David: http://www,b|u1-non.edu/~sullivanm/index/index.htm|

 

statue

is
truly
scendent

 

Bennett and Tom’s
Excellent Adventure

An irreverent tale of Honeymooning
and shoe-shopping in Italy.

es, yes, for our honeymoon
Tom and I really ﬂew to
Rome to buy shoes. Tom

wanted badly to go Milan (his idea of
the birthplace of civilization), but I
insisted, “Honey, they sell those
shoes in Rome.”

But it turned out that Italy
is a country of bowlers.

At least, that’s what their
preferred choice in footwear sug-
gests. The Italians have made bowl-
ing shoes a fashion statement. Red
leather shoes with stitching up the
top, from the tip of the toe to the
laces. Everyone — and I mean every-
one — wears them, from grandmoth-
ers to school children to thehot —
scorching hot! — young guys. They
all share a common, warped sense of
bowling attire as fashion.

Two gay guys ﬂew to Italy
and didn’t bring home any shoes.
Sad, but true!

Rome:
An Annunciation Too Far

We loved Rome, even though much
of it is, ahem, ‘ruined’ (joke). The
Pantheon is an elegant structure, with
a rotunda of 5 concentric circles,
each composed of sets of 5 concen-
tric squares. If only one building was
destined to endure the millennia
intact, this may have been the perfect
choice. It alone was worth the trip.
The Coliseum, the Roman Baths, the
Fountain of Trevi — each was a mag-
niﬁcent bonus.

At the Vatican Museum you
are shepherded through about 200
rooms on the way to the Sistine
Chapel. Every square inch of the
place is covered with paintings of
cherubs and the cruciﬁxion and the
like. One room, painted by Raphael,
was purportedly used as a study by
Pope Leo, but after about ﬁve min-
utes in that space anyone, Pope or
not, would have a killer headache.
I’m sure this is just blasphemous, but
even in the Sistine Chapel I couldn’t
help thinking that the whole place
could really use a fresh coat of paint.
Something a tad more Protestant —
think Shaker — might be an improve-
ment.

They honestly had signs up
in some cathedrals apologizing for
how changes in public taste during
the Restoration had led city magis-
trates and church officials to order
the whitcwashing of frescoes. Yes,
some few of the 2,567,431 paintings
of The Annunciation will never be
seen again: oh, the losses! They
seemed ashamed that the cathedral
might be appreciated simply for its
architecture and the remaining art
treasures that line the walls and
rooms. The most stunning of the
cathedrals we visited was the Santa
Croce in Florence, where the white-
washed walls and ceilings allowed
for an uncluttered appreciation of the

magniﬁcence of the structure itself.
The architecture was the art.

I had to regard many of the
paintings we viewed simply as histor-
ical artifacts. Remarks like “the soph-
omores in art class at Whitcomb High
School could do this” were not wel-
comed. When in Rome, I learned, do
not suggest any.lack of appreciation
for old things. And as a man newly
united to someone younger, I’m per-
manently invested in fostering an
active appreciation for older things.
Think of me as Italian art.

Ficereraae:
Bad Timing, Great David

The timing of our visit to Florence
was unfortunate. We had originally
planned to arrive on Friday and leave
Monday, but we imagined that many
of the sites might be closed on
Sunday. So we changed our plans to
arrive on Saturday and leave on
Tuesday. Turns out that most things
are closed on Sunday and Monday.
Oops.

So we had to choose quick-
ly between seeing Michelangelo"s
statue of David (at the Gallery of the
Academy of Art) and Botticelli’s
“Birth of Venus” at the Ufﬁzi
Gallery. Hmm — naked girl or naked
guy?

The David has to be the
single most perfectly presented piece
of art on the planet. You walk down a
corridor that has two unﬁnished
Michelangelos on each side, and at
the end of the corridor, standing
under its own rotunda, which pro-
vides the only lighting for the piece,
stands the David. You’ve worn the t-
shirt, you have the magnet on your
refrigerator, but the statue is truly
transcendent. An entire world of pos-
sibility for expression through stone
is captured in this one masterpiece.

When we stepped out of
our hotel in Florence on the morning
we were to drive to Ravello, we were
greeted by a marching band, decked
out in uniforms and accompanied by
dancing girls with batons. It was like
stepping into the half-time show at
the Texas Tech vs. Baylor football
game.

We quickly went from
being entertained to concemed, how-
ever, when we discovered that this
band was just the beginning of a
march that stretched for miles and
miles. The leﬁ had called a General
Strike to protest recent decisions of
the right-leaning government, and
they were taking this strike business
at least semi-seriously. All public
transportation was shut down, and an
army of chanting Italians waving
Communist ﬂags completely clogged
the streets — literally for miles (no
half-hearted little demonstrations for
these folks!). To get to our car rental
agency, we had to walk against the
crowd, carrying everything we

owned.

We were lucky to find the
uber-right wing Helga, who had no
time for the petty dissatisfactions of
the working class, stationed resolute-
ly behind the Hertz counter. And
what a welcome sight! If not for
Helga we might be scavenging with
the rats under a bridge along the
Arno.

The ﬁmaiti Qeaat:
Steps & Horses

Driving in Italy is like driving in
major US cities — a kind of every
man for himself mentality prevails —
except they do it faster. And each
lane of the autostrade has its own
posted speed limit: fast, faster, and
fastest. We were tooling along at 150
km/hour, and folks were passing us
like we were standing still. And you
have to realize that this is all in tiny» V
little Europeancars ~ the monsters,~

that we drivein'America simplywill .. ’.

not fit on the streets of these ancient
cities.

Ravello is splendid — gor-
geously situated l,0O0 feet above the
Mediterranean. This became our
favorite part of the trip. Everything is
straight up and down, making the
driving a feat of geometry and
physics, not to mention a serious test
of your nerves. Our car even got hit
by a police car, and the driver didn’t
stop! Besides having the mirror
whacked off the driver’s side by a
cruiser, I also sideswiped a stone wall
during my drive along the sidewalk
and up a ﬂight of stairs to get the car
into the hotel lot, and the rental
return guy didn’t even blink; It turns
out that if you bring the car back,
apparently regardless of its condition,
the rental agency is grateful and
everybody’s happy.

So to avoid the stresses of
driving along the Amalﬁ Coast, most
people opt for the stairs. There were

1,415 stairs from our hotel in Ravello '

to the sea. Straight down. Perhaps the
most fun Tom and I had in Italy was
climbing back up the stairs, from
Amalﬁ to places unknown. We
climbed beyond where mere mortal
tourists ascend, up to where we
encountered more donkeys and hors-
es on the steps than people. Some
guy was apparently building a house
high in the hills by carting construc-
tion supplies up the stairs on a ﬂotilla
of horsebacks.

We were actually chased by
these,horses up the stairs (there’s no
chance to catch your breath when a
pack of horses are quick on your
heels!) to a landing from which the
stairs branched out in three different
directions. I tried my best to discern
which direction the, uh, “cowboy”
was leading these horses, but once
we had committed to what seemed

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