Another thing that is a morning ritual on the drive home from dropping Betty off is flossing my teeth. Probably another personal hygiene habit that most would find disgusting, but there you go. So I'm sitting at a (long) red light with the Gun Club's Fire Spirit roaring out of the decent speakers in the car, furiously digging between my teeth with the floss, and I look to my right and there are 15 scooters with their riders all looking at me. Some of them are nodding their heads, not in a 'that is some cool shit' way but in a mocking 'look at the circus freak' style. I mute the volume and yell at them that 'flossing is punk rock' and pump it back up. I wonder if any of them understood a word I said. .
I have a new podcast to recommend. It is called The History of English podcast and it is blowing my mind. It traces how English has evolved from pre-history to today and it is filling in a ton of gaps not only as to why the language seems so messed up to even native speakers, but the way that history has shaped its evolution. Am on episode 20 of 80-something and am trying to schedule time when I can be alone with the next episode. So well done and if you like history or are interested at all as to the language you speak, please give it a try as I would love to talk about it with someone.
OK...travelogue time. As a reminder, our trip started in Naples and ended in Palermo with a winding drive through the heel and tow of southern Italy in between. A couple of notes on the long flight(s) over. First, on the 11 hour haul from Taipei to Istanbul, behind us on the plane was an old dude that had so much phlegm and he tried in vain to get it out...constantly and loudly the entire way. His wife/nurse just let him wretch away, completely indifferent to his (and our) suffering. Fortunately, the plane is also the place where I watch movies these days, which to a movie aficionado is like putting ketchup on a fine piece of steak, but my attention span has been dulled by 51 years of the technological revolution and noise cancelling headphones were a blessing with Hack Man behind us. Think I watched a couple of things but the only flick I wrote down watching this leg was the new Ghostbusters. The kids liked it (but hadn't seen the originals), and I found the ladies in it to be funny and talented, but sat there wondering why they need to remake this stuff. The plot was somewhat different, but not appreciably so, the CGI is better and it was women instead of men doing the 'busting', but c'mon writers and producers, make a fucking effort at some originality.
Before I dig in, have to mention that this year, the family was joined by our biennial travel partners. They were with us in Italy 4 years ago and Central Europe 2 years back and include an old friend from Seattle and her 16 year old daughter (who we have known since day 1). I have learned that I need to keep names out of this space as it is easily googled and they have not signed a waiver, so will use AM for the mom and Chiquita for the girl.
The Imbros arrived at our accommodation at noon and since our travel partners weren't getting in till midnight, we planned to visit the cities archaeological museum that afternoon to shed some jet lag. I had read that this museum was one of the world's finest of its kind as it housed the best of the finds from Pompeii and would make the visit to that site more colorful. At some of the stops we make, we like to hire a guide to walk us around the town. I am not afraid of maps and love me a DK Eyewitness guide book, but guides can add so much flavor and insight at some stops that they are almost essential at this point. I wasn't gonna do one for Naples as the books indicated there wasn't much 'there' there, but figured we'd be out of it mentally with the brutal time change and hired one for us the next day. In talking to her (let's call her Daniela), I asked how we should best kill out time that first afternoon and she offered to walk us through the archaeological museum this first afternoon and suggested we meet for some pizza before going in. I liked where her head was at immediately.
We meet at the appointed time (and Daniela arrived 20 minutes late in true Neapolitan style) and we walked to one of her favorite pizza joints. A delightfully homey place and an old aunt of hers was there with some of her cronies and they were the cutest bunch of old bats you'll ever see. We are peckish and order some pizza. Am sure I don't have to tell you, but Naples is the birthplace of pizza. Restaurants around the world will seek to gain accreditation from the AVPN-Associazione Verace Pizza Neapolitan. This certifies that their businesses' pizza is made in the authentic tradition of Naples. Here is the dirty secret of the AVPN and Neapolitan style pizza...it is total shit. Have always felt that way about this kind of pizza but thought that being at the epicenter of it, that things would be different. Nope...the same greasy, undercooked, not enough sauce/cheese/topping slop that you can get anywhere else in the world. The crust is somewhat finished, but from that point inwards, the bread is a mushy mess, like its been sitting in a puddle of unclean water before they serve it. Maybe you like it and apparently a lot of people do (or say they do), but it is complete garbage in this food critics opinion.
