Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity is, ideally or in principle, the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level

This, in the words of Wikipedia, is my contribution to the last weekend, alongside a steady and guiding hand in stopping you-know-who from turning tables and derailing (sorry Le Duc) the whole process.

It was one of the most intense moments of my life. There is little I can say to describe it. Those of you who will be unfortunate enough to hear me talk about it will be bored soon enough. But for me it was a life-changing experience. Something changed inside me. Something strong emerged, which I didn't know was there. Something that made me feel a man.

No sniggering ladies.

I mean it!!

Poised

I haven't been to Holland in ages. 20 years, if I am not mistaken. More or less. And my return is not - as I once hoped - to take advantage of all the sexual promiscuity and licit drugs the country has on offer, but to engage in a final battle with someone I once trusted and now think is a threat to my own future.

The gloves are off. There will be blood. This is no country for old men (or women for that).

V Day...

You know I love you...
XOXO

Very true

Some characters didn't get their fair mention. To begin with, Jon Kortarena, about whom all you need to know is that he was born in 1985, 10 long years after yours truly:



Then you have, yes indeed, no introduction needed:



As for the third mention, Nicholas Hoult: I am sorry, not really worthy of my blog. That fluffy jumper was just too offputting. And he still looks like a child!!

Ok, one more of Jon then:

A Single Man

Astounding. Beautiful. It made me fall in love with Colin Firth (whom I never really liked). It made me want to live with Juliane Moore (hang on, I AM going to live with her, at least with a shorter version of her character!!). And it made me want to be Tom Ford's best friend.

I will start wearing only black and white from now on.

Wonderful. Already iconic.

And I cannot feel an immense sense of underachievement for not having yet written, directed or produced such a great piece of art...!!! What have I been doing all along? Time to change my life...

Days of shame

It all started with this encounter. The mayor of Milan meets our World Saviour Muhammad Yunus and declares: we're opening a Hub for social enterprises in Milan. General panic follows in the ranks of yours truly. And the next thing we know, we're invited to meet Her Majesty Herself during a tour she's making on Saturday morning of an exhibition on sustainable architecture.

Describing the scene is really hard. Imagine Versailles at the height of Luis XIV's reign. Once a day, a selected group of beggars is let into the King's parlour, where their pleas are heard. The master of ceremony is the personal secretary, a small kind-faced woman hiding a will of steel. She decides who is to enter the chamber, so de facto decides the destiny of the city.

We join a large group of beggars into the museum, some 25 of us. The mayor makes slightly irrelevant comments on what she sees. Everyone nods emphatically, smiling even if there is nothing to smile about. By the time the exhibition is over, we move into the cafeteria area. The entourage moves a couple of tables close together, as the mayor sits in the centre of the display. A waiter comes up and warns no tables should be moved as the architect would become very upest. Everyone nods politely. Such is the power of design in this city.

The secretary points to us. We are the firsts to go. "Who are you?" - blah blah blah. "What do you want from the City of Milan?" - I really don't know what to answer. It's so obvious it almost hurts: you are opening a Hub and there is one already. Can't you just give us the money and be done with it? I mutter something about synergy and collaboration. She nods and says we should speak to so and so. And before we know it, she's speaking to the next beggar. It's all over in a few seconds.

And I feel dead inside, all my principles crushed. And the circus moving on...

the city

Apologies to those of you who speak Italian. Actually, no apology, you should know it by now ;-)

hello world!

It has been so long this almost feels like that moment in life when you are welcomed into the wonderful world of blogging with that ridiculous cry. Hello World? Oh fuck off. No one's listening, dude.

And yes it is shameful, such a long silence, but my life has been rather difficult and I didn't have anything to say. I won't use this as an excuse, however, so here we go with my top 20 list of the 2000s. No, they are not the best. They are the ones I loved. So to Tot F: no one is right!

1. Donnie Darko - no explanation required.


2. The Dark Knight - just mindblowing.


3. The Incredibles - so perfect it almost hurts.


4. Spirited Away - visionary


5. Amores Perros - what cinema should be like


6. Bamako - what cinema can be like


7. Mysterious Skin - painfully beautiful


8. Les Triplettes de Belville - a stroke of genius


9. 2046 - luscious


10. Chicken Run - weightless joy


11. Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain - a lesson in love


12. Cidade de Deus - a lesson in life


13. La Mala Educación - one of Pedro's best


14. Distric 9 - sci-fi like it has never been


15. Star Trek - sci-fi like it should always be


16. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 - quentin knows his shit


17. Beau Travail - better than brokeback m.


18. Mystic River - a ticking bomb


19. Sunshine - unforgettable


20. Hotel Rwanda - just because

Excited about this too

Kick-Ass

Trailer Park | MySpace Video

Although if I keep staying in Milan I am just going to keep on missing them all...

