Fantastic

Today’s online Guardian has a thing about films of superheroes. It’s not particularly illuminating but it does have this wonderful picture, which I really need to share with you.It comes from the original version of The Fantastic Four, made in 1994. According to the Guardian, the film “apparently only exists because Constantin Film was set to lose its rights to the comic book franchise if it failed to produce a movie by 1995.” To someone’s credit, it was never released. Luckily though, we have this photograph. Any ideas who the actors are? The Thing looks eerily like McCain… And what on earth are they looking at?

Yum

http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/videoplayer/flvplayer.swf
New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less
I love this. From the Onion.

Postscript to postscript

Sorry about this – and believe me, I really am trying to move on – but I was so appalled by this example of partisan journalism, in a country that knows little else, that I felt I had to share it. For those among you who don’t speak Italian, the irate young man in a suit at the beginning of the piece isn’t one of the spotty fascists (from Casa Pound, god help us) who tried to disrupt the march last Saturday, but a frustrated groom. He was supposed to be getting married in Via dei Fori Imperiali, but couldn’t get the car to the church. Authorisation had been granted months before, he said. Sound familiar? Right! If the council had respected the authorisation it gave to Gay Pride months before, he wouldn’t have found his wedding delayed. Odd that no one in the studio thought of pointing this out.

The skinny bint playing nervously with her pen in the rest of the piece is Carfagna. You may not have recognised her with her clothes on. She’s talking about sobriety and stuff like that, but I won’t bother you any more with her silliness. We’ve all heard enough from Carfagna for one government.

Ave Hitler

Now that the catholic church has got a government prepared to present its belly to the clerical boot without any questions being asked, this photograph is a useful reminder of another epoch in which the interests of church and state also appeared to coincide.

(I wouldn’t have felt the need to post this rather snippy comment if I hadn’t just heard Minister for Equal Opportunities Mara Carfagna (see topless photo here) explain why Rome, as the heart of Christianity, isn’t an appropriate venue for Gay Pride. Maybe someone should tell her that it was also home to Julius Caesar, Petronius, Hadrian, etc. But why bother? Why tell the monkey what the organ grinder already knows?)

Thanks to Marisacat for the photo.

Pride postscript

I forgot to mention that Rome council’s decision to forbid Gay Pride to wind up in Piazza San Giovanni looked more and more like an own goal yesterday afternoon. San Giovanni’s bigger than Piazza Navona, but it’s also well off the tourist/shopping route. Sending us through Piazza Venezia and the heart of the old city increased the visibility of the march tenfold. Even the fact that the entrance into Piazza Navona was narrow enough to create a bottleneck played into our hands. The only inconvenient aspect of the re-routing was that all those choristers who had an appointment in the Lateran Palace, the one that would have clashed with Pride (except that it wouldn’t), had to lift up their skirts and run all the way from Piazza Navona, along Via dei Fori Imperiali and Via Labicana and up the last bit of Via Merulana to make sure they didn’t miss their concert at half past eight. Sweet dreams are made of this.

Moments of pride

Dancing on the spot

This was taken in Piazza Navona, towards the end of yesterday’s Gay Pride in Rome. I had, as I always have, a very good time indeed. I danced, I sang, I stared, I photographed. My impression was that there were an awful lot of people – at one point, halfway down Via Cavour, the whole street seemed to be packed with people from top to bottom. This was confirmed by the organisers, who estimated half a million (the police say 10-20,000. They would, wouldn’t they?) The rain held off, and so did party-poopers, with the exception of a rather unpleasant man with dirty grey hair who was clearly upset by the whole business and a small group of youths in suits and ties bearing flags with Celtic crosses on them (like the one, coincidentally, worn by Alemanno) who popped up, appropriately on Via dei Fori Imperiali, and threatened to stab us all. Help! The Italian papers, dramatically, report that the nasty little fascists erupted, presumably in the same way a spot erupts on an otherwise unblemished face. The papers today have given an inordinate amount of space to this trivial hormonal problem, accompanying their articles with the usual display of transsexuals in full ceremonial uniform. Yes, I love them too, and I love the muscle boys and the disco bunnies and the bears, and the world would be a sadder place without them. BUT. I – who have never knowingly worn drag, and no longer have pecs to die for and dance in the privacy of parties and am, just, too slim to be a fully-furred bear, was also there, and so were many thousands of others who were practically indistinguishable from everyone else who wasn’t on the march. You know the kind of people I mean: old and young, fat and thin, plain and hot, bright and dim, tall and short, make and female, dog-lovers and dog-haters, right and left. I know this kind of truth goes against the journalistic grain, but it would be refreshing to see newspapers show the sheer variety of the event. It looks as though, once again, it’s up to me. So if you’d like to see all the photos I took yesterday, of the ordinary and extraordinary people who took part in Pride, click here. (Flickr has decided to rearrange the order, so you’ll be starting at the end and working back…)

PS The title of this post actually refers to a video I’ve been unable to upload, but I’ve left it anyway. If nothing else, it reflects the fact that we are still dancing, without any specific advance or sign of it.

Ten percent of population, one day of year. Hmm

Gay Pride comes round once again. Last year, the national event was held in Rome and emotions were running high. Family Day, the church-inspired hate-fest had been and gone shortly before and the mood was one of rebellion and righteous anger. This year, Rome Gay Pride is precisely that, for Romans and anyone prepared to make the trip, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a mood at all. Not that small gauntlets haven’t been thrown down. The march now ends in Piazza Navona, instead of the previously authorised Piazza San Giovanni, where a bunch of choristers now need heterosexual silence to warble in (this may be a novelty for them). Politically, this is bad news, but hey! Piazza Navona’s so much more convenient for the shops no one’s complaining. The council, with its new mayor, Gianni “Bovver Boy” Alemanno in charge, has refused its patronage, but that’s not new. It was also refused under centre-left administrations. Gauntlets, shmauntlets, in other words.

A worrying note, though, was struck, last night by a lesbian friend of ours. We called to fix up a place to meet. What for? she said. For Gay Pride, we told her. Gay Pride? she said. No one’s going on it this year. We are, we said. So if you read this, and are in Rome, you might want to prove her wrong. The march starts in Piazza della Repubblica at 3, heads off down Via Cavour at 4, passes across Piazza Venezia and then, by which route I’m not sure, ends up in Piazza Navona. It’s all pretty scenic, so you won’t regret it. I’ll be the one in 80 centimetre gold lamé platforms and a frock even Ru Paul wouldn’t risk wearing. Don’t worry, I’m joking.

There will be photos.

Cover story

If you’d like to know my views on buying books in Italy, as well as on the cultural relativism of book covers, all you have to do is click here. You will also find a shameless plug for Little Monsters, which is what it’s all about. My thanks to the Guardian blog (and to Sandra, who placed the piece). Finally, you’ll get the chance to see a very lovely photo of the skyline of San Gimignano. Good god, what more do you want?

Mother goddess

I don’t know what the rest of this year’s Royal Academy Summer Show, curated by Tracey Emin, is like, but the vase in this photograph from today’s Independent looks wonderful. And so does the possibly involuntary halo around Tracey Emin’s head.