August 2006 Archives

As you may know, I prefer unposed snapshots, although I recognize they’re no less deceiving than posed shots in depicting reality. Or as New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote in 1997, “all photographs are contrived to the degree that the photographer chooses the image, framing what is to be in and out of it.”

For instance, this photo of Dana at the window of our hotel room in Rome is sorta quaint—the light and shadow, the Old World shutters and the new world glass window, the architecture of the building across the way and the Vermeer turn of her head—but the actual action depicted is her mild annoyance at me for photographing her as she clipped her fingernails. I think she may have been trying to hit the loud accordionist on the street below.

And now your perception of a photo has been altered to something you were probably better off not knowing.

You know how when you’ve been gone a long time and you return to notice the pleasant smell of the place you live in—maybe old wood and soap and a slight mustiness—that you never normally notice because it’s always there when you are? I like that.

After our 6 a.m. wakeup call and the last of our daily cappuccinos and cornettos, croissant-like rolls that are the nearest the Romans have to a universal breakfast food, Dana and I got bussed out to the airport. We had annoying Irish kids on our flight; the girl next to Dana put a handful of Maltesers in an empty Pringles can and shook it until her Dad told her not to, whereupon she laughed at him, he did nothing and she resumed shaking. Across the aisle, the ADD-racked boy sitting next to me kept quoting a line he claimed was from The Simpsons but which I’d never heard (and now can’t recall) while he opened and shut the windowshade until I wanted to reach over his ineffectual mother and punch him in the neck.

Back in Ireland, we were greeted by a downpour, then gorgeous sunny skies only minutes later, in the grand mercurial fashion of the country. I got a pint of Guinness with Dana at her house’s favored pub, Granger’s, shortly after which I shipped back out to the airport for my six-hour-plus return flight to JFK.

My gift from Aer Lingus was a half-full plane upon which I could stretch out and sleep. I discovered that I require the width of three seats for this purpose; or, expressed as an algebraic equation, 3s=J. There was a jackass family on this flight, too, with three kids that kept running around as if their brains were being bombarded by prions, while their father, a large tattooed meatsack whose neck was the diameter of my waist, shouted unheeded advice from his seat in a gravy-thick New York accent.

The travel may have been rough, but the vacation itself was, as they say, molto bene.

I haven’t mentioned much about the places we’ve eaten because they’ve been mostly good and mostly all pasta. We did discover that food lovers must steer clear of Rome in August: many recommended restaurants are closed for the whole month while the owners and staff vacation, presumably in America. Here are some other tips:

• Order the house wine. It’s cheap and good. Everyone says this and it’s true.
• Sit outside for better people-watching.
• To tip for a dinner, round up the bill to the nearest dollar amount or chip in 10%. Aggravatingly, Romans aren’t expected to tip but tourists are.
• Finally, beware
  • menus with photos of entrees
  • waiters who attempt to corral you in from the street
  • restaurant names in blatant English (one I saw was called “That’s Amore!”)
  • restaurants with red-and-white checkered tablecloths

Not all Americans abroad speak loudly, but whenever an abrasively amped voice here turned heads, it was attached to a cornfed blowhole: the woman in the gelateria under the impression that speaking louder and slower made her English comprehensible to the Italian-speaking clerk; the woman in the hall recounting her life story to some poor soul at 4 a.m., heard clearly through our hotel room’s door; the bratty teen on the street who whined to her parents, “I want shoes. Shoes, shoes, shoes!”; the trattoria patron trumpeting, “Excuse me! Sir? Excuse me! Can I get some ice for my Coke?”; and the usual couples arguing over directions, which start out using the word “hon” in a patronizing fashion, followed shortly by shouting.

But while anyone can hear an American, I found it tough to distinguish them on looks alone. At the Uffizi in particular, I entertained myself with a guessing game based on clothing, hair, eyewear, even posture, then sidled near to see if I could overhear what language they may have been speaking. Unfortunately, I heard little because the Uffizi attracts reverent patrons (although that could just be doggedness from the long wait in line). Most of the time, though not always, I found the stereotypes hold true: Americans like clothing with logos, ballcaps and bad shoes.

After a brisk tour of Villa Borghese, Rome’s second-largest public park, we hit the streets for a touch of shopping. We discovered gray-painted antique wooden stalls in a lot, manned by friendly vendors selling old and antique books, prints and postcards at reasonable prices. It was exactly what I thought the Porta Portese flea market would be and I wish I would have written in my notes where these vendors were located.

If you are a lady in search of funky-fresh stylings from yesterday and today, you must hit Via del Governo Vecchio near the Piazza Navona. Mixed in with pricey antique dealers are snug little joints that smell pleasantly of thriftshop must, stale cigarette smoke and bargains. Dana snagged a retro black skirt in a flower print at a place called Cinzia Vestiti Usati, which boasted old records, eyeglasses and shades, boots, leather jackets and other stuff. Dana located but passed on a pair of billowly purple silk pants that I imagine Carly Simon donated in the late ‘70s.

Dana and I can tell we’ve neared the end now that we’re scraping the guidebook for stuff yet to do in Rome. Also I have the makings of a cold, with a scratchy throat and a snot-filled skull that makes my head feel as heavy as it looks. I won’t speak of this pending illness again because it makes me sad and angry to get sick on vacation.

Bless Lonely Planet and its well-written guidebooks. But trust no one guide fully. Lonely Planet’s 2006 Rome City Guide recommends the Porta Portese flea market in Travastevere, hinted as a charming Sunday-morning diversion. Don’t go. It’s a gauntlet of cheap Asianmade clothing, wallets, jewelry and bric-a-brac shilled by shitmongers worldwide, plus the addition of Roman hillbillies hawking bootleg DVDs, watches and cigarettes. All this stuff I could buy on Eighth Avenue in New York’s Garment District. And the buyers at the market are the Roman equivalent of trailer trash, swarming around the weary tourists such as ourselves who also likely wanted to have a word with Lonely Planet author Duncan Greenwood.

