Italy still Denying that Women can Rock

Touting itself as, "The best major festival in Italy" [I know, I know, damn that GoogleTranslate!!] every summer our Italian Post Office sponsors a total man-fest Rock in Roma concert series, blatantly keeping women out of the program, six years running. Clearly, Italy, despite gifting us a string of hugely talented and successful women rockers, including awesome voices like Gerardina Trovato - the Tracy Chapman of Sicily - Georgia and Fiorella Mannoia, still prefers the comfort of a caveman existence, highlighted by the playlist coming out of the Rock & Roll show.

Organizers state, "Well, we need to keep up with Mali and Saudi Arabia. Their concert series attract thousands."  Before adding, "With this new Pope, even Vatican concerts are more inclusive. Someone's gotta keep women out of the picture. And besides, Madonna, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga act too much like divas. They want to sing, let 'em go to Perugia Jazz Festival.

Once you get your head around the fact that the bankrupt Post Office should be sponsoring anything, (clearly taking a cue from the U.S. Post Office sponsoring the Tour de France bicycle race, an event that went out of the American public's consciousness about when letter-sending did), you wonder what form of machismo is their artistic director made of.  Heck, with photos like this, they could even take the daring step and invite Conchita Wurst, the Eurovision contest winner, and keep to their XY chromosome entry bar.

Here are the 2013 and 2014 Rosters - You can go back even further here -- and try to find the girl groups (in bold below). Of course, with names like Smack my bitch up and Symphony of Destruction, obviously it's a guy-thang.

2014 ROCK IN ROMA LINEUP

GIUDA + THE CYBORGS                                                                 

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE + WE ARE SCIENTISTS             

BILLY IDOL + JESUS WAS HOMELESS                

AVENGED SEVENFOLD

THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS

PRODIGY /  DIE ANTWOORD    

ARCADE FIRE

ROB ZOMBIE / MEGADETH 

DAVID GUETTA

METTALICA + ALICE IN CHAINS

THE BLACK KEYS

THE LUMINEERS + PASSENGER

PAOLO NUTINI + THE RAINBAND

EDITORS

CAPAREZZA

PLACEBO - well, they have one woman on stage

BASTILLE + GEORGE EZRA

AFTERHOURS 

FRANZ FERDINAND + THE CRIBS

————————————————————— 

201E ROCK IN ROMA LINEUP

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

GREEN DAY

THE KILLERS 

STEREOPHONICS

TOTO

KORN

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE

IGGY & THE STOOGES

MAX GAZE’

RAMMSTEIN

ARCTIC MONKEYS

MILES KANE

SPRINGSTEEN

MARK KNOPFLER & BAND

SMASHING PUMPKINS

MARK LANEGAN BAND

ATOMS FOR PEACE

SKA-P

DEEP PURPLE

ZUCCHERO 

DANIELE SILVESTRI

NEIL YOUNG

DEVENDRA BANHART

SIGUR ROS

BLUR NEGRITA

THE CURE 

GARBAGE

NINA ZILLI 

And, lest you think it's because women don't rock hard, even names like Neil Young and The Beach Boys are listed. So where's Blondie, Pat Benatar or even, Tracy Chapman?  And, just to fool you into thinking there are women groups, they've added groups like Nigrita or Devendra (pictured above) - but, no, if you're a woman rocker, better to be out of sight, out of ear shot for PostePay,  Live Nation and co-sponsors City of Rome, Corriere della Sera, and others.

"Look, we're sponsored by the Post Office. All those women tellers stand behind thick glass windows so you can't hear a word they're saying. And in Italy, we still call them PostMen - il Postino - just like the movie. And besides, have you ever seen a woman delivering mail?  We're just upholding a long-standing tradition."

Amazon's Drone Delivery Arrives in Italy

Of course, this title is not true. But when the airwaves were abuzz with the sounds of Drones landing like Hitchcock's The Birds on your doorstep, well...I started fantasizing about what that might just look like in Bell'Italia:

First off, packages might be getting some lift-off in China, where I imagine if you're caught stealing the box outright you will find your head on a post in the piazza by noon the next day.  I even suppose this might work in the U.S. suburbs or rural areas where, should a box be landing on your doorstep, it's not a bad thing (that is, until another UnaBomber decides it's a pretty nifty way to deliver all sorts of evil without passing thru U.S. post offices and their darn stamp machines...).

But, clearly, boastful Bezos & his crew haven't quite conceived of the urban setting or else they never would have bragged about this service on 60 minutes and in markets where most have packages delivered round-the-clock.

The view from your window

Easy as 1-2-3

So, for starters, let's all just relish Amazon's vision for a few moments.  After all, there's not a person in all of Italy who wouldn't want to see mail being delivered to them - at all - drones or not.  [Okay, excepting the mail carriers who don't seem to want to deliver the mail even when they have to - as also featured in my book, in the chapter, The Postman Never Rings Even Once].  In this momentary blissful vision we see the Italian economy jump 6 points because people start ordering things online, rest assured they'll actually be delivered.  Heck - Amazon could even start a new service...Note to Amazon: Check to make sure the thing you ordered hadn't been swiftly substituted with a box of kleenex instead.

