk’s peers in New York City were dying like flies from heroin, I was growing up in the nearby white suburbs.  The main commercial and peer pressures that we faced were to wear dirty white buck shoes, to smoke cigarettes, and to dance the Twist to the music of Chubby Checker.  I gave in to the first, but I found cigarette smoke so repulsive, and most pop music so irritating, that I never really succumbed to the others.  However, I was influenced by other people around me.  The father of my neighborhood friend smoked wonderfully aromatic cigars and my proximity to them started a lifelong habit.  Later a college friend took me by the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee,  introducing me to another substance I’ve used and abused ever since.  Indeed, at this time every year, I look forward to a pumpkin pie laced with Jack Daniel’s Old No.7.  The influences we’re subjected to in our youth cast a lasting shadow on our lives.   Some are more fortunate than others.

This week many of us are following the pilgrims’ tradition of giving thanks to God for our survival, our food and shelter, and our family and friends.  In doing so, I am adding another personal thanks for being born in the right time and place to be exposed to one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

The UK Revisited

Last spring, following a joyful visit to the UK, I commented with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.  The country had changed dramatically since my three-month sojourn in London at the peak of the punk period in the late 70’s.  I was favorably impressed with the gentlemanly demeanor of the three candidates for Prime Minister and the brevity of the electoral campaign.  Nick Clegg was quoted as saying: ”This almost unseemly knee-bending allegiance to the White House: I don’t think it’s good for Britain…for our self-respect”, prompting optimism for a more rational and independent UK leadership.  Up until the election, the Lib/Dem leader Clegg was regarded as the rising star of British politics, but when the results were in, he was among the losers.  With the Liberal/democrats suffering an unexpected net loss of votes and seats, Clegg had little choice but to join in a coalition government with the ascendant Tories.  

Last week I returned from another visit to the UK, during which the first major initiative of the new government was announced.  While this government shows no tendency to do the bidding of the White House, the drastic new budget cuts smell of the same Neo-con ideology that guided the Bush Administration to precipitous decline.  George Bernard Shaw said that “Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language”.  They are different though, in more ways than just linguistic nuance.  The UK has an extensive network of social services while the US government probably provides less services to its people than any other industrialized country in the world.  Given the dimensions of the welfare state in the UK and the magnitude of its public debt, perhaps some reform of the welfare system is necessary, desirable, or even inevitable.  “Everyone” seems to think the cuts were needed.  Being an expert in neither economic theory nor in the economy of the UK, I tend to put my trust in the analyses of Paul Krugman and George Monbiot rather than “everyone”.  The former insists that a major recession is not the time to cut public spending, while Monbiot cites the current measures as another example of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism”, i.e. the use of economic crises to initiate policies designed to redistribute wealth upward.  The effectiveness and fairness of welfare reform are subject to reasonable differences of opinion, but cuts to public transportation and education hardly seem rational at a time when the economy is in recession and there is a widely held desire to see more people move from welfare to the workforce.

The US and the UK may be divided by language but on this trip I was reminded of their shared taste for irrationality.  One of the few bright spots of my stay in the England during the 70’s was an appreciation of its adoption of the metric system.  British irrationality tends to run to the quirky and idiosyncratic.  I suppose I would be asking too much of a country that lived for centuries with a monetary system featuring (if I remember it correctly) twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound, or twenty-one to a guinea, to fully accept a systematic decimal system.  Still, when one reads the opt-repeated stories of fish mongers being fined in the market for selling fish by the pound, one can only wonder why local districts aren’t fined for posting road indications in miles, or why nurses are not arrested for recording patients’ weight in stone.  Our American irrationality appears to be grounded less in nostalgia than in laziness and disease.  I remain convinced that President Reagan’s mid-stream cancellation of metrification in 1982 was the first sign of the tragic onset of Alzheimer’s disease.  

