Shakespeare Party

Today in Porn, Rome Edition

That's St. John Lateran, one of the big four basilicas, in the background. That's a newsstand with a special pink porn section in the foreground.

Today in Porn, Jailbait Edition

Oh, Miley. How did those wicked, manipulative people at Vanity Fair ever manage to manipulate you out of your shirt and bra?

Move over, Joe and Jessica Simpson?

Today in Porn, Biblezine Edition

Amy passes along this gem:

"Ever wish your Bible was as easy to pick up as your favorite magazine? Now there's a new BibleZine created with today's modern guy in mind. With an edgy, techo-savvy style and content that makes Biblical truth fresh and relevant, it might just make Bible reading the best part of your day. By putting one of the most readable versions of the Bible, the New Century Version, together with articles about the topics you face everyday, we've created a 'zine that will help you get deeper in the Bible, find out what God has to say for your life, and grow in your faith."

What does God have to say? Sexcess! Which seems to be defined as "Success with the opposite sex," but which looks an awful lot like "Excess Sex!" Either way, the Gospel has newfound relevance!

Today in Porn, Unplanned Obsolescence Edition

[Heads up - blue language ahead.]

Balk, musing upon the massive number of CDs he purchased back in the day, asks the question:

"But what about the porn fans? I’m sure there’s some poor guy who’s looking at the giant collection of expensive DVDs and videotapes he purchased instead of upgrading his wardrobe or joining a gym and smacking himself (not that way) when he sees how much free jack-off material the Internet makes available now. And not just normal blowjob videos and the like (the porn equivalent of your major label releases), completely cost-free bizarre fetishy stuff (those rare white label Japanese-only pressings of MBV B-sides). Let’s shed a tear for those guys, the porn addicts who were born too soon."

Bragging Rights

Our cousin is the new Director of Vocations for the NY Archdiocese. Things there look good (on the Interweb, anyway). So did the brochure that everybody in Yankee Stadium got in their "gift pouch" (which pouch also included an "emergency" poncho/windbreaker, thank God). It was as smart as it was beautiful (much like the site; much text and many pics in common). Of course, for something like this, beautiful is smart; it's about desire, people. (It was attractive to me, and I'm both deliriously hitched and pater of a familias of seven!) Wish I could post the cover photo (couldn't find it on the site): Taxicabs whizzing past St. Patrick's. Quintessential Church-in-New-York, which is to say, quintessential New York.

Perseverance

My boss is in the news again:

"Jim Holman, owner of the San Diego Reader, has spent millions trying to persuade Californians to pass a law requiring parents to be notified before their underage daughter has an abortion...Opponents predict another defeat for Holman, who has spent a considerable personal fortune on the three measures, about $4.6 million so far...'I'm a dad with daughters,' said Holman, 61. 'But beyond my personal situation I see it as a great horror that young girls under 18 can be whisked away to hide an abortion'...Holman, who is a devout Catholic with seven children, said he has stayed active because he believes he can fill a gap. He charged that others, including Catholic bishops, are too afraid...They are calling the measure Sarah's Law, after the pseudonym of a Texas girl who died from complications arising from an abortion in the 1990s, Short said. The girl's parents were unaware she had an abortion."

Shakespeare Party

"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery."

- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

I really do have an excuse: I haven't spoken this speech since college. I was inspired to do it by the number of expectant mothers in attendance - Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners, indeed. Not enough? How about: this was done at the end of the evening, when things got, well, less than precise. At any rate, someone picked up the camera right around "I am very proud..." Other performances were nothing short of wonderful. But I suspect they will show up elsewhere.

Dept. of License Plates

Because nothing says "Fertility" like an old dude in a little red Corvette...

Yes, I'm sure he's probably a widely respected medical specialist who has helped countless women realize their dreams of becoming mothers...

Padre Pio, Exhumed After 40 Years

[UPDATE: A commenter pointed out what I would have known, had I actually, you know, read something about this. It's a silicon mask.]

[Photo found here.]

Catholics in Hollywood - Who Knew?

And who knew they'd be all excited about making Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged into a film? Box Office Mojo has the story, in the form of an interview with Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns. Here's a fun snippet:

Box Office Mojo: Is it true that you approached the producers about the rights to Atlas Shrugged in a Catholic church?

Michael Burns: I knew [producers] Howard and Karen Baldwin—I'd see them in church, though I knew them outside of church, too—and I knew they had the rights. We were leaving mass [one Sunday], and I said "I heard you have the rights to Atlas Shrugged and I'd like to talk to you about that because that is truly one of my favorite books," so we set up a lunch. Ayn Rand's probably rolling over in her grave to think that happened in a Catholic church. But, look, if you believe in a philosophy—and Ayn Rand was more of a philosopher than anything—that doesn't mean that you have to agree with everything Socrates or Aristotle or Plato stood for; you can embrace many aspects of a philosophy without wrapping yourself up in it. I'm Catholic and [producer] Karen [Baldwin]'s Catholic. But I was married once in a Catholic church—St. Patrick's Cathedral [in New York City] of all places—and I ended up getting divorced and I don't believe in [the Catholic marital annulment rule]—

Box Office Mojo: —So you're not going to be attending mass at Mel Gibson's [fundamentalist Catholic] church in Malibu?

Michael Burns: [Laughs] No, I'm not going to Mel Gibson's church. But—talk about irony—the institution [the Catholic church] is probably involved in the biggest cover-up in the history of religious organizations, with all these priests and bishops [molesting children]. But I go to mass just about every Sunday. I do believe in God.

Box Office Mojo: What do you think of Ayn Rand's thesis in Atlas Shrugged that altruism is at the root of all evil?

Michael Burns: I don't believe that a person should live his or her life for somebody else. I do believe in "do unto others [as you would have others do unto you]" and I don't consider that altruistic.

Box Office Mojo: But the Catholic Church teaches altruism. Are you concerned about being ex-communicated over making Atlas Shrugged?