Later in the day, we purchased audio self-tours at the Pasta Museum because we though the place sounded funny, but it was overpriced and the placards were in Italian. I did learn the sentence Se la farnia è argento la semola è oro. (If flour is silver, semolina is gold.), that Italians have eaten dry pasta since 1154 and that the starchy staple is available in more than 300 shapes. I didn’t learn, however, why Italians started eating pasta and why they haven’t stopped. I mean I know it tastes good and all, but I suspect there are factors at work here that the museum was too loath or lazy to cover.

Our day closed with what we thought would be a high point but was another letdown, Il Gelato di San Crispino, or in English, Rome’s most lauded ice cream shop, endorsed stateside by hipster director Wes Anderson and The New York Times, whose ass-tonguing review is laminated and posted outside.

Maybe we got bum batches, but not only was it the most expensive gelato we ate (and we ate it at least once daily), it was the blandest. My bourbon-vanilla tasted of neither. Dana’s honey flavor tasted of nothingness. It was soylent gelato. But the badness didn’t stop there. The countergirl, clad in an eye-searingly white paper hat and crisp cloth smock, seemed to delight in leveling off the cups and cones instead of piling it on the way everyone else does. And you can’t view your gelato pre-purchase there; it’s closed in clinical, stainless steel pots with little holes where the scoop handles poke out. All you have to go on is a sad little placard printed with the flavor.

Most gelato is merchandised under a glass-fronted counter/freezer cabinet in what appear to be stainless steel steam-trays, each the dimensions of a very large meatloaf pan. The gelato is heaped in there, labeled and optionally topped with related décor. If it’s pineapple flavor, for instance, there may be a spiky pineapple top planted in there. Tiramisu flavor is sculpted and layered to resemble the dessert. At one place, there was a whole mango halfheartedly plunked atop the mango gelato. “Better something than nothing,” seemed to be the cheery philosophy there.

This visual styling is a blast but the real reason you want your gelato on view is to gauge its consistency. We skipped several outfits where the wares looked melty or resembled cottage cheese. In its proper consistency, gelato has a tough-to-describe texture different from American ice cream. It’s almost tacky in texture, but still creamy, yet not as filling as the U.S. stuff: strangely tasty. My favorite flavor was pistachio, which at one place included bits of real pistachio nuts.

Most valuable gelato tip: layering multiple flavors is not only allowed, it’s often encouraged. Mix it up for maximum tastiness!

Today at the Piramide station¹ on the Metro B line, I spotted a vending machine, except instead of containing gumballs or friendship bracelets, it was stocked with ladies’ underdrawers for sale, wadded into small snap-top plastic bubbles. “At least they seemed to be clean, new underdrawers,” I thought.

Vendable unmentionables isn’t as perverted or unusual as it may first seem. As we discovered, underwear is a major feature of Roman retail. In certain segments of the city, especially the high-rent one in which our hotel is located, there’s an underwear boutique on every block, several with slowly rotating underwear-clad mannequins of the human torso positioned in the front window, so you can check out that thong front and back.

There may be an association between ubiquitous lingerie and the fact that you see couples in Rome, presumably Italians, making out all over the place: in cars, against walls, at the supermarket, on the Metro, just standing there in the piazza, etc. I would not be shocked to learn that making out is listed as a top hobby of Romans, along with buying underpants and not neutering their dogs, which you also really can’t help but notice.

Rome’s a city in love with with its history, culture and self, and that love rubs off on its citizens. I got the uncomfortable impression several waiters and most of the assholes on the street peddling long-stem red roses thought Dana and I were married. One insisted on taking a photo of us together at dinner. Another said I was “a lucky guy,” which I am, but not how he meant, I think.

¹ So named because when you exit the station, right across the street is the famous Pyramid of Caius Cestius. Yeah, I never heard of it either. [back]

Dana and I took a Eurostar train from Rome’s Termini station up to Florence for a day, where the highlight was Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia Gallery, a shoddy place with the poor lighting and fake red brick floor of a shopping mall food court circa 1985.

It’s fortunate the statue was moved indoors in 1873 because you can see the apparent effects traditional weather and/or modern phenomena like acid rain have had on Italy’s buildings, monuments and sculpture. I noticed this in particular yesterday at the steps of St. Peter’s Piazza, which are scarred with tiny blackened pits of decay that collect rainwater.

If you’ve only seen David in a print, the statue is much larger than you think: 17 feet tall¹. His hands and feet, detailed with intricately realistic veins, seem exaggerated. But maybe this is appropriate for a giantslayer strong, surefooted and clad in nothing but his wits and a slingshot. His stature and gaze are simultaneously stoic and youthfully relaxed, shy even. You’re allowed to snicker at his dick, resplendent with abstract whorls of pubic hair, but NO PHOTO, as the plainclothes guards shouted. Dana tried to do so anyway, but a clear-eared guard heard the slow and sneaky rip of Velcro on her camera case, chastised her and glowered at us until we left.

Later we advanced slowly in line for the Uffizi Gallery while watching cretins jump queue and shitmongers shill art posters that they scooped off the cobblestones and hid every time a blue-uniformed poliziotto sauntered by. Once inside, I enjoyed German Renaissance man Lucas Cranach the Elder‘s diptych of Adam and Eve from 1528, but mostly Eve, who I think looks hot. (Is that wrong?) Also hot is the obvious standout of the Uffizi, which I didn’t even know was there until we saw it, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Venus bewitches, but so do the tumbling, entwined zephyrs personified on the left, blowing her ashore in a frisson of flowers.

I can tell you that if portraits of Madonna col bambino quicken your pulse, then the Uffizi—really probably any museum in Italy—is for you. It’s clear Italians are reverent superfans of Mary & Jesus, but all those paintings of mothers and children ran together in my mind until I started skipping them altogether.

¹ Photos of canonical artworks like this (and the Mona Lisa, The Persistence of Memory, Rodin’s The Thinker, et al) are nearly always cropped tightly. Or they’re cropped loosely but without people or other scale-establishing elements. Travel guides love the latter because they imply romantic exclusivity. That is, you the tourist-viewer can walk right up to these famous works and bask in their beauty and have them all to yourself and your goosebumps. In reality, you will discover the museum has a heart-stoppingly long queue of guidebook-purchasing yahoos like yourself and the gallery is as packed as a Japanese subway car at rush hour. But the true determent of reproductions is that is no one realizes the scope of the actual artwork. This explains why, if you eavesdrop on people clumped around, say, The Persistence of Memory at the Museum of Modern Art, the #1 topic of conversation is disappointment or incredulousness over how small the thing is. Refreshingly, David is at least three times larger than most everyone imagines, plus buck naked, so everyone wins. [back]

All roads lead to Rome, they say. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you that Roman traffic is comprised of gnatlike swarms of motorcycles and scooters, although not as many Vespas as I’d have thought. At rush hour, you see men in handsomely trim suits and women in dresses and heels incongruously wearing helmets as they motor to or from work.