Before we left London, I saw a newspaper article relating that sales of bidets in England were way down from a few years ago when people had the money to travel more, and it was thought “smart” to have a bidet in your bathroom, but recently the mode had changed.  Here I’d thought that British hygiene had finally taken a great leap forward but no, it was just a matter of trendiness.  Bathtubs are also being phased out.  Who knows when and if flush toilets will be deemed no longer modish?

The curiously incongruous aspects of British life may be amusing but in the US our abrupt swings between black and white absolutes seem more schizophrenic than quaint.  Not so long ago, smoking and drinking were promoted by the government and various other American institutions, while gambling and many forms of sexual activity were illegal and suppressed.  That’s all been reversed, which may be a good thing, or not, but the vehemence and speed of the turn-about have been radical.  This week’s mid-term elections have followed a similar pattern.  Only two years after voting for change, the electorate has returned to its embrace of oligarchy.

While our language may divide the two countries, we are united in our belief that English is the only language of any importance.  On this trip we spent some time in the company of an English high school student, i.e. one who’s doing her A levels, in British parlance.  I was amazed that among the four subjects she was studying, none was a foreign language.  For years I’ve suspected that pre-collegiate education in the US isn’t very good but I’ve never been aware of any American high school that doesn’t require the study of a language.  Perhaps it’s worse than I thought, or maybe by now the Texas Department of Education has decided that foreign languages are as un-American as the Constitution.  

It’s true that one can manage in much of the world speaking only English, but it’s also true that people from countries where it’s the only language tend to be the hardest for other people to understand.  Our hubris extends to believing that our colloquialisms and regional accents are universal.

Despite the misgivings, it was a good trip.  Ryan Air has smoothed out its loading procedures at Stansted.  We got to see the beautiful Dyffryn Gardens near Barry and we spent a lot of time with our delightful ten-month-old grandson.  While in London, I was able to replenish my supply of Mr. Taylor’s Moustache Wax at Taylor of Old Bond Street, located naturally enough by British logic, in Jermyn Street.

Waiting- My New Career in Film

Cinema may not be big in Todi, in the sense of a movie-going public, but the three year old summer film festival in the nearby village of Izzalini first featured films shot in or around Todi (e.g.The Agony and the Ecstasy, Romanoff and Juliet), then, in the second edition, films starring Ida Di Benedetto, an Acqualoreto weekend resident, and this year, six or seven films of Ben Gazzara, who has a house eight km. down the road near Melezzole.  Indeed, we’re surrounded by people from the world of cinema.  Besides Ida Di Benedetto, actors such as Memè Perlini and Adriana Asti have houses here.  Bernardo Bertolucci was here for much of the summer again this year and Danilo Donati, the set and costume designer for films by Fellini, Pasolini and Bertolucci, was a long-time resident of Acqualoreto and now occupies a prominent place in our cemetery.  It would almost be enough to make those of us in the village who are not involved in cinema to feel like outsiders, except that those of us whose names end in consonants already know that we are outsiders.

Every five years one of our more successful ex-patriot friends throws a spectacular birthday party to celebrate another half decade of the good life.  At the most recent manifestation, while the hundred guests were seated for dinner, a young woman circulated asking for volunteers to participate in a film being shot in Rome.  My wife, in her normal skeptical tone, asked why would anyone want to do that, but my American pioneer spirit jumped at the opportunity.  Why not?  At last, a chance to become a member of the cinematic community.

Two days later I found myself getting up at 5 AM to meet a cheerful woman in Amelia named Federica, who would drive me to the set in Rome, along with another aspiring American extra named Scott.  Scott runs a bed and breakfast in one of Amelia’s historic palazzi.  Federica has the effective habit of starting every sentence with the name of the person she’s addressing, as in “Scott, have you done any acting before?” thus creating a sense of familiarity among people who’d never before met and insuring recall of their names.  Yes, Scott did have some acting experience.  As for Federica, I’ll never have a problem with her name since I equate Italian cinema with Federico Fellini, and she’s the movie woman.  Her job is to round up extras, have them sign all the releases, and pay them.

