Down and Dirty

Meet Jon. What a fun looking guy, huh? (Maybe funny looking, hee-haw). Though it's mostly true, I still had to make him do some pose for the picture. Of the 3 or 4 other pictures I took of him, he looked rather bored.

I met Jon on Halloween of 2003. He was dressed up as the Marvel Comics character, The Punisher; I did nothing but wear a stupid hat and tell everyone I was this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peisistratos_(Athens) Peisistratus, ruthless dictator of Athens. He is originally from West Philadelphia (Jon, not Peisistratus), and so is one of the few people I know who can sing the opening lines to "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" without irony. Though I didn't really talk to him then, I overheard him talking to my friend Lori. Both of them, apparently, had gone to Tulane University, in New Orleans, around the same time, and both of them had studied philosophy. Though they didn't know each other, they conversed about different teachers and fellow students. Small world, it turns out. Smaller still, I realized, when Jon told me one of his best friends is from Montgomery, and that her father owns a music store there. A little investigation revealed that his friend is the daughter of, presumably Art, of Art's Music Shop (her last name is... Freihling?). She went to The Montgomery Academy, and is friends with the only people I know from that school.

Jon is enroute to Seattle, where he will pursue his PhD in the epistomological branch of philosophy. Before starting school there he came to Italy to backpack around. His plane arrived in Milan and he took a train from there directly to Venice. After a few days there, he came down here to Rome. He stayed here for a week, and I tried to show him all of the highlights of Rome and Italian culture. After that week, we went together to Naples and to Pompeii. Though I splurged and bought us both tickets on the fancy Eurostar train-- wanting a nice ride in a comfortable train-- it broke down a half hour outside of the city, and we were forced to return to Rome and take one of the cheap, dirty Intercity trains, which meant we got there too late to go to Capri, as we had originally intended (the man who announced the train's malfunction said, in English, "The Large Driving Machine Number 1 has stopped working. We will now use The Large Driving Machine Number 2 to return to Rome."). Instead we spent that afternoon and evening wandering around the streets of Naples. Naples is a city as old and as rich in history as Rome, but Naples is also one of the most filthy cities in Europe. Though with a good cleaning it could be quite beautiful, no one there seems to care. It seems sometimes to me that the people who have the least respect for Italian history and culture and the beauty of the country are the Italians themselves. Not always true, I know, but tourists are not getting off the boat with cans of spraypaint and bags of garbage to cover the streets with. The piazza two blocks from our hostel had a statue of one of the heroes of Italian unification: Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour. In typical Italian fashion, it is covered in spraypaint and the base is strewn with trash--broken beer bottles and cigarette butts, empty bags of junk food, etc. And I wonder if even the most spiteful street thug in America would ever spraypaint a statue of Benjamin Franklin. It is a possibility, but not something you see. Even if it happened, the day wouldn't end without someone coming to clean it up. The next day we went to Pompeii. I've been there before, but it's something one can't complain about seeing twice. Afterwards we returned to Rome. That was yesterday.

This morning he left to go to Florence. He will stay there 2 days and then back to Milan, where he will stay for a day before flying back to America. In Philly, he will stay for just 4 more days before driving across the country with his dog, a friend, and all of his belongings. Part of me envies his adventure, until I realize I'm pretty much in the midst of one myself.

This week has been really nice, and couldn't have come at a better time for me. I've been locked away in my apartment for so long that I think I was starting to go a little stir-crazy.

Here are some pictures of ours from Pompeii. The one on the left is of the interior of one of the baths. The girl on the right is a French girl who was staying in our room at the hostel, and who kept appearing wherever we went (we even saw her outside of Termini, in Rome). The picture on the right is of me and a German girl we spent the day with, hanging outside of a baker's shop. You can see behind us the oven where the bread was made. The conical concrete object to the left is a mystery to me; there were usually several of them in each baker's shop, and there are around 38 baker's shops in Pompeii.