Michael Burns: Atlas Shrugged is like The Sound of Music, compared to [Lionsgate's priest sex scandal documentary] Deliver Us from Evil, which is a great condemnation of [Los Angeles Catholic] Cardinal [Roger] Mahoney—it is staggering and it is shocking to see how [nothing was done by L.A.'s Catholic hierarchy while] hundreds of kids were molested. You know it happens, but I didn't want to believe—I chose not to believe—that [church officials] would know about these situations and then just move these priests from parish to parish, as if that was going to stop the pattern of abuse. All they wanted to do was shuffle it off.

***

I won't offer much comment, except to say that I think it's sweetly hilarious for Box Office Mojo to even suggest that someone could get excommunicated these days for making a piece of art which contained philosophical underpinnings which ran contrary to the teachings of the Church.

Seven

Making Stuff Up

Well, the good people at Inside Catholic sounded the old "Whatever happened to Catholic Fiction?" bell, and Pavlov's dog over here just started salivating. (Good boy. Here's a biscuit.) Anyway, toward the end, one Clare Krishan wrote: "Or recruit some talented comic book illustrators like SERGIO TOPPI AND TONY PAGOT "Karol Wojtyla: The Pope of the Third Millennium" or Gene Luen Yang and Gene Yang 'American Born Chinese.'"

Way ahead of you, darlin.'

Expelled

Ernie and I go to school.

Pieta - Orvieto

Rome: Monday: Interior at Orvieto

With a special appearance of my patron John the Baptist, beneath one of the alabaster windows:

Scenes from Genesis (One of the four great reliefs at the base of the facade.)

Flesh of my flesh:



The Expulsion:

Stripedy

Rome: Monday: Possibly the Most Beautiful Built Thing I Have Ever Seen (Continued)

Rome: Monday: Possibly the Most Beautiful Built Thing I Have Ever Seen (Continued)

Okay, so it's actually Orvieto, not Rome. You take my point. These are scenes from the life of Mary - the marriage to Joseph, and postpartum with Jesus - taken as the afternoon sun set the gold mosaic ablaze. And lest anyone miss out: clicking on the photos makes 'em bigger. Clicking on them again makes 'em bigger still.

Rome: Monday: Possibly the Most Beautiful Built Thing I Have Ever Seen (Continued)

Rome: Monday: Possibly the Most Beautiful Built Thing I Have Ever Seen

Rome: Monday: The Streets of Orvieto

Modern

Powerful indictment of the Modern World's efforts to keep Christ under wraps, sealed in a plastic sheath that masks Christianity's wild, radical call to a new kind of life? With the ladder symbolizing man's attempt to ascend through his own technological prowess - a modern-day Babel?

Or

A newly shipped statue that hasn't been unpacked yet?

It's at the entrance to the Modern Christian Art section in the Vatican Museum - before you get to the Sistine Chapel, you have to run a gauntlet of identical white rooms lined with some really wretched offerings - so it's pretty much anybody's guess.

Rome: Saturday - Part V: Italy - No.

Am I the only one who remembers an "Italy - Si!" tourism campaign a while (possibly a long while) back? I would like to humbly submit an updated version: "Italy - No." We got told "no" a lot - not rudely, and not even dismissively. Just matter-of-factly. "No." The nice part was that the "no"s were rarely final - usually, we found our way around them, or at least got close to realizing our initial desire. But dayum if we didn't hear a lot of 'em. It became the great byword of the vacation, the surefire in-joke between marrieds, one of us turning to the other: "You want (fill in the blank)? No."

Saturday night provided maybe the best of the bunch. We crossed Via Corso with its massed crowds of Friends with Boots (The Wife's term for the endless parade of thin women tromping around in generally fabulous boots, often topped with even more fabulous patterned hose, mostly likely purchased at the one-on-every-streetcorner lingerie shops that dot Rome like so many 7-11s. Me: "It's what they do here - lounge around in lingerie all day, then put on boots and go out for fabulous dinners. No one know just how they manage it."), jamming the sidewalks and forcing the Lessers onto the street. And unlike those cobblestoned alleyways where pedestrian and driver enjoy a certain understanding, the Corso was very much an ordinary two-way street, only without enough room in any way for the buses, cars, taxis, and people that crowded it.

As we headed down Via dei Pastini to Er Faciolaro, I began to wonder. A pleasant enough street, but one tinged with tourism. For the first time, we were being hailed by smiling men in waiters' uniforms, gesturing at the display featuring the evening menu. Sad that such an inviiting gesture should strike me as deeply suspicious, an indicator of sub-par performance from the kitchen. "If they were really good, they wouldn't need to be friendly," seems to have been my underlying thought - though I had never actually formulated such a notion, and certainly had no experience upon which to base such a conclusion. What I had from Zadok the Roman: "Only eaten here once with Fr. Z, but he recommends it as being a reasonably-priced place for lunch or dinner near the Pantheon. I certainly enjoyed my meal there."

Nobody, welcoming or otherwise, stood out in front of Er Faciolaro - a good sign. Inside, we were seated quickly and attended to by a brusque, graying waiter sporting an excellent moustache. He softened up considerably when I ordered the Brunello di Montalcino - at 48 Euros, it was certainly not the most expensive wine on the list, but perhaps it gave him hope that I was not a complete and total barbar. (I had actually intended to order the less-expensive Rosso di Montalcino, but got flustered during a relatively difficult exchange - he had less English than most, it seemed, and we had woefully little Italian - and pointed to the wrong bottle. After that, there was little that could be done; I had to live with my delicious mistake.)

The menu devoted an entire section to game, which made me happy. Mmmm, quail. But oh - over here: another entire section devoted to beans! And here - beans with quailet! Perfect - if "quailet" was some sort of diminutive for quail. The Italian words were different in each case. So I tried to ask my waiter.

"Is this quail the same as this 'quailet'?"

"No." And with that, he reached down with his pen and ran a line through "Beans with quail."

"Ah. Are you out of that? Or is it just that 'quailet' isn't the same as 'quail'?"

"No." And with that, he reached down with his pan and ran a grand, emphatic X through the entire game section.

