One more photo from Malta

I seem to have a thing for taking photos of retro signs. I think it dovetails with my love of pulp fiction and pinup girls, old-school Batman comics (the ones with the square jaws and wide chests), the concept of Gotham City (see left, Gotham at Christmas) and that Metropolis, art deco, Fountainhead feel to city-related artwork. Okay, it's a little off base, but I like old campy looking signs with a retro-America feel to them, calling to mind an America of Slice-It machines that guys in skinny ties sell door-to-door and road trips in Chevys and the blues - it all ties together in my head. So I saw this sign in Valetta, Malta and I had to take a photo:

Some Malta photos...

...that didn't come out as well as last year's, probably because I was always on the move, chasing my grandfather down. For 86, the old devil is pretty spry, although to be completely honest, I really could've lived my life without the tales of all the women who succcumbed to his charms. Seriously, there's nothing like taking a walk down memory lane with your grandfather describing what a ladykiller he was. Best was when we ran into random little old ladies and they'd be batting their geriatric lids at him, going "oh, hel-lo Feliche!" and then babbling on in Maltese and I'm all, I really don't want to know how you two know each other.

I had so many funny stories to share and I couldn't wait to blog, but it's been two weeks and they seem to have all left me. I wrote them down in my moleskine but also can't be bothered to get off my chaise. So, some very blurry photos - no, you're not drunk. Or at least you can't blame the gin.
1. First off, we went to this crazy wedding with 1600 people in attendance. I initially thought the number was just my grandfather's Maltese penchant for exaggeration, but there was seriously a representative sample of the population at this thing. And an excessive amount of skintight Roberto Cavalli. Oh, and lots of ice sculptures. And fruit...carvings. Someone put a lot of effort into these details.

2. My cousin's adorable kids - one of whom, Emma, is pictured to the left. She called herself Claudia Schiffer all night and showed us how to do cartwheels. She and her older sister Sarah (all of age 10) and I ate fruit and played with our hair and talked about boys who tried to kiss them. And we talked about the Great Siege of Malta in 1575 (I'm not kidding).

3. The famous floor of St. John's Co-Cathedral that entombs (is that a verb?) many of the Knights of the Order of St. John (pictured right). It's really spectacular, huge rectangles with painted skeletons dancing or holding scrolls written in Latin. An amazing sight. Don't wear heels.

4. St. John's Co-Cathedral (pictured left). It looks deceptively simple from the outside and inside is a riot of color and sculpture. Each of the Orders - the French, Spanish, Italian, German, etc of the Knights had their own vestibule that they decorated with nationalist and religious symbols and tributes to their patron saints. The Caravaggio, St. Jerome, no longer hangs in the Italian vestibule but in a separate room, alongside the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Incidentally, Caravaggio hated Malta. As did most of the Knights when they arrived. Hey, to be fair, they'd just been kicked out of Rhodes, which sounded pretty sweet.

5. The Mdina Cathedral (pictured right) lit up for the outdoor opera concert...the orchestra was seated right in front of those doors. A gorgeous night, incredible singing, Calleja did Nessum Dorma (but shhhh, I still think Licitra beats him out on the ending) and a host of other lesser-known but really wonderful songs. His wife, who is Moldovan, blew him out of the water - a really gifted soprano.

6. To the left, the empty seats after the concert. Those doors and windows all around are houses, and people were standing in their windows and on their balconies for the music, lucky ones.

7. To the right, a street in Mdina - the contributions of 400-odd years of Arab rule include most of the Maltese language and the name of their former capitol, Mdina - which, like most streets in Mdina, is like something out of a movie...very narrow, very quiet, all stone, and it's as though life doesn't exist there, it's jarring when you actually see someone, as though the city has a presence and people upset the balance. It's my favorite city in the world.

Malta, here comes baby!

Wish I could've blogged more frequently recently...lots of fun things going on and a lot of silly observations about the world I would've liked to capture - of course, they're all gone now. But things have been hectic - a wonderful weekend last week in NYC with Bub and our friends from high school, a day that started as a walk in Riverside Park and ended at 1AM with about 20 rounds of drinks, a mariachi band, and an Aerobie rally in between. Bub starting his residency and practicing suturing. Started running two days a week with friend Marian on the many many running paths in DC, which was the perfect antidote to the feeling of nostalgia and a twinge of despair I had the week before while driving on Skyline Drive. The grass had just been mowed and I caught a whiff of flowers, something I remember smelling every single day of summer as a kid and thinking "the entire summer will pass and I'll not see or smell or feel any of this". And then all of a sudden Marian and I decide, rather spontaneously, to start running and we are watching the sun set over the Potomac and feeling the heavy DC air shift through the trees regularly, and I think of the line Jordan says in Gatsby, right before everything falls apart when they're driving "into town" about how there's something so sensual about the air, like overripe fruit. That's DC in the summer, if you can appreciate it. I also have pollution- and exercise- induced asthsma, so I can only appreciate to a certain point. So if you see two girls running suicides on those stairs near the water on which everyone likes to take cheesy wedding photos and one girl looks like she could use an artificial lung, just beep and wave, you may see me nod my head about half an inch in return greeting.