Jon's visit coincided with a new job for me: that of a Tour Guide. Yes, capitalize that 'T' and that 'G' because this is not any ole' tour guide job, but one for one of the most expensive companies in Rome. My last blog was an introduction to a longer blog I intend to eventually write about my exploits in a different tour company, but that job didn't work out. My boss was an incompetant bufoon and, after a simple communication problem on the phone during my second day, he started screaming at me before firing me. There was no compromising or explaining to him what had happened, he completely lost his temper and started insulting me before telling me he "can't have ----- like [me] working for [him]." For the first time in my life I was fired from a job. Though I'd already been to an interview with another company that looked promising, there was no gauruntee, and I was a bit worried, since both tour companies sounded like great jobs for me (except for the slightly pyschotic manager of the first one, who should have been heavily medicated), and they both paid extremely well. Jon arrived right in the middle of my worries and helped distract me from my stress and gave me some sound advice both before and after my second interview with company B, henceforth known as Through Eternity (the name sounds like a crappy romance novel, but whatever).

Through Eternity wanted me to go through 2 interviews. The first one was with an American, and I was to give a 15 minute lecture on The Transfiguration of Raphael. The picture below. Though I was nervous through the entire interview, the man doing the interview could tell that I was smart and could handle myself well once I got the hang of it. The problem with studying a painting like this is that I have to study thirty different, seemingly irrelevant or unnecessary things just to be able to talk about it with confidence. I have to study the New Testament story that it represents. Since the scene also has Moses and Elijah (and I'd never even heard of Elijah), I also have to go through the Old Testament. Then I have to familiarize myself with the various techniques that set this painting apart, such as the strong use of chiarascuro (the play between light and shadows), what Raphael's contemporaries were up to at the time, the different art movements represented in the painting (such as something called "Mannerism"). I have to study the life of Raphael, the life of the painting, the life of the man who commissioned the painting. I have to be comfortable discussing the contrasts of this painting, with its rich, dark colors, and tight brush strokes, as compared with the rest of Raphael's works. It really is a mind boggling venture.

If I wasn't having problems again uploading pictures, I would upload Caravaggio's "David with the Head of Goliath," which was the painting I had to discuss in my second interview. Far less interesting in terms of the number of figures or the details of the background (of which there isn't one), the painting presented more of a challenge. Again I had to study all of the things mentioned above about Raphael, but then I also had to study even more art movements, such as German Naturalism, Baroque, Venetian Poeticism, etc. Also I had to delve into modern Art, since Caravaggio marks one of the earliest breaks from traditional style. In short, I need to know the significance of every little detail of the painting and the painter and the time period in which it was painted. The second interview was with an Italian. His apartment was decorated with paintings which I assumed, due to the easel in one corner, were his. There was also a grand piano with sheets of music everywhere. He seemed eclectic and highly intelligent; I doubted I could hoodwink him. He also suprised me with a lot of hardball questions, questions he told me he didn't expect me to know the answers too, but which he wanted to see what sorts of guesses I'd come up with. I should get my Masters in B.S., because I think I did admirably well (example question: "What is the significance of David to the Rennaisance?"; think about that one, reader)But I persevered and beat the other 4 candidates for the job.

Now. Now now now. This is going to be a great job, but if you think the amount of studying I had to do for those two paintings is a lot, consider the fact that I'm going to be giving 5 hour tours of the Vatican museums. That is 300 minutes. Assuming I can manage to talk for 15 minutes about a single painting, I still have to stop in front of 20 paintings. That's boring, so let's cut down the length of each presentation to 5 minutes, that's 60 sections. Subtract 45 minutes walking... blah. Basically I'm doing a crash course in Rennaisance art, in Christianity, in Judaism, in the history of the Catholic Church, I need to know which popes commissioned which paintings and sculptures and basilicas and what years these popes lived in, what families they were from, how they were all related. I need to study Latin and Roman history, medieval Rome, modern Italy. I need to study different periods and movements in architecture and the functions of features. I need to know my Saints, who they are and what they're famous for; I need to know the revolutionary figures who united Italy. I need to know the architects of the piazzas and the years in which they were alive. I need to know enough to be able to do some guesswork if a question is thrown at me that I don't know the answer to. My manager gave me 5 books to read for starting out. I've already finished one and am well into the second.

Finally, never before have I felt more thrilled to be learning.

Adventures in Babysitting.

