Twelve Years Before I Knew It

Today while breaking for lunch, I stepped into Lucca at 22nd and Valencia, wondering why I go there a few times a year and not weekly. It recalls the types of places in the Mid-Atlantic that make me miss that part of the country so much. The Italian boys in white aprons certainly add to the appeal and are another key part of what I miss about the East. It helped that it was such a crisp and bright fall early afternoon bordering on perfection. I felt a weird wisp of nostalgia, but as I walked by the first place I lived in when I moved here, I suddenly realized today is my 12th anniversary of living in San Francisco.

Retracing the familiar sidewalks of the past dozen years, I thought of the many betrayals, regrets, mutually unreturned phone calls, emails I regret having sent, emotions still lingered but never expressed, passions never explored and other discomforts that linger so many years later.

Returning home and putting away the various jars and cheeses wrapped in butcher paper I was reminded how some of the things that I long for and feel that I am denied may be just down the street.

Caption This...

...so we don't have to.

Know Your Necessities

"Take care of the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves," a certain, fey friend told me once. She also spoke of the "conspiracy of the weak over the strong." I'll lead it to you to ferret out her alleged source of those quotes and determine if you agree.

All I can say as that one of the obvious, positive balancing acts that comes with the passage of a certain number of years is the reversal of defined and attainable and valued necessities. Booze, boys, fast cars and other fleeting pleasures seem to be replaced by increasingly extravagances that were once defined as bland and assumed presences that now have greater nuance and price tags -- shelter, clothing, food, even water that comes in its many variations.

Shelter, in fact, can take on such a starring role as I've enjoyed Alain de Botton describe in his book The Architecture of Happiness, its title suggesting that design and form extend to far more abstract and defining aspects of life than just four walls and a roof.

He takes time to wax poetic on Casa Malaparte in Capri, a structure that in Godard's Contempt some might argue upstaged Bardot who is now a 70-something, wrinkled, hobbling racist while the villa has far outlived its Fascist creator, Curzio Malaparte. It stands today, looking ever youthful and pristine, apolitical and in harmony with the Meditteranean.

As Botton explains:

With its proud isolation, its juxtapositioning of ruggedness and refinement its unblinking, hardy defiance of the elements, and the aesthetic debt it owed to Ancient Rome on the one hand and Italian modernism on the other, the house did indeed pick up on key traits of Malaparte's character. Fortunately for visitors, however, it turned out not to be a slavishly faithful portait of its owner in all of his faces -- a difficult prospect for any house, certainly, but particularly so in Malaparte's case, for that would have necessitated the inclusion of pretentious furnishings, dead-end corridors, perhaps a shooting range (he was a Facisct until 1943) and a few broken windows (he liekd a drink and then a fight). Rather than reflecting the author's many foibles, Casa Malaparte, like all effective works of idealisation, assisted its gifted yet flawed proprietor in orienting himself towards the noblest sides of his personality."

Is it telling that I live in a long, skinny Edwardian with rich-hued rooms filled with remnants of travels and past lives in other parts of the world, anchored by two rooms with a wall of curving windows as their centerpieces -- one looking out on the bustling, sometimes tawdry corner of urban life, the other glimpsing onto a pristine garden filled with lilies, sterling silver roses and succulents.

What Land Are You From?

With today's simultaneous release of DVD sets of films of both Sophia Loren and Catherine Deneuve, Dave Kehr had this interesting description of these two sovereign nations in his review in today's Times:

Lorenland is a proletarian world of workers and peasants, defined by spontaneity and sensuality, a world of broad comedy and even broader melodrama. The petit principality of Deneuve is the Monaco of movies: a primarily urban environment of designer boutiques and chic restaurants, in which emotions are muffled and sex discreet (and frequently unhappy).

Can you guess which one is Junk Thief's patron saint? On the topic of ice queens, the ever eloquent Dunlap offers this perspective.

Male Auditory Orifice Mutilation

This week I've been tempted to re-enact famed scenes from Reservoir Dogs, Lust for Life and Nove Cento. Okay, I'd forgotten that ear cutting scene in Novecento until buying it over the weekend and have yet to get past hour three or four. How many more to go. Some time I will get the energy to watch it sandwiched in between The Leopard and The Best of Youth. Better yet, once I get past this tax season I'll just spend a season in Umbria and learn about all that history first hand. I'm overdue to spend some time with an Italian peasant with a jug of wine and Ecuadorean cheese in a hay loft. Preferably on on top of an alpaca blanket.

In the meantime, the scenes I've been threatening to re-enact come from a two day ear infection that have made me want to cut away the flesh until there's nothing left to be clogged. Unfortunately I don't have any unrequited love to whom to mail the evidence. Well, at least none that I'll admit to here in print.