But enough with all that - leaving for Malta tomorrow! I've been so busy at work and outside work as well, it's surreal - I'm even blogging when I should be packing. We've always gone with a big US family contingent and met up with the big Malta family contingent, but this time its just me and my grandfather- as much as I wanted my dad to come with us, I think it'll be really fun, just the two of us. He came up to NY to see Joseph Calleja debut in Rigoletto last winter and I invited my friend Dana over and he had us all in stitches, telling stories from Malta when he was young. I have this vision of us in a beat-up jeep, my legs are resting on the door and my feet are sticking out the window, and he's singing Italian war songs from the Mussolini era and explaining to me how the Italians used to strafe Malta and they had to go and hide in the catacombs. Both of you who read this blog may remember that my Italian grandmother (other side of the family) died a little over a year ago and there are so many questions I can't believe I never asked her, so maybe there's a little atonement here, we'll see.

Speaking of Atonement, it's one of the 10 books I'm bringing on my trip. The others include A Savage War of Peace (about the Algerian insurgency of the 1950s), The Adventures of Auggie Marsh (Bub recommendation), The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (so I can read the new Chabon when I get back), Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri, who also wrote The Namesake), and I Didn't Do It for You, about Eritrea by Michela Wong. I think it's a good mix and hopefully I'll finish at least half of them. I don't know, I'd like to think I'll have a lot of downtime to sit on the benches by the water and read, but we'll see...

Again, will try to blog from vacation but both of you know how well that's gone in the past. See you on the back end...!

My procrastination skills save me again!

As much as Bub will hate this post, because he usually has to clean up after my procrastinating (case in point: he just had to give me Southwest credits to fly to Stanford for his graduation because I didn't book it in time - I'm now insisting he take my True Blue flight in return), even he will have to acknowledge that sometimes they really save my butt. Such as....my dad has been on me to book Malta, and about a week ago we browsed sidestep.com and all the websites looking for a good deal. While we found a sale on Air Malta to get me from Heathrow to Luqa for $200, the UK flights were not cheap. We finally settled on a British Airways r/t for $1200. So my dad and mom went to the Berkshires this weekend after pop's instruction to please book this flight.

And of course, with studying and hemming and hawing and rising annoyance at a $1200 British Airways flight, I didn't. Okay, it slipped my mind. The phone rings about 30 minutes ago and it's my parents from home and I know my dad's calling to make sure I booked. So I hustle over to 'puter - and the flight in question is now $500 more. And I'm cursing my stupidity (Bub is right now nodding his head in sympathy with my pops, I know) and thinking of a way to scheme myself out of this. So it looks like if I leave a full day earlier, in the morning, no less (who flies from the east coast to London in the AM?), it'll only be $200 more expensive. Oy.

In a last minute act of desperation as I'm about to click "purchase" I open another tab and check out sidestep one last time. You know this never works, the flights are even more expensive than the ridiculous one you're about to shell out for...and THEN. AND THEN. $756 bucks round trip to Heathrow on American!!*#&#)%&_%*#(*_#(*%#^*$( ^%^ (this is the dance I was doing)

So, being the total sneak I am, I ring up pops and crow about my shrewdness in not booking the flight because I wanted to "shop around" a little and doncha know, I'm saving 400 smackers. He was suitably impressed with my carefully-thought-out strategy. So I am on my way to Malta! And Bub is shaking his head and rolling his eyes...

Some adorable photos of my grandfather with Joseph Calleja last winter backstage at the Met - I have no idea who the little Sopranos-looking-guy in brown is, he was another Maltese groupie:

Tuesdays with (Maltese) Morrie

Lest I let my tan begin to fade, it looks like I will be on the road again soon (fingers, toes, and eyes crossed)... my 87-year-old Maltese grandfather, who like me is a huge opera buff and an all-around cool guy, calls me the other day to let me know this up-and-coming Maltese tenor, Joseph Calleja (who we saw at the Met in Rigoletto in January and he ended up coming to dinner at our house - we did not make him sing for his supper, which I thought I was nice of us) is singing in Mdina, Malta in early July and do I want to go? Oh, and, gee, Jose Carreras is giving a concert, too and we're going to go to that. So then my dad calls and asks me to do him a favor and go to Malta for two weeks with my grandfather. I guess everyone is worried about my grandfather getting around at his age, although I have to say (knock on wood), the guy's a champ for 87, he's probably going to beat me on the swim out to St. Paul's Island. Also, my cousin Charlie (70+ year old cousin at that) who is the most fun will be hanging out with us, so it'll be all the people I love there and I'll have them all to myself.

Full disclosure - there is no full disclosure, there is no question that I am going to be in Malta faster than you can say old guys who love La Traviata. Oh, and I'm driving.

I'm so excited, I dug out these pictures from our trip last year: