UNCLE DAVID

First off, the David is super mega big.  Carmen expected the statue to be life size and Carmen was wrong.  Goliath must of had the same rationale.  Carmen apologizes for the framing issues in the photo, as every room of the Accademia is somewhat ardently guarded by seated guards that are ever vigilant of anyone trying to take a picture, of anything.  They appear lacksidasical and job-beaten and bored, but as soon as they hear the telltale flash of an Asian's camera they explode and go all Italian screaming "No photo!" and gesture madly.  Then they slowly slink back to the chair, watching.

Some non-David highlights included a huge painting called Tree of Life by Pacino di Bonaguida, which depicts Christ crucified on the tree of life, from which little spheres of familial life hang. A bowl of water made by a German in the 1960's.  Inexplicably, in the hall of sculptures that literally teems with smallish but nevertheless intricate carvings of white marble, therein sits a green, blocky paper mache foot on a pedestal.  There is also a museum of mid-century instruments that was quite awesome.  Carmen got to see how a piano works!  It uses strings and little hammers.

Overflow Side-note From Previous Post:  The drinking age in Italy is SIXTEEN.  By way of the transitive property, kids get fake ID's at around 12, and most of the walls of the fake American sports bar are adorned with cramped pictures of 12-year-olds at fake 16th birthday celebrations using multiple curly-straws to sip out of a 2 foot plastic martini glass.

The Urination Station

Carmen has decided that Italians' furtive obsession with waffer cookies is not without merit.  

Last night was spent in what Italians appear to perceive an American sports bar to be.  One of the walls boasted a 3:2 scale Troy Aikman mid-release.  Others had USC, Missouri, Wisconsin micro-flags for each school's respective football team.  There was an excellent special on 16 fl oz beers that were unfortunately Heineken, which, to Carmen, tastes like urine left out in the sun for too long.  Really a great deal though.  Some tracks on the playlist: "Pretty Fly for a White Guy," "Just Like A Pill" by PINK!  There wasn't a single Italian in the bar, outside of the bartender, who spent almost the entire night mid-booth Facebooking and snatching peoples' glasses during bathroom breaks.

Clubs in Italy are much the same.  Awfully loud, awfully awful music.  Dance partners trying to pelvically impale one another.  Stroboscopic lighting.  Guidos.  The modern concept of "dancing" is a horrifying thing to Carmen.  Whenever he sees drunkies vertically dry-humping he tends to imagine how the act would look in quaint, rationally normal place.  Imagine a hundred sweaty, glossy-eyed people grinding one another in a bed & breakfast or on the surface of the moon.  Carmen only tangoes.

Both locales offered up really exquisite bathroom choices though.  In the bar, the bathroom was 25x2 and the toilet ran constantly and had a pull-string flusher.  Much to Carmen's delight the club had the sought-after piss hole in the ground.  No toilet, just a hole, filled with pee-pee.  There are porcelain footpads so you don't step in the fallout.

The Nose Knows

In honor of Bob Dylan's April tour stop in Florence and Carmen's potential attendance, a list was commissioned of bands that Carmen has seen in concert, so far.  This would enable him to commission a subsequent list of bands that require seeing, by Carmen.  Here's both lists:

Seen So Far, In Alphabetical Order, With Quality Ratings That Are Suspect and Biased:

1. Arcade Fire-4.5

2. As I Lay Dying-3

3. Audioslave-4 

4. Citizen Cope-2

5. David Bowie-5

6. Death Cab For Cutie- 3.5

7. Fleet Foxes- 5

8. Glen Hansard-4.5

9. Incubus (sorry)-4

10. Jane's Addiction-4.25

11. Jimmy Eat World- 4

12. Kanye West-4.5

13. LCD Soundsystem-3.75

14. The Mars Volta 4x- Multiple Ratings Listed Chronologically- 5, 2 (opener), 6, 4

15. Mastodon- 4.5

16. My Morning Jacket- 6

17. The National- 4.5

18. Queens of the Stone Age- 4

19. Radiohead 2x- 6, 5

20. Red Hot Chili Peppers- 4.5

21. Sigur Ros- 6

22. Slipknot- 4.5

23. Smashing Pumpkins- 5

24. Tool 2x-5, 5

25. Yes-4.5

26. Zwan- 3.75

Who's Left:

1. Beck

2. The Black Keys

3. Bob Dylan

4. Bruce

5. Coldplay?

6. The Flaming Lips

7. The Killers

8. Metallica

9. Modest Mouse

10. Muse

11. Neil Young

12. Pearl Jam

13. Phish (Just for YEM)

14. Rage Against the Machine

15. TV on the Radio

16. White Stripes

17. Wilco

So much to do!

