Author: Chris

Writer, journalist, wanderer. "Gnashing," a blog about stuff — cultural, personal, important and frivolous. Lots about wanderlust and books and movies and memories. Much about travel and social observations. Hopefully entertaining, a little insightful, forever random and rambling.

My big birthday wish list (aren’t I worth it?)

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My birthday’s fast approaching. Here’s what you can get me (thanks!):

1. The hefty new book “Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears” by New Yorker staffer Michael Schulman. It sounds frivolous, and a lot of it surely is, but it also promises a chunky serving of cultural history about the loved and lambasted Academy Awards, dusted with tidbits, like the similarities between two of my all-time favorite movies, “All About Eve” and “Sunset Boulevard.” Reviews say it’s compulsively readable, if you’re into that stuff, and I am. The damn thing costs $40. 

2. Monkey 47 — A deliciously complicated and original gin that’s out of my price range by a good 30 dollars. I generally wait to get this bottle as a gift. So I say to you: Go for it!

3. A pair of Black Ghost sneakers from Italian brand Oliver Cabell. They run a gulping $270 (that’s with a $68-off promotion code). But these “fashion-forward” kicks are true beauts: top-notch black leather matched with clear rubber outsoles — not white, black or gum, but clear. They’ll probably rack me with flesh-shredding blisters, but what’s searing pain in the name of unspeakable hotness?

4. Dinner for two at four-star, impossible-to-get-into restaurant Le Bernardin in New York, where you can nosh an eight-course tasting menu with caviar and langoustines for a piddling $298 per person. I promise you a doggy bag. Maybe.

5. A round-trip ticket to Istanbul in the fall. Expensive, you say? Hey, economy class is just fine. I like pretzels.

6. Any ritzy anti-aging serum that’s not hawked by Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Lopez, those obscenely compensated airbrushed quacks. I’ve got a couple of crow’s feet that are absolutely mocking me. 

7. I chose seven gifts because my birthday lands on April 7. It’s a neat number, and a lucky one, too. But it’s awfully small. So how about $700 in cash, please. Cool.

Best. Birthday. Ever!

Quote of the day: Exactly how I feel about it

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“Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” — Teen philosopher Holden Caulfield

Dying for our sins, and for Italian food

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Like many Catholic countries, Italy is crawling with crucifixes, and Florence, where I’ve been for four days so far, is inescapably swept up in the cross craze. The objects, often beautiful pieces of art, are bloody, baroque, humdrum and horrific — a whole cross-section. 

Jesus died on the cross and we know that wasn’t pleasant. Naked, nailed, speared, bleeding, suffocating … you get the picture.

I do too. But what I don’t get is the exuberant, even perverse glorification of Christ’s grisly death. I sort of understand the symbolic power of it all — God willed it — yet wonder why people wear one of history’s worst torture devices around their necks. (And I wonder why so many heavy metal bands are morbidly obsessed with them. Dude!)

Speaking of bodily torment, today I stumbled on the rabidly popular sandwich stand All’Antico Vinaio — the kind of place with lines out the door — where I had been hoping to go but had no idea where it was. Pure kismet. This was after I took in a sprawling and mind-altering M.C. Escher (he sounds like a Dutch rapper) exhibit at the Museum of the Innocents, whose name has guilt written all over it. I didn’t know Pink Floyd was so into Escher, but it makes almost comical sense.

I couldn’t read the big menu board at the sandwich place — Italian and all — but I finally settled on the Firenze for seven euros, or just over seven bucks. The baseball mitt-sized meal consists of six heart attacks worth of salami, creamed parmesan and sun-dried tomatoes, stuffed between thinly sliced focaccia. It was fantastic, popping with flavor, and totally unfinishable. The pigeons had a frenzied feast.

The night’s meal is typically the highlight of the day and must be meticulously researched. For dinner I went to an old-school trattoria — defined as an “Italian restaurant serving simple food” — that ratings aggregates go gaga for. Even Michelin backs this joint. It was fine, but mostly wound up being overrated by dint of its noble, been-there-forever history. The giant glass of house wine was a plus at a meager four euros. I maybe eat one or two steaks a year and I ordered a sirloin (Florence is famous for superior steaks) and a seven-euro salad that was actually a few floppy, naked leaves worth about 15 cents. 

The steak was solid, but it dawned on me: As yummy as they are, steaks are like pancakes — they get boring about half-way through. I was glad I didn’t get a true “Florentine” steak that so many diners got and chewed on for like an hour. Those meats are the size of the cut from the opening credits of “The Flintstones,” a slab so big it tips over Fred Flintstone’s car.