My phone rang at 10pm the other night. I had forgotten what the ring sounded like, and so didn't even answer it the first time, having wrongly assumed it was that of my roommate. When it rang the second time, however, I walked into my room and found it, buried underneath a pile of books on my bed. The number was restricted.

"Hello? Pronto?" I asked.

Rapid fire Italian accent (this should have all the spacing between words omitted to emphasize the sheer speed of this man's speech, but that would be a distracting device; instead I have omitted punctuation): "Hello Justin this is Jerry Whatshisname I run a tour company you emailed me your CV last month we spoke one day or maybe we didn't either way it is not important are you busy tomorrow morning I need you to give a tour to 24 people of all the piazzas of Rome and of the Forum and the Colosseum and the Vatican it will last 7 hours."

Me, scratching myself while coming out of my internet daze and trying to remember which company this was: "Uh... OK."

"Good show up outside of the Hotel Blahbityblah tomorrow at 9:30 you will meet a girl named Eliza and together you will give a tour of ancient Rome the fountains and the Vatican OK good Ciao-Ciao!"

I swayed on my feet for a minute, digesting what had just happened, before becoming flushed with panic and fear, the primordial, colorless type typical of a cornered Neanderthal. I rushed to my bookshelf and started flinging my way through texts, cramming dates and names into my head. Seutonius. Tacitus. Livy. Plutarch. On to the more modern! Wainright and Boatwell! Wikipedia! Hotel Blahbityblah? I'll Google Earth it! Great, right near the Ottaviano Metro stop. That will take me... 1 hour to get to. Let's see... the Vatican? Oh hell... the piazzas... grr... and I still need to shave. I covered a 1000 years of history in one wreckless hour before falling asleep fully clothed on top of a large stack of books I carried with me from the US of A. Or as I like to call it, the "us of A."

(I have a lot I'd like to put in here, so I think I'm going to rush through quite a bit)

The next morning I awoke bright and early and took the first train into town. Not knowing what to wear, I went with my basic polo and khakis-- the most inoffensive clothes I wear. Not that jeans and a t-shirt are offensive, but some might see them as unproffessional (note the emphasis on "some"; personally I'd trust a tour guide who appreciated the value of comfort more than one who seemed to have no concept of it). There was no hot Italian girl waiting for me; in fact, there was nobody waiting for me. I waited for a half an hour before two vans suddenly pulled up. Both of the drivers got out and started smoking. I approached and asked them in Italian if they were there for the tours, which they were. I asked a few more questions about where we were going, what the tour was like, etc. They just shrugged and kept smoking. One of them, noticing my look of panic, listed off which piazzas we would "probably" see. I looked at the two vans and realized that I'd probably have to give a tour (with a microphone!) to one of the vans, and then, with a horrifying revelation, I realized I couldn't remember the names of the architects of the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps (generally the two most crowded places in Rome, and therefore my least favorite). I sent a text message to my probably sleeping roommate asking her to find this essential information on the internet for me; I could work from that. (afternote: she "never got a text message")

Another 10 minutes passed before the other girl arrived with a man known as "The Professor" (which I still pronounce with an ominous voice in my head before punctuating it with imagined claps of thunder) and "Jerry," the man from the phone. The three of them ignored me until all of the tourists came out of their hotel and started filing into their respective vans. Then Jerry turned to me and introduced me to "The Professor"(ka-POW!) and Eliza before patting me on the back and telling me I'd probably be giving the tour of the Forum. Though I know the Forum pretty well by now, it was still nervewracking to think that I'd be guiding these 24 people around. This Jerry shook my hand and turned away to get on his motorino and drive off, probably to some cafe somewhere where he could do what most Italians seem to do with their time: nothing.

Eliza started speaking to me in Italian and, not wanting to betray my insufficient understanding of the language this early in our relationship, I nodded and followed her, cramming myself into a van of tourists I soon learned were going to about 8 cities in 15 days. Each one would be a crammed, whirlwind tour of whatever most people wanted to see. In short, it was a nightmare.