Reason to Be Happy on a Sunny Sunday

It's been a perfect, gorgeous Sunday in San Francisco. A good day to celebrate not being in Fat City and trying to do something other than the personal catch up needed after a week on the road. Among the random tasks in my bottomless stash of various transfers has been putting a number of Mina Mazzini videos into MP3 format. I think she reached her peak around 1973 or 1974 when she covered several Brecht/Weill tunes. But her specials from the latter half of the 1960s are gloriously surreal. It's sort of like seeing Lola Heatherton at the Hollywood Palace under the direction of Count Visconti with Caligula as the executive producer. If only Connie Francis ever dreamed of being half as melodramatic.

She's recorded in quite a number of languages, but I especially lover her wonderfully wacky diction in English. And sequins seemed to have much more hypnotic lure back in the days of simple blck and white TV, dontcha think?

Caligula, Karen Black and the Junkster

Okay, I'm more than a little pissed that my Lauren Bacall/Hank Hyena post has been up for nearly 48 hours with absolutely zero comments. Like Gwenyth Paltrow, this celebrity may just retreat to Europe and never come back to the crass, clueless Etats Unis.

So, on the topic of fame whores, how has it taken Junk Thief so long to discover Francesco Vezzoli with his Democrazy with Sharon Stone and the Gore Vidal's Caligula remake with the real Karen Black not just The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black glorious as that is? I can't believe Mark of There's No One Driving the Plane! hasn't tipped me off on this great outing for Karen.

Regardless, looking at it don't you get just a certain feel of your beloved Junk Thief's Sbalzi de Amore? And while I tip the fedora to his nabbing both Sharon and Karen, I don't think he's yet to capture Cantinflas and Ruth Buzzi. Anyways, I'm off to watch John Phillip Law as the scantily clad blind angel in Barbarella and them I'm out of here.

Eros Ramazzotti - Bambino nel Tempo

Hearing a factoid on the order that Bananrama is the most popular British girl group of all time or that Eros Ramazzotti is the most popular Italian pop singer of all time makes me do a double take. Granted, he's from a country where Puccini and Verdi sell better than a lot of pop pap.

Now in his mid-40s, his salt and pepper locks and fondness for velvet and brocade blazers only make him more appealing. He obviously opted for reaching the enormous Latin American market instead of the U.S. which he's never conquered despite being produced by Trevor Horn and duets with duets with Tina Turner (passable, but uninspired), Cher (cheesy but passable song, but he is at his most munchable in their video), onetime girl friend Patsy Kinset (whatever), Pavarotti (inevitable) Andrea Bocelli (inevitable but unfortunate), and Anastacia (actually not half bad)

He is possibly the one singer more nasal than Rufus Wainwright, but when he's on target as with this tune, he deserves all the hoopla afforded him. As with most of his albums, this one was also released in Spanish which was pretty decent, but it just doesn't have the same sweep as the Italian original. It really manages the capture the sadness and joy of being alone on an adventure as a boy or as a man in his 40s. Towards the final 3/4s of this clip when he pulls out the harmonica while contemplating the heavens, it really takes on the level of powerful pop poetry that hasn't been seen in top 40 music in this country since at least 1980 or so. The lyric reaches for thoughts a bit higher than what is usually broadcast on local airwaves:

"At this time of doubt/I can't keep fooling myself/even with so much hope/I keep a bit of the naivety/I long to keep going like I did then/always asking why...

....loneliness keeps me company/while I'm breathing salty air/this place seemed magical in my memory/like a young boy I'm looking for an answer I don't have/just as I did long ago/It makes no difference/It just grows more stunning with the passage of time..."

Though not exactly profound poetry, it's a sharp contrast to the drivel of some 45+ shrill like Fergie braying about "all that junk in my trunk" on this side of the pond.

The vibe of this song really makes me think of the film The Best of Youth, another Italian puffy pop pastry, that pulls at me with a mix of sadness, longing and joy. I really love the idea of the best of youth, optimism, a lack of cynicism, and contentment with solitude and salty summer breezes making life joyful with all of its pain and unbearable lightness.

The Best of Carvaggio

It took me a while (basically two years) to getting around to watching The Best of Youth, and I am glad that I did. Its origins as a TV movie are often evident, but that doesn't diminish its power as a story. Visually, it is quite variable -- sometimes bland, sometimes gorgeous, sometimes nearly inept with things like projected backgrounds during car driving scenes, clearly fake beards (nothing beats the real thing) or badly applied gray spray paint on heads to indicate the passing of the years. But none of that diminishes the sweep of it and its ability to pull me in slowly and subtly. Its theme, some have suggested, is not that we are at our best in youth but if we are lucky we take the best, our idealism and hopes, with us in the years ahead to battle cynicism.

And to have Alessio Boni to feast one's eyes on for most of the six hours is, well...is it too late to change my ticket from Barcelona to Florence? He managed to creep up on me slowly. Though not bad with longer hair at the left in the beginning, his transformation after the first third or so is rather breathtaking. The fact that he just filmed a new Caravaggio biopic as the title character with Jordi Molla playing a benefactor/priest is almost too much for the mind and heart to handle. I wish Jordi would go back to playing wayward bisexual husbands instead of sloppy English speaking drug dealers. I love you sloppy, Jordi, but go back to doing it in your mother-tongue.