As far as Florentine greatest hits, the other day I visited the awesome 17-foot-tall marble nudist David, by Michelangelo. I didn’t mention it before, but here’s a peek (it’s almost obligatory, isn’t it?):

Flitting about Florence

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The humongous duomo (cathedral) that is the centerpiece of Florence slams you with its blunt-force beauty. Instead of describing it, which would reduce its flamboyance to a clinical chill, here’s a couple of shots that hint at its Renaissance marble glory:

Elaborate, bold, proud. And yet the cathedral’s interior is almost naked, largely stripped of art and artifice, the gaudy trimmings of Catholicism. Except for some stained glass, it is cold and gray, stubbornly spartan. 

But then you look up at Brunelleschi’s mind-boggling, logic-defying dome and soak in Vasari’s “Last Judgement,” one of the world’s largest paintings, a spectacular sprawl of doomsday religious commotion. I craned my neck and arched my back for a proper peek, stretching body parts that I’ve never used before. The painting, which gives the interior a dazzling kick, is outright sublime.

As is Florence, which at times seems to be one enormous fashion show cum gelato shop. That’s not a complaint.

Last night, I ate my first sit-down dinner here at a highly acclaimed restaurant (ristorante!), whose groovy chef/owner wears so many arm bangles he practically looks bionic, or like a distant cousin of C-3PO. He’s one of those characters who hangs photos of himself with celebrities like John Travolta all over the joint. 

Today, to see more of Tuscany, I beat it about 40 minutes outside the city to Chianti, land of fine red wine. I was with a tour group of mostly swell people for a wine tasting and damn it started early. We had to meet at 8:45 a.m. and the drinking began at 10 a.m. sharp and lasted till 1 p.m. We were all baffled. But it turned out well and I was back at my hotel by 2:30 p.m.

The guides basically left the group tipsy then thundered off in the big bus. Everyone I talked to said they were going to go take a nap, which I shamefully admit I did (for all of 20 minutes). 

At one of the wineries, three Labrador Retrievers roamed the idyllic grounds when they weren’t begging for belly rubs and general adorable attention. I liked the dogs immensely, even more than some of the wine poured so generously — and frequently. This place is vino mad, and I like it.

Getting there is half the battle, but so worth it

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It’s a blinding blue 60-degree Monday in Florence, Italy, and I just about broke my neck slipping on a yellow glob of melting gelato on the sidewalk. Except for the fact that I almost became a paraplegic, I will not complain. 

See, this happened a block from my hotel, which — both boon and bane — is plumb in the fluttering heart of the ancient Renaissance city center: the Duomo, Medici Museum, Academia, Uffizi, and I’ll stop before this embarrassment of riches makes me flush. I say bane because it’s teeming with bodies — though, from what I gather, most are locals; they’re speaking Italian and looking stunningly chic. Locals are good, even local tourists. They almost always make a journey better. Fellow American tourists? Meh.

Yet I’ve only been here an hour, so what do I know? Maybe I’ll get mugged, or pummeled for persistently mispronouncing grazie. Big plans await this week in Tuscany, a region peppered with medieval towns and fecund vineyards and a particular tower with dismal posture. I will tour cathedrals and museums, take day trips to crumbly towns, and sip vino, nectar of the gods (next to bourbon and gin).

An angle of the Duomo, Florence

Getting abroad is always fun for me, ha. I can’t sleep on the seven- to 10-hour red-eyes, and this time I had a delightful layover in Munich, where the short flight to Florence was delayed and my fortitude, eyes and shoulders were drooping gruesomely, Quasimodo-ly. 

Finally we were herded into a standing-room-only shuttle bus and dumped at the bottom of steep stairs leading to a tiny jet. Ascending, I felt like Joe Biden, like I should turn and wave to the press scrum and his half dozen fans.

I had a bad feeling about this winged, rickety rust bucket. When it finally got off the ground, creaking and rattling, I was reminded of a bi-plane, or worse, one of those tiny-tot airplanes you put a quarter in and rock about on the curbside in front of Safeway or Target. 

But we made it, despite the bloody fingernails and crippling jet lag. More on how the hell it’s all going down later. For now, a much-needed cocktail at swooningly classy bar/restaurant/book and flower shop La Ménagère, a stone’s throw from the Duomo:

Oscar mired

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I haven’t seen, and will not see, James Cameron’s latest self-regarding epic of glorious wonderment and spine-tingling astonishment “Avatar: The Way of Water.” I loathed the first “Avatar” — its stupefying clichés, cornball story and embarrassing gravitas gave me the willies — and I have no need for three more hours of blue-hued pablum and pixie dust.

