What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Boy, i do hope my forthcoming summer holiday is nothing like this one. Well, the last one sort of was.

my kingdom for a wig

I can't believe i found the link to this site at my Contemporary Art II teacher's blog
Of course, they still are missing a Max Headroom wig. I'd enjoy one of those.

speaking of which...

A rather unexpected entry can be found over at this very borgesian site

Breaking news!

A NEW FRANK ZAPPA ALBUM IS COMING!


Available only via Zappa Family Trust's online store, Joe's Corsage collects early recordings from the original mothers of invention, including the ultra-rare sessions with the late Canned Heat frontman, Henri Vestine!

And i even posted the news before KillUglyRadio!
Now, aren't i hip. Oh yes.

The webmaster has finally found a way to post all the pictures he likes. Please excuse him.

Strange machine in place we weren't really supposed to be. But i liked its shape.

Ok, that's enough, before this starts to look like a photoblog. Perhaps tomorrow i'll actually write something here again. But hey - a picture is worth a thousand words, isn't it?

Portrait of Raymond Queneau, approximately 1930, by Man Ray.

Marcel Duchamp, presumably in New York, presumably in the 1960s, definitely photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Elio on flute, Barcolana Festival, Trieste, October 9, 1999.
I'm particularly proud of this one. Nice, isn't it?

Webmaster and roommate, back when they inhabited a beautiful 3x2x1,5m room in a house they were later kicked out of. not that we took that personally. Oh, no.

another attempt: Gato, sleeping.

Terry Gilliam wearing a jacket vaguely like mine.

The webmaster is currently experimenting with some new blogger applet.
Hope that explains this photo's presence.

More importantly, i'm off downstairs for the annual survivor's dinner, which for once happens on a sunday and not a thursday probably because of the illogical timetable that was adopted this year. Strange to think of what was happening just one year ago, but now's not the time to get sentimental. Ok, it is, but i don't intend to show it here.

folkloristic

Candidates for duino college selections just passed by beneath my window. I leaned out, pointed my index finger at them and laughed.
They took no notice of this event.

And on a similar note...

The monument to a peeing dog has been erected in Russian town of Vologda.

Portrait of the webmaster, Foresteria lawn, 26 May 2004

(from My Father's photo album)

Meanwhile, why not read this short comic by Harvey Pekar, drawn by Robert Crumb, about Billy Bragg?
Quality, not quantity.

this is the longest i've ever been without blogging. But don't worry, i'll be back soon.
Be it known, that my absence is fully justified.

true british cuisine

This is the kind of thing that quite seriously makes me consider moving back to britain. But if i tell people that one of the things i miss the most about the place is the food, they never believe me. Bah.

On a completely unrelated note, it seems that Andy Kaufman is alive and well, not to mention blogging regularly. Proof somewhere around here. If it's really true, the man gets even more of my admiration for actually pulling off something so huge.

Oh, and reading this fansite induces compassion.

tiny, tiny update

Anybody in milan next month? Well, This will be going on, and the webmaster is sure to be popping by to take a look. Chris Bachalo, Hunt Emerson, Dave Sim, Jim Mahfood, Bill Sienkiewicz and other great illustrators homaging one of our greatest sources of inspiration. And if you go over to the organizers' website, you'll find a pic of Zappa himself with Jack "King" Kirby. Which i would've posted here if the right-click wasn't disabled there. So go take a look.

And no, WGD is all but dead. we're just...resting. Gathering energy for the return to regular posting sometime next week or so.
So now if you'll excuse me, i have a party to attend.

The music nerd test.

I ranked only 56.76329% - Mega Music Nerd on the music nerd test. I actually expected much worse. Or better, depending. Actually this test applied to me in so, so many ways. And i just had to edit that last phrase because i realized how involuntarily similar it was to one well known Lennon-penned Beatles song which Caetano once covered in the seventies.

tiny update

"The biggest problem with blogging is that when things get really interesting I'm too exhausted to write about it."

-Neil Gaiman

Which is also true for little ol'me. So while i'm out, readers may peruse some interesting links. Like the announcement of yet another in the neverending series of comics about quantum physics. Or a nice 1968 Mothers Of Invention concert only available this week. Oh, and the Library of Alexandria was discovered. Wonder if they need a photocopy guy.