The film was to be a two-part TV movie on the Fontana sisters, who were big in the fashion world starting in the 40’s.  The day’s scenes were to be at a villa in Olgiata, Rome’s gated suburb to the northwest, with the villa standing in for one in Beverly Hills.  After reporting for duty we were sent directly to the wardrobe people, who, equipped with one or two racks of clothes, miraculously managed to dress up twelve extras from head to toe in slightly exaggerated 1950’s outfits.  When one of the wardrobe women first saw me, she muttered “American?  He looks more Russian.”  Once dressed, we were sent to makeup where I was shorn of all the hair above my ears with the little that remained pomaded straight back.  One fellow recruit from the party showed up, along with his partner, who proudly proclaimed himself to be a dealer in derivatives, i.e. a master of the universe, as well as a lecturer in economics at American universities in Rome.  He thought he might meet young women on the set, since this was August and his wife was away at the beach, per Roman custom.

Among the other extras were some mostly retired Italo-American women from the International Club of Rome and students from American universities.  The girls all seemed pretty and slightly overweight, a trait emphasized by their casual attire.  In a flash they emerged from the wardrobe tent transformed into Kim Novak replicas with cinched-in waists, billowing skirts and hair piled up under silly little hats.  Scott was immediately dressed up as a waiter and was so convincing in his demeanor that all day I kept wanting to ask him to bring me a gin and tonic.   The box lunches filled with a nice pasta and tomato sauce, roast veal, and assorted fruits and vegetables, arrived soon after we were all costumed and made up.  I managed through supreme effort and concentration to keep the sauce off my wool suit and tie, but the scheduling did seem a bit strange.

After lunch the extras were all ordered out to the street in front of the villa. This is a small street in a gated residential community but it seemed like we were on the Via Flaminia and nobody seemed able or inclined to halt or divert the traffic.  Filming was done in brief spurts between the passage of cars, construction trucks, motorcycles, anything you could imagine.  I found myself on the street escorting one of the costumed ladies, wondering what we were doing or where we were going when I heard a distant voice say “you, come over here”, after which another extra stepped into my place.  It was all over right there, but I just didn’t know it, and I waited around all afternoon in my wool suit wondering if I’d be called for another scene.  They switched to the driveway where a 1954 Oldsmobile convertible pulls up to the villa and Scott unloads the luggage from the trunk, even getting to say something, creating speculation on his part as to whether his name will appear in the credits.  The masters of the universe were long gone.  They’d said at the outset that they could only stay until 1:30 and the filming hadn’t gotten started until 3:00.  Eventually Federica started calling the extras to be paid, the girls traded their new glamour for their baggy shorts, and I finally realized that I hadn’t even made it to the cutting room floor.

A week later Federica called to see if I was ready for another day as an extra.  Of course!  I spend lots of days sitting or standing around and usually I’m not paid.  My overly protective wife worried “How do you know that this isn’t a disreputable film?” instantly conjuring up lascivious thoughts of my being an extra in a new Tinto Brass epic.  Alas, it was the same film, but this time the filming would be done at the Alitalia Training Facility at Fiumicino.  I’d been called two days ahead for all my clothing sizes and when I arrived, my costume had my name pinned to it.  Today’s extras were divided into “Italians”, mostly darker haired people dressed as peasants, who would be doing a dusty bus scene at an old villa in Ostia Antica later in the day, and “Americans”, who would be passengers on two or three flights simulated at Fiumicino.  There are Americans of every size, shape, color and ethnicity and by now I suspect that young Italians think of Michael Jordan as the prototypical American, but this was a 50’s film and they wanted the people to look like the ones in the movies of that period.  Ironically, there was a tall, stocky red-headed (Italian) fellow working on the set who looked more like that American stereotype than anyone I’ve ever seen, but nobody thought to simply have him stop working long enough to put him in the movie.  There was more confusion of nationalities in the hangar as we were getting started.  They called for the “Americans” but then said we need some “real Americans”, apparently because someone might have to be seen speaking.  Among the day’s extras there was one good looking woman, casually but elegantly dressed enough that I immediately assumed she must be Italian.  Another young woman looked like she could be her daughter or younger sister.  The first one emerged from wardrobe looking fifteen years older and very American, with her hair scrunched up under a funny little hat and clothes that completed the look.  I suppose it was fair since she turned out to be a teacher from North Carolina, but she seemed a little disappointed when I told her I didn’t think they’d done her any favor.  Her ”daughter” turned out to be a lovely young woman from Naples named Simona, who works in the fashion industry in Rome.

