No Country for Young Men
The journalist Massimo Gramellini, reporting on the 2012 Olympic Games in London, has pointed out an interesting element of the opening ceremony last week, an element which is “typically” italian.
As we all know, the hot moment of the opening ceremony is when the various delegations walk into the stadium, with the athletes waving at the crowd around them. The most representative (or the tallest..) athlete is vested with the honour of leading the delegation, carrying the national flag.
This was the Italian delegation:
Here is Gramellini’s comment:
“Behind the flag-bearer Valentina Vezzali, there comes a host of alert old men, who haven’t seen a gym for decades. The bowling team? Or maybe the canasta one? No, these are the executives of the Athletic Federation, those who are normally placed at the end of the group. Only for Italy the “differently young” are in the first row. And not just at the Olympic Games.”
The flag-bearer Valentina Vezzali remains famous, in addition to her achievements in fencing, for publicly telling Silvio Berlusconi “I’d very happily let you touch me”.
Aka: the most representative female athlete.
Bunga Bunga Condoms
In the last 12 years, a new word has entered te international vocabulary as a synonym of ‘Italy’: after pizza, mandolino, mafia, now we also have “bunga bunga”.
For a quick review of the words’ meaning, click here (yes, it’s even got its own Wikipedia page. And doing a google search on it can keep you busy for a good 10 minutes). So much is the folklore attached to this expression, that people have tried to use it for business purposes. Here and here are examples.
Enters Nicole Minetti:
These two pictures refer to her before and after meeting Berlusconi.
After much ado, and in the effort to clear her own image from the allegation that she was organising the infamous bunga bunga parties, and providing ladies for the ex-PM’s pleasure (more on this here), Minetti has made plans to re-establish her image once (if) she will leave politics. She has just deposited the trademark for a new line of condoms.
The condoms’ brand? Bunga Bunga, of course.
Well done, Italy
The President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, has welcomed the Italian team back to Italy after the final match of the European Championship of football 2012. Highlighting how bad things looked like before the EuroCup started, for Italy, he pointed out what an excellent performance the 4-0 defeat against Spain represented. Well, something like that.
Let’s face it though: a 4-0 defeat is not good ground for celebrations. Unless you are a stats geek: it is in fact the largest winning margin in a Euro tournament final, so it makes for a change in the records. Spain has certainly the best team at the moment, but Italian players clearly underperformed: they looked tired, unfit, and they basically stopped playing after 60 minutes.
Prandelli, Italy’s coach, admitted he was wrong in calling for the worn-out players, leaving the fresher ones on the bench, but he had a great explanation for why he did that: “I could have been more courageous, and change some of the team players. But that would have been disrespectful for those who had taken us to the final.“
Take Thiago Motta, who replaced Montolivo at the 11th minute of the second half. After 6 minutes, his harmstring cracked, and he had to leave the pitch, leaving Italy with 10 players only: after that, the match turned into carnage.
Now: Motta could have rightly complained for not being respected by Prandelli, had the latter judged him unfit to play in the final. And Prandelli owed it to Motta to give him 6 minutes in the Euro final, although the match was then lost. It’s pure logic, people, and if you don’t see it, that’s why you will never coach a football team.
The Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, aka “the sober” (google “Mario Monti sober” and you’ll see why), also praised Italy’s performance.
He showed the country’s support for the team, by flying to Kiev to be present at the stadium for the final, sitting next to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yanukovich, and other nice fella Lukashenko -and pondering “human rights, what human rights“?
San Remo, or Italy at its best
There is (at least) one week every year in which everything is put on hold, in Italy, and the entire country focuses on one specific event: the Sanremo Music Festival.
It’s a 5 day-singing competition, where basically people sing songs, a jury gives votes, each day someone is excluded, and eventually one wins. Normally, the songs are cheesy and boring. One of the boring songs wins the festival; there is a separate category for the “Young Promises”, with its own winner. Sometimes good singers have come up from the Festival (one being, for example, Alex Baroni – whom I really liked and who, sadly, died a few years ago). On the downside, the Festival has given to the world Andrea Bocelli.
The weeks before the Festival are characterised by a build-up of national thrilling about what the guests will be, who will present the show, who will do what, who will say what, and sometimes even who will sing what. There is normally a standard structure: the presenter is a man, a popular face from TV or music. Then there are two co-presenters, one at his left and one at his right: these are, by rules, mega-hot women with a (recent) past of being sluts or similar. The Festival has just started and will run until the 18th of February. This year’s and last year’s team was the same: presenter, the man, the famous singer from the 60s, Gianni Morandi; left wing, Elisabetta Canalis, famous for being Goerge Clooney’s date for a while; and Belen Rodriguez, famous for having long legs.
Here’s a group picture:
Morandi is the one in the middle.
Being at its 60th-something edition, there is some concern that the attachment of the Italian population to the festival might decrease. So, the authors have devised a series of cunning strategies to attract a bigger audience.
This was the most successful one, which took place on the first night of the Festival. Enters one of the co-presenters, Belen Rodriguez:
Yes, you may want to zoom in.
The day after this show, the Vatican expressed harsh criticisms.
The target was a man called Adriano Celentano. A guest of the Festival, during the show he publicly called for people to stop reading L’Avvenire, the Vatican’s newspaper. The Bishops commented that Celentano’s comment was inappropriate, and that he should not appear again at the following nights of the Festival.
Immediately after that, an executive of RAI, the Italian national TV channel that hosts the Festival, and who has an interest in getting as big an audience as possible, joined the Vatican’s condemnation, pointing out that Celentano’s language “was unsuitable for public service”.
More songs, and more vaginas, to come in the next two days.
Kissing and peeing
There are people that do things that can even make a long-dormant blog suddenly awake.
One of this is Carlo Giovanardi. He has appeared on this blog in the past, and he still looks the same, that is, like this:
Interviewed today on the Italian radio, Carlo The Straight was asked to express his view on same-sex unions. Here is his fine answer:
“There are organs designed to receive, and others designed to expel. There are also some delicate issues, like bacteria, and so on and so forth, which require great attention when certain activities are performed. This is to avoid diseases. Therefore, when sexual education is taught in schools, providing a model is normal, right and physiological: men’s and women’s organs were created for specific functions, and relations between two men or two women are not equally natural “
Then he was asked: “What kind of reaction would you have in seeing two women kissing each other?”
He replied:”Well, what kind of reaction would you have in seeing someone peeing? If he does it in the toilet, it’s fine, but if he does it in the street, it can be disturbing”.
Article on the Sidney Morning Herald
The Italianist has made it into the national press – here’s my article on Berlusconi’s resignation, which appears on today’s SMH.
