While MMB was lucky enough to escape the trenches of the family vacation, the extended fam drafted me to come up to New England for the week, an order I could not avoid due to my current state of unemployment.

So as she gets ready to go live it up in the Hamptons for the long weekend, I find myself banished to the back-woods of New England, surrounded by trees, water, and 16 family members. Essentially, I’ve died and gone to the next season of Survivor.

The first day started out pleasantly enough with a swim in the ocean. New York stripped me of a summer tan so I was happy to spend some time in the sun. By the time I got into a piping hot shower, I felt myself approaching an unfamiliar state of being: relaxation.

Then the bathroom door jerked open:

Get out! Get out of the shower now! The toilet in the basement is overflowing!

They didn’t have to tell me twice. I’m staying in the basement bedroom. Upon hearing my living space was being invaded by sewage, I leapt out of the shower covered in shampoo and soap and finished my bathing under the hose of freezing water in the backyard.

For the next 20 hours, we had to rough it: no running water, no working toilets. And yet we had wireless internet and the unrated version of Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay. Life is strange.

Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay: the Unrated Version is perhaps the worst possible movie to watch with your extended family, the only exception being a full blown porno. An entire scene consists of hot females milling about at a no-pants party. Bikini wax preferences of all shapes and sizes filled the screen.

I sat there squirming next to my fifty-something year-old uncle.

I spent the next 24-hours painting.

How refined and cultured of me, no?

I’ve been creating a lovely lighthouse with red and white stripes, a perfect New England scene. And who exactly is commissioning such a piece? Well, it’s for my cousin’s college beirut table. Everyone is oo-ing and ah-ing over it as if it was going up at the Met, when really it will simply be a board game of under-age alcoholism and hedonistic debauchery.


The highlight of the week: definitely my dad’s cutting-edge fashion sense.

Dad now wears his jeans in the same style as the likes of Katie Holmes and Rachel Bilson.

Who wore it best?



My father: intuitive trend-setter or unintentional cross-dresser? You decide.

While deer ticks swarm the premises, family tensions lay like land-mines. No one is safe from themselves or each other. And while the younger cousins slink off to take bong rips in the back woods, I’ve been perpetually inhaling nothing but ragweed. The result: I’ve taken on the appearance of a huge stoner and the burden of battling constant allergy attacks.

There’s nothing like a weekend with the family to make me realize how functional my daily life is. In New York, I perpetually feel like I’m in over my head, but at least my head is on straight.

Allow me to paraphrase a previous post that I wrote while in the beaches of Puglia:

Southern Italy is the land of the man purse. In addition, some skewed fashion authority also approved Italian men wearing white (repeat, white) Speedos on the beach. Tiny Speedo bathing suits on men is already kind of a problem in my book. White swimwear of any kind is also a major no-no in my book unless you’re a Victoria’s Secret model or the guy from the Calvin Klein underwear ad. Combine these two factors of ‘tiny’ and ‘white’ and the result is me on the beach, my head swiveling every three seconds as I check out another guy’s package as revealed by his wet, white, see-through, skin tight swimming costume. Nothing is left to the imagination, and many of these guys look like Enrique Inglesias on steroids, so I guess I’m not complaining. I only marvel at their lack of shame.

Well, what I didn’t mention at the time of this post is that I actually unabashedly photographed such male specimens, essentially out of fear that my friends and fellow blog readers wouldn’t believe the white swimsuit phenomena. Yep, I'm that much of a pervert loser. So I give you my footage:

The scene:


The speedos:






I had to take two photos of this guy as he beautifully and proudly exemplified BOTH the practical yet bizarre phenomena of the man purse and the white speedo:


Doesn't he rock out?

SO, the white male speedo: hot or not? I leave you all to be the judge.

In my August travels, I currently find myself in the miniscule town of Cutrofiano, about forty kilometers south of Lecce in Puglia – the heel of the boot of Italy. Why this area of Italy, commonly referred to as Salento, isn’t a global tourist magnet remains a mystery to me. The terrain is dry yet enchanting, similar to the Greek landscapes. The area’s dirt cheap and surrounded by acres and acres of beach on not one, but TWO coastlines. The sand is phenomenal, the water clearer than the Caribbean and warmer than the sea in the Greek isles. You can watch the most intense, heated orange sunset of your life fall behind the beach facing Sicily, drive a mere sixty kilometers (45 minutes) and watch the sun rise on the ocean front facing Greece.