Playlist for 12/05/04

Sananda Maitreya - Mona Lisa's Laughing
Carmen Consoli - Can't Get You Out Of My Head (Live at MTV)
Kahimi Karie - En Melody
The Clash - I Fought The Law
Giuliano Palma and the Bluebeaters ft. Gino Paoli - Domani
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Teenager In Love
Sananda Maitreya - Glad She's Gone
Yasuharu Konishi - Theme from Lupin_3rd I II-readymade all that jazz mix
Monsieur Blumenberg - L'Altra Sera Al Ristorante
Yukihiro Fukutomi - I Wanna Be Like You
Bande Sonore Originale du film "Trafic" de Jacques Tati - La Course D'Autos
The Flaming Lips - Fight Test
Keziah Jones - Autumn Moon
PFM - E' Festa
Ambitious Lovers - Half Out Of It
Gilberto Gil & Os Mutantes - Bat Macumba
Perez Prado - Perfidia
Cornelius - Cannabis
Tito Puente - Oye Como Va
Mongo Santamaria - Louie Louie
Gal Costa & Caetano Veloso - Que Pena (Ela Ja Não Gosta Mais de Mim)
Edu Lobo - Upa Neguinho
Tamba Trio - Mas Que Nada
Caetano Veloso - Chuva Suor e Cerveja
Lisa Ono - Cosa Hai Messo Nel Caffè (special request from Sapphire)
Earth Wind and Fire - Let's Groove (live)
Pizzicato Five - Nonstop To Tokyo
Terence Trent D'arby - If You Let Me Stay (live at the Grammy Awards)
Beat Bros vs. Nilla Pizzi - La Rumba Del Cocorico
The Five Blobs - The Blob
Jerry Garcia Band - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Genesis - I Know What I Like(In Your Wardrobe)
Maki Nomiya - Intro(kuukou nite- airport)
Quartetto Cetra - Tu Me Acostumbraste
Bobo Rondelli ft.Stefano Bollani - Suicidio travel

Something of a mixed bag again...i guess the first few tracks are rather indicative of how my mood was the other day. Luckily i cheered up quite a bit, as can be seen from the rest of the playlist.
Actually, i wasn't even sure if i would feel like doing it, which is why i hadn't announced it on the blog. Thanks to those who showed up anyway!

I Still have many interesting cuts to play, already have something of a working order for next time. But we'll see about that in a couple of weeks.

Safe For HouseWork

This video is probably the most amazing thing i've seen all week. I've had it on loop all morning, and i still can't believe it.
(Via Marok.org)

Speaking of Uma Thurman...

My parents went to see Kill Bill vol.2 last night. This morning, my mom told me it was REALLY COOL.
Just wanted to share that concept with you.

Ok, i'm going off to do some of ES's final photocopies, and then at four i'm meeting with Emanuele, Janos and Andras. For those of you starving for Duino news.

The town is in no immediate danger

Just finished downloading one of my four or five favourite movies, Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. The one who's first ten minutes i always go on and on about being the entire inspiration for Kusturica's Underground (well, just watch it and tell me if i'm not right). A film about the opposition between war and imagination, which ultimately defines which of the two is most powerful. Must be seen by most people possible, especially recommended when on the verge of armed conflicts.
Some facts you probably didn't know about this movie:

-It was partly filmed in Cinecittà(Rome) while Federico Fellini was filming Intervista, one of his underrated final movies. One day, he set his director's chair in front of Gilliam's office door, and filmed a long self-interview scene. Meanwhile, Gilliam was trapped inside his office, too scared to open the door thus ruining The Maestro's work. (Afterwards, Fellini apologized by inviting Gilliam out for dinner with himself and Giulietta Masina. Quite an encounter.)

-Gilliam's assistant director during the Rome shoots (other locations were in the desert near Saragoza in Spain. Which is also the location of one of my favurite books, but i digress) was Michele Soavi, who would some years later direct the cult movie Dellamorte Dellamore scripted by the great Tiziano Sclavi, comic book scripter, writer, former manic depressive and surrealist.

-Uma Thurman is featured her first major movie role. In one of the most visually memorable scenes ever, Gilliam recreates Botticelli's Birth Of Venus with Ms. Thurman as the goddess.

-The last time this movie was shown in a cinema in Trieste, the webmaster was kindly asked to leave the premises after having issued rather loud complaints regarding the truncated end credits.

More interesting tidbits on this masterpiece(or at least, i think it is) over at Phil Stubbs' wonderful Dreams website

Another article

Also from TheGuardian, here's another article by the reknowned author, Ariel Dorfman, whose Death And The maiden everybody knows, and whose "How To Read Donald Duck" more people ought to have read. Myself, i read it several years ago after somehow finding it at Udine's library.

