Obligatory Photos Part 1

You can imagine how many folks came by to lay their head in the missing noggin spot. This is in the garden to the National Museum, along with the next two shots. Antiquity's beauty is strewn all over Rome. Often, it felt like we were walking on a film set.

Piazza della Repubblica was fairly hopping.

The temperature may have hit 23C.

Most of our meals were taken outside.

Romans, by contrast, were wrapped up for a cold winter's day.

The idea of an industrial belt sander's utility to grind down all the dead shit on my wounded feet holds so much appeal. We melted into the jacuzzi on the first night to soothe away the crimps and grime from so many hours hoofing it. What a contradiction you find in the streets of Rome: the traffic moves at racetrack pace, yet the citizenry stroll about without any sense of destination or timeframe. Fast cars coupled with slow walkers keep you on alert.

Trevi Fountain.

Mr. M's impression of me throwing in a coin launched a fit of hysterics.

Rome has the sublime tucked around every other corner.

Pantheon before nightfall.

Mr. M enjoyed the re-branding on evidence where the church converted all the old pagan sites to their team.

The level of detail and design inside was impossible to capture with the shitty camera.

All around posted signs cautioned folks that it was a sacred place commanding silence.

Inside the Pantheon was as noisy as an after work pub.

My second pizza of the day was relished at a cafe on the Piazza Navona.

Patriarchy A Go-Go

The mystery of what happens to Art History majors a decade after graduation has been clarified. Minted AH folks are roaming the Vatican with various degrees of desperation in an attempt to parlay their education into a few bucks by acting as personal tour guides. Now that I think about it, I should have stopped to ask at least one of the four American women or the one British dude how much they charge for their education. The women looked like Vassar types in fraying J Crew. The dude with the Oxford accent shouted after us in his clippity voice that "there is literally no information available on the art so good luck trying to go through it alone." Ah, the "expert" dudes are always fitted with a smug assurance of their own brilliance. Ripping out my eyelashes sounds like more fun than having to listen to him for three hours. Same goes for the tour our hotel sponsored for 59 Euro per person. It was only three subway stops away on the Metro which cost 1 Euro to ride. Tickets to the Vatican--to see all the art--are only 14 Euro. These shady tour operations feed on folks who are too terrified to negotiate the streets so they'll pay through the nose to have someone else take them around. Same thing with the bus tour to the Colosseum. The tour bus clip-joint charged 20 Euro for the short trip that was easily taken onfoot. How do you get to know a city if you refuse to perambulate?

Mr. M took far more pleasure in the Vatican than I did, although he half expected some monumental change to occur due to the interpellation in my childhood, like I would be worrying beads by the end or something. As if. St. Peter's Basilica and Square felt closer to a military compound than pilgrimage site. There were angy-looking dudes barking orders all over the place. Be-smocked junior priests swaggered around like rock stars. Folks from all over the world came to dip their fingers in the holy-holy. We stopped to watch a beaming novice nun squealing to have her picture taken. Inside, there was hardly a face without a camera affixed. Our camera was kaput (it's 5 years old and no longer holds the charge), but I was okay with that, because while I did want to visit, there's no pressing need for me to save any of the images on view from the font of patriarchy. The splendour of dude culture is as exaggerated as you imagine. Fictional and historical peen-bearers who carved power from the subjugation of women and impoverished indigenous folk appear preserved in marble for eternity. The Vatican is one big patriarchal wank-stain of self-pleasure and glory. No need for me to see it pop up on my screensaver.

In the Basilica, standing in front of yet another tomb to a dead pope, the grand black marble door underneath slowly opened. Mr. M looked forward with anticipation, as if the Rat was going to show his face. Turned out to be an elderly janitor with a mop and bucket. Mr. M said it made his day, this Monty Python moment of showing the human toil necessary to keep the place running. He was also visibly interested in the Map Room, one of the many galleries on the way to the Sistine Chapel. Mr. M could have easily been saddled with the appellation "Mr. Map" on this blog because the man is mad for them. The walls were festooned with a series of detailed cartography of Italy, accompanied by paintings which depicted incidents of religious significance. Yes, it was impressive.

For me, the highlight was getting to view Michaelangelo's Pietà. It was the most human and humane image in the place.

