Tin roof on a hot catwalk

It is fashion week in Milan. My friend Carmen works for Jil Sander, an international design house on the high end of the spectrum. The Jil Sander fashion show was yesterday. Carmen had invited Mark. Mark is busier than the antacid supplier for Red Sox Nation with his job. Ergo, I went to a my first fashion show yesterday, in Milan at the height of fashion week no less. And as if that wasn’t enough fashion, I continued to gorge myself on fashion all day.

Even before the fashion show began, it was clear to me that I was no longer in Kansas. The security in black suits, stylish facial hair, and radio earpieces. An American woman in a bright pink wrap/shawl/sack making faces like a guppy on stilts. Lots of ankle boots, knee boots, cowboy boots, shiny pointy shoes, big skyscraper heels, sleek black loafers – all of them surely more expensive than my Adidas. As for the models, they were uniformly tall, thin, ethereal, and young, much younger than I expected and young enough that I felt uncomfortable watching them stream by wearing see-through clothing. Most had piercing eyes, jutting chins, and long hair stirred by a breeze that seems only to affect the preternaturally tall and striking. Watching the audience was as good if not better than watching the squeamish-inducing parade of teens in sheer and absurdist clothing. I use clothing here in the broadest sense of the term as some outfits were closer to elaborately folded napkins, cheesecloth made from birds of paradise, dress-size illumination bags for propane lanterns – who could ever wear such things on the street? In many places such a person could get harassed as a clown without a permit. Some appeared to have fallen from spider webs woven of diaphanous spools. Their faces reminded me of elves and aliens I have seen. I obviously know very little about fashion.

[After reading my uneducated review, perhaps you would care to see what the NY Times reporter thought.]

After the show, I had the pleasure of hanging around afterwards with the company’s employees as they came back down to earth, some investors, a few models, the hairdressers, and others associated with the show. Word on the terrace was that the show had been a great success. The important people had liked it, and everyone could relax a bit. The prosecco and finger sandwiches were plentiful. My sense of dislocation was also great - isn't that the castle? Where am I? Who am I?

To continue unspooling the fashion thread, Carmen and I spent the afternoon shopping. For me, this activity usually involves the transaction of goods and money or credit and is to be spoken of with a mix of trepidation and guilty disdain. Out on the town in Milan, I was reminded that shopping can be free and eye-opening. Carmen did not find the definitive dress for her friend’s wedding, but she was once again an excellent guide. While I would probably need to mow one lawn every 37 seconds without stopping to eat or sleep for the next 12 years to pay for the clothes I tried on, I enjoyed the game of trying on expensive outfits. Domenico acted as Virgil and led me expertly through the experience.

As a cherry on top of the ridiculous day, Mark, Carmen, and I strolled over to a party hosted by Marie Claire UK at Mozart’s former house. More prosecco, beautiful fashionable people, expensive artwork, jaw-dropping setting. Pretty standard really. This is the way I roll now that I live in bel paese. [Mile grazie, Carmen, Mark, e Domenico.]

One of the guys

Recently, a group of teammates parted ways at the end of another season. So close. Maybe next time. Wait till next year. The last two weeks of the season had been difficult physically and mentally; losing three out of four is never enjoyable. There was talk of possible retirements. But the team had gone out winners, roaring back from a deep hole to win the last game in dramatic fashion. The team walked off the field to the bus and the waiting off-season without a post-game stretch, much to the consternation of the trainer. Aching but smiling.

This scenario can and does transpire all across the athletic map, year in and year out. What made this story unique was the way the leading actors and supporting characters included me in the unfolding. As the season ended, Mark and his teammates welcomed me as an adjunct professor among an academy of lovable oddballs. Practice. Outings to Park Club (at least another post unto itself). The last two games: Codogno at Bollate.

I rode the bus with the team. I helped with outfield practice. I sat the bench and ate sunflower seeds. I warmed up the left fielder before the start of each defensive half-inning. I rode the wave of energy through highs and lows; I was in the wave of energy cheering the guys on and berating the ump in English baseball chatter, much to everyone’s entertainment.

As I’ve mentioned, I stopped playing organized baseball at 13, when pitchers threw only fastballs and changeups and there were not always outfield fences to aim over. I have had the pleasure over the years to see Mark continue to play baseball at many levels, in diverse places – for our high school, on Cape Cod, in college, around Boston, and now Italy. He is good and many of the “skilled practitioner practicing his art” clichés apply: the way he gathers a ground ball during infield practice; the momentum-building leg kick that repeats and repeats with each pitch; the slow pendulum of his bat as he sets himself in the batter’s box.

Against Bollate, the last game of the season, losing 5-0 with the opposing pitcher, a Venezuelan fireballer, working on a no-hitter through five innings, the manager called on Mark. They walked slowly together to the mound, Mark’s stage.

I wish I could say that Mark shut down the vaunted offense of Bollate, striking out 15 batters over 4 2/3 innings. I cannot. Or I could, but I would be lying (and as many will remember, if you tell one lie, it leads to another; you tell two lies and, whoa, you’re in trouble, brother). In this case, the truth is not far from the fiction. Mark threw peas; the team’s bats came alive; and Codogno stormed back to win. Mark gritted through a Rolaids bottom of the ninth, getting a final ground-ball out with the go-ahead run left stranded on second base. In the excitement of the moment, I carried myself away and walked down the line with the team, shaking hands with the Bollate players. Good game.

As so often has been the case, I have been lucky to end up among such people as the Codogno Jaguars. People honk and wave at me as they drive by; others insist on buying me a drink. Players share inside jokes. The groundskeeper knows my name and thinks I’m a great softball player (of which fiction I will not be dissuading him). It is nice to be included. Warm up the stove.

Chitty? Is that you?

La vita continues to take interesting turns.

Italian TV is interesting for more reasons than I can possibly enumerate let alone count in one post. We can look at commercials, per esempio. One of my favorites is a series featuring three men stranded on a desert island, doing deserted-on-a-desert-island-type things like making phones out of tin cans and string. I'm a sucker for tin can phones. Many Italian commercials make me go hmmm. For example, Vera, a company owned by Nestle, advertises their bottled water using a song made famous by Dick Van Dyke...

Today I was thrown a curveball when I found out that I had been signed up for a softball tournament. Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? My team is the Bad News Bears mashed with Cocoon. In Italian, of course. A few of the players used to play for the baseball team here, but that was in the era of the phonograph. We even have the Babe Ruth of Codogno baseball, il bambino himself: Bob. Yes, Bob. I watched the first few innings from the bench, then I got the call up. "You've pitched before?" asked our make-shift coach, perhaps thinking that all Americans are born with a glove on their non-throwing hands and spikes on their feet. "Uh. Sure. Years ago," I answered. Maybe in middle school gym class? "Great. Start warming up. You're going in next inning."

Heavy metal poured from the sound system; beads of cold sweat trickled down our opponents' necks; time froze as I strode to the mound. I unleashed a barrage of fireballs and mowed down the batters like so many dandelions, fluttering in the breeze... Not exactly, but it was fun to hear the crowd of 17 cheering my name, to see little kids posting the score on the manual scoreboard perched above center field, to cheer incoherently with the chain-smoking grandmother sitting next to me on the bench. No one asked for my autograph and the kids posted way too many donuts for our side, but la nonna played center for a few innings and I went home laughing. Game #2 is next Sunday. I'll be working on my slurve all week.

Oh, and I was almost eaten alive by a dog the size and color of a polar bear.