We were only in the hangar for a short time when the “real Americans” were called into the fragmented plane interior.  I was told to sit next to the star, Alessandra Mastronardi.  When the others were in place I was told to pretend to be asleep and I did as told.  I’m not the director, and he seemed to know what he’s doing, but I wonder how many flights Ms. Mastronardi is on where men sitting next to her fall asleep.  I was on another flight later but since I’d been in a close-up, I had to sit in the back row with my face behind a newspaper.  Scott returned for the day’s shooting too but having been a servant at the villa, he couldn’t get too close to the camera this time either.

As we were waiting around the hangar between scenes, rather than reading a book, I pulled out my ever-present sketchbook and started drawing some of the extras.  When Simona saw this, she jumped up and asked if she could draw me and vice versa.  She did the sketch at the top of this piece in a few minutes.  It’s in ink and rather decisively done.  I was impressed, as well as flattered.  By then it was five o’clock and unfortunately, as I started to sketch her, she had to leave for her ride back to Rome and I had to go to Ostia Antica with Federica for the remaining scenes.  While waiting for the crew to finish, I passed a little time sketching the villa.  The  bus scene was done expeditiously, but the filming was held up by the need to reshoot a scene with a little girl who had appeared in an earlier scene and whose parents were holding out for more money to bring her back but Federica got it resolved.  Around 10 PM the corks popped, signaling the end of the production and the time to go home.

The Fontana Sisters film is due to be shown on RAI this fall or winter.  The director is Riccardo Milani.  I’ll be curious to see it; even more curious to see if Federica calls again.

In A Sentimental Mood

In the course of attending Umbria Jazz for the past thirty-six years, I’ve developed the habit of sketching musicians as they perform, wherever that may be. This season, most of the sounds I’ve heard have emanated from the legions of grandchildren making pilgrimages to the family home, but on Friday, July 16th, I managed to slip out to Perugia for some music. Too late for the Roberta Gamberini concert, not inclined toward the over-elegant confines of the Hotel Brufani to hear Hilary Kole sing, and confused about the whereabouts of the Funk Off concert, I just had an ice cream and waited for the concert I’d come to Perugia for, that of Sonny Rollins.

What I saw is documented in the drawing here, and what most of us there really couldn’t see, appears in the photo. What I heard was something else again. Rollins started the concert with a long, raucous number that could have been the death rattle of some aging beast. Not an auspicious start, but as he played on, the power and the beauty of his music emerged. He is indeed a beast. He turns eighty on September 7th and while his walk gives away his age, his energy and creativity never abate. Backed by a four-man rhythm section of guitar, bass, drums and conga drum, Sonny Rollins played virtually non-stop, pausing only briefly for an occasional solo by guitarist Peter Bernstein. The concert featured standards from his repertoire of recent years, but some of the titles seemed particularly timely. He hit his stride with a thoroughly unsentimental version of Duke Ellington’s In A Sentimental Mood and went on to his calypso classic, Global Warming. Rollins was born in Harlem to parents from the Virgin Islands and his affinity for calypso songs runs deep.

Despite a harebrained US Senator erecting an igloo on the Washington Mall last winter to mock the concept of global warming, this has been the hottest first six months of the year since measurements were kept. The 32-35° temperatures (90-96 American degrees) in Perugia kept Corso Vannucci, normally carpeted with people at this time of the year, looking semi-deserted. Nevertheless, the huge Arena Santa Giuliana was ¾ full to hear the Saxophone Colossus, and while the hellish temperatures had abated somewhat with the sunset (the sun-baked concrete seats retained their heat), Sonny Rollins played without a break from 9:45 until midnight.