"Ah. I'll have the beans with sausage."

Looking back, I think the most likely explanation - certainly the one that fits best with the idea that he was happy about someone ordering the Brunello - is that the game had all been flash-frozen, and was not quite up to par. That also fit well with The WIfe's experience.

"I'll have the pork cutlet."

"No. Spring pork." At least he didn't take a pen to her menu.

The Wife's verdict: "Best Pork Ever. Sometimes when things are really tender, they don't have as much flavor. Think filet mignon or veal. This was like a veal of pork, but it was super-flavorful. And it wasn't even that it had that much sauce - it was just its own flavor, but it was tender enough that you could just pull it off the bone." Which is not to imply that the sauce wasn't awesome - a concentrated, caramelized reduction. Add to that a primi of cannelloni in a tomato-bechamel sauce - a favorite of The Wife's from the legendary Garozzo's in Kansas City (where we had our rehearsal dinner) - and you had one of her two favorite dinners of the visit. I was hardly less pleased - my plump, white beans arrived robed in olive oil of surpassing delicacy, and accompanied of rounds of dense, sweet sausage. Something like the kielbasa my neighbors used to smoke back in the hometown. And the Brunello just got better as the night wore on. A long, slow, happy end to the day. Zadok had served us well.

As I said: "Italy - No." But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Big Ol' Door

(St. John Lateran)

Of course.

Of course there's a bird posing on St. Francis' head. This is across from St. John Lateran

Divine Mercy Sunday

Divine Mercy Sunday from Matthew Lickona on Vimeo.

I wrote a bit about it for the day job.

Rome: Sunday - A Question

Okay, maybe it's a dumb question. But still. If you saw this poster:



And if you noted that the only actual place mentioned on the poster was Chiesa S. Spirito in Sassia, AND you knew that said church was just down the street from St. Peter's, AND the poster said that the Holy Father would be leading the Regina Coeli, would it be too amazingly stupid for words to assume that the Holy Father would be leading said prayers in said church?

As I said, maybe it's a dumb question. At any rate, the poster, combined with our woeful lack of Italian, explains why we were in said church from 9:10 a.m. to shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday. What eventually convinced us to leave? They started a second Mass. We hobbled - well, I hobbled (The Blisters and all) - home along the river, and hunger eventually drove us to stop in at a random trattoria, which provided our first culinary disappointment of the visit. Burnt vegetables, a couple of off mussels, and carbonara covered in what looked like separated hollandaise. We thought we'd reached Minimum Safe Dining Distance from the Vatican. Apparently, like young Skywalker, we were mistaken - about a great many things.

THEY RUINED S. MARIA MAGGIORE - PART 2: EVERY OTHER WINDOW

This one's a little harder to prove, because I don't have photos from the Before phase. But I have a pretty clear memory of our excellent tour guide telling us in 1991 that four alabaster columns had been donated by Someone Ruler of Somewhere when the church was being constructed. Two of the columns were used to flank the main doors, while the other two were sliced into inch-thick slabs, which slabs were used as windows. The effect was little short of magical. The windows glowed, and all that New World gold on the ceiling glowed back, and everything was gentle and luminous and lovely. All changed, changed utterly

Well, not really. The gold is still there on the ceiling, and the incredible mosaic still adorns the apse, and it's still my favorite baldacchino. But none of it lives in the same atmosphere. Now, the plain glass windows let in light that blares like a trumpet; what was there before was more like a French Horn.

I can't prove all this, of course. But before we left for Rome, our friend Ernesto told The Wife, "Be sure to stop into St. Mary Major. The windows are made of stone, and the light is wonderful." You can't go Rome again?

THEY RUINED S. MARIA MAGGIORE - PART 1: THE ROSE WINDOW

When I visited Rome in 1991, this was my favorite of the four major basilicas. I went on and on to The Wife about it. Alas. Problem number one: the rose window, installed in 1995:



Hey, look, it's the cover from Today's Missal! But leaving aside my own personal private assessment of the window's particular aesthetic merit, I don't think there's anybody who still retains the use of at least one eye who can argue that this particular window looks anything but wildly out of place in this particular church:



I just don't get it.

Writer's Rooms: Karen Hall - 3

(What's going on here? See previous post.)



Close up of the painting that is always wherever I'm working. I think of her as the "real" me. (The real me doesn't smoke -- the cigarette was just for the picture. But that's the real me's waistline, for sure.)



This litho, by Leroy Neiman, was a gift to everyone who was working on M*A*S*H at the end of the show. There were something like 324 of them and the plate was broken after they were made. It could probably fetch a handsome price on Ebay, but it survived the strike, so I think it's safe.

(More photos of Ms. Hall's Home Office may be found here.)

Writer's Rooms: Karen Hall - 2

(What's going on here? See previous post.)



For the trivia minded. This is a candleholder and three silver spoons with the Hotel Winecoff insignia. The Hotel Winecoff features prominently in my novel "Dark Debts," and is, to date, the deadliest hotel fire in American history. The building itself is still standing in downtown Atlanta and the builders were correct in proclaiming the building to be fireproof. Unfortunately, the furniture, drapes, carpet, bedding, and guests were not. In a "Titanic" style display of arrogance, the Winecoff Hotel stationery included the hotel's motto: Absolutely Fireproof. I have a few sheets in my Winecoff collection, which also includes about a dozen postcards and a tarnished brass ashtray shaped like a puppy.



The communion of saints.

The back of the "It's Not Me!" sign reads "It's Production!" "Production" is how you blame anything that is late when you don't want to take the blame yourself. That was a farewell gift to me from a friend in the post-production department at Judging Amy.

Writer's Rooms: Karen Hall - 1

As soon as I saw this, I knew I wanted to do something similar for the Friends of Godsbody. (Okay, not quite as soon as I saw it - there was a good hour and a half of slack-jawed gawking in the interim. I mean, come on - Seamus Heaney. John Banville.) I've sent out a few invites already, but don't stand on ceremony - if you're a Friend of Godsbody and a scribbler, feel free to send something in!