For drivers favoring four wheels, a roof, and not much else, Smart cars are all the rage. As small and cubelike as a two-seater can get, they take up as much space parked parallel or perpendicular to the curb. With customized trim and upholstery jobs, and as curved, shiny and vividly colored as fingernails freshly manicured and polished, I would not be surprised to learn Smart cars were actually manufactured by Apple.

At least the Romans know where they’re going. For tourists, especially now during vacation season, the way is crowded and confusing. Streets end abruptly and turn into different streets while others seem to have more than one name at the same point. For the orderly and appreciative of city plans resembling grids, Rome maddens. Everything curves. Maps resemble a pile of spaghetti. At most every corner and intersection, visitors consult a map or guidebook and squint up at the sides of the buildings. There on the walls, the names of Rome’s tortuous vias are chiseled, headstones marking the death of carefully plotted directions.

Based on horror stories I’d accumulated from Rome-ing friends and coworkers, I feared pickpockets and ne’er-do-wells. I spent an inordinate amount of time shielding Dana’s bag from potential Vespa-borne snatchers. But the only busy hands we witnessed directly were outside the high walls of Vatican City where a tagteam of gypsies bum-rushed the American behind us in line; he stayed with the caller on his cellphone and said, “Hold on a sec; someone’s trying to steal my wallet.” Dana and I theorize we were spared such malfeasance in general because in certain light and stagings, we can appear vaguely non-American, as long as we keep our yaps shut and steer clear of McDonald’s. I think it’s the black plastic spectacle frames and our proclivity for “interesting” clothing.

The Vatican Museums comprise nearly a dozen interconnected small galleries or mini-museums, at the end of which is the Sistine Chapel, which, let’s face it, is the reason everyone’s there. Most of the comparatively minor stuff leading up to that iconic fresco gets the short shrift. As we hustled through with the other cattle, I was surprised to spot in the modern art gallery a few of Dali’s religious themed paintings, and especially one of Francis Bacon‘s more sedate papal portraits, still a strange pick for hardline Catholics. The artist usually painted a pontiff trapped in a transparent cube, head exploding in a gape-mouthed vertical smear. A scathing 1974 article in Time of the Vatican’s modern art holdings contained this well-put Bacon bit:

The only distinguished image of a Pope in the collection is one of Francis Bacon’s variations on Velásquez’s Innocent X. The gift of Italian Automobile Tycoon Gianni Agnelli, it sits, mouth open in a feral and silent snarl, glaring at the sacramental kitsch around it. But that it should be hung as "religious" art is unconscious black humor.

The Sistine Chapel is essentially a dim, high rectangular room packed with people shoulder-to-shoulder milling around like it’s the world’s quietest, slowest rave. From their vantage point on the steps leading up to the altar, guards shout NO PHOTO whenever they see a camera or a flash. Alternately, they shout SHHHH, which sounds impossible, but judging by the noisiness of the crowd, it’s something they’ve had lots of practice at. These interjections quash any epiphanies or grandeur you may plan to experience viewing Michelangelo’s masterpiece. You’ll be standing there, reverently contemplating God bringing life through the limp hand of Adam when suddenly SHHHH! NO PHOTO!! SHHHHHHH!

In the Vatican Museums cafeteria, we composed and mailed postcards to family. While waiting in line for lunch, Dana noticed the holy city peddles wine packaged in what appear to be children’s Tetra Pak juice boxes.

Back outside, we walked over to nearby St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s big. Really big. It holds 60,000 people and there’s likely enough airspace inside to fly around in one of those lightweight airplanes without knocking into anything. The Pietà, an eerie marble lump of disproportion, sits near the front doors in an alcove behind a floor-to-ceiling sheet of plastic to prevent further lunatic hammer attacks.

In the basement, nearly 100 popes are entombed. Everyone tried to cluster around Pope John Paul II‘s tomb, a simple white marble affair located not far from the site of St. Peter‘s alleged remains. A bouncer-like guard only gave everyone about 15 seconds facetime with the sarcophagus before shooing them on down the line.

Outside in the square, the clownishly clad Swiss Guard stand stoically with their lances as tourists photograph them from a distance. If they can help it, the only part of them that moves is their beady eyes.

The architectural highlight of Rome for me was the Pantheon. Like much here, that thing is old; it’s not even the original Pantheon and it was built circa 125. But what blows my mind, particularly as Dana and I stood inside, directly in the center, and looked up, is that modern structural engineers can’t fully explain how the fuck the temple’s 5,000-ton dome stands up. If you were to hire a team of burly men from New Jersey to recreate it using modern building materials, it would collapse under its own weight.

Eggheads theorize the Romans used different grades of concrete, starting with the dense and heavy stuff at the dome’s base, graduating up to lighter composites, then topping it off with a pumicelike substance. (It’s beyond me why someone can’t just X-ray the thing or something to find out definitively.) There’s also a hole centered in the top of the dome, which helps disperse weight and in a perfect balance of form and function, lets in light majestically. It also, of course, lets in rain, but the Romans covered that by secreting several drains in the marble floor below.

We toured the Pantheon early this morning, which was a fine idea, because there was no one there except a few early risers and a wandering elderly priest cassocked in white, probably assigned to provide a colorful local human element for tourists’ snapshots.

Raphael, who died in 1520, was buried at the Pantheon on request and his epitaph is the most conceited I’ve yet read; I love it.

Ille hic est Raphael timuit quo sospite vinci rerum magna parens et moriente mori.

Here lies Raphael. When he was alive, Nature was afraid to be bested by him. When he died, she wanted to die herself.

