R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

I have an issue with it. The people that were trying to convince me that being a childlike person is an irresponsible thing to do also pinpointed that respect was an important issue, so far so good, and that I was lacking a good perspective on it. They were right. Probably this is not a problem for most people, maybe most of us are born with it, but me, I was so unsure of myself, I had so little respect for me in the first place that I wasn’t demanding it from anybody else. I think normally life shows you a way to improve yourself and not in every case you need someone to spell it out for you. But while respect may come natural to some, I needed these people to turn a light on for me.

Since that light has been lit I have a fair good idea of what kind of respect I want. Thing is not every time I manage to make it clear.

As far as the people who turned the light on, I don’t like the way they act anymore. We fell apart. Because I started demanding more respect from them as well. How ironic. They weren’t treating me with any. They were just dictating the way I was supposed to be to their eyes. Take this for granted, I’m not going to explain, I warned you this past one has been the worst year of my life.

So one thing is to know what you want, one thing is to obtain it. And although I’ve learned my lesson and it was ugly believe me, I still find myself stalling when presented with respect demanding situations.

I have a theory why that is. I am not used to rudeness and arrogance. I’m not saying I’m perfectly candid, I may get on the unkind spot every once in a while, I may snap my friends and family from time to time but it’s overall really mild. What I’m talking about here it’s people that truly can’t hold their own. When that happens it always astounds me and I’m left wordless, hence I don’t ask for respect.

Let’s say you come up to me and we have some kind of relationship and you ask me nicely how it went yesterday, I am capable of answering: “Oh well, don’t wanna talk about it”. But if you barely know me and you sneak yourself under my nose in front of a lot of people, and I’ve never told you one single private thing about my life and you know it, and I didn’t come to you in the first place, and you don’t even care about how it went yesterday, you’re just asking for the attention, and you loudly go: “I’m so curious, I wanna know, tell me tell me!” like you’re a five year old talking about candy during a break at school, I should tell you: “Hey, this is not stickers you’re talking about Miss, it’s my life and I never gave you the impression that I wanted to share it with you and your rude stuck up manners, so go fuck yourself”, but I don’t. Because I feel uncomfortable offending people. Because I always try to moderate. Because I always try to avoid unpleasantness.

I’m tired of this attitude, it gets in the way of the respect I deserve. But at the same time I don’t want to start being the rude one and transfer to the other side of the barricade.

Is it just an excuse? I don’t know. But I had to suffer a shitload in order to get this lesson clear and I need to make it happen. I told the turning-the-light-on people that I was going to be fine and a good person and respect worthy even without them and as sure as hell I’m going to prove to myself that I can.

A long long time ago in a country far far away… (Episode I)

It is a period f civil war. Rebel children, striking from a hidden base, have learned to turn the TV on by themselves. It’s 1995, I hit puberty and discover the great world of teen shows. I watch them all and I start the infamous path that leads me to being a hopeless romantic. Also I’m fascinated with the backdrop of all these stories. I’m Italian, and half my family is from Naples. A country that offers you lockers in schools’ hallways to let you organize your things feels like an alien sorcery.

It may also be that I’m a child at heart and I recently discovered through the worst year of my life that that is who I am, and it doesn’t make me a lesser person or stupid or anything, and I have to accept it. A lot of people have tried to convince me that being a bit of a child is bad for you, and I believed them for a while. But you can change your outlook on life just for so long. I know now that you can learn and upgrade what you are but you can’t change it. I am, will remain and want to remain a free, optimistic, childish spirit, and I am now sure there is nothing wrong with that.

If the United States were a person they’d be my soulmate, because they are free and young and light hearted. I know I shouldn’t get the optimism in me take over and that bad shit happens, I watch the news for crying out loud, but in the midst of the filth that fills the world everywhere, you can’t choose who you love. US of A chose me.

Years go by and I get to learn more and more about the country. I should specify I am not a politic person, I just don’t do it. I like culture, and traditions, I’m a humanist.

Press pause.

