Hunting the Antique Torg - Crisis Aversion

March 31, 2008 · Filed Under My son · 2 Comments

‘Hunting the what?’, you may be mouthing. Well, if you did not know, the Antique Torg (a strained translation from the Italian ‘l’Antico Torg’), is an agressive looking little fellow who belongs to one of the upteen Gormiti clans. He resembles the figure in the picture on your left.

We have hoards of the things sprouting from just about everywhere in our apartment. Only now, one of their number has mysteriously disappeared. For the moment, this vanishing remains an unsolved whodunnit.

I strongly suspect a case of ‘Gormiti napping’, and it’s likely that the dog actually is the Gormito napper. I did carry out a strip search of said dog’s basket, but to no avail.

Luckily, a potential crisis situation did not arise, as although your official Gormito hunter here suspected that the 4.5 year old Gormito Godfather may have kicked up a fuss before heading for bed, the aforementioned self-proclaimed head of his own personal Gormito clan, proceeded to bed without further ado.

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Tags: craze, gormiti, Gormito, My son, plastic figure, toy

Why Vote Berlusconi?

March 31, 2008 · Filed Under Italian politics · 2 Comments

The word on the via (street) here is that Mr Berlusconi is quite likely to win the Italian general elections, which are coming up faster than a flashy Ferrari in your wing mirrors. However, if you work for Alitalia or one of the myriad of companies that feed off the collapsing Italian airline, you’ll probably want the B man holding Italy’s reins. Berlusco is very good at giving the impression he is Mr Italy, even if he well knows that by keeping Alitalia, Allitalian, he will also be safeguarding his own power base.

Meanwhile Vetroni, the only other candidate who appears to stand something like a chance against the multi-media marketing manipulating Berlusco, is playing things ever so gently.

Why? Because he knows that the only way he stands a gnats chance in hell of sitting in the prime minister’s seat is by continuing to scratch several hundred backs at the same time. Hence the muted election campaign. If he does not scratch backs, he will end up treading on toes. No win, no win, situation. And, should he achieve the unlikely, he’ll have to keep rubbing the backs of a lot of people for a lot of time, if he is to have any hope of keeping himself in power for more than a few nanoseconds. It’s the usual fragile virtually useless destined to fail Italian coalition style that Veltroni is aiming for. Same old same old.

However, the B man may not have everything his own way, as it is by no means clear who will grab the majority in Italy’s upper house, the senate. Confusion at this level will, as usual, lead to a virtually inanimate government, which, yet again, will lead to Italy’s one step forward, two steps back, style of progress. Another reason to back Berlusco.

People will vote for Berlusconi. They love his brusque ‘tell it like it is’ directness, which, to many Italians, almost appears to be something like honesty. And this is another reason why he won’t find himself short of votes.

Whether of course he will actually do any good for the Living Museum remains to be seen, but the image of gnats in hell springs to mind once more, oddly enough.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Italy became the new Albania of Europe? No, I hear you bay, that cannot happen. All I can say is mafia, mozzarella, trash, and dioxin.

But the people will still vote for Berlusconi, at least until a real viable alternative emerges.

Funny thing is though, that despite the dodgy characters, there is an awful lot to like about Italy. At least for the moment.

There, sorry, I’ve dissed Italy a wee bit, but only after mentioning the Chianti Sculpture Park in my previous post, so I thought I could get away with it.

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Tags: Berlusconi, Italian elections, Italian government, Italian politics, Vetroni

Let Chianti Sculpture Park re-capture that holiday mood

March 31, 2008 · Filed Under Art · Comment

My writings on Gianpietro Carlesso caused me to ‘come up in conversation’ the other day while Chris Bright was chatting fellow American and Milan based Sean Carlos, and, as a result of Sean’s recent email, I’ve been darting around the web looking at sculpture related things. There is some interesting stuff out there, and some future posts will be dedicated to them, and, in turn, I hope, help the lives of struggling artists become, well, less of a struggle. High hopes indeed, I know.