First up: Karen Hall, TV writer and novelist. (Ye Olde Blogge Sofftwyrre will allow only two photos per post, so I'll be breaking this up...) Text belongs to Ms. Hall.



This is my little desktop tableau for perspective. "The script sucks" is NOT the worst thing that could happen.



Where the REAL procrastinating happens.

Elsewhere, Big-Time Blog Edition

This place is dead, anyway. So go thou and check out Amy's work on the New York Times' PopeBlog. It's full of bloggy goodness!

Pre-Emptive Mockery

The Wife: "You look like Eraserhead in that photo." (See below.)

Hiatus

We interrupt our Romeblogging to bring you...The Flu. Starring Mr. Godsbody as Three Miles of Bad Road:

Red River

Ernie and I go West again.

Rome: Saturday - Part IV: Video Tyme

Scene by scene, then:
1. Colonna dell'Immacolata in the Southeast part of the Piazza di Spagna, to which we walked from the Villa Borghese, including a long jaunt alongside the Aurelian Wall.
2. The Spanish Steps, rising up from the Piazza di Spagna toward the church of Trinita' dei Monti, covered not with penitents reciting prayers whilst ascending on their knees, but with tourists and teenagers and sunglass merchants watching the sun set over the Roman rooftops. The obelisk in front of the church was undergoing restoration, and was shrouded in scaffolding wrapped with material showing an image of the obelisk.
3. The Mock Penitent, ascending the last step (which also happens to be his first). "Shame on you," said Mom, and rightly so.
4. Looking out over the Roman rooftops toward the setting sun.
5. The Sacred and Immaculate Hearts over the doorway into the church of Trinita' dei Monti, panning over to the afternoon sun striking the statue of the Scourged Christ.
6. The Scourged Christ
7. A painting of the scourging, gestured at by a helpful bust.
8. Hauling Christ down from the cross.
9. Interior of Trinita' dei Monti - The Wife in lower right of frame.
10. Our Lady
11. Cubeland Mystic
12. The Baptism of Our Lord
13. St. Michael. The devils struck me as particularly horrifying - not because they were especially monstrous, but because they seemed very much fallen - once beautiful, now twisted, and horrified at their new condition.
14. The Trevi fountain, to which we walked from the Piazza di Spagna. Just to show that I really was there for that photo.
15. A church we popped into on the way to dinner. Or rather, on our second way to dinner (as opposed to our way to a second dinner...). Our first destination was Ristorante Abruzzi, just down the street from the Gregorian, recommended to us by Zadok by way of Amy. But what the good Mr. Zadok failed to mention (and this was his only slip in a slew of excellent suggestions) was that, for whatever reason, Abruzzi is closed on Saturdays. Disheartening - and hard on the stomach as well. We'd done a fair bit of walking since the Villa Borghese, and were ready to sit and eat. Desperate, we went next door to Cafe Caviar. We were not inspired to great culinary hope. But we were fortified - a glass of fruity House Red (most likely Montepulciano D'Abruzzo, unless I miss my guess) and some serviceable bruschetta gave us the strength we needed to push on to another of Zadok's suggestions: Er Faciolaro. (More on that anon.) The church was Santa Maria in Via Lata, and it was the first of many, many churches holding Eucharistic Adoration. It's like they believe in the True Presence or something. I think we came in around Vespers.
16. The rather monumental facade of the church of St. Ignatius of Loyola - another stumble-upon. (Also seen in above photo.)
17. A little levity. It's a pity my camera didn't have a better microphone - I do so wish you could hear the club music beat on the sound system, and the swooning cries of "All night...all night..." This was in Cafe Caviar - one more example of the bad music in Rome (the Vespers in Santa Maria in Via Lata being a happy exception.)

Rome: Saturday - Part III

The Galleria Borghese. (We got in for two Euros instead of eight, because it was a Cultural Week. Another small blessing.) A brief moment to savor the secular before we went and got thoroughly Church Drunk (The Wife's term). Photos were not permitted, so I'm going to work from Google images and just hit a few highlights for us. (Not that photos or Google images will do the pieces justice. Seeing the professionally shot postcards in the gift shops just minutes after leaving was enough proof of that. Something to this pilgrimage business - the necessity of presence...)

The Wife very much admired Canova's Venus, modeled on Pauline Bonaparte Borghese. The first Google image result of any decent size brings up the following caption: "This is the petrified 'corpse' of his former mistress that a horrified Soliman encounters in the Borghese Palace in The Kingdom of This World." For whatever reason, we were not horrified. I was especially taken with the incredible work done on the cushion upon which the lady reclines. So supple were its lines, so seemingly yielding its surface, that it didn't even register to The Wife as marble until I started in marveling at it. I suppose this makes me a sad, modern soul, sighing over marble made to look like cotton while remaining woefully ignorant of the aesthetic dynamics involved in the piece as a whole (why was Soliman horrified?) But I've never pretended otherwise. Here 'tis:



And as long as we're the subject of my aesthetic barbarism, I should say that my favorite piece was Caravaggio's St. Jerome:



I tried to prefer other things. I tried not to be a pious pilgrim, unable to delight in good, honest pagan images because I was forever flitting after Jesus and death instead of full-blooded life. I stared goggle-eyed at Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, and marveled at the fingers of Pluto gripping the thigh of his prize in the sculptor's The Rape of Prosperina. I pondered the mosaic floors depicting gladiators plying their bloody trade, killing ferocious animals and each other. I wished that the 17th-century (I think) busts of the Caesars had some basis in fact, that I could imagine I was staring into the face of Julius, or Augustus, or Claudius, or even Caligula. I was at first fascinated, and then disturbed, by a black stone relief depicting a bacchanal of plump little children.

But in the end, I was a sucker for Caravaggio's light, and for the skull on the desk. Over at The Lion and the Cardinal, Daniel Mitsui points to this comment on Caravaggio by Nicholas Poussin, whom Mitsui terms a "perceptive contemporary" of the artist: "I won't look at it. That man was born to destroy the art of painting. Such a vulgar painting can only be the work of a vulgar man."