My girlfriend Solare, a Cutrofiano native and my ex-flat mate in Milan, claims there are tourists here, but I’ve yet to see anyone on the beach that isn’t a ultra-brown Italian. She tells me Germans, Brits and Scandinavians have discovered the immense beauty that is Puglia, but I’m not buying it. I haven’t encountered one foreigner. The roads are magnificently empty and the beach void of any pale, lost, misfits from Germany. And Americans, forget it. Solare admits she’s never encountered one down here. American tourists are way too busy doing nothing in their overpriced villas in Tuscany to come to Salento. The really adventurous Americans might make it down to Positano around the area of Naples, but no one from the USA dares to venture this far south on vacation – literally as far south as you can get. I’m not sure if it’s a habitual mafia fear that keeps most Americans out of Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily, or just the fact that very few people speak English in these areas. Whatever the reason, it’s wonderful to be in an utterly tourist free environment – no traffic, no lines, no screaming children on the beach, no overpriced bottles of water. That isn’t to say the beaches are empty. By three pm when everyone’s rolled out of bed and killed their hangover with several espressos, the beaches are Rio-like – there’s not a open square inch as crowds of people sunbathe and play volleyball in the sand and in the water. And the open-air discotechs at night ON the beach make Hampton’s nightlife establishments look like a trashy, suburban Hooters.

Solare’s family owns a hotel and restaurant in Cutrofiano but reside in a classic, unpretentious Italian villa near the town. All meals are consumed outside where hanging laundry ripples in the wind and the farm’s cats swerve between your ankles. Miles of olive groves soak up the sun in the flat landscape ahead since Solare’s family makes their own olive oil (buckets of which I’m transporting home in empty water bottles). Yes, I’ve been eating from their garden non-stop, and yes the tomatoes are mouthwatering. After a leisurely breakfast and baking on the beach all day, we spend the evening in Solare’s restaurant where she works as a hostess / waitress and I hang out behind the bar attempting to be useful and getting drunk off patrons unfinished bottles of wine. The problem with friends who own restaurants is the absolutely absurd amounts of free food they generously force you to consume. For example, last night I ate meatballs, polenta with ham and cheese with a salad, followed by an entire fish, followed by seafood linguine with clams and shrimp, followed by steamed carrots and zucchini, followed by two chocolate cookies, peaches covered in cream and liquor, and finally pineapples and grapes. My body went into shock and I had to sleep ten hours to recover.

Other phenomenon of note is the man purse. It’s commonly used here by guidos and by Solare’s older brother. Some skewed fashion authority also approved Italian men wearing white (repeat, white) Speedos on the beach. Tiny Speedo bathing suits on men is already kind of a problem in my book. White swimwear of any kind is also a major no-no in my book unless you’re a Victoria’s Secret model or the guy from the Calvin Klein underwear ad. Combine these two factors of tiny and white and the result is me on the beach, my head swiveling every three seconds as I check out another guy’s package as revealed by his wet, white, see-through, skin tight swimming costume. Nothing is left to the imagination, and many of these guys look like Enrique Inglesias on steroids, so I guess I’m not complaining. I only marvel at their lack of shame.

I’ve also developed a deep passion for beach racquetta. Solare’s an expert volleyball player. Me… not so much. I’m not really into sports where large, soccer-like, hard balls FLY AT MY HEAD and force me to ruin my manicure. Call me a wimp, but I have really frail arms (and bones in general). Smacking a seriously hard ball with my wrists just isn’t my definition of a good time. My hands barely function anyway since I type faster than your average college student on Ritalin and in really weird positions (carpel tunnel here I come). Plus everyone here plays ball in the water, and I really don’t like things or people splashing in my face. Racquetball on the beach however, is a sport in which I excel. I mean, you can only get tan and read so much historical fiction sprawled on beach towels before you want to shoot yourself in the head. Racquetball is my perfect seaside activity. As a trained tennis player since age two, the hand-eye coordination skills cross over. It’s a great way to even out your tan and especially to meet people – like when your ball hits other beachgoers or conveniently ends up in the hot lifeguard’s lap thanks to your expert aim. Our extraneous shots have led to introductions of many good-looking fellow ball players, and several cups of free prosecco (yes, people here drink prosecco on the beach in the middle of the day.)

So I’m still in an utterly infantile state. Anyone witnessing Solare and I pack her car to go to the beach would think we were entertaining a group of preschoolers with ADD, when in reality all the toys are for us. We bring inflatable rafts, beach balls, floatation devices, snorkels, goggles, water wings, racquets, and cookie snacks. Today we were too lazy to even get to the beach. I played with a kitten outside for forty-five minutes and then actually watched dust particles float in the air, following their path from the sunlit screen door to the coach. I’d love to report that I’m contemplating the meaning of life and have answers to all your problems, but all I really think about is how good the six kilos of spaghetti with homemade sauce I consumed for lunch feels in my stomach.

I’m starting to think reentering New York will be especially traumatizing. Rumor is that Bartok’s coming at the end of August to help me re-acclimate to my city life with a bang. But there are many southern Italian discotech adventures to report before then. This is the land of the original Guido. Here I come!