Dinosaurs Roaming The Earth (x3)

On the lull between textific posts Carmen has seen Italian lunch ladies do their best Gestapo impressions as they questioned his presence in the dining hall.  Carmen has taken a number and been very-nearly-kindly aided at a Florentine post office.  Carmen has attended a chocolate festival where he ate zero chocolate.  Carmen has lifted weights for self betterment two times.  Carmen has walked and walked and walked.  Carmen has seen penises made of chocolate.  Carmen has located a park that can't even be called far from campus that boasts an otherworldly view of Florence, outlying country side, prettiness.  Carmen has watched an old couple watch the sunset from a park bench. Carmen has seen an elaborate, topographically integrated fountain.  Carmen has seen a shinless panhandler balance his beggar cup on his detached, artificial legs.  Carmen has been rained on until his boots were soaked through.  Carmen has discovered the outdoor ping pong courts and their overindulgent lighting systems.  Carmen has decided that the altered reality of an Italian grocery store deserves its own paragraph.

HOW THINGS ARE NON-PATHMARK IN ITALIAN GROCERY STORES:

You cannot touch and carefully examine a fruit's battle scars, discolorations, disheartening softness without a transparent plastic glove.  There are no Pop-Tarts.  Frosted Flakes are simply Frosties.  Pringles are Pringles.  An entire aisle, both sides and maybe more, is pasta.  Alcohol requires three aisles.  Kit-Kat bars come in packaged bricks of three.  Two or more aisles are occupied by brandless cookies known only as biscotti (which translates to cookies).  Gypsies patrol both entrance and exit and are very touchy-feely.  No express lines.  The idea of "express" anything is an abstraction of an abstraction of the physical representation of the word "the," to Italians.  YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THE PLASTIC BAGS.

When Words Cannot Do Justice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBazo5uciVc

THE TORRENTS OF "SPRING"

Italy sees heavy rainfall.  Refreshing naps are taken.  Carmen meets Virginia Tech acquaintance Tom Muscarella and scales a large majority of the stairs to the enclosed observation deck of the Duomo.  The stairs are ancient and graffitied and winding and endless.  Due to rain Carmen's camera could not make the trip, and thus he did not scale the cathedral in its entirety.  Fun Fact:  Carmen is an acrophobe.  The entire thing is painted, exquisitely and grandiosely.  How someone crafted the dome's sedan-sized depictions of heaven and hell pre-Ipod is a marvel unto itself.  Satan was there chomping on Judas and Co.  Upon his return to the Duomo his camera will capture the moments, his feet will conquer all 467 stairs, but for now this photo of what may be Piazza della Liberta will have to suffice.  Looking good!

Carmen finished "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and highly recommends it to all soul-havers.

Congratulations are extended to all who voted for Carmen's Impending Demise as being Gypsy-centric.  Carmen's best gypsy experience so far has to be walking through the parking lot behind the above pictured plaza and seeing a ragtag team of gypsies surrounding a parked car, refusing to move until the frightened Italian inside surrendered his Euros.  There's nothing quite like the gift of giving, especially to those gypsies in need.

The Transformations Take and Bloodlust Tanks

Firstly, LOST.  The true genius of the show lies in the implementation of preposterous devices that allow for literally anything to happen and how the audience never questions the show for a second, for the most part.  It's taking place in fifty different locales in fifty distinct time periods, simultaneously.  Also Sawyer, mostly Sawyer really.  Two A-bomb lines: "Open up it's the ghost of Christmas future." and "Shut your trap, ginger."  Carmen cannot wait for the spin-off.

BIG LOVE has more story lines than Friday night brothel on fire and still it manages to pull it off.  There is a potential stabbing that occurs during a male-on-male highway rest stop hiene-sex rendezvous.  Bill has sex with a Romanian out of multi-wedlock.  Nikki orates on top of her roof in a hat with a 17" radius brim.  Bill tricks Native Americans into opening a Mormon casino in Idaho.  Margie is secretly chatting the the Romanian.  The Romanian doesn't want to get married then does.  Barb's vagina has cancer again.  Nikki's dad is facing fifteen rape charges.  Nikki is a spy in the state department.  Sarah is accepted to BYU but wants out of Utah.  Sarah's closet lesbian best friend is distraught that they won't be roomies.  Tweeny is going through puberty and is banned from her friends house for letting the neighborhood boys look at dirty magazines she found for fifty cents.  The Henderson's are convinced that everyone knows they are polygamists, but they are very, very wrong.  Albie is having gay sex in highway rest-stops.  Etc.