As a person interested in both latinamerican cold war politics and Carl Barks' masterpieces, i hope to someday write a fulfilling comentary on that last book, whose examples and conclusions i didn't find fully satisfying. Let's just say that after over thirty years, it definitely shows its age. But it's still a worthwile read, even just with skeptical criticism in mind.

(Article link via My Father, whom this Dorfman guy apparently still owes money or something like that.)

And while we're at it,

I also want one of these t-shirts!

Yes, i'm visiting contemporary design sites again today...


FIVE MINUTE LATER UPDATE:
Actually, i should get one of these:



After all, i *did* survive chicken pox in '85! And so did my brother! Woo-hoo!

Cool! Cool! cool!

This must be the coolest site i've seen in quite some time. God, how i want one of these dolls!

Got there via Kozyndan, who were getting praised on the second-to-latest copy of Internazionale, but whom i'd already linked to some months ago. So it seems i'm still somehow ahead of other people in detecting what's cool. Still waiting for colorful socks to become fashionable, i've spent the past few days looking for a nice pair but style apparently hasn't caught up with me yet.

Another design site which i still haven't decided whether i like or not: welcometotatiana.org

How To Be a Stupid Visionary Philosopher

Inspired by Killuglyradio, i just went over here and did my IQ test. The result was 133 IQ points, and the description was...well, i'll just copy-paste it here since there's no way to link to it:

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.

This result does not take in account two things.
The first, that i waste my time doing these stupid internet tests.
The second, that i had felt a strong sense of deja-vu while i struggled over some questions, only to realize some minutes after recieving the results, that i had already taken the test some months ago and subsequently forgotten about it.
Bah.

Oh, and also...(Part two of three)

(Continued from here)

...So i get home, and my brother tells me:

"Guess what? The Telecom gnomes came. We have DSL now."

The first thing he did after that was to put me in front of the window and show me exactly how many electricity poles, phone lines and lampposts they had to climb up before finding the right connection. Presumably electrocuting each other several times in the process thus losing hard-earned bonus points.
Since i wasn't there while all of this happened, i can't help imagining the telecom technicians as Mario&Luigi lookalikes, with all their special jumping-actions and combined attacks. With the funny nippo-italian accent to boot.
My fantasies had already found confirmation in the fact that some weeks earlier, when the telecom pre-technician had come(a pre-technician is, as the name itself quite clearly indicates, a slightly smaller and monochrome technician), he realized he could do nothing without the technician and thus declared he would spend the rest of the day looking for mushrooms in the woods. Power-ups, i say.

Anyway, to make a long story short, we now have DSL and have had it for some weeks now. And therefore have downloaded an amount of songs, videos and movies that approaches infinity.
It was particularly satisfying to finally be able to watch an excerpt from Zappa's '93 soiree featuring The Chieftains, the Huun-Huur-Tu Tuvan Vocal Ensemble and Johnny Guitar Watson, as visible on A&E's 1994 Zappa biography.
Also, to boast possession over a copy of Jacques Tati's long-out-of-print final movie, the much underrated Trafic: a bizarre road-movie filmed in most european languages at the same time, thus avoiding the need to dub it for any foreign release. An ouvre that brings to mind Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and Cortazar's Los Autonautas De La Cosmopista(which i've half a mind to start reading again) in equal parts.
Needless to say, now that it's in my shared folder, every time anyone tries to download it from me via WinMX i activate them automatically. Such beauty must be shared.

Also, now my pc is constantly on and downloading tuesday night through sunday afternoon. Which isn't very good for my sleep, since the CPU ventilation is particularly loud.

That's My Candidate!

Last week, a delegation from Duino was in Trieste for Romano Prodi's conference on the new countries entering the European Union. After the ceremonies (or whatever they were), a friend of mine from Verona made his way over to Prodi and presented himself as a Duino College Student. Prodi's reaction was to shake his hand and say:

"Oh, so you're those people who are asking for money!"

This man has So got my vote at the next italian elections. And making fun of the college only got him even more of my esteem.

An. (article!)

There's a nice article, it's over here. I think you'll like it, it's by that nice Terry Jones person. He also has a nice little website, you'll probably like that too.

SALT

Arto Lindsay's new album is out!

This blogger got his copy on wednesday, even though the official release date is the 5th of may. Privileged. And now there are no longer copies of it in all of Udine.
Anyway, here's where you may read more about it!

Still haven't had time to make myself a real opinion about this album, but there are already two or three songs in there i really love. Some other things on the record were disappointing, but after all, all Arto albums disappoint at the beginning. It's only once you get used to them that they start to reveal their beauty.