Still, the movie — which The Guardian torpedoed as “a soggy, twee, trillion-dollar screensaver” — is of course making bundles and is, Christ, nominated for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars. It’s all so predictable, and so terribly depressing.

Cameron’s mammoth, mystical, magical 3-D cartoon joins nine other Best Picture contenders, a few of which look interesting. I’ve only seen four and a half of the 10 films, but I know what I like — and what to shun. 

The list isn’t totally offensive, yet it’s certainly not in the league of, say, the Best Picture roster of 1976: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Barry Lyndon,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Jaws” and “Nashville.” (Top that.) 

Still, I did enjoy Martin McDonagh’s chatty, touching tale of a foundering friendship, “The Banshees of Inisherin,” as much for its shattering performances (led by Colin Farrell, all knitted brow) as for its emotional fragility. Baz Luhrmann’s typically over-caffeinated “Elvis” biopic was fine if rather pat and conventional considering its Visine-demanding razzle-dazzle.

I could not finish the highly (and curiously) lauded metaverse mess that is “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” its great and fitting title aside. I don’t know who this steroidal video game is aimed at (yes, I do: freaks and geeks) and I found it incoherent, unfunny and frenetically unwatchable. The baffling part: It will probably win Best Picture. Seriously.

I long ago stopped trusting Steven Spielberg not to bow to bathos, and his latest, the autobiographical melodrama “The Fabelmans,” looks like a hot, bubbly bath of bathos. Respectable reviews apart, I’ve heard it’s dreadful, only confirming my hunches. Michelle Williams is up for an acting award and I hope she gets it. She’s terrific and is likely one of the few watchable things in this movie I will not watch. I don’t even like the title.

Nothing against that elfin egomaniac Tom Cruise — I happen to think he’s an underrated actor — but I also won’t be squandering two and a half hours on “Top Gun: Maverick,” a popcorn flick without the laughable high-minded pretensions of “Avatar.” How this show about penises with wings got nominated I will never know. Because I won’t be seeing it. But good for it!

In Todd Field’s “Tár” a commanding Cate Blanchett plays the titular classical conductor, an imperious and imposing figure, the artist as viper. A chamber piece cum character study, this coiled drama entrances with theatrical flair and a seriousness that lends it a sheen of prestige. I like it.

Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s famous anti-war novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a huge German production directed with gloomy zest by Edward Berger and starring piles of mutilated war dead. It’s grisly, affecting and deeply human. The film shimmers with ghastly beauty and unstinting realism — irresistible Oscar bait. 

Snubs? While I’m happy Noah Baumbach’s irritating “White Noise” was dissed wholesale, the rejection of delirious Indian action orgy “RRR” for Best International Feature Film is scandalous. (Though it is — whoopee — up for Best Song. Watch it on Netflix. Please.) James Cameron, self-proclaimed King of the World, was denied a Best Director nod for “The Way of Water.” I bet he’s having a seismic hissy fit.

Finally in the Best Picture race are Sarah Polley’s #MeToo-ready drama “Women Talking” and Ruben Östlund’s dark international satire “Triangle of Sadness,” neither of which I’ve seen yet. Critics love them. They are probably good, maybe even superb, and for that they will win nothing.

A brief winter reverie

~ Chris ~ 1 Comment

A crisp Sunday morning and gaggles of children hoot, holler and gambol outside. It is the sound of chaos. (And, to these gentle ears, terror.) 

Temperatures are far higher than the last couple of freezing days. At 47 degrees, the sky is a glowing gray, sun struggling to burn through the haze. A fine winter day.

The children are out at last, released from the arctic prison imposed by the polar vortex, or whatever hit us with only a whisper of snow, for which we’re grateful. Snow is lovely, until it’s a big brown Slurpee. 

It will hit 60 later this week, an unwelcome augur of springtime. I’m all about the 40s and 50s. I have plans to go to Florence, Italy, in one week and the forecast says low 50s and I couldn’t be happier. I can see you frowning, and I don’t care.

But spring is a’coming. I had a dream last night that colorful leaves — red! green! yellow! — were blossoming on naked winter branches. A dream? More of a nightmare. 

So save for the one-day dusting, there’s been no snow this season. The children above — those huggable hellions — have been deprived of sledding and hurling balls and making snowmen, however virtuosically deformed the creatures invariably turn out.

It’s been a mostly mellow winter, a zigzag of 20s to 60s, so heat lovers and outliers like me can split the difference. That rotund rodent Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow a few days ago, ergo we are promised — blessed with — six more weeks of winter, they say.