Chris Garneau - "Fireflies"

I liked this a lot. Inspired by Zelda, clearly, one of my favourite games of all times:

The entry point

Some of your have been vaguely clamouring about my lack of posting. It is of course all because of the fact that I am a VBIP, a Very Busy and Important Person.

This is what I was up to recently:




Yes, basically sitting around and drinking. Same old same old.
In fact, last week was a very important week, the one signalling the entry into the H space and therefore one very big step closer to my return to London.

Now all I have to do is fit it with lots of furniture (pics to follow soon of me being all butch and carpenter-y) and subsequently people.

Easy peasy.

Sometimes...

... all you need is a pick me up...



A reminder that when it all becomes a bit too much, there are always cartoons!

"Milan, darling. Milan!"

oh well

Two amazing videos I have been obsessing over for days

A question about the future

I don't want this to be a serious post, but I think it might be in the end. I am a little tipsy, in an unusually warm late-September night, and pondering about the future. And since the great majority of readers that stumble on this blog are my kin, I feel rather enticed to the idea of a good banging session. Plus, I need to get it out of the system, and the Internet is just perfect for a bit of global ranting.

Let me beging by saying: I was screwed. Not in the fun, lubed-up manner that we have all become accustomed to and that we all (some secretly some less) love. Nay. I have been screwed in the professional manner that is unpleasant, grating, humiliating and rather annoying, especially when the artful perpetrator was allowed to screw me not once but twice. The perpetrator is of course JR, the illustrious founder of the H.

I had maneuvered my position quite skillfully, or so I believed. I was to stay in the Southern provinces for as long as it took to consolidate JR's power on this side of the Alps. When successful, I would return to the Kingdom and be given a nice, pleasant castle with a good amount of land, a few lads on it to work, a view of the sea. With the new year, this agreement was to be set on paper and sealed. My return triumphant and my life back in order.

And then, something happened. A glitch in the system. A cat running twice past the doorframe. A deja-vu. I went for dinner with K, Tot T's former flatmate, and discovered why one should never leave the court. You might be fighting valiantly for your king in faraway lands, this is not going to stop him from betraying you and giving the land he's promised you to anyone who cares to ask. Not only did I get the backstabbing treatment, I also got the cold shoulder from his generals. I now seem to be treated like a pariah, and have no way to defend myself or to fight back, simply because I am not there. And even if I were, would I want to? Is this why I joined the H?

At first there was denial, I just could not believe this was happening. Then there was anger, I just wanted to grab someone's throat, wanted to shout and kick and punch and scream. Now there are resignation and indifference. Not only do I not care about this specific land any longer. Not only do I think the land wasn't THAT good after all. I simply don't want to serve this king. Period. In fact, I don't want to serve ANY king in the near, middle or distant future. Monarchies are, if you ask me, highly over-rated. Everyone should be his or her own king.

So here we are. As my conquering of the Southern provinces comes to a near-closure, the moment to decide what do to next approaches. And while before I felt I had the luxury of certainty, now I feel I am returning to a land where I have to start everything from scratch if I want to be my own boss. Trust me, setting off alone on a long and dangerous journey is pretty exhausting, when not outright insane. I've done it once, I have learned a lot, and I am not willing to do it all over again. But I will do it if I find something really worth fighting for. And I know I am good at it. I have proof now. I have achieved in just over a year what no one else has. I am returning victorious, a hero. I now have utter confidence in my abilities and I won't be fooled any longer.

So here comes the question, and the core of the post. When the days start getting longer again, I will be slowly making my way back to the Island, first for a week every month, then for two, then for three. And as I do that, I will need purpose and clarity, lest I go mad after months of passionate and focused work. So what - let me ask you all - should I do? What should I set my brain and abilities to achieve?

There are a few options in my mind, of course. There's carrying on administering the southern provinces, carving out a distant role for myself, with frequent flights back to probe, check and rally. But I cannot have my body in one place and my mind in another one. This is against nature, it'll make me sick and make those around me sick. I want to be back with both my body and my mind.