Later in the day, wandering around near the Tiber River, we happened upon the Mouth of Truth. Dana gave it a try and managed to retain her hand. It’s strange that a manhole cover could become a talisman and tourist attraction, but I’m sure the Audrey Hepburn association doesn’t hurt.

We had trouble locating Domus Aurea, a.k.a. Nero’s house, but found it closed for renovation, a curious status for a ruin. We scaled the lunkish Castel Sant’Angelo, a onetime fortress near Vatican City. Via a secret tunnel, the pope could flee to the stronghold if the Vatican came under siege.

We dined on the Piazza Pasquino at Cul de Sac, foremost an enoteca with an astounding 1,500 varieties of wine, most of which line the walls inside the narrow dining room. Tiny rope nets run the length of the lowest shelf, presumably to prevent bottles errantly nudged over the edge from conking a diner on the head. I had deliciously browned and savory involtini, beef rolls that reminded me of the ones my mom makes, right down to the toothpicks that hold the shape.

If you ever plan a trip to Rome, the most time-saving tip I can offer concerns the Colosseum, which, as you know, was famous for drawing 500,000 bloodthirsty fans for the spectator sport of Billy Joel‘s world tour-concluding concert this July 31st.

The tip is to buy your eight euro ticket for the Palatine a few hundred feet away, an attraction with curiously short lines for ruins representing the oldest part of the city on the centralmost of its Seven Hills. That ticket will gain you admission not only to the ruins but to the Colosseum, where the lines are bafflingly disorganized and long.

Other highlights were the Roman Forum, the Musei Capitolini, where an evil woman shouted at us in Italian to check our bags, and the Spanish Steps, which, unless I’m missing something, are famous for being sat on by crowds of tourists.

I had pizza for dinner and although I’d never tasted the signature Italian alcohol, I insisted on Campari apéritifs from a bar near our hotel. That stuff’s too bitter even for me. The eager-to-please bartender first served it straight up (too bitter); added orange slices, shook it in a Martini tumbler, strained and added fresh orange slices (too bitter); and finally dashed the drink with grenadine and re-tumbled (still too bitter). I gave up on mine although Dana drained hers.

At the Trevi Fountain, Dana and I dug out two low-denomination euro coins. Dana opted for the forward flip and I tried to sidearm mine like skipping a pebble, but it only plunked and sank. Later we discovered we’d done it wrong: a traveler must toss in his coin over his left shoulder to ensure a return trip to Rome. I guess we won’t be back.

Get too close to the edge or even think about splashing around in there, as was made famous by Fellini‘s La Dolce Vita, and one of many roving cops will stop you with a shout and a whistle. Exceptions are rare. A coworker who visited Rome this year told me that by remarkable coincidence, she was at the fountain at the precise moment the country’s footballers won the World Cup. Everyone immediately leapt in and went nuts.

If you pack a banana for your transatlantic travels, good for you. That’s a lot of vitamins and potassium, and fresh fruit can be hard to come by on planes and in parts of Europe. On the other hand, take care to remember you’ve placed the banana in your backpack, lest it get smooshed by the travel guide, umbrella and David Foster Wallace book in there, resulting in a slimy, baby food-like paste smeared all over said items and the interior of the backpack.

I’m off on vacation to Rome, flying out this afternoon and returning late Tuesday, August 29th. You know the drill: entries here may be delayed, but eventually I aim to post a full daily travelogue. Enjoy the remainder of August!

Continuing my series of reviewing movies or TV shows with bits that freaked me out when I was young, I recently rewatched Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, which I remember seeing on TV at some early point after it appeared in theaters in 1982. Other than Ricardo Montalban in general and several things Shatneriffic (toupee, girdle, halting speech, “Khaaan!”, etc.), there’s one big kid-freaky thing in this sequel: Ceti eels.

Y’see, to extract information about why Chekov and Captain Terrell are on Ceti Alpha Five, Khan drops a sluglike Ceti eel into each of their space helmets, then puts the helmets back on their heads and has their hands held tight behind their backs. The eels drop onto the faces of Chekov and Terrell, and as for what happens next, Khan explains:

[T]heir young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion. Later as they [dramatic pause] grow, follows madness. Death.

In closeup, this is quite blatantly a special effect, with ears sculpted from what appear to be glycerin-sweated blocks of Hickory Farms cheese, but it’s still unsettling. No one wants a bug entering that orifice. This scene ranks up there on my list of movies with Unsettling Body Part Torture, which memorably includes teeth (no, not Marathon Man; Cast Away gets my Tremulous Wince Award), eyeballs (A Clockwork Orange or perhaps Blade Runner) and fingernails (Syriana).

There are benefits to having friends here who work in bookstores. One is to hear of juicy encounters with celebrities, as when Katie, who manages the children’s department at McNally Robinson, assisted David Bowie in buying a small toy guitar for his daughter, or when Sting grazed his tantric body against Andie’s in the elevator at the Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble.

The tangible benefit is the review copies the girls occasionally loan me. Review copies appeal to me because although they’re professionally printed and bound paperbacks, they’re uncorrected proofs rife with exciting typographical errors. Also, let’s face it: if you’re a bookworm, it’s cool to be reading something a full month or two before most everyone else. I often read books on the subway and when it’s a review copy, I like to think someone will glance at the cover with jealously, but this is a city where commuters barely register the sudden incongruous appearance of breakdancers and mariachi bands.

To the point, after our trip to Rhode Island, Katie loaned me a review copy of Mark Haddon’s second novel, A Spot of Bother, which will be issued to the public on September 5th. Haddon wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I haven’t read, nor did I know much about him. In deference of my usual practice, I made a point not to read up on the author or his books, even the promotional blurb on the back of Bother, so I could judge it on its merits.

Few authors I’ve read more accurately capture the disconnect between what people think, what they say and what they do. Really that’s what the book’s about. It’s the story of a middle-class English family, normal in its dysfunctions and miscommunication, and it’s laudable for a writer to capture the essence and dialogue of “real” people like these without resorting to tics, archetypes or other writerly schemes. Haddon especially excels at crafting believable dialogue for his cast. In many books, the characters stunt-double for the writer, especially when male authors are writing non-male characters of a different age; in Bother, they have independent voices and actions, accurate to who they are.