We head to the museum and it is fine. Probably would have liked it more if we weren't in a haze, but it had a lot of nice statues and mosaics. It gets boring looking at that stuff after a short while and I like the history of it more, but the highlight of this museum was the Secret Cabinet. This is a room that has been off limits to the public for most of its history (you had to have special permission from the church to go in for a hundred years) and unaccompanied minors under 14 are not allowed in. This part of the museum houses the erotic art they found in Pompeii. They surmise that most of it came from the red light districts in the town and it is clear that the Romans of AD79 liked their penises (and goats) a great deal
We got back to town and strolled along the promenade of the bay for a while before dinner, and that was pretty. The lights and street markets...good stuff.
After a less than impressive dinner, as we're walking around looking at the holiday shoppers and locals on the street, I turn to the Boy and ask, 'have you seen any cute girls?' He shrugs...for the rest of the night and all during our walking tour of Naples the next day, I became a bit obsessed with looking at the local people. I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but as one fortunate enough to have lived a bunch of places and to have visited many more, I have never seen an uglier conglomeration of humanity in my life. There is not even a close second. The dudes were frumpy and unkempt and didn't have that traditional cool Italian hair, and the women were...I don't want to sound all Trumpy at this point, but I did not see a single one where I went 'hmmm, there's a pussy I'd like to grab'. And the ones that were trying to look good had this heavy orange make-up all over their face that was almost clown like in its application.
Our walking tour of Naples the next day was fine, but as feared from my research, Naples just isn't a town that has a "wow" factor to it. There are some interesting churches, but little that made them stand out from the others that we have seen. The history and story of San Gennaro (or Januarius) is fascinating. We saw the church that holds the ampule of his blood where three times a year it is said to liquefy, proving some miracle.. If it doesn't liquefy on the day it is supposed to, then disaster of some kind is imminent. We learned that the priests took it out a few days before (December 16th) and it did not do so and there was some concern amongst the highly superstitious residents. Go read about the history of Janaurius cause it is kinda interesting, but my thought in the moment was...Religion? Really?
Here is another thing (other than the affinity for all things penis and the ugly ass population) about Naples that was hard to ignore...vomit. There was puke on the streets everywhere and we saw it constantly the entire time. One of the affects of having bad knees is a constant fear of stepping in a crack and falling down. With my moms recent spill and subsequent brain draining fresh in my mind, am constantly scanning the ground like it was a minefield. Sucks cause I know I am missing the world around me, especially on vacation, but if there is money in the street, I'm gonna see it. Another thing I see a lot of everywhere is dog shit. On our trip with AM and Chiquita to Austria two years ago, the popular local soft drink at the time was a citrus thing called Almdudler. One day while tooling around town, Chiquita stepped in a fresh pile of dog poo...the kind where you never really ever get it off and think she even tossed that pair of shoes. I can't remember the evolution exactly, but during that trip, whenever we were walking around and saw some poop on the street, the person that spotted it would call out "Almdudler" and it has become our word for dog doo whenever we see it since. After seeing the vomit on the streets so frequently, it was natural that we had to have a term for it to warn the others, so it quickly became a Neapolitan frittata.
We saw a cave where they transported the bones of the Christians killed in Roman times that was sorta cool.
In my (and the kids) opinion, the best thing we saw/did there was take the subterranean tour in the evening of our last night in town. Originally, these were aqueducts carved out of the ground in Roman times (how they did this without electricity and power tools astounds) and were used as such until the 18th century (when cholera killed a decent percentage of the town). During WWII, they became the shelter for the locals during allied bombing in 1943. Not a huge fan of claustrophobic spaces, but hit the history and sensory parts of the body just right.
I just crumbed on the city of Naples. I feel bad cause I did like it, Pompeii and Vesuvius are fascinating and I groove on a real city and its grittiness. Plus, the penis thing was hilarious. But Naples is a shit hole, which is surprising cause everything I had seen of Italy before, and my romanticized version of it from before that, was instantly changed. Not in a terrible way, but more realistic. So to you Naples...
but in a loving way.
Will try to write up more tomorrow, but the Hawks playoff game against Detroit is on (after my beloved Raiders at Houston...such a shame about the Carr injury, but am so happy to have my team back in the playoffs in a quincinera), so if it's a blowout, will write. If not, will talk soon.
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