Back in 1995 my habit of watching TV shows grew in a habit of watching films. Stories, tales, take my mind away, they make me live things that I wouldn’t even imagine. Books, movies, any sort of storytelling is the very core of being human. Escaping, being inspired, learning. Everything and anything can be in a story. That’s just how powerful that is.

It was this one movie that started it all. Back to the future. I was never tired of learning new facts on how they made it.

Flash forward to some years later. I’m in high school, I was a good student, and then I spent the rest of my time on rented DVDs or on Coming Soon Television watching films’ making-ofs. I would shed a couple of tears sometimes. A perfectly engineered shot, a swift dolly, balanced framing move me.

Graduation comes and I’m asked where I want to go to College. There really wasn’t any choice to be made. That’s when cinema met homework and it all became fucking good!

Here you have a young woman who just made the first real decision of her short life. And you remember how she was a humanist.

So she takes off and goes to live in Omaha, Nebraska for the summer…


Go to Episode II

Undercovers - Pilot

Pilots are always meah, you know, nothing’s really breathtaking, just a showcase of characters and situations. There are two exceptions to this general rule: Alias and Lost, both shows brought to you by a tiny man by the name of J.J. Abrams. Some things this man has written have changed my life. I would even watch a 7^th Heaven reboot if he was involved.

That’s why I didn’t think twice before tuning in to the series premiere of Undercovers. A.k.a. Alias 2.0.

Let me start by telling you how much I love Alias, better yet, let me show you how much I love Alias.

This is me at a TV show themed birthday party last week. LAST WEEK. So you get where I stand right? (on the left side I'm clearly cracking into a super secure remote system from a cell phone)

Let me start from the beginning. First scene of the show there’s a spy running away with a BAD ROBOT pen drive. Number one, I want that; number two, you getting confident J.J.? Awesome. Smirks. He then proceeds to launch himself off buildings while the drums of an old Alias score come tumbling in. See what I mean? I bet they didn’t even re-record it. And it gets better!

Our heroes are introduced and they own a catering service. Our leading lady has a stupid black sister. Francine anyone??

They have resigned from CIA five years before and they are called back on duty by an old bald guy whom we will see later on wearing a collar shirt and tie over boxers, comic relief. Now freeze. Since this notion is stated (the retirement not the boxers) I am never going to see these guys’ faces ever again. All I see is their bodies, and on top of those there are Jennifer Garner and Michael Vartan’s heads respectively. Come on. This is basically what happens some years after the end of Alias. Syd and Vaughn grow tired of the house on the beach and get back in the game. I don’t care about you, but that is the show I am going to be seeing from now on.

After a brief scene where we’re thrust with the notion that Syd and Vaughn are missing being spies after all, we are introduced to the astonishing new concept of a CGI postcard which announces the city where the action is going to take place. Wow this shit is avant garde!

I am not going to get into the details of the mission here but let me note two things. Throughout the episode I counted five different pairs of Loubs on this woman. Seriously? She goes to break into an apartment in Madrid wearing a white crepe pencil skirt suit paired with red patent 4.5 inch heeled pumps. Are you shitting me? All the while he looks like he just stepped off an Armani catwalk. I mean Syd had her fucking stylish moments too but keep it real you guys! Secondly I am nor Spanish nor French but I live close by both of these countries and I have never heard quite as good faux accents before. I’m talking every single spy show ever made. Need more dialect coaches? “No gracias estamos bien”.

When we go back to the first agent we met we are presented with the obvious J.J. self-reference. The chair scene. In the first episode of Alias flame hot red motherfucking Sydney Bristow was being tortured by the bad ass round glassed creepy Chinese guy. Here the blondie agent is being punched in the face by the bland chubby Russian guy.

Just a few minutes later we are treated with the second reference. The jumping off a plane scene. I would probably bet my Alias DVD collection that they used the exact same backdrop! Syd and Vaughn talking over the slide at the back of the aircraft, aw memories…

Finally our most favorite character of the J.J. Abrams franchise is mentioned twice: Langley, Virginia. I missed you so much!

I enjoyed the first hour of this show although my jaw never dropped and that’s news to me on a J.J. Abrams’ production. I am going to tune in again even if I’m still unsure if I ought to be happy he went back to his roots and still has it going on or biased because he’s serving us a re-heated soup.

