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This week, we reunite the cast and they tell us a bit about their summer trips (or swanky conferences). Then, the EPCC’s Henry Olsen joins us for some rank punditry® on 2020 and Trump’s re-election chances, as well as keeping the Senate and winning back the House. Also, Iran, China, Italy, and yes, Costa Rica.
Music from this week’s show: Volare (Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu) by Dean Martin
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Great guest.
And Robinson! Nice to have you back. Other than the Uffizi, any good detours in Firenze? Isn’t everything pretty much nearby everything else in Florence? Or were you stuck in a secret conference that just happened to be halfway across the globe from the tech hub right down the road from your house?
Here’s what I learned about Firenze: Even in the first days of June all the big museums and public areas are jammed–the Ponte Vecchio was as crowded as Disneyland, and I mean that literally–with a single exception: the churches. They’re huge, cool (the temperature and humidity outdoors were both high), full of magnificent works of art, and, such is the state of things in this twenty-first century, nearly empty. I spent a lot of time in the Duomo, even more in Sta Croce, a still older structure. In Sta Croce, the side chapels had been frescoed by Giotto, the big crucifix in the sacristy was the work of Cimabue, and St. Francis was present everywhere: in the fragment of his cloak and belt in the church treasury, and in the life-size polychrome portrait of the saint, surrounded by scenes from his life, that dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, just a quarter of a century or so after the death of St. Francis himself. Florentine churches. If you’re in search of beauty, and history, and a certain lovely hush, you just can’t go wrong.
That’s great, Peter. Ars longa, but what about the food? The pizza? The gelato?
I’m very, very sorry to report that food has never really registered with me. I’m sure the food was good–wonderful, even. Lots of exquisite little helpings of pasta, followed by lovely small, perfect plates of beef or fish, and, once, if I’m remembering this correctly, rabbit. Likewise the wine: very good, I’m sure.
But honestly? I’d have preferred spaghetti and meatballs with a Diet Coke every single time.
Peter, loosen the sweater knot. Savonarola (b. 1452) and Dante (b. 1265) were essentially contemporaries like Abigail Adams (b. 1765) and I (b. 1952) are essentially contemporaries. Breathe, Dude!
Edit: Wrong Abigail Adams. Her daughter Abigail Adams Smith. Make it Eli Whitney instead. These sweaters are dangerous.
The final music made me laugh. What a great combo, you have the Italian and Rob’s little flying trip combined.
Good show, Gents.
I think he said Donatello.
Interesting to hear Rob Long defend Donald Trump on the Iran stepdown. Certainly unusual, if not a first.
Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks …
Maybe his trip has given him new insight. 😜
Thanks for putting me right.
In my defense, I seem to recall that I started by saying Savonarola was a contemporary of Michelangelo, which he was. (Then I corrected myself, substituting Dante for Michelangelo, except that my correction itself, as you’ve noted, was incorrect, so I guess I actually miscorrected myself.) But Savonarola was hanged and then burned in 1498. Michelangelo completed the David just six years later, in 1504-and until it was placed indoors in the late nineteenth century, the David, one of the most uplifting and magnificent pieces ever sculpted, stood in the Piazza della Signoria, just paces from the spot on which Savonarola had been put to a savage and degrading death.
Which is the point I was trying to make. In Firenze, I found, one is constantly surrounded both by beauty-lavish beauty, extreme beauty- and emblems of brutality.
For two weeks I do this show and, being self conscious about my rather ancient tastes in music, close with Chicago and the Beatles. Yeti comes back and drops Dino on me.
Stai scherzando?
Oh, piffle! You wouldn’t know ancient if it bit you in the lyre. Kids these days.
“…in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo – Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance…
“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?…The cuckoo clock.” — Orson Welles as “Harry Lime” in The Third Man (1949).
Peter Robinson outside the Duomo di Firenze in Florence.
Rob mentioned the shamans in what sounds like the ‘shabebo’ tradition, and I every time I hear that my brain hears ‘placebo.’
Does that mean you were there, too?
I was! We shot some upcoming episodes of Uncommon Knowledge there.
This image is how I have long been imagining how the weekends go for this Ricochet trio.
If it makes you feel better, the first thought I had when I heard Dino was, “I thought EJ said Blue Yeti was back this week.”
My thought exactly!
Y’all should listen to the GloP podcast to hear a more in-depth discussion of Rob’s “trip”.
I wanted to use the Gypsy Kings’ very cool version of Volare, but it’s in Spanish.
Yeah, I knew it was one of those Ninja Turtles.
I like The Third Man line. The Greeks kind of contribute to that thesis too. The most iconic works of the Classical period were produced in 5th Century, which was book-ended by the Persian Invasion and the Peloponnesian War.
Our peaceful century has seen the complete infusion of human beings into pieces of art… I think the Ninja Turtles were probably more beautiful.
Lileks steers the boat while Rob and Peter mess around?
The good Episcopalian, Rob Long, with his foray into the wisdom of the ancients probably doesn’t realize how close he is to the vision of the future Catholic Church under Pope Francis. With the release of the Instrumentum Laboris for the upcoming Amazon Synod, we learn that rather than evangelizing the indigenous people and seeking their conversion the Church is to “dialogue” with them and “enrich herself with clearly pagan and / or pantheistic elements of belief.”. Or as the document says, the Church can learn from the “cosmic dimension of experience (that) palpitates within the family, where one learns to live in harmony between peoples, between generations, with nature, in dialogue with the spirits”.
Perhaps Rob can bring a new sacramental form to the Church with what he learned in Costa Rica.
Rob for Pope!
Dean’s is the standard, but this was really good. Thanks for posting it.
Rob’s assertion, starting at 52:38, that the Chinese are terrified of the prospect that’s “really not that far away… 2, 3, 4 years”of iPhones being 3D printed in local Apple stores has to be the stupidest thing he’s ever said.
Must have been some sort of iowaska flashback.
@blueyeti, Gypsy Kings have very cool versions of a lot of songs. Oh the things we learned from watching The Dude. I’m glad you channeled @ejhill this time, though. Nothing beats a classic.
Or at the very least, Rob can become P.J. O’Rourke for Gen-X.
Something for the older folks to think about:
Do you remember when “Is the Pope a Catholic” was a rhetorical question?
In a similar vein, I’ve often thought that Obama is unique in history as the first President of the United States who was not an American patriot.
The difference, though, is that Obama didn’t get to name the electors who would choose the next President, while Francis does. His tolerance for bishops with a yen for altar boys seems to be based on his political need for leftists in the hierarchy, according to a comment he is alleged to have made.