Hang tight. All this brisk glory will soon be usurped by sun and sweat and pollen and long days and children screeching outside and the warbling tune of the ice cream truck and picnics and baseball and tank tops and flip-flops and other fashion misdemeanors. It’s going to be a massacre. For now, I’ll do what I can: just chill with the chill.

Sleep? In my dreams

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Counting sheep is for chumps. When I can’t sleep I engage in fun activities:  tossing, turning, kicking, getting up, lying back down, pounding the pillow, cursing like a Tarantino badass. It’s almost aerobic and so I don’t feel quite as horrible that I didn’t fall asleep until 5:36 a.m.

Wrong. It’s always crummy. I’ve had so many sleepless nights, I’m ready to press a pistol to my groggy noggin. Then, then, perhaps I’ll catch a few winks. But with my luck, no.

Why is insomnia so vexing? Partly because it’s so seemingly controllable. For instance, I won’t touch caffeine after 1 p.m. and even then the sandman, that skulking rascal, that creepy home intruder, will fail me badly. 

I can yawn all day, reading and writing, taking a brisk walk, watching some Netflix, and still I’m like Linda Blair in her jumpy two-poster bed, bloodshot eyes glaring at the ceiling, arms spread Christlike, mouth a satanic rictus, steam billowing from that hideous maw. (OK, that last bit is slightly embellished.)

I am possessed, but not by the devil. I am bedeviled by churning thoughts, junk my brain can’t turn off, even when — and this is true — I’ve taken a full eight Benadryl antihistamine pills, which are famous for their soporific powers. I know people who can take half a Benadryl and sleep through the next three days. Yet the stuff won’t pierce my impervious wakefulness.

Occasionally a Clonazepam or two works wonders. That is rare. And when I do nod off, I’m haunted by uncomfortably vivid dreams quivering with cameos by my late parents, old co-workers, deadlines, writing, weird travel, ex-girlfriends and a random monstrosity, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I can’t remember the last time I had a truly pleasant dream. In that case, maybe sleep-deprivation is a blessing, not a pillow-punching curse.

Nope. I’d trade a long night of exasperating insomnia — which entails a full bleary-eyed day of feeling like the cranky undead — for a good snooze with bad dreams. Insomnia, after all, is a waking nightmare.

What am I on about? I’ve been sleeping pretty soundly lately, though the other night required pills and pejoratives to achieve a solid snooze. At one point, I kicked the comforter off the bed, bolted up and tried to read, fuming. It was well past 3 a.m. I read two pages, doused the lights, tossed, turned, eventually falling asleep around 6:30. I was a positive joy to be around that day. 

I can’t sleep on trains or planes, a bad look for this inveterate traveler. Once upon a time, equipped with an eye mask, ear plugs and the occasional jacket thrown over my head, I could zonk out on a red-eye flight. No more. For reasons unknown, I’m now Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange,” eyelids cranked open with medieval clamps.

It’s all so tiresome, literally. I’d prefer eyes wide shut, to name-check another Kubrick film. For now it’s a battle, a nightly crap-shoot, will I snooze or lose? Let me sleep on it. Please.

Taffy, teeth, terror

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I’m guessing that many of you aren’t familiar with Abba-Zaba. It’s an aggressively old-school candy, invented in 1922 and enjoying its height of popularity in the 1970s. It’s still around, available largely at specialty and retro candy shops. It’s a bar of white taffy filled with peanut butter. It’s delicious. It’s gooey. It’s lethal.

I loved them as a kid, when my mouth wasn’t a constellation of expensive dental work. And I got one in my Christmas stocking recently, either as a joyous surprise or a malicious joke. Either way, I was giddy. 

Still, considering the crowns in my mouth, I knew I was holding TNT. And yet, flinging caution to the wind, I unsheathed the sweet alchemy that is an Abba-Zaba, stripped it of its iconic checkered wrapper. I even paused to puzzle over the candy’s nonsense name: Abba-Zaba. Something about A to Z? Whatever. I took a bite.

I knew what I was doing. Or so I thought. I tried my best to keep the taffy away from my three crowns, sucking it and chewing mostly with my front teeth, almost rat-like. Peanut butter oozed and the sumptuous confection was kept under control, if you will. 

Evidently sustaining that exercise is next to impossible, because, pop, out went my rear right crown. I have to wonder what kind of glue they use on crowns — Elmer’s? 