We'll be chillin' in one of the cradles of global patriarchy for a spell.
The early days of the city were a rape-0-rama for the founding Romulus and his cohort dudes.
But hey, the only way to avoid patriarchy would be to enter one of those sensory deprivation tanks of the type featured in that boring David Cronenberg movie.
Besides, they have pizza.

"Cannibal Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death" (1989) rates as a really shitty satire of feminism and gender politics. Starring Shannon Tweed, Adrienne Barbeau and Bill fucking Maher, the film sets feminism up as a great big national boogie man on par with Cold War communism. This film channels the funny bone of the MRA set; dudes who rail on about the feminist conspiracy keeping them down will eat this shit up. According to this script drippy with mars and venus gender mythology, a swathe of jungle running from Bakersfield, California down to Mexico serves as the "avacado belt" which is essential to national security. Government dudes prevail upon a Woman's Studies professor to confirm the rumour about the women warriors who inhabit the jungle. Shannon Tweed's Professor Hunt admits the legend about women eating men in the form of beef jerky with a side of guacamole. The dudes strong arm her into agreeing to do down and "reason" with the radical feminist cannibals. It was funny to think that any WS department would have the kind of funding and resources the film imagines.

There are a string of unfunny jokes such as when the student Bunny (Karen Waldron) asks Prof. Hunt if it's true that feminists eat men, the shoulder padded lady responds "No! Well, not many" Har-dee-har-har. Bill Maher's character enters as the only dude among a ninja, wrestler and a crazy Vietnam vet who's brave enough to face the horrid throng of pirana women. Maher's character is a delusional stalker type who proclaims love for Hunt even though they only had a one night stand. In his mind, that means he owns her. This film fashions a clumsy satire full of false notes and lady hating.

The only truly funny part comes at the clip above near the end of the film. Hunt gets to confront the leader, Dr. Kurtz (Adrienne Barbeau) who was the self-described token feminist of the talk show circuit. Her plan was to write a memoir about her stint as leader of the pirana women. Kurtz (in a nod to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness") pleads "you don't know what it's like to face David Letterman with a book on male insensitivity." With her dying breath she gasps "Oh, god, David Letterman. The horror! The horror of that show. The horror!"
Now that's pretty fucking funny.
Watch that and skip the rest.

Tabloid Television

Donal McIntyre hosted "Ireland's Crime Capitals: Dublin," which was unapologetically sensationalistic, fear-mongering, and least fact-based pieces of tabloid television I've witnessed.
He devoted nearly half the programme to the Love, Ulster riot on O'Connell Street in Feb. 2006 by trying to connect the Easter Rising '16 to the flash street riot. There's a huge fucking difference between a revolution against the colonial condition and contemporary republicans setting the stage for mayhem as a means to prove their own relevancy. He promised exclusive interviews with two men who had rioted. "Colin" was an American pulling greenface who gained " a sense of pride" from taking part in a disgraceful bit of anarchy. American dudes acting with greenface look towards the Irish republican legacy as an opportunity to shore up masculine anxieties. It's one route for the men's rights mentality to claim victimhood through an age-old grudge match with England. Then they can play the so-called hard cunts by hanging out at the Sinn Fein office on Parnell Square and try to prove they have a pair by tearing up the city centre. Then "Kieran" the Irish dude explained his role in the riot as directed by the sense that it was a "once in a lifetime opportunity to do something like that." How is it that civic destruction, looting, pelting the Gardai and a bunch of pathetic Orangemen with bottles and smashed paving stones an opportunity? The video footage of the carnage was played on a loop inviting viewers to tut-tut and clutch pearls over their tea.

McIntyre cites EU membership and immigration for the influx of drugs during the boom years. We're to assume that demand had nothing to do with it. Some old dude explains how drugs filter through importers to street runners as if we're not already familiar with how kids are used in the drug trade. Shit, we all watched "The Wire." The presenter intones "just one call is all it takes to get a fix" like a dude out of "Reefer Madness." Cue the fainting couch. What, it should take 6 phone calls? The melodramatic voiceovers were unbearable. Then the programme cuts to the storm trooper STT rail security dudes who are scary as fuck. (We watched them the other night giving a hard time to the two dudes who panhandle with the accordian on the DART. They were stupid enough to leave the instrument unattended on the train.) McIntyre wants viewers to to know that the Luas is not safe! Panic! We get anecdotal evidence about junkies shooting up and anti social behaviour. There's also footage shown of a man robbing one of the ticket machines and the Gardai breaking up a street fight. Hardly scary stuff and no hard data to accompany or verify the claims.
Very disappointing.