To wrap up this element of the story, I will say that "The Professor" (BOOM!) decided to stay for the entire tour, so my job was limited to hovering around the fringes of the flock and nipping at the heels of anyone who strayed too far or decided to take time to frame a picture decently. I was told to keep everyone together, and the sheep-dog metaphor sorta dominated my entire day, so that I don't really feel I learned a single new thing.

Ok, well I have a good deal more to this, but since I've been such a slacker lately on the blog posting issue, I think I'll get back to it next week (tomorrow I return to an entirely different job I've started, but I'll get to that). This weekend I'm going to Naples and Pompeii, with my friend Jon, who is visiting from Philadelphia. But just you wait...

More of Tuscany

Here are some more pictures. It takes a really long time to upload each one of these (at least it takes me a really long time), so I've only had the patience to do a few at a time. Above is Russ, the sound guy, in the town Anhiari, where we took some fantastic shots. The valley in the distance is the Tiber river valley, and if this picture were larger I think you could see the mountains in the distance. The mountains in the distance are where we made most of our shots, since that was where the monastery was located, as well as the house of the people we were filming. Both of them were published writers. One of Lucinda's books can be found Here . One of her husband's books is Here .

These are just snapshots of around the place.

Tuscany

Apparantly I'm an idiot. Either that or Blogger is. Either way, I can't get my photos to line up correctly. They look fine in the "Edit" window, but as soon as I post the thing, they go all over the place. Regardless, here are some pictures from my trip to Tuscany. Enjoy:

This one to the left is of the very colorful market we went to on the Sunday after they arrived. It was given to them as a jet-lag day, and so we decided to spend it in Florence. Most of them wanted to do some shopping at the market. We explored a little bit of Florence.

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This is one of my favorite sculptures in Florence. It is a pretty gruesome representation of Perseus cutting off the head of Medusa. It was made by Benevuto Cellini, considered by some to also be the founder of the autobiographical style. He was quite an interesting character, always challenging people who offended him to fights, or backstabbing companions to get a commission. The only thing redeeming about it is that the man is outrageously funny. And he was good at what he did. This is his most famous work.

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This is the back of the house we were doing the feature on. It was used for several hundred years after it's abandonment around the 15th century as a sort of weigh station for pilgrims, until this Canadian couple came in and renovated it. The road on the front side of the house is an ancient road from the Roman times. It's just gravel and dirt now, but you can see the large stones that used to give it form. This house was around 1000 years old. The picture below it is another angle of the house that show's its positioning among the hills somewhat. The "garden" they're standing in grows all sorts of herbs naturally. When we arrived, I took one look at the place and thought, "They flew all the way here to film a bunch of weeds?" Apparantly, and I'm not taking sides on this argument, but the lady says that she believes a garden should be left alone, that it should grow naturally.

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This house is used as a spiritual retreat center for people from all over the world. A plethura of seemingly incongruous religious icons dot the land and house; though the people who run it are primarily Catholic. The inspiration for all of this is St. Francis of Assissi, who very likely walked the road in front of it, towards his monastery up the mountain.

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In the 110 Tuscan heat, this is what we spent all of our time doing: creating shade. That is Russ, the sound guy on the left. Linda to his right. Barry, the director, is just visible beneath the umbrella, which is being held by Giulia. We rotated this chore.

This last picture is a shot we were taking of John, the man of the house we were filming, riding his scooter away from the house and towards the small, medieval town of Sansepolcro, where he went to mass everyday.

Tomorrow I'll post some more photos.

Only in Italy...

ROME, Italy (Reuters) -- A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son's house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late.

Tired of her son's misbehavior, the pensioner in the central Sicilian city of Caltagirone turned to the police to "convince this blockhead" to behave properly, La Sicilia, one of Sicily's leading newspapers, reported on Thursday.

The son responded by saying his mother did not give him a big enough weekly allowance and did not know how to cook.

"My son does not respect me, he doesn't tell me where he's going in the evenings and returns home late," the woman was quoted as saying. "He is never happy with the food I make and always complains. This can't go on."

Police helped the squabbling duo make up and the two returned home together, with the son's house keys and daily allowance restored.

Most Italian men still live at home late into their 30s, enjoying their "mamma's" cooking, washing and ironing.