Any way you slice it, I've not seen someone quite as gifted at playing the gorgeous, doomed poetic soul with quite the sweep of Boni in a long time. I'm hooked.

UPDATE: We don't plan to become that kind of site, but if you weren't already won over by Alessio try this. Lawdy, where'd I put those smelling salts...

Overall Overhaul

There's a new contractor banging around the JunkPlex, and JunkThief is just itchin' with desire. He was a bit miffed because the fellow, Angelo, wanted to come at 7:30 a.m. to avoid Carnaval parking issues. 7:30 on Saturday? Well, good thing JunkThief only had two gimlets at Bruno's last night.

The payoff, he decided was the chance to see a hot little Guatemalan guy crawling around with a tool belt and screwdriver. Well, it turns out Angelo is Italian, and just as cute as a button. He can't be more than 5'8" tall. (Insiders know that JunkThief, at 6'2", is a real push over for shorter -- but not too short -- men.) And to top it off he's wearing overalls and a cap, asking if he can work on JunkThief's circuit box with an accent that makes JunkThief feel like he has buttah pumping through his veins. JunkThief also has a weakness for tradesmen. Enough of the endless chatter about French existentialism and Borges. And there's not a chance the plumber or electrician will torture you by making you listen to Celine Dion or Madonna.

It would be really shameless to take or publish a photo of the real Angelo (though we'll see how the day plays out), but this shot is pretty close to what's banging around in JunkThief's basement. Height challenged men with accents and Mediterranean heritage are always more than welcome to strap on their tool belts and spend some time at the JunkPlex.

UPDATE: At 1:32 p.m. Angelo's been having trouble sorting out all the wires in the basement, and is still cheerful but frustrated. (If not obvious: frustrated Italian = need for sexual release.) This dude's got some hilarious lines, but the best, and most exciting, was after trying to locate the transformer in my flat he exited saying: "The next time I knock on your door it's gonna be show time!" Got the message, ready to raise the curtain, dispense with the overture and get down with act one.

UPDATE 2: Angelo the electrician completed his job and said, "We'll I think I'm about ready to button up" and then asked for a check for $1,400. Why is that scene familiar? Always quick on his feet and seeing a chance for a return performance, JunkThief asked him to give him a big for a couple of additional sockets in the master bedroom. You can never have too much power for things you may want to plug in in the bedroom.

In a Perfect World...

...PBS would not waste our time with the likes of Andrea Bocelli or the Three Tenors. This schlock is hawked as high European culture, when in an ideal world PBS would be airing the greatest TV moments of Mina Mazzini. She had to wear the “Italian Streisand” moniker for many years, and her specials from the 1960s well into the mid-1970s certainly look and sound as if they were filmed on the same soundstage as “My Name Is Barbra,” though in Italian mind you. She even included “Gente” (People) and "Minute Waltz" on some of her shows. But around the time that Streisand’s career and sense of taste kept going south, Mina's got even better as she covered Brecht-Weill tunes looking like she stepped off the set of The Damned. It’s as if she never left the world that produced “Belle of 14^th Street” and kept getting increasingly interesting instead of knocking out crap like “Evergreen” or “Enough Is Enough.” She really sounds more like Ute Lemper than Streisand and has the same "biting" sharpness of Lemper but never resorts to the showy weirdness that can ruin the best efforts of the German chanteuse.

Take her version of “Mack the Knife” for example, perhaps the only Lenya-worthy version not sung by Lenya. She looks like Rosel Zech in Veronika Voss or an extra from Rocky Horror. Her work just kept getting more deliciously and odd in a good way through the years, even though she retired from the stage. But when she sings in English, which she often did, she could be simultaneously disconcertingly familiar and downright weird in a way that forces you not to look away. Her take on "The Man That Got Away" makes her look and sound like the bastard child of Marlene Dietrich and Joey Heatheton. And believe me, coming from me that is not an insult. I usually don't like it when Romance-language artists sing in English, but with her it works. It sounds as if she doesn't know the exact meaning of the words, but she puts her own emotions into them so they feel artfully chopped up and reassembled -- sort of a Cubist interpretation of American pop standards.

Over the past 45 years she has put out consistently interesting albums though they are hard to find the U.S. At a time when Streisand is making something like her third tour after her “retirement” concerts and propping herself with the wind-up faux operatic Il Divo, it’s not surprising that her New York appearance last week got at best lukewarm reviews. By comparison, as Mina’s recent Oggi sono io proves, a real diva does not need props. She has kept being interesting and non-conformist. There is a bit of Elis Regina on this tune, but also something distinctly her own. She belts, emotes and stays wonderfully weird as if still on the set of Belle of 14^th Street but evolved and matured but grounded in the same quirky sensibility of that show from 1967. Maybe she'll do a duet with Nina Hagen some day.