OK, so as it turns out I didn't have enough material for 10 days of posting. I don't think 8 days is too shabby, however. As I don't really have any topics worthy of a full post, I'll just share a few things that have been rattling around in my head since I got back:
I don't fly well. I guess I never noticed this because I'd never been on a plane for 10 hours before. But I can really be quite the bastard at the end of a flight. I blame this on my family's problem of having really bad ears when it comes to pressure changes. While I know that a popping sensation in one's ears is normal during airline travel, I don't think it's normal to feel like someone stuck a screwdriver in my ear hours after I got off the fucking plane. So I must admit, by the time I get off the actual plane, I'm less than cordial, even to my lovely wife. Sorry baby.
Airline policies suck ass. I may be a prick when I fly, but I refuse to take all of the blame. If you're not supposed to bring meat products back from other countries, then that information should be readily available to read BEFORE you've purchased almost 50 bucks worth of Italian salami and gotten it 90% of the way through U.S. customs. Not to mention that this was after about 14 hours worth of going through inefficient security stations and boarding procedures. I think what gets me the most pissed off about airlines is that their security is reactionary. Perhaps if these schmucks would think far enough ahead to create some kind of technology that's flexible enough to catch the crap that they didn't think of before, then they wouldn't have to update their carry-on policies every five minutes. Oh, someone managed to put a bomb in a shoe? Then you'll have to take yours off and put it through the x-ray machine every time you fly. Someone made a bomb out of liquid? Then you can only have less than 3 ounces on the plane from now on. I'd hate to see what would happen if someone managed to plant a bomb in one of his testicles. I'm picturing a small guillotine next to the metal detector.
We must be actively trying to become obese in the U.S. I spent ten days in Italy, making absolutely no attempt to watch what I ate. Yet somehow, I managed to lose two pounds. That's not much, I know, but considering I ate enough prosciutto to risk a swine shortage in the Chianti region, I should be about 300 pounds by now. I don't know what we're putting in our food here, but we should seriously look into switching to what they're having. Although, my weight loss may also have been due to the fact that everything in the Chianti region is at least at a 30 degree incline. It's unreal. I always laughed when an elderly person would say they had to walk uphill both ways to get to school everyday. But now I realized they weren't full of shit if they grew up in Italy.
Being worried about acting like a stereotypical arrogant American while traveling abroad is the most surefire way of acting like a stereotypical arrogant American while traveling abroad. I so didn't want to be that guy. But within a day of arriving at our hotel I managed to call the guy working the counter "Matt" about 13 times before I realized his name was Andreas. And I managed to pull off the ever-helpful language barrier busting technique of yelling things slowly and obnoxiously in English. Because, after all, anyone should be able to understand English as long as you speak it to them as if they are a deaf child. Shockingly, I don't think I turned into the hotel's favorite guest. My natural reaction to this suspicion was to think they were the assholes, because anyone who doesn't think I'm awesome is clearly a douche bag.
The final conclusion that I pull from everything I've posted about this trip is pretty simple. I am one lucky guy to be married to Mrs. Grump. I'd imagine that traveling with me is similar to going on vacation with an ill-tempered gorilla that can form basic sentences. Yet even so, Mrs. Grump made sure we had an excellent honeymoon. We saw sights that I'd probably only ever see on a computer screen if left to my own devices. I ate food that makes me tear up a little bit just to think about it (On a side note, if you ever have a chance to eat food that has wild boar in it, do it. Don't think about it. Just do it). I even managed to pick up a phrases of Italian. I think my favorite was "due." It's nothing special. It just means "two." But it was the word I used the most often because anything I ordered or purchased was always in duplicate to accommodate my new wife. And that makes me happy.
Speaking of the wife, stay tuned for a special guest post sometime next week from Mrs. Grump herself. I don't drink coffee, but according to Mrs. Grump, anything good you've heard about Italian coffee is a bold-faced lie. Check in sometime next week to find out why.
Yes, yes. I know I missed yesterday's Italy post. Cut me some slack work has been a pain in the ass. Actually it's pretty delusional of me to think that anyone even noticed that I missed a day, but that's not the point. It's the principle of the thing. Unfortunately, work has been giving me a healthy kick in the pills for the last couple of days so I haven't gotten around to doing anything productive since yesterday morning.
Anyway, midway through our trip Mrs. Grump and I had go to the local laundromat to wash our clothes because we didn't feel like lugging ten days worth of clothes with us over to Italy. While at the laundromat we were passing the time by making fun of the crappy Italian music videos that were playing on the TV, which was made even funnier by the fact that there was no sound. Next time you're watching your very favorite band in a music video, try turning the sound off. Without fail it will be the dumbest fucking thing you've ever seen.
One video, however, was so awful that I had to see if I could find it on YouTube when I got back to the apartment. Fortunately for everyone in the world, I was able to find it. It's actually a Swiss band called Gotthard, who named themselves after both a mountain pass and the act of pitching a tent. Pun: accomplished.
Alright, I've kept you from this long enough. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Unconditional Faith."
I just don't know where to begin, here. I think I'll go with pointing out the mandolin player. What about him? Well, basically just the fact that he exists. There is a grown man in the middle of a rock band playing an itty bitty guitar. And he's rocking that shit.
Also, can anyone tell me where the story of the boxer is supposed to go? He's training, he wins a fight, and he goes back home to his wife. I mean, that's lovely and all, but is there a point? Or are we just going for a surrealistic depiction of a white guy beating a black guy in a boxing match?