Allow me to be pedantic...

Welcome to the Circus Maximus.

Allow me to be annoyingly pedantic. And, I fear, some of what I'm about to say may be incorrect, so I apologize for any amount of authority in the tone, if, that is, it detectable at all. The truth is, one can never be too sure about these things.

The Circus Maximus is one of, I believe, the more interesting historical sites of Rome. Many of the early scholars on ancient Rome misread certain key historical texts, and erroneously assumed that where these texts said most of the early Christians were killed in the "Arena", what they meant was "Colosseum." Though there is still much scholarly debate about this, from what I gather as an amateur historian is that the argument is tilting more and more towards the Circus Maximus. The Colosseum was for more professional sports; killing Christians was no sport at all. For mass killings they needed larger areas. Using their line of reason, it was probably much more fun to watch a lion chase a man over the large distance offered by the Circus Maximus, than to watch one go round in tight circles at the Colosseum. This is what my professional historian teachers have told me, at least. What is unfortunate about the Circus Maximus is apparant in the picture: there is nothing left. Nothing. Not even a stone. There aren't even any markers indicating the historical importance of the place; if indeed my teachers' arguments can be trusted, this is a travesty. What can be seen in the distance are the ruins of the Palantine hill, the hill upon which Romulus famously (though mythically) established Rome. It is also where we get the word "Palace." Beyond that is the Capitoline hill, where we get another important word, "Capitol."

In 1749, Pope Benedetto XIV ("Benedetto" literally means "well read"; for all intents and purposes, we shall now refer to him as "Pope Wellread the 14th") declared the Colosseum a religious monument. The Colosseum still stands today because of this assumption that Christians were killed in there, maimed, crucified, burned, fed to lions, and all sorts of other generally unpleasant things. There is a fair chance that they were, especially in the middle years of the Roman Empire (ho-hum estimation: 150-250) but the most revered group of these early martyrs, died in the Circus Maximus, which is not standing. The Circus Maximus was about 2000 feet long and about 400 feet wide. It could seat a quarter of a million spectators: 5 times as many as the Colosseum. I imagine it was pretty spectacular.

When (and if) Nero famously burned Rome to the ground, he did not play the violin, since the violin would not be invented for another 1500 years, but he very well may have played the lyre. One way or the other, some believe his intention was to clear out a section of Rome, where he wanted to build his "Domus Aurea," or, "Golden Palace." The area of Rome burned? Mostly right where the Colosseum stands today. The fire started just a little ways behind where I stood when I took this picture to the right. This is no coincidence. Nero succeeded in building his Golden Palace. A few years later, under the emperor Vespasian, the Golden Palace was largely demolished. On top of it, the Colosseum was constructed. But the Golden Palace, in its day, was one of the most decadent buildings of the ancient world, something sure to be costly and sure to generate a fair amount of unrest in a populace whose homes had just been burned. In order to save himself a little bit from an angry mob, he declared quite simple that it was the Christians who set fire to Rome. It was a brilliant political move, almost as brilliant as when, some 200 odd years later, another emperor, Constantine, would declare Christianity the official state religion. At the time, the Christians were a small, growing religious group who operated in secrecy and who were led by two names I'm sure we all know: Peter and Paul. After Nero used them as a scapegoat, the Christians were rounded up. Here is a passage from the Roman historian Tacitus:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired

The place where much of this happened, it would appear, is in the Circus Maximus. The fire was in 64AD; the Colosseum would not be built for another decade, would not be completed for another 2.

Fleeing the city, Peter had his famous "Quo Vadis" vision in which Jesus appeared to him as he walked along the Appian Way (which is what I drive along when coming into the city in my roommate's car), heading towards Rome. Peter asked him "Where are you going?" to which Jesus replied something along the lines of, "To be crucified again." Peter, ashamed of himself, turned and walked back to Rome, to be crucified upside down.

I believe most of the Christians were killed on the other side of the Tiber, near where St. Peter's stands. But the possibility that much of it happened here, in Rome's first and largest circus, cannot be ruled out. Even if these assumptions are incorrect, there must've been a helluva lot of amazing chariot races.

This is where I go to read books in the afternoon.