An open letter to Lindsay Lohan

I just got off the phone with Robert. He said he’s going to take care of you. You’re in good hands, Lindsay.

I was fourteen when I first fell in love with you. I was watching The Parent Trap. A terrible movie, we both know that, but there were two of you. You looked so young and vivid. You looked healthy and pure. Untouched, maybe that’s the right word. And then came fame. Your parents started fighting over your money. Freaky Friday came out. Not quite your best performance. I don’t know which one was. It’s hard to say. But I was nineteen then, and you were seventeen. It would have been illegal. You still had great legs. Your bosom was undamaged, and you had highlights in your hair.

Herbie was great. It was the performance that convinced me to come and look for you. I moved to L.A., just to be close to you. I visited all your regular bars. I roamed the streets at night, but I couldn’t find you. And then, two years later, we finally met. You checked yourself into the Promises rehab facility in Malibu, California. That was 2007. I was also doing C and H  then–who wasn’t?–and decided to quit just to join you at Promises. I waved at you from across the yard. Every day. You always missed it. I swear we exchanged special glances. At least once. You always wore sunglasses, and people said you started looking different. To me, you were still the girl I fell in love with nine years earlier. You were you, but you were hiding behind a shell of mascara and cocaine was covering your senses.

Waiting in line in the cafeteria we spoke for fifteen minutes. I offered you my cupcake. You were a great listener. We talked–I talked–about the essentials of life. How to cover up freckles, how to make your lips look bigger, and about good plastic surgeons in the 90210 district. The next day you were gone. I knew you’d come back. Someday. We were destined for each other. We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers. I still don’t understand how we could forget that. A week later I also left, but I kept following you. Over the years we kept growing closer to each other. I like girls, and you started liking them too. I was still drinking too much, and you picked it up again. And now you’re at Pickford Loffs, and I want you to know I’m checking myself in there tomorrow. We’ll be together again for the first time. Lindsay, I still love you.

“Did you know that some monkeys eat six times a day?”

So it’s a lovely day, what do you do? You go and have lunch in the park. And just to do something special, you go to a park you’ve never been to. “Alright, let’s do that,” your friend says. The place called BigFood, on your way to the park, has a line longer than a box office on Twilight opening night (you tend to exaggerate when annoyed). “No problem, there’s another place a bit further down the street,” your friend says. No one there, and it looks better. You take off your prescription sunglasses not to look like an ass and of course you can’t read the chalk menu against the wall. After a couple of seconds your eyes adjust and you can vaguely make out S H R I M P on the bottom of the menu. Two minutes later the woman behind the counter gives you the smallest paper bag ever. “What’s wrong?” your friend asks. What’s wrong? This is what’s wrong.

If you Google “shrimp sandwich” you get a lot of things. Mostly sandwiches. Like these for instance:

Yours looked a bit smaller, but only a bit. So you pay and holding your little bag you decide to go back to the other place to order some real sandwiches.”The shrimp will be a great appetizer,” you say to your friend while finding a seat in the park.

And then you open the bag. It actually looks kinda nice, and it feels so soft, and it makes you think of Wonder Bread, which is really cheap and really unhealthy and full of chemicals, but oh so tasty.

And you have the first bite, still complaining about the size of the thing that is supposed to keep you strong for the next six hours. It tastes pretty good, actually, and you take a second bite, saying to your friend that it may be worth its money, or maybe at least 3 euros (you paid 4). You quickly add “it’s still too small, though.” And then you’re finished–not that much later–and you look at the other sandwich, the bigger one. The cheaper one. The definitely-less-tasty-one. And you feel obliged to eat it, just to prove that the spongy creamy shrimp sandwich really wasn’t big enough. Your friend is staring at the fountain, looking very satisfied. “Aren’t you gonna eat your other sandwich?” you go. “Nah,” he says, “I’ll save it for later.” “It’s actually healthier,” he continues. “Did you know that some monkeys eat six times a day? it’s better for the body.” “No, I didn’t, actually.” Now you’re also staring at the fountain, and then it remains quiet for a little while. “Aren’t gonna eat your other sandwich?” your friend asks. “I’m thinking about the monkeys,” you reply.

And you were, and you were thinking that you actually weren’t that hungry anymore. And you couldn’t understand how that pathetic little sandwich could have possibly filled your stomach. But it did, kinda, for the next thirty minutes, cause by the time you got home you felt like having the other sandwich, and you did. It was a lousy sandwich. It was nothing like the other curly and spongy and too-expensive-for-its-size one. But tomorrow you’re probably going back. You might just even have one for breakfast.

Out of their League

I believe in leagues, football leagues, car leagues, man-woman leagues. You won’t see Inter Milan playing Cercle Bruges just like you won’t see a Porsche racing a Citroën. I am Udinese, I’ve played in the preliminary round of the Champions League, but didn’t get very far. I am a Volkwagen, I’m solid and I can go pretty fast, but I don’t have a V8. I play in the Serie A, but am not sure if I still belong there. My engine is getting rusty.