Sigh. I am, it seems, a B-movie Catholic.

Throwing Down

Korrektiv is stirring up the Catholic literary waters with a big spoon named Tobias Wolff:

"Flannery O'Connor was for me a very powerful and influential writer at a certain point in my life. Some of the stories I still admire tremendously. But the more I read her, the more apparent her design is to me. I'm much more interested in Katherine Anne Porter, who has more real mystery in her work than Flannery O'Connor does, despite all her talk of mystery. I love Flannery O'Connor, don't get me wrong. Stories like 'Revelation,' 'Parker's Back,' 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find,' any number of stories. But I can see it coming, I can see her hand on the scales a lot of the time, and I don't ever with Porter. Stories like 'Noon Wine' and 'Flowering Judas' are the highest achievement of a really deeply questioning spirit, a sincerely questioning spirit. Maybe that's what I miss in O'Connor: there's not really a question there. She's already made her mind up, and she's just trying to get you to make yours up the same way."

Rome: Saturday - Part II

Ah, walking in Rome. But then, as with most things, there is walking in Rome, and there is walking in Rome. There is walking down narrow alleyways ("Hey, this one's even narrower and darker and windier than the last!"); forever stepping out of the way of tiny cars and tinier Vespas as they buzz past with remarkable confidence in your cooperation ("Ciao!" - Eddie Izzard); happening upon a too-very basement level party for some American author that has, despite its private character, become too besotted with its own fabulousness to remain cooped up in a bookshop and so has spilled up the steps that rise in either direction from the subterranean door and out onto the street; marveling at the notion that Italian women might somehow be able to negotiate four-inch cobblestones with three-quarter-inch gaps between them while perched in three-inch heels and somehow not break their ankles or even their stride; and generally marveling at the dizzying array of restaurants, many of them tucked half out of sight, advertised only by a small framed menu to the left of the door, and seemingly indifferent to whether or not anybody actually happens inside on a given evening; all while soaking up the delicious cool and the heady mix of surrounding urban chatter and majestic overhead silence (if that makes any sense). That's one sort of walking- that was Friday night. "Going out to dinner in a car can never match it," wrote our dear Victoria, and she was right.

But Saturday - Saturday had other sorts of walking in store. First, there was the walk of shame, which took us from one part of Trastevere to another - from the Hotel Santa Maria to the Casa di Santa Francesca Romana. There wasn't actually any shame involved - I'm pretty sure I was easily made as a tourista even without luggage - but there was a fair amount of effort. I was warm by the time we made it up to our room. Then it was off across the bridge to the Bocca della Verita - past the crowded line waiting for a picture with the famous mouth, and on to the bus stop. Destination: Villa Borghese, way up at the north end of the city. Ride up, walk back.

The Wife consulted her guidebook: "Bus tickets are available at major stops and at tobacco shops." This was not, apparently, a major stop. Husband set off in search of a tobacconist, a search that eventually led pretty much back to the Hotel Santa Maria, though not by anything like a direct route. By the time I made it back to the bus station, The Blisters had begun. That's another sort of walking.

(Little will be said about The Blisters, except that they were real, and they were spectacular. And Born shoes have a lot to answer for. And The Wife got many a sheepish chuckle out of watching me hobble for the next few days. And that I spent my final days in Rome strolling about in my awesomely comfortable Urban Slippers from Stegmann. Fashion be damned - I'm a tourist!)

The only good part was the purchase of a surprisingly good Prosciutto panini purchased at a tobacconist tucked along what turned out to be a dead-end street in the Jewish Quarter. (Two sandwiches and a big bottle of water for five Euros - as opposed to a four-Euro Gatorade at the Hot Dog cart near the bus stop. Truly, this was a foreign land - I stuck to water and wine.) That, and my wanderings took me past a patch of ruins that apparently housed an ancient public bathroom - a row of three gleaming marble sinks shone out from amid the flat brown Roman bricks, their rounded bowls making a pleasing contrast with all the long, rectangular lines.

Hot and miserable, or at least as hot and miserable as a man can be when he is in Rome with his wife and not having to manage five kids or think about work, I boarded the bus, only to discover what I imagine everyone knows: no one checks tickets in Rome. Not on buses, not on trains, not even at Papal Masses in St. Peter's Square. The only time anybody asked for a ticket was when I needed to show a restaurant receipt to use a pay toilet for free in the Termini. So we could have waited to buy our bus tickets. So I hadn't needed to go on my little jaunt. End of whinge.

We strolled through the Villa Borghese. We stopped and took pictures, including these silly shots (okay, the one of The Wife is adorable) inside a huge tree with a completely rotted center. (Please stifle all comparisons to the state of the author's bloated soul):





Husband: "I don't know why I look fat in all these photos."

Wife: "You know, some people would say that the reason a person looks fat in pictures is because, well..."

Husband: "I hate you."

Powers

Well now, looky here: The Wisconsin Poet has gone and written a sweet piece for OSV on the Master of Midwestern Catholicism, J.F. Powers.

Favorite line from the man himself: "But I write about priests for reasons of irony and comedy and philosophy. They officially are committed to both worlds in the way that most people officially are not. This makes for stronger beer. ... So I just start with a priest, with a man with one foot in each world."

Also liked this, from his daughter: "My father was interested in what it meant to be a Catholic writer," she says, "and for him that meant telling the truth -- through which the Truth would, or at least could, be glimpsed."

It's a grand piece. Go thou and read.

And if that whets your appetite for something longer, here's Joseph Bottum on the man. (Bottum also contributes a quote or two to the Poet's piece.)

Rome: Saturday - Part I

(Here Godsbody becomes a travel journal, and a somewhat random one at that. We arrived on Friday, but I'm starting with Saturday. Some of you may be completely uninterested in what follows - it's hardly the usual sort of thing for this blog. My apologies.)