The crab cakes at Gotham on Anne Street are sizeable, have the perfect texture (not too bready) and are prepared with a measured level of seasoning. No question, I could eat them several times a week. Quick service also means that we can get out in an hour or less, which is my preference. Lingering in a restaurant has no appeal.

Crab cakes are such a gendered dish, aren't they?

They seem like the entree equivalent to yogurt.

Those little patties are the ultimate dish for ladies who lunch.

Waiters don't even ask which of us ordered them while setting plates down.

"Oh, you have a vagina? The crabcakes have to be for you."

Makes me want to avoid them altogether.

Not all Artists are Creepy

The forty prints by Edvard Munch on display at the National Gallery are worth seeing.

Far too often, male artists give me the heebie-jeebies when they telegraph anger and hatred in their work and common disdain reserved for women. Our culture emulates fucked up dudes on a regular basis, especially when they're artists with license to be an arrogant monster.

Munch has been saddled with a reputation for being psychologically disturbed just because he was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. It seems unwarranted. Based on the work in this exhibit, the worst we can attribute to him would be having a hair fetish, low self-esteem and a long standing loneliness. Munch was too industrious and productive to be debilitated by melancholia. There's nothing here that signals "damaged" to me.

Sure, Munch objectified the ladies, just like most dudes in the fin de siècle when women were admired for their beauty, but not considered for much more than decorative purposes. Listed as "Woman with Red Hair, Green Eyes: The Sin" (1902) Munch has a model looking scant with her mesmeric eyes. The woman's tresses appear as a cape or mantle about her shoulders. She seems somewhat aghast to me. Munch's "Madonna" (1895) imagines a fully human and sexualized version of our lady. Rather than feature a virgin clad in della robbia blue, Munch's holy mother looks orgasmic. I could do without the sperm flourishes on the border, but then the cowering ghostly spermatozoa hints to the artist's own shortcomings or inadequacies, which I can appreciate as a departure from the ordinary arrogance so many artists exhibit.

"Vampire II" (1895) is one of many prints with a male figure huddled over in either resignation or despair. It's rare to see a dude interested in composing male submission. It gives his work a vulnerable, humble quality that I find endearing.

Folks used to refer to Ireland as Wolf Land?
Brilliant.

"In folklore, wolves were very important but considered evil, and were depicted as such in the Book of Kells. Their body parts and dung were used in medicine.
Cures included eating a dish of wolf meat to prevent a person seeing ghosts, and sleeping with a wolf’s head under the pillow to prevent nightmares. Mr Hickey found place names referring to wolves in 20 of the 32 counties, and wolf hunting was mandatory under a ninth century Brehon-law text."

Having a wolf's head under the pillow seems more likely to cause nightmares rather than prevent them. Those Brehons were a wacky bunch I guess.

Did you catch the BBC Horizon show "Why We Talk" last night?
Fascinating.
That dude Christopher Taylor who can speak and read more than twenty languages made me feel like a dolt for struggling to get through this measly little Italian phrase book.
How ironic that the dude has command of so many tongues and yet doesn't really want to talk with anyone. Life's funny like that.

My lack of facility with language is more a mental block than lack of application.
I've dabbled in French in secondary school but since the teacher was batty all I remember how to ask for the day's date. I took Spanish for two years as an undergrad. There was a clear rift between those instructors with Castillian accents and those without which made the department seem political. Then I needed a better grade to apply towards the language requirement for the doctorate. I spent 5 hours per day for eight weeks to get that A.
There was an Old English course I sat in the M.A. program. I remember nothing.
The year studying Irish was the most taxing I've had. It was accelerated study at the graduate level on top of also taking two seminars and teaching a literature course with 30 students.
Three hours a day on Irish and I still received the lowest grade on my graduate record: B+.

So I marvel at folks like Mr. Taylor who soak up language and drink deep.
Meanwhile I will mangle the lovely Italian next week and feel like an ass.

James Ellroy TMI

Alex Sharkey's interview with James Ellroy reveals a creepy dude indeed.