I cannot go back to the king's castle either. When I loose faith in someone, I never re-gain it. He lured me into working for him with false promises not once, but twice. I am not going to give him a third chance. That would make me, not him, the fool. No, this is a chapter that is closing for me, and sadly so. I loved this job. But we need to move on.

I could drop the weapons and pick another tool. Should I learn how to carve wood? I've always dreamed of making things, not just talking about making. It would be strange though, my brain at rest while my arms work. I don't know that I can do that. I have always associated work with my brain, my body an appendice used to carry my brain from a place to another one. Things could be different though.

I ask you, my friends. I ask you because you know me better than anyone else. Because I think you have insights I do not have. And because I am drunk and feel like posing the question. So give me your answers and let me hear you imagining my and your own future.

getting pretty obsessed

I just hope this time I get to the end!!

Aliens, next door

Seen from above, Cittadella is a quaint Medieval town in the Brenta Riviera of Veneto, some 20 km north of Padua. Its low townhouses speak of a quiet time when this land's sole purpose was to feed the aristocratic decadence of Venice. Its ancient villas, covered in moss and statues, were built by the region's most famous architect, Andrea Palladio, to give a countryside toy to the Republic's rich and famous. So far, so good. As I climbed on the 6:35 train from Milan to Venice yesterday morning, I was ready to meet this idyllic landscape in the deep, scary North-East.


Six hours later I was trying to hitchike my way out of it, shaking with fear.

The North-East is the site of Italy's second economic miracle, the one that started in the 1980s and turned a fomrerly depressed region (Veneto) into one of Europe's richest regions (in GDP per capita). Scores of former farmers started opening little workshops, then factories and warehouses, and before anyone noticed, they were churning out most of the goods designed and sold in Milan under the "Made in Italy" label. This - to make just one example - is prime Benetton land.


The deep North-East has long lost its agricultural identity. What were once endless cornfields feeding polenta to the workers of Turin and Milan's factories were soon turned into rows of industrial production sites. And as the cash started rolling in, farms became houses, houses villas, and villas palaces. But the inspiration did not come this time from Ancient Greece's classical lines, but from Vegas and Dubai. From those plastic cities of the world where sudden wealth pours into a formerly deprived area. The result is - to putit mildly - an anthropological and architectural collapse.


As I sat in the back of the car driving me to the meeting I was supposed to attend, I stared out of the window, progressively more nauseated. Warehouse. Bloated villa. Cornfield. Factory. Bloated villa. Cornfield. Factory. Warehouse. Cornfield. Bloated villa. On and on and on for miles.


Thankfully, the guys I was about to meet were the exact opposite of this lunar lanscape. Lago Design, cool, urban, intelligent and the most celebrated thing to emerge out of Italy's design world since... well... a long time. Not just their furniture, but also their factory, something you'd expect to see on an Alpine lake. And their personality, the kind of people you'd want to get drunk with and talk to until the end of the world. I was instantly seduced.


Once the meeting was over, I was dumped with my fellow traveller along a busy road, waiting for a bus that would take me back to Padua, and from there to Planet Earth. The bus was 30 minutes late. Hitchiking was useless, drivers glanced at us with the suspicion of the paranoid schitzofrenic.

When the bus finally arrived, I shivered when I noticed it was full of 15 year olds returning from school. But when I climbed onto it, I was even more shocked. The kids - about 40 of them - just sat silently in the chairs, or stood holding on to railings. The bus was quiet as a church. The kids LOOKED normal, but I have never, EVER been in a bus full of teenagers in my life without feeling my ears bleed. This is when I realised they are all aliens. Most of them climbed out of the bus before Padua. Their houses where along that busy road, grotesque villas fenced by their fathers' factories. Born into a trade. Dead before reaching their 18th year.

This is when I seriously wonder about the future.

Obsessed with Robot Chicken. Really.

A 3 act play

Act 1

Tot T leaves Milan after 3 months of absolute fun. Tot A decides not to plunge into a deep, dark depression (which as Tot C always explains can only be fought with large amounts of gin).

Act 2

Tot A embarks on a number of distracting and self-improving activities:

1. Chinese language course.
2. Physical activities in the gymnasium.
3. Business dinners to raise cash for the f*cking H*b.
4. Healthy eating (chili tofu, right?)

Act 3

Tot A gets drunk on large amounts of gin and cries incessantly from 8 pm to 1 am. Gets taken to hospital and sedated. Wakes up with massive hangover.

The End

Things that could happen in paradise: 1

Breakfast next to him:



Breathtaking.