I have a couple big adventures to write about but I’ll save those and their accompanying pictures for later this week and instead clear the decks with a couple smaller topics.
About that Super Bowl. I did manage to stay awake the entire game which I was quite proud of. The feed was the American one, but Rai 2, an Italian station provided their own announcers who seemed to be both knowledgeable and obsessed with highlighting every time either offense came out in the I-formation. Whenever you went to commercial in the US, we cut to a long shot of the field with the time filled by more commentary at which point I would switch to MTV for a few minutes. Marco and Massimo, our Italian studio hosts, made pre-game picks with Marco taking the sure bet by backing the Colts and Massimo going out on a limb with the emotional pick. You could almost see Marco smirk but Massimo had the last laugh when all was said and done and the Saints won. For how pervasive American culture is here (books, music, movies, McDonalds) I was a little surprised at how little anyone knew or cared about the Super Bowl or even Football Americano. Puts the World Cup into perspective.
And speaking of pervasive, I went to see Avatar on Tuesday last week. Interesting note about cinemas in Ancona. We have the highest per capita number of cinema seats in all of Europe with 126.9 seats per 1000 residents. The next city on the list is Vitoria/Gasteiz in Spain and those lie-abouts only have 51.9 seats per 1000 residents. Luxembourg has the highest cinema attendance per population followed by Paris, France and Gijon, Spain. They are mad for their movies in Spain as 8 of the top 10 cities in terms of attendance are in Spain. These and many other fun facts can be found in this fascinating survey. Speaking of fun facts and surveys, don’t even get me started on the hours of amusement on offer here where you can rank and compare European cities according to a wide variety of self-selected parameters.
I’ve been resisting going to the movies because they insist on dubbing everything and there are no subtitles. Fortunately, if I’m patient I can usually locate an English version of the movie sooner or later and watch it at home which I prefer. But I didn’t want to miss the 3D experience or the chance to do my part in the global effort to push the film past the 2 billion dollar mark. At 10 Euros a ticket, our group of seven more than did its bit. The movie going experience is strikingly similar to the US except that your ticket is for a specific row and seat which is kind of cool. There is also incessant chatter throughout the film but that may be true everywhere these days. I also found out beforehand that they offer headphones that play the film's original soundtrack. Upon arrival though, I learned a fun, new Italian expression: c’è ma non c’è. Which basically means: there is but there isn’t. They have the headphones; not for Avatar. Oh well. A lot of things in life are c’è ma non c’è. Visually and technically the film was everything everyone has said it is. I give high marks for the natural world they created and I think it's an interesting commentary on our own society that the "fake" world experienced through the avatar came to feel more real than the "real" world. Story wise, I was surprised at how easy it was to follow. I don’t know if that says more about the quality of the script or that my Italian is improving.
We ate dinner before the movie at Old Wild West, a chain here in Italy with an outpost in the cinema that I insisted we go to in order to make America night complete. The place does a remarkable job of capturing the feel of an American chain restaurant from the giant wood sign above the bar reading “Oregon – 1858”, the buckets of peanuts to eat and throw shells on the floor (no one was doing this except me), the design of the menu, and the quality of the food. I had a Dakota burger which was supposed to be a bacon cheeseburger and had all the right components but none of the right taste. I would have had wings but they were 8 Euros for eight of them and were not made from the steroid chomping birds used in the US. I think these might have been pigeon judging from their size. My only other disappointment came when I realized I was charged 50 cents each per package of ketchup. This was no Bacon Blue from the New New Old Lompoc. However, it was all worth it watching my friend Sarcan eat his first “jalapeño popper”.
Speaking of food, it’s a topic I’m always debating here. It’s one of the things I miss most, the variety of cuisine options. My friends are convinced America is a culinary wasteland based on their experience eating at McDonalds in Italy and Italian restaurants in Florida while on vacation and they regard any perceived knock on their food as a personal, and national, affront. I’ve eaten well and fantastically since I’ve arrived and the pride in using local ingredients and dishes is rightfully taken, but I would love to have the option to eat something besides Italian food when we go out for dinner. Some of the larger cities have a few non-Italian restaurants but in Ancona it’s pretty rare with only a mediocre Chinese and Indian restaurant on offer. Frankly, I think most people here are so obsessed with their local food culture that there is little interest or desire to try anything else. For me, variety is Chinese versus Mexican versus Thai. For them it’s the difference in preparation of a pasta dish from region to region or even city to city. As evidence, whenever I raise this subject, their immediate defense is to tell me about the excellent Japanese restaurant just outside of downtown. I take great pleasure in first telling them the Japanese restaurant is now an Italian restaurant and then confirming that while they knew of its existence they had never bothered to visit. I’m sure if just a few of these people had ever bothered to visit it would still be doing a bustling business in sushi instead of serving plates of pasta.
This entire debate was neatly summed-up by, of all things, a blog post on a British news site commenting about the new McItaly, a burger from McDonalds now being advertised on Italian television made with all Italian ingredients and endorsed by the government as a way to support local farmers and encourage kids to eat healthy food instead of junk food. It features all-Italian ingredients including Asiago cheese, artichoke spread and an Italian produced bun and paddy.
The original blog post is here.
This bit of incendiary writing grabbed the Italian Minister of Agriculture’s attention so he posted a response here.
The entire kerfuffle was then neatly summarized here.
Of course, the blog comments throughout it all are mostly not to be missed including this bit of wise-cracking:
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