I first met William Murray - son of a Roman woman and an American talent agent - in 2000, long after his 30-year stint at The New Yorker (a stint which saw him write many of the magazine's "Letters from Italy") had come to an end. His Roman days were long behind him by then, as were his years in Malibu, writing for television. By 2000, he was living in the lovely coastal village of Del Mar; the most Italian thing about his newish, stuccoed California home was the stand of Italian Cypress that ran along the back of his yard. The "Letters from Rome" had given way to a string of books, many of them crime novels - and some of those set in the world of horse racing. (The Del Mar racetrack was just a few minutes away; Murray was still living close to the source.)

The occasion for our meeting was another sort of book - Murray's memoir of growing up, largely in the care of two women who were also lovers: Natalie Danesi Murray, his mother; and Janet Flanner, who for many years wrote The New Yorker's "Letters from Paris" under the name Genet. It was called, appropriately enough, Janet, My Mother, and Me. My paper, The San Diego Reader, was running an excerpt from the book as a cover story. (Our Senior Editor, Judith Moore, was a minor luminary in the literary journalism world on account of the long, conversational interviews she conducted with authors and then ran in the paper's Reading column. Authors liked her; she gave them the luxury of space, a chance to ramble in the fields of nuance and detail. I think she felt that getting the excerpt was something of a coup - given the literary pedigree, it might have gone somewhere other than a West Coast alt-weekly. But she got it.) The Reader had decided to run parallel stories on the cover - the excerpt, and a profile of the author written by yours truly.

The story had an extremely tight turnaround, and I was very pleased with how it turned out. As a wannabe writer with a longtime admiration for The New Yorker, there was a vicarious thrill in talking with a man who had been a part of its world - Flanner's letters stretched back through World War II - and who had been published regularly in its pages. But my most salient memory from the whole experience remains this: walking into Murray's living room and beholding the framed artwork on the wall - artwork that included an original work from Peter Arno, one of the great cartoonists from the New Yorker's early years. It wasn't a particularly clever piece - just a thick-lined sketch of a woman sunbathing in France - but I found myself actually wishing I could have it, this personal gift given from artist to writer. A strange feeling.

But I digress. (That's a joke. I fear digression is going to be the order of the day. Going to Rome was a large event for me, the kind that pulls a lot of other things in its wake, and I want to get it all down.) Two years later, I chatted with Murray again, this time for his slim travel book, A Walk in Rome: City of the Soul, part of the Crown Journeys series that included Edwidge Danticant's walk through Jacmel, Haiti at Carnival, and Christopher Buckley's walks in D.C.. Part memoir, part highly personal travel guide, Murray's walk began at the north end of the old city, in the Piazza del Popolo, and swung back and forth, east and west, as it worked its way south to the Verano Cemetery. It was a slim volume - not quite enough for a Reading column, apparently - and so I was assigned to write an Events piece about Murray's upcoming reading at a local bookstore.

Chapter Two of A Walk in Rome opens thus: "The only way to really enjoy Rome and to begin to understand the city is to walk about in it. It is not even necessary to follow any particular itinerary. I've always felt sorry for the masses of tourists who are yanked about from one great popular historical site to another in air-conditioned buses, or herded through museums and churches in unwieldy groups led by guides spouting endless statistics and nuggets of often unreliable information. What can they get out of such visits but a bewilderingly kaleidoscopic view of the capital's many wonders, a passing impression of historical time as reflected by such familiar monuments as the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain?

"No one should come to Rome for only a day or two; better to stay home and watch the Travel Channel. This is a city that makes demands upon your attention, that requires a commitment to leisurely exploration. Its ancient ruins, its gleaming Renaissance palaces, its great Baroque basilicas and dozens of treasure-filled churches, its squares and fountains and statues, its maze of narrow cobbled streets, the very stones themselves, which exude an aura of time endlessly indulged, can only be appreciated in the intimacy of personal exploration. And even then you will find that whatever time you have spent in the city, you will long for more. Like Hawthorne, Goethe, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Twain, and so many other artists and writers and just plain visitors, you will find yourself lured back to it time after time by the fascination it exerts. 'For Rome one lifetime is not enough' is the apt title of one Roman author's cheerful reminiscences...

"A walk anywhere in Rome cannot be hurried. I still like to stroll at random through the snarled cobweb of the centro, pausing every few yards to look around, then unfailingly up the building walls where, no matter how familiar the area or how many times I've already walked that way, I always spot something I haven't noticed before - a cornice, an inscription, a fragment of a ruin, an arch, a statue...Recently on the Via Montoro, a narrow little street near the Campo dei Fiori, I glanced upward and spotted a marble tablet on the corner of a large seventeenth-century palazzo that read, 'By order of the resident Monsignor of the Streets, it is forbidden to discard rubbish in this place under penalty of fifteen scudi and other penalties in conformity with the edict promulgated May 22, 1761.' I had never been in the Via Montoro before or noticed such a sign, but since then I've become aware that it's to be found on the corners of many buildings all over the centro."

I didn't see any such tablets, and I probably couldn't have read them if I had, but I did notice this, on a wall in the piazza in front of the Pantheon:



The inscription reads: "TOTA PULCHRA ES AMICA MEA ET MACULA NON EST IN TE" - a verse from the Song of Songs which translates as, "Thou art all fair, my love, and there is not a spot in thee." Noticing it was something of a providential moment for me - one of a great many on this trip - because I have, frankly, a pretty serious taste for the ugly. Such a taste has its uses, even its virtues - I think of Flannery O'Connor saying that Southern writers wrote about freaks because they were still able to recognize them - but it also takes a toll. A priest once told me that I ought to place Book Two under the patronage of St. John the Evangelist, who saw terrible things on Patmos. And I'm the first to admit that there are times when my taste for the ugly leads me to places that are unhealthy.