George Hall, the lead in that bothersome spot, is a retired designer and installer of playground equipment whose mind wanders and who fears three things: leaving the comforts of home, dealing with his family, and death. His wife Jean finds him difficult and loves him but is having an affair with one of his friends, David. Their daughter and son have their own issues. Katie, a stubborn free spirit, is torn over whether she should marry Ray, a caring lunk of a guy. She has a young son from her first marriage, Jacob, who speaks and acts precisely as I’d imagine a Bob the Builder-obsessed kid would. Jamie, the son, is a gay real estate broker who fears he’s losing his sister as he’s challenged by his own relationships.

The third-person narration shifts each chapter to another character, offering his or her thoughts, dialogue and points of view. Haddon sticks to this structure rigorously, which means the characters’ appearances, relations and ages are rarely described outright, although they’re inferred through action and dialogue. This structure is perfect for a novel about familial communication because it ensures the narrators are unreliable. Each character thinks and acts on his own, so whose view represents reality? Jean, for example, feels her lover David is charming and sophisticated; much later in the book, Jamie summarizes him as, “Dapper. Suntan. Roll-neck sweater. A little too much aftershave.”

There are many thoughts the characters don’t share or act upon, while misreading those of others. It’s like a real-life version of those movies where the guy and the girl keep missing cues and opportunities so obvious to the audience that you want to scream, “Just kiss her, you jackass!”

Everyone’s story thread gets sucked into the tempest of Katie’s wedding in the final quarter of the book, culminating in a sudden but long-time-coming action that sends cutlery airborne. The problems of the Halls get resolved by The End, although it seems especially sudden and convenient that George would so suddenly shake the cobwebs from his head. It also wasn’t until this denouement that I started sensing serious movie-treatment vibes. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book hadn’t already been optioned for a Major Motion Picture by the same folks who produced Four Weddings and a Funeral or any movie adapted from a Nick Hornby novel.

But the short of it is that I liked A Spot of Bother, with its conflicted characters, crisp, believable dialogue and a focus on the aspect of relationships that Jamie sums up well in two simple sentences: “He needed to be close to someone. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted?”

Greetings from Miami, Home of the Humidity. I got up at 2 a.m. today to catch a 3 a.m. car for my 6 a.m. flight out of La Guardia, because the TSA monkeys are still suggesting we arrive early to cover for their gross inefficiency over the liquid terror scare. The problem is, everyone arrived early. There were already a full 60 people in line when I arrived at 3:30 a.m. And not for screening: for checking in. Because American couldn’t be bothered to open any earlier than normal. Plus, it was annoying, because as a flight to Miami it was chock full of Summer Breaking youngsters, many of whom it seemed had never been in an airport before. Also, there was an entire teenaged baseball team checking in at once, complete with coaches and long duffel bags stuffed with bats. By the time I got through the lines and waiting, it was 30 minutes until my flight. Once aboard, the requisite shrieking baby across the aisle challenged my sleep, but I nodded off twice and the flight passed quickly.

I rented a Taurus at the airport, because I’m meeting with a bunch of bigwig real estate executives this week. Unlike D.C., Philly or San Francisco, where I made similar trips in the last 18 months, everything considered the Miami Metropolitain Area is spread out across three counties, connected by perpetually jammed routes like I-95 and no reliable public transportation.

Because I’m so bad at following directions, I opted for a car with one of those GPS systems that digitally maps the vehicle’s location and announces where to go. I spent the first 15 minutes shouting at it. First, it didn’t even tell me where to go from the car pickup garage. Then—and I swear it did this even after I entered my correct downtown Miami destination—it gave me directions back to the drop-off area at the Miami Airport, which I stupidly followed until I realized too late that it was trying to ditch me. As the day wore on, I got the hang of it. My favorite feature is that I can drive in a random direction, which is how I usually start map-plotted trips, and the GPS will immediately chart a correct alternate route based on my waywardness. The interface is clumsy, as any data-entry device without a keyboard will be, and it takes me a good five minutes to enter my coordinates. But better that than than trying to unfurl a map of Southern Florida as I hurtle down I-95.

My hotel, a franchised Days Inn, is really, really cheap. There’s a dead cockroach on its back in the closet, which bothers me considerably less than finding a live one. In fact, I’m going to leave the carcass there as a warning to any living insects, like a head on a pike.

The blue collar neighborhood behind the hotel is comprised of low bungalows with rippled terra-cotta roofs and stunted palm trees poking from stiff-grassed lawns. Walking around back there late this afternoon, I noticed lizards the size of tiepins skittering up tree trunks and across the sidewalks. They’re probably considered vermin, but they’re cute, with their tongues darting out and their spindly legs.

Good for you that the hotel has free wireless internet access, that I might bring you this thrilling entry. Wireless internet is quite plainly the most expensive and recent capital improvement that’s been made to the place. I believe the furnishings, duvet and curtains can be carbon-dated to the Carter administration. As long as my room stays quiet, air-conditioned and alive bug-free, what more could I want?

We held a real estate conference this morning in White Plains for the Westchester, New York market for which I moderated a panel discussion on Yonkers. The panelists and I had a conference call last week to talk about what we were going to talk about. Among the panel’s politicians and economic development officials, there was much hand wringing over the phrase “affordable housing.” Suggestions of “workforce” or “obtainable” were named instead, words that have specific meanings but in this case were being used as euphamisms or Newspeak like “downsizing.” These phrases were debated for a full five minutes of the call. And there was a strict warning not to mention a shame of Yonkers from the past that’s still having repercussions on the city’s success today: desegregation. Conspicuously absent from the conference call was the panel’s star, Yonkers mayor Philip Amicone, who dispatched a minion to the teleconference in his place. Later I realized this may have been a maneuver by him to speak his mind on the panel without bowing to suggestion.

During the panel, he flat out talked about not only affordable housing (that’s right: housing for poor people), but desegregation and he used the phrase white flight, which caused several panel members to look down at their water glasses with a grimace, though they seemed resigned to the fact that he was the mayor and he’d do whatever he wanted. Yet he seems far from a dictator. After the panel I thanked him for his candor, and he said he picked up his low-bullshit way of talking practically and getting things done from his previous civilian job as a civil engineer. “And if I don’t get re-elected, I’ll go right back to doing that,” he told me, as if he’d rather be designing a particularly majestic suspension bridge.