But then, bureaucracy rears its ugly head.  After all, who would sign for the package?  Those blips on the economy upswing would be merely temporary as companies far & wide go belly-up due to millions of belly-aching claims to the contrary:  I never rec'd my package.  Please resend or refund [okay, I know the refund is sheer fantasy but we are dreaming, right?) Note to Amazon: Add CCTV camera footage to assure the drop.]  Italian businesses still operate on the stay-at-home-wife for everything; including package delivery and trips to the post office [well, she's not so stay-at-home -- busying herself at the market stalls and passing her formative years in lines at the Post Office]. Packages cannot be left without someone's 'signature' (and I use the term loosely - as loosely as an unintelligible scribble since that's what signatures look like here).

The package gets dropped. Once, while loading up my car in front of my doorman building in my swanky Milanese neighborhood, I set down a huge bag of clothes (within the entryway and just beyond eyeshot of my usually vigilant doorman).  By the time I came downstairs again, the bag and most of its contents had vanished.  I found remnants of my articles strewn down the street; my familiar family of gypsies making off like, well, bandits.  To this day, I still can't decide if I was more upset from getting my clothes stolen, or discovering that some of my prized pieces actually went rejected by the wandering gypsies who took them in the first place.
So, yes, Amazon -- Drone Delivery would be a definite improvement in people's lives.  The hordes of gypsies currently plunging head first into humongous garbage containers like Santa picking out the perfect present -- could set their sticks aside - for good.  They would only have to gaze up in the sky to find their proverbial pennies from heaven dropped at their feet.  Before long, their Flea Markets (in the true sense of the words) would become Amazon outposts -- you could go to the Train Station or around the Vatican and shop to your heart's delight - at bargain prices.  And everything, in spanking new condition.

Imagine that-Amazon's Drone Delivery would actually put the bricks & mortar shops they've so roundly razed back in business.  It might not be a bad thing, after all.

Ahhhh...Alitalia takes a nose dive

Okay-you know things are bad with your Company when the last resort to bail you out is a company so broke it has stopped mail delivery -- and it's the one who is supposed to be delivering the mail.  This is like Detroit trying to get bailed out by Lehman Bros.  I don't know where to start with this incredible story of how - gasp! - horrors! - The Italian Post Office is going to save Alitalia, so I'll start at the end:  Let it fail.  It's not like we'll all suddenly be stranded on our little peninsula - it's a peninsula, after all, and we could always train it out if worse came to worst.  There are plenty of airlines who would gladly pay for the slots, they just don't want to buy the Company those slots come with.

Picture by Gianni Falcone - Diario Acido

I dedicate an entire chapter in my book, Burnt by the Tuscan Sun to Italy's Post Office:  The Postman Never Rings (even) Once.  So I can't think for the life of me how you could take a company, so totally removed from the idea of getting letters and packages from point A to point B, whose only m.o. is 'raise the rates' and maybe we'll make money, and put them in charge of trying to get people and luggage from one place to another.  They'll probably put into practice their current system:  Raise all ticket prices to coincide with Denmark's, and double all prices to & from America, they can afford it.

Italy's post office offers tons of other services; so much so, they shouldn't even be in the letter business to begin with.  But, I guess I can see the commonalities: Nowadays you don't need tickets to board planes, in Italy, you don't need stamps to mail your letters.  Furthermore, both entities have problems with stealing -- fancy items from luggage / fancy items from envelopes.  Talk about core businesses.  I'm thinking that the union personnel over at the Post Office is totally behind this one:  If one group of people is going to have an upgrade, it'll be the poor sods rifling - errr - handling envelopes in the back room.  They're salivating at the bit to get their hands on real cool stuff like cameras and phones and jewelry.
But it's all not as ludicrous as the goins on elsewhere in the postal services:  The U.S. Postal Service is cutting back as well, out of money, and in the red.  And so they spend $40 million to finance Lance Armstrong through consecutive Tours de France?  [and over $100 million on the Olympics??!! -- If there's any need for a government agency shutdown, this would be near the top of my list.  Adding insult to injury, with Lance Armstrong's doping confession, they're trying to get their money returned to sender.  Maybe Lance should just try and buy an airline and it'll all work out for the best.

Your recommended reading list of all things Alitalia (from the last time they went up for sale in 2008) as reported by yours, truly in Burnt by the Tuscan Sun:
Alitalia's Turbulent Ride 
What goes up ...
Amore per Alitalia
Who's who in Alitalia deal
Alitalia's Reality: Lost or Survivor?
Alitalia's Three Card Monty 

And, if you want to try and wrap your head around the reasons behind a failed govt agency spending money on athletes, Start Here.