I think what I like best about this video is that it actually got worse when I was able to watch it with sound, it actually got worse. And it's not just that the song is bad. Well, yeah it is bad. But when you watch that music video while it plays with that song, you get an entity that transcends itself and evolves into art on par with Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Sadly, the lead singer of Gotthard, Steve Lee, recently died in a motorcycle accident. That really is a bummer, and I will take the high road for perhaps the first time in my life and not make a joke about it. In fact, I better just end this post now before I wind up accidentally saying something that makes me look like a complete dick.
I'm not going to lie to you. This pigeon kind of scared the shit out of me. Mrs. Grump and I found this guy perched on a statue outside of the Uffizi Gallery, and he really did not seem to be happy to share the same air as us ground dwellers. At first he just looked like he was part of the statue, because he did not move. At all. But then I realized that nothing on the statue seemed as evil as that little fucker.
And since when did pigeons have the ability to retract their heads into their necks, thereby turning themselves into a demonic, uncircumcised penis? Although, maybe my looking at a pigeon and seeing a dick says more about me than it does the bird.
Phallic illusions aside, I still had trouble taking this guy's picture. Seeing him through the digital display of the camera made him seem a lot closer to me than I was comfortable with. I was expecting to take the camera away and find him only inches away from my face, ready to murder and devour me in front of hundreds of people. Fortunately, I was able to escape with my life and fly home to Philly where the pigeons aren't demonic. They're just assholes.
Last week I introduced you to A Bit of Fry and Laurie with a skit from their pilot episode, which aired in 1987. It wasn't until 1989 that their first proper season began. Which begs the question...what the hell takes so long to produce British sitcoms? Blackadder had a three year gap between its first and second season. The recent dramedy Doc Martin ended its fourth season in 2009, and won't even begin filming until 2011. What gives? I mean, I like British sitcoms but most of them aren't exactly epic in grandeur. It's usually just some people on a soundstage acting snarky.
Eh, whatever. This week's clip takes the silly factor that I mentioned from last week and goes ahead and cranks that bitch right up to 11. There is absolutely no point to it other than to be bizarre, but as usual it works like a charm.
OK, so grappa is not really poison. It's just an after dinner drink that they serve in Italy. Wikipedia describes it as a "fragrant, grape-based pomace brandy" but I don't think that's really true either. Sure, it looks harmless enough...
Grappa (the shot glass to the right) just looks like a little shot glass filled with water. I tried to tell the waitress that I don't drink, but she spoke very little English and I wasn't about to give her the "no wanto to be an alcoholico" treatment. So when she gave me a free grappa with what turned out to be a limoncello chaser, I just smiled and said thank you. It being a small restaurant, I felt obligated to at least investigate the drink lest she watch me casually discard it off to the side of the table.
Well, the limoncello smelled strong, but pleasant. The grappa, however, smelled like someone misplaced their shot of rubbing alcohol. Later we came to find out that's because Grappa is like 40% alcohol. Jesus, I think I'd be better off drinking the rubbing alcohol.
Needless to say, not being a drinker I decided to let the waitress be offended if need be because I was not going to touch the grappa. I did down the limoncello, however, which lead to this...
Today's title is wordplay at it's finest, folks. First, the innocent layer: Mrs. Grump and I stayed in the town of Greve, whose official emblem is the black cock. In this instance, cock is just a rooster, plenty of which can be found around town.
You can't miss my gate. It's the one with the big, black cock on it.
Cock a doodle doo, indeed.....right?
Don't trust any wine that doesn't have a black cock right on the label.
I have to say I'd be very interested in seeing how the town would look if black cock took on the other meaning, especially considering that black stereotypes are alive and well in Italy...
That actually may be the most obscene picture that I show you today. And that's including the next pictures that prove that roosters aren't the only kind of popular cock in the area.
Can anyone please explain this sculpture to me in a way that doesn't include a man being forced to wear a Trojan War Helmet at clubpoint?
Insert joke about giving head here.
Pretty much everything about this statue deeply disturbs me.
So, like I said, cocks are big in Italy. But wait! There is also a delightful layer of irony in that sentence. If you notice, in terms of proportion, all of the cocks in the above examples are actually quite small. Mrs. Grump informed me that this was due to artists of the time feeling that a long ding dong would be in bad taste. So, it's cool for a dude to hold a severed head while in the nude, just as long as his winky isn't taking up too much space. Michelangelo's "David" is another good example of that mindset, but Mrs. Grump didn't get any pictures of little David. I guess she was trying to keep some semblance of scruples for our photo album.
Ha! You thought I was going to skip today. Well I just had to wait until Mrs. Grump hooked me up with the rest of the honeymoon pics so I'd have some visual aids. Speaking of pics, it turns out the wife took 350 of the damn things during our trip. I'll have a few collections to show you, but there are a few in particular that I'd like to share.
Get a load at the ornate decoration here. It's obvious that this structure was pretty important to make the artist put so much care and attention to detail into it.
Or maybe it was just a fucking lamp post.
This is just plain awesome, especially when you consider this turtle is the base of a simple set of bars covering someone's window. I've been to Camden, NJ, where there are entire blocks of houses with bars covering any opening. But you won't find turtle one on any of them. Not even a frog. I think Camden would be in much better shape if their protecting window bars had adorable little animals on them. OK...this is beautiful work, but it really depressed me when I realized it was graffiti. Mrs. Grump and I found it on a construction barrier in Florence, and it makes me ashamed of how we do graffiti in the States. We're lucky if the cock and balls drawn in Sharpie on the bathroom stall are realistic enough to include pubic hair.
Stay tuned for some examples of what happens when Italians actually get serious with their art. Marble, granite, and poorly-endowed, naked men will abound!