1. *Lydia didn’t leave for a better job as she’d suggested. Her boyfriend, 10 years older than her, made her quit to be with him as often as possible. He made her sell her Jeep, took away her cellphone and carefully monitored her friends. Those friends she had told her to watch out, or else in five years she’d be a stay-home mom with three kids and no life. But she was smitten with the guy. She had a photo of the two of them on her desk at work, he standing behind her, two-feet taller, his large hands over her shoulders. He may have hit her once, a few years back. Or maybe she really did walk into a doorframe, or whatever that excuse usually is. Nobody’s heard from her in awhile.
2. George can’t stay awake at work. His body lolls until his head hangs low, nearly touching his computer’s keyboard. This only happens maybe every other day for a few minutes at a time, then he snaps back up and resumes work like nothing happened. His cubicle is positioned as such that only one person can see him, and she’s being discreet. There’s talk of drugs; he does seem to be in the restroom a lot. Then again he’s young and handsome, muscular. Maybe he only stays out late.
3. Catherine flat out told Bennet that nobody liked him—really, just that: “Nobody likes you.” He was over at her apartment at the time, just sitting on her couch, when she sprung it on him. What his reaction was, I wasn’t told, but knowing him, I can imagine it was one of sheepish resignation. And if that wasn’t enough, she told him that if he really hated his job so much, he should just quit. It’s unclear whether this is a shame of Catherine, Bennet or of them both. But what kind of person tells someone that? And what kind of person wouldn’t know he was despised to that degree?
4. Eliza choked on a piece of chicken at a business luncheon a few years back. She was surrounded suddenly by 300 concerned executives, who had stopped eating to form around her a loose, staring ring. One man stepped forward and performed the Heimlich maneuver, but it didn’t take, and he had to do it all over again before she chucked out the partially chewed meat, 300 concerned executives watching it land on the carpet. She tends to bring this up when someone at a cocktail party spills wine on himself or drags his sleeve over the butter at dinner. “At least you didn’t choke on a piece of chicken in front of 300 strangers,” she’ll begin. So I suppose it’s not much of a secret. But she never told me.

* Names have been changed to ones picked at random from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The neighborhood was alternately vacant and hip-hoppin’, on account of the Comite del Desfile y Festival Dominicano (on Amsterdam Avenue between 191st and 192nd Street), not to be confused with the Dominican Republican Day Parade (on Sixth Avenue from 36th to 62nd Street), both of which were held today. The sidewalks in my neighborhood were crowded with cookouts. People leaned from passing cars shaking Dominican flags and cheering. And when I was on the A train this afternoon, someone mashed play on a jambox, launching a lively tune with Spanish lyrics. On perfect cue, random groups of strangers dressed in red, white and blue spontaneously broke into song.

My mom mailed me some brittle pages from the Sunday Magazine of the Toledo Blade dated August 18, 1974 that she found in a dresser drawer. Check out these Holly Hill summer fashions in Easy-Care Polyester available at Lion, a local department store chain. For only $16 apiece, you could sashay among Ohio society in the Skimmer with self-flip-tie on the left or the “Fit and Flare” princess dress on the right.

Storms back east delayed my flight home from California about four hours, so the redeye scheduled to depart at midnight took off around 4 a.m. Pacific time. Airport innards have the most soul-sucking atmosphere anywhere, so I waited outside as long as I could stand to, enjoying the fresh air and watching the red-alerted cops bitch at drivers lingering in the drop-off/pick-up zone.

I checked myself into the airport at midnight and found a quiet spot in a near-deserted gate area, in a corner between a wide pillar and a windowed wall, where I formed a little nest. I put on my light jacket for warmth, used my backpack as a pillow and curled up on the hard carpet. I slept fitfully under repeated PA warnings about liquids and gels. I listened to Sarah McLachlan on my iPod and through my floor-level window watched the nightshift on the tarmac empty trash. At one point, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and thought someone was making off with my stuff or looking to challenge my territory, but it was only a young lady plugging her cell phone charger into the outlet above the one I’d commandeered for my iPod.

Although I don’t think the recently foiled terror in the UK was responsible for the delays, it certainly didn’t help. Inefficiencies lingered. The airports recommended passengers arrive two to three hours early due to heightened security. TSA grunts at Ontario were hand-searching every piece of checked baggage, right next to the airlines’ check-in areas, and confused lines snaked all around. When I arrived at JFK the gate areas were a bazaar of the weary and desperate. I could relate. I tried to muster an understanding smile but my face was too tired.

Traffic advanced haltingly on Harlem River Drive and I arrived home after the long cabride in a stupor. I feel asleep unexpectedly and woke around 7 p.m., disoriented and shaky, like Han in Jedi, freshly thawed from carbonite.

Donny: Those are good burgers, Walter.
Walter: Shut the fuck up, Donny.

My joy in flight is childlike. I board a plane in New York City. I sit and watch VH1 Classic, Mythbusters and two episodes of Band of Brothers. I get off the plane. Now I’m in Southern California, surrounded by desert, mountains, palm trees, oddly vivid sunlight and hot, dry air that makes me sweat only if I move. None of that stuff is in New York! That’s a neat trick.

The restaurant Gino is renowned for its glossy red wallpaper, printed with slung arrows and leaping zebras, their white yellowed but stripes still vivid black. It’s like the pattern on the necktie of a crazy uncle, and probably as old. Until the post-6:00 p.m. dinner crowd began trickling in, I appeared to be the only diner there who hadn’t lived through World War II, which is when the restaurant opened.

Five people were already eating dinner when I arrived, or one for every member of the waitstaff, who talked among themselves against the far wall. The servers were dressed in starched gray tuxedo jackets with cuffs trimmed red, black bow ties and pants. They greeted by name several of the regular patrons, who were tight-faced women in big sunglasses, gorgon hair or Bloomingdale’s hats, and lots of rings. The men were dressed in knit shirts and sportscoats.