Sonny arrived on the jazz scene in the 40’s and 50’s, playing with Bird, Diz, Monk, Miles, Trane, Bags, Dexter, Stan and Bud. He’s survived all of them, as well as his wife of forty-six years, Lucille. She was also his manager, taking care of everything but the music until she died in 2004. He’s had to adjust, but he keeps on going, playing these Olympic–sized concerts. Five days before Perugia he played in Rotterdam and four days after the Perugia concert he was scheduled to play in Norway.

One of the last songs of the concert was “Why was I Born?” It’s a question that most of us ask at some point and one that Sonny Rollins has asked more than most. He’s found his answer. Sonny Rollins is here to play his music.

Hard Choices

Upon my return from a recent trip to the UK, I recorded my thoughts about British politics vs. those of the US (You can scroll down to “A New Perspective” in case you missed it.) For those of you unfamiliar with the current state of US politics, I refer you to recent events in South Carolina. We’ll just skip lightly over all the sexual shenanigans but something seems to be in the air in the Palmetto State. Could it be powdered Viagra? More to the point is the current reelection campaign of Sen. Jim DeMint and that of his new Democratic challenger, Alvin Greene. While Vic Rawl, a Charleston County councilman and retired judge, was expected to easily win the Democratic primary to challenge DeMint for his Senate seat, Alvin Greene came from nowhere to win his first foray into electoral politics, getting 59% of the vote (although Rawl had received as much as 84% of the absentee ballots in some districts), in a state election which featured electronic voting machines with no paper trail. “Nowhere” in this case was the very modest house in Manning, SC that the unemployed Greene shares with his father after an involuntary discharge from the Army, in which he had served for twelve years. Greene’s place in the race is not yet assured since he faces felony charges relating to showing pornography to a (presumably under-age) SC University student, and because there is some question about where he got the $10,400 for the filing fee, given his serious lack of income or other resources. Daniel Vovak, a Republican who had run against Michael Steele in the 2006 GOP primary for the US Senate, claims to be Greene’s campaign manager.

I confess that Greene’s success has engendered a certain amount of envy on my part. Like Greene, I am short of cash, and even the outside chance of gaining a US senator’s salary and perks has more appeal than most lottery tickets on the market these days. Therefore, I hereby declare my willingness to run for any congressional or senate seat that someone is willing to pay my filing fee for, along with reasonable relocation expenses. Like Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton and countless others before me, I’m ready to establish residency in any state which provides suitable political opportunity, though since the cost of home heating is so high here in Italy, I would prefer the sun belt. Nevertheless, if Alaska beckons (it seems they're in bad need of new blood) or any other desolate place, I’m open to the challenge.

Unlike Greene, I have no pending felony charges, and I do have a political platform, which won’t be affected by choice of locale, given my foreign residence for thirty-seven years and my regional loyalties to Umbria. My platform hasn’t changed much since my 2008 presidential platform, ignored almost equally by both major parties. Indeed, party affiliation is also no problem. Just as I could provide an unlikely alternative to shoe-in GOP senators such as DeMint, Cornyn or Shelby, I could as effectively provide token opposition to any dysfunctional Democratic incumbent senator such as Nelson or Landrieu.
Sadly, sunny South Carolina, with its charming, sexually charged atmosphere, is out of play, barring a Greene disqualification. Returning for a moment to that contest, there is the prospect of a tough choice that South Carolinians will have to make. Jim DeMint has a perfect voting record, according to the Conservatives Fund, which gives Mitch McConnell only a 79% approval rating. He has consistently voted for all wars, guns, war resolutions, proposals and funding, border fences and corporate interests, while regularly voting against education, separation of church and state, health care, environmental protections and civil rights. Alvin Greene has no voting record at all, and his comment on any issue raised to date has been “no comment”. Still, if he votes differently on any one issue from what Jim DeMint has done until now, or if he never shows up to vote at all, we will see a significant improvement over DeMint’s performance. Weigh your choices carefully Carolinians!