In Bruges got nominated for an Oscar.  Score one for justice.  Benjamin Button got nominated for thirteen Oscars.  Score thirteen for whatever you define the silent evil of the world as.  Carmen will not start on Slumdog Millionaire.

To Gore A Centaur

Here's a sculpture of Hercules about to gut-thrash a centaur with a severed black penis.  This is the type of thing Carmen desires in the foyer of his eventual house, along with a robot butler.  Outside the Accademia there is a bunch of sculptures of this ilk.  Zeus encircled with flaming mini-horses.  Some dude holding up his fallen opponent's offal-dripping head.  Really great stuff.  A class of embittered Italian middle school students were smoking and fighting at the bottom of the latter though.  Carmen's picture was subsequently muffed.

Mommy/Noni leave Friday morn and being the pristine (grand)son he is Carmen spent all of yesterday with them, watching them shop.  He was duly compensated with two meals and a three hour nap on their hotel bed.  It is questionable if he made out in the end, but those are the thoughts of a drab, self-centered muttonhead, which Carmen is maybe not.  Everyone loves family time.  

Fun Fact: The phenomenon of white males wearing New Balance shoes in non-gym situations does not carry over to Italy, for reasons Carmen can fully understand.  Carmen completely gets the importance of comfort in one's shoe selection process, but still.  (Sub-Fun Fact: Italian cleaning products present the smell of feet drenched in olive oil.)   

Carmen purchased the novel he must read in Italian and realized that he is in no way capable of reading a novel in Italian.  He also found Don Delillo's Americana for a steal.

Coming Soon: Carmen's Reactions to All Things Entertainment.  Mainly, Academy Award nominations, Big Love, LOST, and if the IN BRUGES nod outweighs the rampant idiocy of the noms in every other category.

Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter of Available Space with Mind-Boggling Efficiency

When the sky is a seamless, dull-colored ceiling Carmen can be :(, but luckily today his Money & Banking teacher entered class in a neon yellow jumpsuit with the word SLAM emblazoned across the chest in huge red letters.  He then proceeded to remove the outfit in a swift motion, revealing the full suit held underneath.  This made things instantly better.  Also contributing was the creepy TA who idled at the periphery of the classroom and whose sole purpose appeared to be making sure that the teacher acknowledged the ten minute cappuccino break.  The class was shortened and there was no cappuccino break. There are nine people in W 9:00-11:30 Money & Banking, the largest total of any of Carmen's classes.

The gym on campus is more than adequate!  Carmen feels beyond cool using his PERFECT-PUSHUP TRAVEL KIT.

Carmen's second class of the day is 3.5 hours long and conducted fully in Italian.  This is interesting because Carmen speaks Italian on the level of a glue-eating pre-K Italian boy that's unsure of himself.  No joking the class is really 3.5 hours long.  No joking the teacher doesn't even hint at English.  Luckily, the class ((of 6 students) renowned since it had a single student last semester) meets in a second floor room at Villa Ulivi that is 80% windows and overlooks the entire grounds and most of the city of Florence.  During the sunset other teachers came in to awe-gaze.  Two students took pictures.  Every week Carmen has to read a novel in Italian, then analyze the novel for 3.5 hours with only 5 other students to act as time-sucking crutches. Carmen is going to look into making it a pass-fail.  The sunset is so picturesque it renders postcards unto grotesqueries.  It's a sight to behold.

In honor of LOST tonight, TCS has supplied an interesting link to get everyone excited: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Jackface.

Thanks to NS for opening CP's eyes to a band called the Wrens.  They wrote a song entitled "Boys You Won't" that is so unfathomably good that Carmen's ears spray Vesuvian geysers of blood every time he listens.  Helping each other is great isn't it?

For all the talk of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA's entrance into the purported post-racial utopia, everyone during the inauguration sure seemed to talk about absolutely nothing (0) besides BHO's blackness.  Shout outs to the girls who explicitly detailed how to bypass the security checkpoints on CNN.  The inauguration of the first half-white President is a big deal.  The government did a super job of overloading the broadcast with overtly symbolic demonstrations of how much things are "changing" and the decrepitude of the previous administration and the non-decrepitude of the entering one.   Cheney in a wheelchair.  The zombified GHWB.  Obama showing W. how to correctly get into a helicopter.  Laura Bush's Jedi outfit.  The subtext abounds.  Nevertheless, B.O. can write the frothing volcanoes out of a speech.  Can't wait until Oliver Stone and Denzel Washington hook up in 2010 for BARACK.   I still prefer William Henry Harrison's acceptance speech, though.  May American History's most long-winded, short-termed, and ironic President ride on comets and eat only homemade dinners and play pool with Sinatra and George Carlin and call heaven his eternal home forevermore. Amen.

