Observe and report

Getting out of Lacoste is a little bit of a challenge. To meet up with 36-hour Tina in Turin, Italy, this weekend, I had to fly in this from Marseille to Milan.

Only 18 seats on that puddle jumper.

A train or a car would have taken about seven hours, so I dealt with it.

And a weekend with my friend was worth it. (I should rename Tina as we spent a whole 60 hours together this visit.) It rained the entire time, but we still had fun (eating, mostly).

I also had fun watching a little Italian television in our sweet 1980s living room.

Yes, that's red velvet.

Here’s what I saw on Italian television:

• A “Starsky and Hutch“-style overdubbed show from the ’80s (to match the couch)
• An infomercial where a woman in sparkling white pumps demonstrated the cleaning power of a vacuum cleaner. Look! It sucks up cigarette butts from an ashtray! (Why couldn’t she just dump the ashtray’s contents into the trash?)
• An infomercial for a water-purifying faucet that comes in a variety of festive colors, such as burnt plastic.
• Three men dressed in drag seated at a desk reading something off clipboards.
• News delivered by women wearing lingerie.
• No fewer than four channels devoted solely to cars.
• A close-up shot of a man using a pencil carved from a tree branch as a pointer to read through each headline in that day’s newspaper.
• A participatory talk show featuring the host dressed in a George Washington get-up.
• A “Welcome Back, Kotter“-style high school drama featuring a fat, pasty Johnny Depp wannabe and a kid with too many teeth in his mouth.
• “C’è posta per Te” (loosely translated as “you’ve got mail”), a Maury/Sally Jesse/Montel type of reunion show.
• What can only be described as the “Understanding Art Channel.”

All of the above employed the production quality/values from the ’80s and ’90s. It was like a time warp.

Outside the ’80s bubble, plenty was happening in Turin. One of the biggest things was the SilverSkiff, an annual regatta on the Po River. It’s why Tina was in Turin in the first place. Unfortunately, she and the other rowers made the pilgrimage for nothing: The organizers cancelled the race because of the effects of the torrential rain.

We still had a great time, though. Here are some photos (not postcard-perfect, as usual) from the weekend adventure.

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