Bluebloods aside, loosened-tie neighborhood types drank at the polished wooden bar in front, and after awhile, additional younger people arrived to eat. A strange scene, although unless the draw is an ironic hipness to mingle with the elderly, it’s probably for the large menu and no-nonsense Italian food.

I had the stuffed zucchini, topped with finely chopped herbed meat, breaded, sauced, then draped with three stripes of mozzarella and broiled. Tasty! Post meal, my server brought out my espresso still in its old-fashioned aluminum moka pot and poured it for me.

Gino

• 780 Lexington Ave. (between 60th and 61st Streets)
• (212) 758-4466
• Meal 27 of 52: stuffed zucchini ($14.50), glass of house red wine ($5.50) and an espresso ($3.50).

If you store a mysteriously chunky, semiliquid foodstuff in a Mason jar wrapped in a torn plastic grocery bag, then place it in the common fridge at work, right in the middle of the top shelf, you’ve opened the floor for commentary.

The locusts, joined by a rooster for good measure, woke me this morning, heralding another fine sunny day in Rhode Island. During breakfast, I watched Howard, Laura’s cockatiel, cautiously creep inside an empty cereal box, where he composed a whistly tune. If translated to English, it would be a punk song with the lyric “I’m in a cardboard box” shouted over and over again.

For the second and final day of the Newport Folk Fest, Patty Larkin opened on the main stage, with some twangy-folksy songs I liked, particularly “The Book I’m Not Reading,” which makes me want someone to read me stories, and a cover she dedicated to one of her two kids, the Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.”

There was also Abigail Washburn, fingerpicking a guitar and singing country songs—in Chinese—with backup by Ben Sollee, who plays cello as one would play a fiddle. Patty Larkin performed again, joining a troika of Muriel Anderson, who sang sappily but played a mean harp guitar and virtuoso jazz guitarist Mimi Fox. Here’s a photo of Patty from that set, snapped from our awesome seats three rows from the stage.

Through the day we also heard Madeleine Peyroux, who was too Norah Jonesey for me, though I liked her cover of Randy Newman’s “I Think it’s Gonna Rain Today”; Odetta, the husky-voiced African-American folk pioneer of the ’50s and ’60s, who had a great run on Ledbelly’s “Bourgeois Blues”; and the standup bass/steel guitar combo of the Wood Brothers.

One of two hands-down highlights was the closing act, the Indigo Girls, who inspired the crowd to sing, clap and dance along by playing a blend of fan favorites (“Chickenman,” “Dairy Queen”), radio hits (“Galelio,” “Closer to Fine”), at least four cuts from their forthcoming album and a two-song encore that included a haunting rendition of “Kid Fears.” They even awarded their guitar tech a cheesy trophy for 10 years of faithful service.

The other bright spot was infectiously cheery bluegrass singer-songwriter David Rawlings and his unbilled guest, musical partner Gillian Welch. They knocked out raucous versions of Dylan’s “I am a Lonesome Hobo” and Jesse “the Lone Cat” Fuller’s “The Monkey and the Engineer,” a silly song about a curious monkey that seizes control of a locomotive and cranks it up to 90mph on the mainline run.

We hit the road home directly after the festival, over cathedral-like bridges toward the fireball sunset. Dinner at an Applebee’s near Mystic was crappy, but the remainder of the trip was fun as we sang along to ’80s songs on the radio until losing ourselves looking for the Saw Mill River Parkway.

Laura called to see how the festival played out and how our drive was proceding. She also told us she discovered a horned owl in her barn and that she was stung by a bee today for the first time ever, a wonder considering her years of gardening. It was a tense moment as she waited to see whether she’d have a severe allergic reaction. She didn’t.

The locusts in Laura’s backyard made a valiant attempt to wake me but the earlier-rising jackass with the lawnmower won out. After a quick breakfast of hazelnut coffee and Peace brand breakfast cereal, purchased from the local dollar store and billed as “70% organic,” Katie and I took a 30-minute drive off the mainland onto Newport Island for the Newport Folk Fest.

I imagined it’d be populated by arthritic hippies, and there were a few, both onstage and in the crowd. But it may be inaccurate to call it a folk fest when performers represent not only that genre, but soul, funk, pop and country. Katie put the name game to rest by saying folk is a mindset. If I were cynical, I’d suspect the diverse lineup was to boost attendance; BostonHerald.com reported that the crowd of 4,000 today was one of the smallest in 20 years. But with a bow to brotherhood/sisterhood, love and Ben & Jerry’s Peace Pops, I’m satisfied with Katie’s definition.

Really though, 4,000 appeared like a lot of people to me and didn’t even account for the freeloaders in sailboats, yachts and kayaks that pulled as close as possible to the island to overhear the music. There was something for most everyone on the three stages of various sizes, which were positioned just outside the looming shale and granite block walls of Fort Adams, the largest coastal fortification in the country. Vendors stationed about peddled crap like dreamcatchers and didgeridoos, and I wished the fort could have been temporarily remilitarized to cannonball them into the harbor, especially mismatched and roundly mocked corporate sponsor Dunkin’ Donuts. Some of the stuff for sale wasn’t bad; Katie bought a straw hat with a beaded turquoise band and a plum-colored peasant skirt.

We listened to a lot of music, planning our movement between the stages and staying for sets by folksy The Duhks, ’60s soul diva Bettye LaVette, and Sonya Kitchell, a too-breathy 17-year-old who had trite lyrics, but a smooth, lush pop sound cranked by a stellar band. We had just a touch of Rosanne Cash, too dislike her daddy for my tastes. Closer David Gray drew the biggest crowd and dismissed his band at the end of his set to grab an acoustic for two covers: the appropriate finalé of Soft Cell’s “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Mansion on the Hill,” inspired by the grand old mansions visible on a far shore.

Highlights were Chris Smither, who sang his humorous tales solo, then shared the stage with Darrell Scott (who resembled Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski) and Jeffrey Foucault. All of them picked and strummed like men possessed. Katie and I also liked Louisiana singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier (pronounced go-shay), whose clear voice and lyrics tell sad and funny luck-down stories, including one referencing microwaving a chicken TV dinner, then getting drunk while eating it. Her between song banter was funny too, mentioning that Dylan has made it tough for folkies by stealing all the good rhymes, but that she cooked up a doozy with kitchenette and cigarette.