The author admits to being a twisted scopophiliac who spied on women. He's blatantly hitting on the female photographer. Men are competition and women conquests to him. Yack. Also, Sharkey's clumsy prose style sets my teeth on edge when he talks about Ellroy exposing himself and having nothing to hide when he's a pervert voyeur.

Or how about this part early on where Sharkey defines every visible feature of a human dwelling as "feminine" and then calls the non-feminine room "womb-like."

"No television, computer, magazines, cushions, family photos, plants or flowers. The feminine absent, the present banished save for the rows of shiny new books on the shelves. A dozen titles, multiple copies, all by the same writer. His name is James Ellroy, and this womblike lair is his home."

Jesus Christ, that's sloppy.

Bette Davis' burnished skin dazzles onscreen in "Marked Woman" (1937).
This is the type of picture where you anticipate a woman getting wise enough to cry foul at patriarchy. None of the five nightclub hostesses get a feminist awakening by the end. Instead, we see the exhausted ladies walk off without a Hollywood ending. It's proper realism from the 30s without any romantic flourish of the noir cycle yet to come.
In the opening scene, Davis' character Mary surmises that the new boss plans to run a "clip joint" where the hostesses drain men of their money towards booze and gambling. Johnny Vanning (Eduardo Cianelli) lays down the law about how he owns all the clubs in town and all the girls. They'll do as told and pay protection money on top of it. Mary declines a drinks invitation with the boss by saying she doesn't want to learn too much about him and wind up in the river like Audrey. She later tells her four roomies that she knows "how to beat this racket" until she can put aside enough money to retire. Everytime you hear a woman say she's figured out how to beat the system, you can bet a rude smackdown will follow. It puts in mind the rules for horror films they establish in "Scream." Ladies don't get to pull one over on the man.

Mary's sister Betty (Jane Bryan) shows up from university for a quick visit. Betty's tuition and support comes from her sister's largesse, although she thinks Mary works as a model in a dress shop. The five hostesses listen to the college girl with a wistful look of what wasn't possible.

There's a subplot about a club patron who stiffs the club for nearly two thousand and later turns up dead. Enter a yummy young Humphrey Bogart as David Graham from the district attorney's office to see about Mary's connection to the chizzler. (Nosing around about the film, I found that one of the hostesses played by Mayo Methot married Bogie a year later. IMDB says the marriage was characterized by violence with Mayo beating HIM up regularly. What a shocker).
Graham wants to nail Vanning for the murder with Mary's help. He gives her the standard guilt trip about how it's her duty for women everywhere, while extending little concern that she'll wind up in the river just like Audrey.
In a clever twist, the men she identifies as dragging the dead dude off were serving a short jail sentence for DUI at the time. Charges are immediately dismissed.
Faced with which dude she should accommodate, johnny thug or johnny law, Mary chose pleasing the one who had the most power over her life. In his summation, the lawyer for the defense called Mary unscrupulous and unfit to be among decent men and women. There's little regard for her humanity after she openly admits to entertaining men for money.
Later, Betty has trouble meeting her sister's eye after the frank admission in court concerning what she does for a living. She moans that she can't go back to university because all her friends know about Mary and now she's ashamed. The spoiled brat doesn't offer thanks for the privilege she enjoyed at her sister's expense.
When Betty watches Emmy Lou (Isabel Jewell) get ready for a party she compliments her clothing. Emmy Lou explains that nice clothes are essential in her racket ("There's nothing like clothes, honey. That's the sugar that makes the flies come 'round.") She lends her a dress and then takes Betty to the party to get pawed by a man old enough to be her father. Betty's protestations to leave are met with a slap from Johnny which propels the girl down the stairs. "She ain't breathing too good" a henchman cautions. Johnny dumps Betty in the river and has two men beat the shit out of Mary. Even behind a closed door, it's gruelling to hear Bette Davis getting worked over. Davis had her own doctor wrap realistic bandages to replace those she was given onset.
The dudes carve a cross into her delicate cheek, the mark serves as Johnny's symbol for traitors.

Based on Lucky Luciano's sentence for savaging the women who worked in his clubs, "Marked Woman" echoes Gabby's (Lola Lane) lament that "the law isn't for people like us." Just because one dude was caught up for treating women as disposable punching bags, the world order remains the same. Women walk off with the daily struggle of being considered fully human.