Lo Scerzo Infinito (The Infinite Joke)

Carmen found INFINITE JEST translated into Italian and said YaYYY.  The translation face rapes the structure and tonality, as far as Carmen can tell.  They tried their best though.  They being all three of the translators.  "I am in here (pg. 1)." becomes "I am here within (pg. 15)." Still some of the better $42 Carmen has ever spent.  Turns out a demand for books exists in Europe, hence a $6 book in heaven is worth $42 in Europa.  The Italians in the bookstore were so awesomely, indelibly rude it was funny.

Italians don't believe in the 1st floor.  There is a zero floor.  When you enter a building, you enter the zero.  Basements are designated the -1 floor.  Carmen believes this says something about optimism and pessimism, but maybe not.

Carmen's International Finance class has five people in it, total, including Carmen.  His teacher rides a Vespa to class and says the Danish are morons for not entering the European Union. Between Villa Natalia (Carmen's house) and Villa Ulivi (his classes' house) there is a monstrously steep hill.  It sits at about 65°.  If it weren't 60°F out and raining there could be some serious, Castle Park-esque sledding going on.

Interested in skinny jeans and/or overly exclamatory acknowledgements of things?  Run your eyes over NGQRK's new blog: http://nickrkok.blogspot.com

To Bathe in the Fountain, To Swing on the Spiral

Today, Carmen visited the ornately humongous monument that the Catholic Church built to honor its two-millenia genocide against contradictory thought, Jews, and the Earth's revolution around the Sun.  It was great! Observations were made, such as: Catholic sculptors, although totally sick, have this weird fetish for arming babies with weapons, lutes, and mini-harps.  The Vatican is large enough to house at least four con-current proms.  Beneath the floor there's this sepulcher where they've buried all the previous Popes.  Scattered throughout the place are ancient, semi-transparent manhole covers that allow one to see into the underground mass grave. There have been a lot of Popes.  The Vatican is sponsored by WIND, a European cell-phone provider.  In the free part of the place, about two thousand people mill around, but in the three Euro a head museum there isn't a soul.  Not one.  There are workers but no guests.  Carmen may have been the only person all day to see the war elephant tusks from the Crusade, Pope John Paul II's four finger ring.

After today Carmen now has two regrets logged for his short, privileged life:

1. Not buying the Haitian virility sculpture of the man fellating himself.

2. Not taking a picture of the war elephant tusks from the Crusades.

Reports were made to Carmen from multiple sources as to Italians geniality and grasp of the English language.  So far, these reports seem false, especially in relation to Italian waiters, whose dispositions reflect something around autistic death camp overseers.  Whatever Italians speak English have obviously gone into hiding, replacing themselves with curt, angry, impatient people who like to stare and make you feel like a dumbyhead.

Also, a braking Vespa-rider fell and got his head partially ran over by the taxi adjacent to Carmen's.  His helmet absorbed it really well!  Everyone helped pull the motorcycle off of his legs. Good for him.

This morning the system tried to fist Carmen by bringing up requirements that would force his taking of a four-day a week Advanced Review of Italian class.  In response, Carmen misled the machine by agreeing to this, and then, by utilizing loopholes, managed to not only avoid the class but reduce his schedule to two days a week.  Carmen now has five day weekends, every week.  Good for him.

Relative Boredom Prompts Hysteric Blogging and Listitis

Some lists for those living in carmenless squalor, these can help channel the carmen of the now:

Best Movies of 2008:

1. Synecdoche, NY

2. Wall-E

3. The Wrestler

4. In Bruges

5. Shotgun Stories

6. Milk

7. Tropic Thunder

8. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

9. The Dark Knight

10. Iron Man

Best Songs of 2008:

1. Inni mer syngur vitleysingur by Sigur Ros

2. Skinny Love by Bon Iver

3. Mykonos by Fleet Foxes

4. Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 2 by My Morning Jacket

5. Illyena by The Mars Volta

6. Things Ain't The Way They Used to Be by The Black Keys

7. Robocop by Kanye West

8. Golden Age by TV on the Radio

9. Death and All His Friends by Coldplay

10. The Wrestler by Bruce Springsteen

The Best Albums of 2008 (Abridged for Lack of Purchased Albums)

1. Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust by Sigur Ros

2. The Bedlam in Goliath by The Mars Volta

3. Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes

4. Dear Science by TV on the Radio

5. 808s and Heartbreak by Kanye West

6. For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver

7. Viva La Vida by Coldplay 

8. Chinese Democracy by Guns N' Roses

9. Attack & Release by The Black Keys

The Best Books Read by Carmen in 2008:

1. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson 

2. Then We Came to The End by Joshua Ferris

3. Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders

4. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran-Foer

5. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Do Italians Dream of Electric Grease?