Hot and tired, we headed back around 7 p.m., stopping at a beach boasting a marvelous pink and blue sunset. Sandpipers skittered in the surf and in the distance, a wedding party posed for a photographer. We discovered an eroded sand castle and what appeared to be a tangle of Poseidon’s dreadlocks washed ashore.

Katie decided we should drop by Bruce and Elizabeth’s place, located directly on the Sakonnet inlet of the Atlantic. The tide comes and goes under their house, and they have a long picturesque dock. As we waited for the coals on the grill to heat for dinner, I asked Bruce, a salt at heart, how one would boat to the ocean from his place. He described the various inlets, the historical sources of their Indian names, and that the official name of the smallest state is the longest: the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Just as the anecdote was getting lost at sea, he was called to tend the meat, which he said was for the best, admitting he was boring himself.

Excepting the salad, the dinner was grilled: juicy London broil, zucchini halves topped with olive oil, fresh spices and cheese, and crusty bread. Dessert was more Gray’s ice cream, only this time topped with rainbow jimmies. Elizabeth spoke of Australia’s male chauvinism and Bruce of its blockbuster sailing, which he related with anecdotes as a cast member of Wind, the America’s Cup film that starred Matthew Modine and Jennifer Grey.

Later as Bruce and I sat in the deck chairs out back drinking whiskey, the ladies put on a Tom Jones greatest hits CD loud enough to warn errant craft, then performed a goofy and scandalous dance routine in front of us on the tiny waterfront lawn. “What is it about Mr. Jones that makes the ladies crazy?” we wondered aloud.

Katie picked me up early this afternoon and we set out onto I-95 for a weekend visiting her relatives in Rhode Island and attending the Newport Folk Fest.

We stayed with a cousin, Laura, in Tiverton, a quiet resort and residential town of about 15,000. She lives in a classic New England shingle-style farmhouse that dates from the mid-1800s and although it’s supposedly not haunted, workers did unearth a century-old cistern under the house that no one knew existed.

Upon our arrival and greeting cousin Erica, who was already there in the middle of her own Rhode Island mini-vacation, we got cracking with iced bourbon-and-ginger-ales while I toured the heavily flowered grounds. It’s rustic. Out back there’s a barn and a now-ornamental outhouse. Next door, over a hedge of green bramble, is a pasture of sheep. In the yard on the other side, chickens roam. Laura pointed out nearly every flower, tree and shrub on her grounds while her cat, Mr. Fur, his coat the sleek gray of a weimaraner’s, followed us covertly, master of all he surveyed. His claims to fame are disappearing for days on end and depositing the occasional mouse segment on the deck.

During the garden tour, we discussed which flowers would look best cut and placed in vases, and Laura instructed us obliquely on how to build our own arrangements, much as Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel bonsai in The Karate Kid. Here’s Laura helping me achieve a visual balance with my floral work-in-progress.

Somehow our arrangements turned out and fit snugly into Laura’s homestead, already comfortable in its tastefully weathered and mismatched antique furniture, wooden floors, and hundreds of curios and books. I think the fresh, sunlit air was combining chemically with the sulfured well water or something, because my central nervous system was so depressed, I thought I might soon start talking with the hypnotic cadence of Martha Stewart, never to fully return to big city life.

Despite promises to the contrary, it was a classically late family dinner. Laura’s brother Bruce, his lady Elizabeth and their kid Emerald came over and we started eating around 11 p.m. at a candlelit table on the screened-in porch. The spread included barbecued pork ribs and grilled kielbasa, salad, couscous with diced fresh vegetables and wine. Dessert was black cherries and famous Gray’s Ice Cream. I recommend the ginger and coconut flavors. I felt at home with the strange, educated debates at the dinner table; the chief one tonight was a heated discussion about the history of snuff production in New England. Erica taught Emerald one-handed Zippo tricks while striving to avoid self-immolation.

Before we retired for the night, Laura, Katie and I took what Laura called a Lions, Tigers and Bears Walk down her lane and onto the road, which has almost no traffic and no streetlights. Stars speckled the sky. Katie and I saw a meteor, but we didn’t feel the need to wish upon it.

Back home and assigning my room for the evening, Laura explained that town zoning issues dictate she can only house two bedrooms on her property because of the size of her septic tank. So Katie got the guest room and I slept on a firm air mattress in what appeared to be a hallway, but with windows and overstuffed bookcases.

You know, it’s never too early to start Christmas shopping. With that in mind, what better gift for your friendly neighborhood blogwriter than a Marshmallow Blaster.

Man, it’s hot. How hot is it?

My boss is having me moderate one of the panel discussions at an upcoming real estate conference of ours which necessitated a photo of me for the program. One of the production ladies took it in our office with her digital camera, but she kept getting glare off my glasses. If it wasn’t one lens, it was the other, or both, no matter which way my head was turned or tilted and no matter where the light source. She ended up photographing me without my glasses, removed one of my eyes digitally and Photoshopped it over one of the glaring glasses frames in another photo. There’s still some glare, but it’s clearer that I have two eyes. After too much of me staring over her shoulder at this fascinating surgery, watching my digital eye flit around her screen on the tip of her cursor, she threatened to place it in the center of my forehead,

Looking over these photos, I realize that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen myself without glasses. Sure, I can look in a mirror, but my eyesight is so poor that my face must be about an inch from the glass, or else I’m a pale blur. So I know what three-inch-square segments of my face look like without glasses, but not my whole head, until I saw the photo. Eh. I look like one of the “before” photos in one of those magazine pictorials that strive to convince ladies to wear the newest seasonal makeup combination, lest their face look as if it’s sculpted from wax.

The production lady was also able to erase the background elements of the photo so it appears as if I was photographed on a gray studio backdrop. This is always slightly harder than it would seem, to avoid looking as if the foreground element has been cut out with safety scissors and gluesticked to a new background. Also, my tie that day was crumpled, having been wadded in my backpack, and production lady was all set to “iron” it in Photoshop, but she didn’t need to because of the angle at which it appears in the final photo.

Really all this work was overkill, seeing as the headshots in our event programs are the size of postage stamps. But it was an intriguing process. O, Photoshop; you save us from reality.