Before they played their semi-final against the Netherlands, Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez said: “We are at a party that we weren’t invited to. But I think we have the right to stay at that party.” Uruguay lost. Udinese plays in the Serie A, one of the best football competitions in the world. They are a good team, better than the best teams in the Belgian Jupiler League, the Dutch Eredivisie, The Scottish Football League, the Norwegian, the Swedish, the Greek, the Swiss, you name it. Unfortunately, all the best teams in the Serie A, the Premier League, the Primera Division, and even the Bundesliga, are better than Udinese.

And it’s the same with women. Just like in football, a guy can get lucky and end up playing a woman who is  out of his league. She should be in the Champions League, and definitely has played there in the past, but all of a sudden she’s playing in the Portuguese Liga. Switzerland beat Spain in the first group match of the World Cup, and Portsmouth played the FA Cup Final, but in the end, it never lasts. Pride comes before the fall, and the best example is probably Greece. The Euro 2004 winners haven’t been able to repeat their stunning performance. Very recently, at the World Cup in South Africa, they only managed to win one game.

After the 2006 scandal, Juventus quickly made their way back to the Serie A, where they belong. For Udinese, on the other hand, the last five years have been hard.

They are still at the party, definitely, and they are still dancing with the Heidi Klums of football. They owe it to themselves to stay on the floor until the bouncer throws them out. In the mean time, all they can do, is show the world they’ve been repudiated for too long.

Next season Udinese is playing the UEFA cup, but some day, they’ll be playing the Champions League again, and then, maybe, they’ll be allowed to stay a little longer.

They ruined my sidewalk

They simply don’t care. They don’t care about anyone when they park in front of a house, take out their drills, and start doing what they do, at 6:58 in the morning. I wasn’t supposed to wake up until 8, and it was supposed to have been by the lovely tunes of MC Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This.” – Can’t touch this tuutututut — They ruined it.

I was dreaming about something quite lovely, definitely something about Cuban cigars and pretty women, untill the drilling started. I didn’t quite understand where it came from. It wasn’t there yesterday morning. For a split second I thought about opening the window and shouting at them. I knew who it was, the people renovating their house a bit further down the street. I wanted to open the window and shout. The drills were giving me a headache. I got up at 7:02 and opened the window, only to see that it wasn’t the people a bit further down the street, the ones renovating their house. No, this is worse, these are city workers.

So I was up, and did what I do best at 7:02 in the morning. And by the time I was all done, 8 minutes later, the drilling had stopped. It had stopped. I opened the window again and looked at a hole in what had been a perfectly good sidewalk not that long ago. And then they sat down to drink coffee and turned on their radio. And they never listen to Iron Maiden, or Johnny Cash, or ABBA, or Billy Joel, or even Metallica, or any of the other sixteen thousand bands I like. No, they only listen to crap. And then their friends came, to make the hole even bigger. Great.

The Strip Joint

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a bachelor party. We had been driving around between cities and bars  having a great time but at 5:30 in the morning we couldn’t find a decent place left open. So my friend parked the car along the seacoast and we decided to start walking. I should add that somewhere along the way a couple of friends had picked up three Scottish girls who were still with us. After fifteen minutes of walking we stopped in front of what looked like a shop specialized in neon signs. I remember saying “the drinks are quite expensive here,” as an excuse for “I’ve never been to a strip club in my life.” I hadn’t, but I’ve always known that if I’d ever go to one, it would have to be Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing. The Scottish girls seemed really excited about the idea, so before I knew it I was drinking overpriced lukewarm beers surrounded by other men of the night, the Scottish girls, and one dancer.

One dancer. This clearly wasn’t the Bada Bing. But the music was great. Nineties techno. “You should pay him a dance!” Scottish girl #1 yells in my ear. “Great idea,” I reply, “ask the bartender how much is it.” It turns out to be only five euros, but we don’t want to give him a sleazy lap dance on the lap dance chair in the corner where three minutes earlier grandfather #23 was having the time of his life. No, no, no, our friend deserves the best treatment in the house. “Ask her what we get for twenty,” I shout to the Scottish girl, who asks the bartender. “You get a lot,” she communicates to me a minute later. “A lot?” That sounds good! “I think she said something about a private room,” the Scottish girl says. “Private room?” So I give my twenty to the bartender, who passes it on to the stripper, who then puts a chair on her stage next to her pole, takes my friend by the hand, and makes him sit there. That does not look like a private room, which is a good thing, of course, since the man is supposed to be getting married. The twenty-five other men of the night present are all staring at him. “This is not what I had in mind,” I shout to my other friend. He replies: “I know. This is even better!” The music starts, or better, changes, and she begings by taking off his shirt. A couple of minutes later he’s lying on the floor counting the stripper’s pubes with his nose. Would you want to sit in your boxer shorts with the entire room staring at you while a stripper is putting ice cubes down your pants rubbing her nipples over your face then telling you to sit on hands and knees and spanking you? I wouldn’t, but I could see a vague sign of enjoyment in our buddy’s eyes.

He was having the time of his life. He was better than us at that very moment, cause he realized that no one in that goddamn lousy strip joint knows who he is. They don’t even care. Ten minutes later, fully dressed again, after telling the stripper how good she is at her profession and thanking us so much for a fantastic early wedding present, the picture was perfect when a Mike Tyson look-alike told him how well he did and congratulated him for having such good friends. I smiled, hoping I’ll never have to be that lucky.