The good, the bad and the UGLY

I confess I enjoy sinking my teeth into E! television. I feel it gives you the exact level of addiction while throwing in the occasional film backstage piece which makes it ok to watch and save appearances. So what it looks like: I’m interested in the making-ofs and thorough interviews. What it really is: reality, reality, REALITY.

I was going to be OCD about this particular train of thoughts, so I bookmarked interesting case studies on nowadays television and I was going to read them and make a wonderful essay out of it… That’s how my mind works. But I decided to fight it, so I didn’t read those articles and I’m just going for the dirt!

There are three shameless productions on tv these days that jump to the eye, each for a set of different reasons which I am going to judge because I am a paying viewer and I can.

GIULIANA & BILL

First of all God almighty Bill is fine. F. I. N. E. I don’t know what his deal is with Donald Trump because I don’t think we get The Apprentice here in Italy so first time I saw him I thought he was simply a motivational man running around the States getting paid to blab on granted stuff and be praised for it.

On a side note, I don’t get this kind of jobs. In Italy they would never work. Imagine someone getting in a conference room at some workplace and go: “To advance in your careers and be successful in your lives you have to be focused and hard working, sleep at least 8 hours a day, drink plenty of water and try to always be at the top of your game”. Even if this is just an example I can already hear blowing raspberries. We have grandmothers here for that kind of advice, thank you very much.

Anyhow, initially I thought Bill was this kind of useless guru but I found out later on that he actually does a bunch of other stuff too, which all in all makes him just more fascinating.

Giuliana I knew, being a consumed E! watcher, and I already explained how I like it for the movie backstages. And of course the serious show-business related news. What I didn’t know is that she’s funny and witty, kinda frivolous at times but mostly very grounded. I have the feeling she’s the best of both worlds. She gives me the impression that she’s worked hard to get where she’s at and she deserves to be happy and dwell on lighter sides of life if she wants to. Even though I love it when Bill crashes all of her over the top plans with his practical manly snaps, and muscular arms, and pretty hazel eyes, and perfect little scar on upper lip.

I enjoy watching these two because they are natural and never boring. Although this show is most certainly scripted it is not over the top, it’s not trying to typecast these two people. They don’t want to stand out. They’re graceful.

And of course my favorite moments are the ones that involve Italian speech of any sort. Holy lasagnas, she has the thickest accent. She doesn’t even speak Italian, what she speaks is a long lost dialect known to 100 year old people only. Your ears can be gifted with it just in the most remote villages around Naples, and here we have this woman who grew up in America, has a college degree and a public persona who speaks just like that. Hilarious! I am not even going to get started on her family, but I would take an Italianish speaking Bill Rancic anytime.

Keeping up with the kardashians

Here is a concept I don’t quite get: a whole family becomes famous because they’re so good at doing… Nothing! Now that the Kardashians are notorious I can understand why the usual nosey 21^st century person would want to see whatever happens in their living room, but back when the show started, when no one even knew who they were, how the hell did the network manage to make people interested in tuning in to this kind of show? That I don’t understand.

Let’s see how great this family is.

Kris Jenner. I don’t mean to disrespect but these type of mothers that would not only accept but dwell in their children being famous for being slutty and incapable at any actual craft I can only picture in the US. The country that works on appearance and publicity. Not saying that the rest of the world isn’t following close, but I don’t see any Kardashians in Europe yet. She says she works really hard but I don’t see how she can considering it must take her the whole morning to get dressed an have her make up done (you don’t believe me to buy that she does that herself do you?) and she spends a lot of the remaining time going back and forth to Miami.

Bruce Jenner. So he looks normal, he’s had his glorious past and he is now working as the abovementioned motivational useless guru. Why this occupation seems to be so popular I am not going to try to make out and I won’t repeat myself on how useless I find it. Useless. The thing is if you are as normal as you look Bruce, where the hell did you get the insane idea of marrying Kris?