Destroying a Medieval Town

Medieval hill towns, typical of Umbria, but present in most of Italy, grew up as fortified castles on hilltops where both visibility and air quality were good and would-be invaders had an uphill battle. Their massive external walls enclosed and protected artisans and shopkeepers, as well as some of the people who worked the surrounding agricultural land. Little changed in this scenario for a millennium until the advent of the automobile. Still, throughout the twentieth century these old towns continued to provide compact urban centers of remarkable architectural richness, surrounded by unspoiled landscapes.

Indeed, Professor Richard Levine, who headed an overseas branch of the University of Kentucky School of Architecture, starting in 1983, described one such medieval town, our own nearby Todi, as the model sustainable city. The town fathers were thrilled by the good professor’s praise and went on to declare Todi to be the world’s most livable city. No doubt Prof. Levine only intended to identify the urban characteristics in evidence in Todi as qualities to be emulated elsewhere. In what would be an extreme case of the law of unintended consequences, foreigners flocked to Todi to buy up houses and apartments where they could spend two or three weeks a years reveling in this ideal environment. Every third shop in Todi was transformed into a real estate agency and very quickly existing houses were priced well beyond the means of young local people who needed homes. Despite a static local population, a great deal of building has taken place on the periphery of Todi since its fame spread.

The town government has done a reasonably good job (scroll down to “The Sienese Invasion” for a notable exception) of assuring that the new buildings are compact and the materials reasonably harmonious with the existing town. However, when people are compelled to move to new houses, they want those houses to have modern amenities, or more precisely, the basic modern amenity, easy access to a car, and the new housing has provided this access. Despite worldwide evidence that we’re facing energy shortages and that greater urban densities will be needed to sustain our environment and our standard of living, Todi is moving from a compact pedestrian-oriented town to one in which most local movement is by car. Todi’s main street is a narrow passage allowing one lane of downhill traffic and, in most places, one lane of parking. It doesn’t work very well for shoppers who come by car, and merchants complain that the city hasn’t done enough to provide parking. In reality, the city has done a great deal to improve access. In addition to frequent bus service to the center, a large pay parking lot has been built at the bottom of the hill with a funicular elevator leading to the center of town. Existing parking spaces in town have been divided into those reserved for residents and others where people can park and pay with time-stamped tickets from conveniently located machines. In a town so dense and hilly, there just isn’t a lot of space to put cars. The main piazza at the apex has a busy mix of commercial, governmental and cultural activity. Local institutions make a strong effort to promote fairs, concerts, theater, etc. in the town center. Nevertheless, shops along the main street have been closing for years, and once you get 150 meters down the hill from the piazza, the empty shops outnumber those still in business, at least until you approach the hospital near the bottom. More on that another time.

Much of Todi’s revenue these days derives from tourism. The beauty of its setting and its architecture are impressive attractions, but if its economic decline continues, its appeal to visitors will diminish, creating a sad downward spiral. Some of the recent changes were inevitable, others less so. The arrival of large supermarkets signaled the end of the small food shops in the center, just as has happened everywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, small shops depend on pedestrian traffic and it can’t all be tourists.

What’s to be done? Many people have tried to answer this but the decline continues. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do believe more of a stick and carrot approach is required. The town has provided lots of carrots, such as subsidies to people opening shops in the town center, and the amazing variety of cultural promotions. I would propose taxing the owners of storefront properties on the main streets that remain vacant. The owners have to pay taxes on the rental income, an incentive to not rent, but not on the value of business potential. The community spends a fortune to keep the town viable, but by holding out for non-economically feasible rents, these owners are damaging the town by wasting a valuable community resource.

It’s also important that doctors, lawyers, notaries, dentists, accountants and design professionals keep their offices in the town center to insure an ample presence of pedestrians. Unlike supermarkets, these activities do not require a steady flow of bulk merchandise. Many doctors, etc. have already moved to the new residential districts where parking is hardly better, and where the flux of patients does nothing for the town. Whether by stick or by carrot, they should be encouraged to stay in (or move to) the center.