I don't want to overdramatize, but there was a point during our visit when I told The Wife that my taste for the ugly hadn't made itself felt for days. It certainly wasn't gone - a few days back was enough to make that clear - but living in a city where great beauty was commonplace did have an effect on me, to the point where I stopped noticing the omnipresent graffiti (well, most of the time*) and found myself paying more attention to the sweetness and grandeur of human creativity. I'm sure some of it was because of the extraordinary character of the visit - I don't imagine even the most pious and/or aesthetically-minded of Roman citizens spends as much time visiting churches and museums as we did - and I know that almost anything, no matter how beautiful, can become everyday and thereby cease to signify. But it was wonderful, for those few days, to delight so easily in goodness. Spotting that Marian image and that inscription above a piazza crowded with tourists, packs of teenagers, and trinket vendors made for a happy image of that experience.

(As I say, I don't want to overdramatize. I live in San Diego, which is not exactly the bowels of Mordor. And holy cow, did we hear a lot of bad music in Rome. One of the more extreme examples: our most expensive dinner, in a restaurant with a truly world-class wine list - '98 Pio Cesare Barbaresco for 78 Euros! - was enjoyed to the strains of Huey Lewis and the News singing "I Want a New Drug." Plus - dignum et justum est? - a little Amy Winehouse. And there were times when it wasn't much better in the churches. The dregs of Glory and Praise have been borne back across the Atlantic. That said, there aren't too many town squares here at home where you're likely to catch some itinerant tenor belting out a few easy arias for tourists sitting by a fountain on a Friday night.)

*****

I read that passage in the Murray book on the plane from San Diego to Atlanta - in the mad rush to set everything in order before our departure, we really didn't get to do too much in the way of preparation, which left me - surprise, surprise - worried to the point of anxiety about whether or not this astonishing opportunity would result in an equally astonishing fiasco. (The Wife, needless to say, was not so perturbed.)

One great concern: the food. My first visit, back in 1991 had been marked by unremarkable food - partly, no doubt, because of my teenage hesitance to wander too far into unfamiliar territory. Lots of pizza margharita. (Part of my trouble then was that I had just spent a week in Medjugorje, where our kind hosts had attempted to please us with American food, which translated in one memorable instance to spaghetti doused with ketchup.) So many people had since told me about the wonders of Italian dining - I'd manage to miss out the first time, and didn't want to do so again. As I've said, dinner at home is often the high point of my day - chiefly because of the company of wife and children, but also because I love to eat and drink. I asked The Wife on our first night there what her hopes were for the visit. Her reply served for both of us: see great things, eat great food, spend time with spouse.

I needn't have worried. I had one addition to The Wife's list: shore up flagging faith. My first visit had been a wonderful high point in my spiritual life - I left Assisi certain that I would become a contemplative Fransciscan priest - and while I wasn't chasing a high or trying to recapture the glorious purity of young(er) faith, I was making a pilgrimage of sorts. The Scavi tour to see Peter's tomb, the Papal Mass, Divine Mercy Sunday in the church dedicated by John Paul II to the Divine Mercy - these were the most unmissable elements of our Roman holiday. I was looking to recollect myself, to recover some sense of God's presence in my life.

That recovery started long before we left, through the workings - if not explicitly religious, then still manifestly charitable - of God's faithful. We began by asking friends and acquaintances for suggestions about things to see/places to eat, and we were amazed at the outpouring that followed - in particular, the loving detail in the descriptions. Particular dishes to order and avoid, particular parts of certain churches to see, particular streets to traverse. Even what coffee bar to frequent. No doubt there was an element of vicarious living in all this - some people even said as much - but still: there was clearly effort in what they sent us, time carved out for the sake of another. We ate all but a few meals in restaurants suggested to us by people who had lived in or visited Rome before us, and we were never disappointed.

The outpouring made for the best sort of visit - the intimacy and reassurance of traveling in a strange place under the guidance of a friendly hand. And better still (he said, selfishly), it was just the two of us. No herded tourists, we. We would have our leisurely walks through "the snarled cobweb of the centro." We would visit the expected places, but we would have the freedom to discover that comes with the certainty that one is well looked after in one's wanderings. (And what a happy blunder to accidentally stumble upon the Pantheon - perhaps the coolest building in Rome - on the way to dinner. Boom - there it is. The Pantheon, all lit up and monumental.)

*****

A final comment on that passage from Murray, an affirmation of his claim that "No one should come to Rome for only a day or two." On our second (and final) morning at the Hotel Santa Maria (which I recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who has the means), we descended once again into the basement dining room with the ancient wood ceiling - the sort with hand-hewn beams supporting broad, gnarled boards stained the darkest of chocolatey browns. (I suppose such ceilings are de rigeur for certain sorts of places, the way hardwood floors are a given for certain homebuyers here. "Another horrible ceiling," The Wife would sigh as we took our place at table in this or that little restaurant.) We were grateful for the nod to American breakfast habits - scrambled eggs, plus a generous array of cold cuts and fruit to go with our (sighs longingly) barely-sweet cornetto and coffee. (Ridiculously, I let my curiosity get the better of me and ordered my coffee Americano, with perhaps predictably disappointing results. When in Rome... The cappuccino the day before had been a dream, the foamed milk seeming to permeate the entire contents of the cup, the coffee strong and acidic but without a hint of bitterness.) As we dined, we overheard an older Englishman chatting with an American couple. It was hard not to overhear; the little room was generally suffused with morning hush, such that every passing scooter in the alley outside sounded not unlike an Allied bomber passing overhead, and so their conversational tones came across as positively boisterous. The Englishman asked how long the Americans were in Rome.

"A week."

"A week? Here?"

Oh, the glories of British inflection. Back when I had my first chat with my (onetime) literary agent (this was right around when I first met Murray - see how it all ties up?), I got a splendid lesson in the power of pronunciation. She was English (though based in New York), and when she asked, "Now, La Mesa - where is that, exactly?" she dragged out "La Mesa" just long enough, and with just the right inflection, to indicate that she suspected it was situated somewhere deep in the unexplored hinterlands of some largely unknown continent, and possibly populated by cannibals. The Englishman in the breakfast room did a similar number on "A week? Here?" His incredulity was breathtaking - the very idea that a couple could throw away an entire week of their lives in Rome.