Kourtney Kardashian. Excuse me for my limited vocabulary but I am to be reusing this word because I find it really fitting for a lot of names here: useless. The only storyline that the writers are able to fit her into is her ongoing drama with the boyfriend and the son because she actually isn’t good at anything else. She isn’t pretty, she isn’t witty, she’s winy and not at all articulate. Bad, bad example to put on television.

Kim Kardashian. I don’t approve of girls becoming famous for having big tits but at least I can see that she has made somewhat of a career for herself. Her voice is annoying but she was able to transform her sex tape and consequent invitations to showcase her body at big events in Hollywood into money making fragrances, calendars and publicity deals.

Khloe Kardashian. Big mouthed girl. I can see how being the ugly duckling she had to resort to some kind of wits to get her noticed, but that was probably good for her, because she looks like the only sister with a personality. Spoiled rich brat personality but still a lot more than I’d have expected for someone who was raised in this family. Also the writers make it look like she’s trying to do something with her life with various jobs at radio shows and managing clothes stores. Of course she only got those opportunities because her mom allowed her daughters to be slutty o television, and she never had to print a single resume in her life, but hey this world isn’t perfect and we all know that.

Kendall & Kylie Jenner. Poor babies.

Scott Disick. I don’t believe for one split second this guy actually is the way he is portrayed to be. He must be a very good actor because he is as close a douchebag to Johnny Lawrence in the original Karate kid movie, and that is a whole lot of douche. No one would have made a baby with this guy otherwise. All in all he’s my favorite character. At least he has some consistent dramatic distinctiveness.

I have watched marathons of this show, in strictly non-chronological order, so I didn’t get much of the storyline except it just keeps on repeating itself. I won’t deny it is well fabricated and addictive, but it is also so blatantly scripted that you might just as well watch an episode of The bold and the beautiful to the same enjoyment. The production behind this show is trying hard to make you envious of these three retarded chicks slapping to your fake-lash-less face that you will never have a perfect smoky eye at 7 am in the morning, you will never be able to buy a 5.5 million house in Bel Air with your basketball playing husband, and you will never be presented with free Chanel purses, while they all are.

KIMORA LEE SIMMONS’ LIFE IN THE FAB LANE

Just reading her name makes me sick to my stomach. She is the most obnoxious self-centered piece of fuck chubby woman I have ever seen.

She proclaims herself a model, a mogul and a mom.

Well, first off a mom doesn’t spoil rotten her 7 and 9 year old daughters. And I mean having babysitters lay down so that they can walk all over them, sending them to SPA treatments, having them model on catwalks, believe they are the princesses of the whole wide universe and they can do nothing wrong. A mom doesn’t disrespect her employees treating them like the vilest worms on the planet in front of her children. A mom should set an example and interfacing with your own assistants turning up your nose like they smell of crap and having them manually remove your boots because they hurt your fat feet is NOT an example.

Being a mogul actually implies that you have a successful business. As far as I’m concerned I have seen her golden plated faucets (ding ding) but I have yet to see a single decent piece of clothing by her. All she makes are cheap, tacky, animal print pieces of fabric where someone has vomited glitter on. I can only picture them on cleaning ladies. Not because the cleaning ladies are cheap and tacky but because they have a tendency to dirt their clothes during their working hours, and with the clothes Kimora designs that would not be a problem, cause you could throw them directly to the fire, no harm.

Lastly, shed the cloths from over the mirrors Kimora. You were a model, now you have five chins.

Night Brings Advice

I feel like I’m always running after something. Most of the times I swear it’s like I’m constantly doing the one thing I really don’t want to do, whishing I could be doing something else. Like I don’t know maybe Hurley walking to get to a Dharma dressing jar wishing he was already there.