Some things Carmen learned today:

Former suitemate and "The Phantom Tollbooth" Fan Dahyun Lee lives down the hall from him.

Italy appears to shut down on Sunday's for Church/Soccer, which is interesting from both a theological/athletic standpoint and beyond.

On said Sunday's it is very difficult to find your way places and this could result in getting lost for an around an hour trying to find POI.

Italy has its own version of BIG BROTHER aptly titled: Grande Fratello.  It is enthralling. Every girl has artillery tits and cries constantly.  Every guy has hyper-stratified abs and sub abs and never wear shirts and cries constantly.

The toilets flush differently.  Instead of the determined, unidirectional whoosh down the hole there is more of a flopping and thrashing of the water and somehow your waste just disappears!

Here are some interesting translations of North American movie titles into Italian that he observed:

Get Smart: Agente Smart Casino Totale 

YDMWT Zohan: Zohan: Le tutte donne pettino (Zohan, All the women's hair I comb)

Cento Percente Donna in Donna (100% Girl on Girl)

The only David Foster Wallace book translated into Italian (that he could find) is "Westward the Course of the Empire Takes Its Way" which is his least favorite anything David Foster Wallace wrote and this made him :(

Lost is on at 5 A.M.

The TV is broken and he cannot watch the Cardinals win.

Airports and Mass-Transit Too: Globally Interconnected Simulacra of Hollow Escapism or Globally Interconnected Simulacra of Eventual Betterment?

What Carmen Did Today If You Can Call It That:

Woke up in the big city.  Ate a breakfast sandwich specially made by Sarah Ramirez. Dragged his big, wheelie suitcase across nearly all of Manhattan.  Felt his eyeballs freeze over in the cold.  Sat in Class for 3 hours.  Earned 4 credits.  Ate Lenny's.  Got stared at by an A-train full of black people for using his wheelie suitcase as a chair.  Rode on something called the AIR-TRAIN.  Found his mommy and Noni in a for-the-most-part eerily deserted airport and hugged them both and said hello!  Enjoyed a motorized walkway.  Waited at the terminal with a vociferous elderly adventure club of some sort, a woman who trained her 30 exotic birds to be self-sufficient in her absence.  a 50ish German couple who appeared to be on heavy tranquilizers.   Saw an Asian woman drag her Asian son across the terminal with a leash that the Asian woman had attached her Asian son to.  Bought 3 $4 soda-pops.  Called Sarah, "Hello Sarah."  Called Poppie because he had his clogged artery scraped clean.  Waited out the 3-terminal long line to board the plane.  Saw first-class and its oversized children's car seats.  Traded seats with a woman who spoke Gerglish.  Sat on the tarmac for an hour because the conveyer-belt/go-cart froze.  Participated in a pre-departure seance performed by Noni.  Watched through a porthole window a plane take of at 1°F.  Saw a bilingual, Gerglish speaking woman get real into Nights in Rodanthe.  Failed to sleep for the entirety of the 8 hour plane ride.  "Flew" over the Atlantic Ocean at 666mph at -65°F.  Rode the world's largest motorized walkway in the world's largest airport to great effect.  Thought the Frankfurt Airport in Germany was a real downer.  Took a bus to a new, super small plane.  Rode the small plane for 2.5 hours to Florence.  Didn't sleep really at all during the 2.5 hours.  Got on a shiny bus straight from the airplane stairs that drove 20 feet to the airport entrance.  Got a restaurant recommendation and rundown of the history of Florence for the past thousand years or so from a limo-bus driver named Fabricio.  Checked into mommy's hotel that reeked of fecal matter.  Drank an $11 Sprite.  Began to lose grip on reality due to sleeplessness.  Tried to contact NYU in a number of fashions and failed.  Enlisted the help of an abrupt, non-English speaking taxi driver.  Rode with the taxi-driver/Noni/mommy to two very pretty but wrong places and then the right one.  Checked in in ablated Italian.  Met his roommates.  Moved in.  Fell asleep in Italy the end.