The couple was full of apologies, explaining that they had family and friends in the city, and were going house to house - really, it couldn't be helped. The Englishman was understanding. We were flabbergasted. It became a byword during the rest of our stay: "A week? Here?" Yes, indeed.

*I say "most of the time" - here is a shot I took in the Eucharistic chapel at Orvieto. I couldn't resist - something about the juxtaposition of the faded black Greek script and the bright white scrawlings of a more modern age:

Charity, as envisioned by Bernini

(Rough draft, in the Vatican Museum.)

McBrayer With Me Here.

If you haven't seen this, you should. (Keeping the vid off G-body, 'cuz it might be said to ride the line. Even if in a good way.) Because the truth is that nobody can enjoy something like this as much as someone who actually delights in innocence (such as exists between, say, young newlyweds cavorting in the fields of love; again, see vid).

Innocence here is the visual gag (pictures don't fit the music), but it's more than funny. It's truth. Which actually makes it more funny. Even as it's not true at all (i.e., with respect to the whoredom of Carey). But then, Carey does tell on herself a bit here--plus there are moments when she seems to be actually playing, rather than playing someone playing--so more truthy delights here too? (But then again, how much better is a truthful whore than a lying whore?)

Bonus heartbreak: McBrayer is gay. Which is probably the only way the imagery could have come off as so delightfully pure. Any guy who wasn't bent the other way probably couldn't have pulled it off.

Peter said to Paul, "You know, all those words we wrote..."

"...are just the rules of the game, and the rules are the first to go."

- Josh Ritter, "Girl in the War"



(Illustration on wall at Vatican Museum.)

The Slaughter of the Innocents

Tapestry in the Vatican Museum. Hello, Alphonse...

Hercules

In the Vatican Museum. How's that for a mix of pagan and sacred?

The Doors

Meanwhile, Back Upstate... (NOT ABOUT ROME.)

...New Yorker cartoonists Marshall and Emily recently got married, had a baby and moved back upstate (he's from Ithaca). So says the Ithaca Times interview (the "complete interview" was supposed to be online--but from the look of the Ithaca Times Art Blog, things may have gotten a little mixed up by their assistant Mary J. Wanna). Emily's Blogger profile doesn't yet indicate their return to their roots, but her last blog entry (a few months after getting married...busy mom?) does.

It just gets more and more interesting around here...

UPDATE: Found this, at least.

Roman Prelude

Shortly before our departure, FOG Ernesto and his wife took us out to dinner at Antica Trattoria, right here in the hometown. (Some of the dishes - I think in particular of the Ravioli al Funghetto, with its glorious veal stock - were outstanding, Gruelag or not Gruelag.) Our waiter accent and demeanor gave him away as a recent arrival, and we talked a bit about Italy (Ernesto and his wife stopped in on a whirlwind post-collegiate tour of Europe). His comment: "There are only three problems with Italy: too many communists, too many priests, and too many Italians." My reply: "There won't be too many Italians for long. They're not having enough babies." He disagreed, and I wasn't about to argue.

Sopra Minerva

See, JOB, this is why it's hard to bring back many photos of pagan stuff - they kept building churches on top of temples. This is Santa Maria Sopra Minvera. On the Creepy Catholic front - Saint Catherine's body is here (see second photo), but her head is elsewhere - Siena, I think. On the video/travel journal front, apologies to the two or three of you who are waiting for more - The Wife is ill, and I'm in Mommy mode.

The Pagan Underground...

JOB asked for more pagan stuff. I'm going to have to disappoint him, I'm afraid - this was at least half-pilgrimage, and the pictures show it. But St. Clement's basilica is built on top of the original St. Clement's basilica, which is built in turn on top of a pagan temple and maybe part of a Roman government building. Here, The Wife gets hints for retiling the bathroom - over 2000 years later, and the pattern still isn't dated.

Villa Borghese

Oh, and while we were in St. Peter in Chains...

...we figured we might as well get a shot of this Moses character...

Creepy Catholics

Death, death, death! These are from the wall of St. Peter in Chains:

Me (and the Colosseum)

And again, with a slightly less monomaniacal perspective:

Santa Maria in Trastevere

Okay, we're back, and my body clock is still messed up enough to spend a little time trying to upload some video at six in the morning. This is the church (and piazza) that was just down the street from our hotel the first night. The bit at the end is The Wife lighting a candle for an old college friend who spent a few years living in Rome, and who gave us huge amounts of fabulous help - including both hotels in Trastevere. (She was one of many in this regard - more shout-outs to come!)

Arrivederci - for now.

We fly home tomorrow. Most posts soon - with video!

A Little Something for Cubeland Mystic

Who knew the McDonald's in Orvieto sold ravioli with black truffle sauce?

Papal Mass on Anniversary of Death of Pope John Paul II

The Holy Father, seen from a distance, but seen:

Orvieto

Termini Johannes Paolo II

St. Cecilia's, a half-block down from the hotel.

Death is everywhere here...


(Statue of Saint Cecilia, post-martyrdom - burial cloth around her head, line on her throat indicating the manner of her death.)

...and yet, it is easier to believe.


(Statue of St. Therese in church of St. Cecilia.)

We Interrupt This Breathtakingly Beautiful and Annoyingly Idyllic Trip to Rome To Bring You... (NO, NOT ROME...)

...the latest casualty of the Iraq War: Jessica Queller's breasts. Because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of flesh. Or something. (Little known fact: The likelihood of Saddam Hussein developing WMDs from that great big nuclear stockpile of his was figured at 85.9 percent. So it actually makes perfect sense that Jessica declared war on her boobs.)

Anybody watch Felicity? Gilmore Girls? Gossip Girl? Are these shows as aborticontraceptively insane as their writer/producer? Is life imitating art imitating life here? (I'd catch up with iTunes, but I'm not getting paid for this.)

P.S.: Come to the farm. Soon. (For one thing, The Hollywood Farmer has a few seats to fill in the writers' room.)

(Now semi-bi-locating--if that's not a double-negative--at THF.)

Pantheon

Pantheon