As local residents, what can we do? We can support the various government initiatives to promote the town. More practically, we can patronize businesses in the center, from barbers, lawyers, dentists and shoemakers, to bars and restaurants. Do your banking in town rather than at the strip mall. This violates the theology of the new religion of Convenience as God, but heresy has its own rewards. It may take more time to park one’s car and walk through Todi to a bank in the center than it does to stop at some roadside shack, but for those of us not under inflexible time constraints, the trip is well worth it.

A New Perspective

Half a century ago when I first visited Italy, I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world. After living here for well over three decades and becoming familiar with all the warts and blemishes of my adoptive country, my evaluation remains unchanged. Nevertheless, it’s good to get away now and then. The world is full of other delightful places.

I’ve recently returned from a two and a half week trip to England and Wales. It was a happy occasion, a daughter’s wedding and family reunion with all the grandchildren, two of whom I’d not seen before, and most of the new in-laws present. I had lived in London for a few months in 1977 and quite frankly, I hated it. Perhaps the country has changed dramatically, perhaps I’ve mellowed with age to the point of losing my critical edge, or maybe it was just the joyous circumstances of this visit, but I thoroughly enjoyed being there. People were friendly and helpful, the food was much better than thirty years ago, the countryside was green and lovely, and I even grew to enjoy the beer.

During this visit, national elections were held. What a revelation that was! I believe they’d only set the date a month before. I managed to see half of the TV debates between the three contenders for Prime Minister. While there were some differences on policy, all three came across as intelligent and articulate gentlemen who were mostly in agreement on the challenges that the nation faced. There was no debate about banishing evolution from the schools or the need for more concealed weapons on the streets. While the press speculated over whether Gordon Brown’s grumpiness would prove fatal to his political career, no one felt the need to question any of the candidates’ mental health or stability. As an American, I fully expected the other two to challenge the citizenship or the patriotism of Nick Clegg, whose mother was Dutch, his father half Russian, and whose wife is Spanish. Not only was no one’s patriotism challenged but neither Cameron not Clegg brought up Gordon Brown’s embarrassingly recorded comments about an older constituent he’d been introduced to.

In a lead-up to the election, a scandal regarding bogus “expenses” claimed by Members of Parliament was unveiled by The Telegraph. More than ten MPs involved lost their seats in the elections, among them Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, who had claimed expenses for her family home while listing her sister’s home as her main residence, as well as submitting claims for pornographic films ordered up by her husband. Among other contested MP expenses were charges for manure for gardens, plasma TVs, massage chairs, second homes eight miles from the main home, a chimney sweep for a second home, etc. Most of the claims were trivial as well as outrageous, with amounts ranging from a few pounds on up into the thousands. MPs had avoided voting themselves pay raises in an attempt to look better to their constituents, so there was some irony in their comeuppance, brought on by their padding of expenses to round up their pay and benefits.

What a striking contrast between these tragicomic examples of petty graft and the industrial sized bribes our US Congressmen receive for selling out the interests of their constituents, under the seemingly legitimate guise of campaign contributions. High ranking Democrats such as ex-Majority Leader of the House Dick Gephardt and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have gone on to lucrative careers peddling influence on behalf of the health care, health insurance and investment banking industries. Republican Senators such as Mitch McConnell, Richard Shelby and Bob Corker haven’t even seen fit to exit the Senate before getting those big paychecks from insurance, investment, tobacco, oil and mining interests to insure that the American public doesn’t run the risk of getting decent health care or environmental protection.

The words of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales come to mind, as when he described the provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint”. The British MP expenses scandals do indeed seem quaint in this era of Supreme Court-approved corporate influence peddling. May these quaint British notions of propriety long endure and, with a little luck, may they spread to our American shores, together with their brilliant idea of one month-long election campaigns.

God save the Queen!