When I was back in college I was studying all the time while all I wanted to do was watch movies. Once I graduated I could watch movies all the time but opted for intensifying my acting classes (which I loved btw) and wishing I was watching movies the whole time I was there. Then I finished film school and basically had nothing on my plate, which meant (I did this math) at least 5 movies a day, but instead I bought a lot of books and started playing soccer, which all in all takes up three and a half hours of my time three days a week. This past summer I packed a shitload of divx for my three weeks secluded stay at the beach and I ended up reading the fucking Twilight saga. This past month I was going to catch up on the movies Edward Cullen had me miss but got lost on creating blogs and learning how to RT and what the hell the pound sign means on twitter. Also decided to get excellent at taking pictures with reflex cameras and master the great p, Photoshop, awesome but still time consuming. Oh yeah and I went Extreme Makeover Home Edition on myself and devoted my perfectly movie-filled life to a couple of projects. Right now I was going to watch Sucker Free City by Spike Lee but actually saw the clock ticking while working my way in to the circle of trust of my brand new iPhone 4 who at the end of the day will have to love me back just as much as I love him!

And so I find myself disgruntled about another movie-less night where I actually did nothing, like Hurley sitting on his fat ass refusing to keep walking although he really badly wants the ranch dressing.

This not only happens with movies you know… It’s a pattern to my life. I constantly avoid the GOOD things and opt for the less good things because I want to save the firsts for later, in order to enjoy them more. And then later becomes really late at night and I find myself here like right now, in bed, with my favorite Tinkerbell PJ, laptop sparkling and fingers ranting on keys, wishing I had a couple more hours to watch moving pictures fill up the screen. But then again if I had those two hours I would probably resume reading the Harry Potter series where I left off…

Does this happen to other human beings???

Riflessioni

When I was growing up I thought I was this big shot unstoppable wonder woman, that nothing could hurt me or change me and that I was so young and yet already on a firm, strong path. I really felt that way and I truly believed it. Then 2006 hit and I realized that what I saw in me before was just a little part of what I could be. That being 20ish and independent was something I was rightly very proud of, but still just a part of the whole picture I could morph into.

This may be ridiculous but there was a guy in our school we nicknamed Dawson. Yes, because he was making films, in high school, with students, imagination, and a little of daddy’s money. But still he was making it happen. Unlike me, just sitting on my ass admiring how unstoppable I was, all the while being unstoppable at doing nothing, which kind of defeats the purpose right?

It took me 2 more years to realize that thinking about doing something doesn’t really make it happen, rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands in the dirt does. Maybe I had yet to find myself way more than I thought, because at one point it was crystal clear to me that I wasn’t happy in my shoes, that I was standing still. And I didn’t want to stand still anymore. I was craving for action, and I itched for a change. That’s when I thought, and believe me this was a recent discovery, that I could be the Dawson now, and explore those parts of me that were missing, the parts where the actions happen, the doing vs. the thinking, the creativity, without fearing of not being good enough.

That’s what I’m doing now.

I’m happy, but I wish this happened 10 years ago, that’s all I’m saying.

3D

My brother is leaving tomorrow for six months for the North of Italy to go study at a self-proclaimed big shot 3D graphic school. That makes for a lot of moving this year in the fam!

Anyhow, I’m gonna miss him like crazy and maybe that feeling jumpstarted me because I find myself watching a lot of crazy animation videos these days!

I wish I owned this craft!

Ready, set, go

I’m starting this project mainly for myself, for keeping track of the journey I’m undertaking and everything that happens along the way. This maybe my biggest experience yet and I wanna nibble on every bit of it!

Why I chose to follow this path is not a humanly describable resolution. It’s something I was born with. I am very proud of being Italian, although that maybe not the happiest statement at the moment. I feel an unconditional 27 year long love for Rome, the capital of the world, the capital of my heart. But there’s something else etched in me, something I am very thankful for, like I have a chance to live a double life.

My parallel existence started when I pursued learning English, the best fucking thing that ever happened to me. That was the opening of the Gate, the starting of the Flood. And now, many, maaaaaany moons after I’m ready to step my foot in the door and live both my lives to the fullest. I am ready to become an immigrant!!

Oh boy, how 1900s of me but that is exactly what I’m doing. I didn’t decide that the time was now, I just knew. There is really nothing here to hold me back and when I put off this journey the first time around I did it for a damn good reason, I got everything I could get out of it, I am grateful for it and it will always be a part of me. I never, ever, regretted it, not even for a moment! But now my train is stopping at this station again.

Only this time, I’m hopping on!

Cricci