I’m a numbskull. This is the second time a chewy candy has suctioned out a crown. Once a pink Starburst dislodged a crown with a swiftness that almost seemed spiteful. What just happened? I thought and then pulled out a gold beauty attached to a pink beast.

This time there it was, a silver crown, shiny, perplexed and despondent, all by its lonesome. It floated around my mouth before my tongue could catch it, frog-like. I cursed the Abba-Zaba, threw away the rest of it with a gulp of rue, a flash of ire, and sealed the crown in a plastic bag to bring to the inevitable dentist appointment. 

My dentist wasn’t familiar with Abba-Zaba until I educated her about its ravishing (ravaging?) delights. She confessed a mean proclivity for peanut butter. (Taffy, I presume, is anathema to dentists.) We both agreed I was a fool. Me to her: “I made the genius move of eating taffy.”

The good doctor, whose bedside manner is made of sprites and unicorns, glued it right back with a seamless dexterity that would make an orthodontist cry. (I almost cried, especially when I got the bill.) Pleased to report that weeks later my old crown is holding strong with the new adhesive, which I’ve been assured is not Elmer’s, rubber cement or school paste.

But my adventures at the dentist did not end there. Three weeks later — today — I had my biannual cleaning/check-up, something akin to a periodic colonoscopy, but, you know, about a thousand times better. The dentist mentioned to the hygienist that I had a crown reattached recently, but she mistakenly said it came out naturally.

And then, boom: “No, wait! He was eating taffy!” She chortled. And there I was, on my back, feet elevated part-way in the air, a paper baby-blue bib around my neck, smiling wanly and murmuring, “Yeah. It was an Abba-Zaba.”

It just dawned on me that the hygienist probably has no idea what in the world that is. 

A flaneur in Florence

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The frivolities in my life are legion, but travel isn’t one of them, despite how trivial a far-flung journey might seem — or ultimately be. (Most trips soar. Some sink.) 

In three weeks I head to Florence, Italy. Though I’ve been there twice, the last visit was in the Paleolithic Age. I wanted something mellow, somewhat familiar, distinctly European, with lots of marble, museums, manicotti, and mustaches on both men and women.

The city is a cornucopia of artistic abundance: Michelangelo’s David; Donatello’s bittier David; the Uffizi, that Renaissance eruption of Botticelli to da Vinci; Ghiberti’s bronze doors; Brunelleschi’s dome; the locals’ luxuriant facial hair.

I was last in Italy in March 2022, ferrying between Rome and Naples, the latter a bracing revelation, rough-hewn and bristling with a singular urban snap. As novelties go — serpentine side streets, graffiti, killer Neapolitan pizza — it sort of kicked Rome’s ass. In July I swanned to beautiful Buenos Aires. In October, magical Madrid.

Florence seemed like a good middle-ground — encrusted in a glorious past but not overly exotic; grand but not overwhelmingly vast. It’s not like going to jostling Taipei, say, or sunbaked Algeria, which I hear is majestic. Yet Forbes did name Florence the most beautiful city in the world in 2010.

No, this would be a week luxuriating in western art, architecture, food, drink, scenery, inhaling the rarefied air of undiluted enchantment. I imagine me a self-styled flaneur, strolling the cobblestones, gilded walking stick in one hand, tipping my top hat to passersby with the other. And then I snap out of it and pinch the bridge of my nose.

Florence is not massive. So I’m making at least one day trip to Central Tuscany, namely Siena and San Gimignano, medieval towns cluttered with Gothic architecture and honeycombed with history. The region is also a wellspring of Chianti, and tippling some of the red elixir from the source is essential.

I have made five restaurant reservations in Florence, from a traditional trattoria to a Michelin-star bistro. I will eat pasta and pizza and exist — and subsist — a bit like Stanley Tucci, without the bald pate and skinny chinos (but with the dashing scarf). I might also employ a larger vocabulary of superlatives than just, “This is so good” when I taste something delicious.

And though Tucci meets up, and hams it up, with lots of local hosts, he makes it appear he is his own man, ambling the streets of Italy, the stylish flaneur (that word again), when really, of course, he’s accompanied by a small battalion of producers and technicians taping him all the way.  

If life were only like that. I travel solo most of the time, by choice. But once in a while it might be nice to have a crew of professional sycophants at your beck and call, filming you, powdering your nose, providing the background about everyone you’re about to meet and everywhere you’re about to go so you appear super smart and amply informed. 

I do what I can. I read books, watch Tucci and Bourdain, comb the net, view movies. In the end, I’m still alone, tramping about the glittering city, whose promise is assured. I think that’s pretty cool. And I think that’s quite enough.