Sorry, couldn't do it.

Just could not get myself to put together a show even though I had most of it at the tip of my fingers. Producing one of theses shows just took takes too much out of me. We are getting ready for our trip and there was just not much time. My fans will have to do with the 141 for now.

Meanwhile the subscribers keep increasing in numbers. More people are reading these blogs, and of course the number of views on Youtube steadily approaches 50,000, a great milestone for me.

I will try to bring back more shows, although the thought of just relaxing with our friends in great places like Florence, Venice, and Rome appeals to me very much, but I am am a Youtube Video Producer with responsibilities. I would like to bring back videos of performance pieces at the Venice Biennale. That is one sure fire thing. I would also like to photograph and video some more unique Tuscan locations another fair certainty. While in Florence I would like to do some of my own narration on video of places around town, perhaps go to a museum I haven't been to yet (if I can find one), perhaps photograph the inside of one of the most unique stores in Florence, the Alinari Bookstore, occupying the  former Alinari Worshop during the 19th century. We will also be staying at a new hotel in a newish area Trastevere. That alone should be a treasure trove of new material. I would also like to video interview with people in Italy, but not sure how much aggressiveness I will have over there; that's hard to predict. It takes a lot of guts to walk up strangers and even and especially friends and ask for an interview on video. Perhaps 10 more shows total is possible and would satisfy me.

I will see you soon. In the meantime, keep reading and keep watching!! Thanks to my loyal fans.

A Day and a Half in Milan

After two weeks of back and forth deciding whether to create a show based on Milan or the Amalfi Coast, I suddenly gave in to my initial desire to do Milan and thus show # 141 was born. Taking only a few days to put together, here is a 30 minute retrospective of the tour I planned for myself aboard a train to Milan during one of my between marriages solo trips to Italy. This occurred in 2002 and wound up spontaneously being the result of an imminent rail stroke which threatened to mess up my travel plans. In one of my very few impromptu decisions traveling around Italy, I scrapped a night in Venice and a side trip to Verona in favor of a lot of extra time in Milan. Since I had very little knowledge of Milan, I kept my itinerary simple and contained to one small area of Milan and had an amazing tour of some of the greatest sights in Milan including the Ambrosiana Pinacoteca, Leonardo's Last Supper, Castello Sforzesco for the amazing final sculpture created by Michelangelo just before his death in 1564, the Brera Museum, the unheralded but spectacular Palazzo Poldi Pezzoli, La Scala, arguably the most famous opera house in the world, the Cathedral of Milan, Galleria Emanuele, one of the oldest indoor shopping areas in the world, and Piazza del Duomo one of the most exciting places in Italy. I served the dual purpose of describing some outstanding sights to see in Milan and also reliving one of my favorite times in Italy during my 7th trip total and last solo trip to Italy in the summer of 2002. I interspersed photos Laura and I had taken during subsequent visits to Milan and internet material to enhance the presentation.

I found the production of this show to be very concisely organized and executed. It swiftly moves from topic to topic in a very efficient manner, in many ways more hurried than any show I have produced recently. When I watched it at the conclusion of the process, I was surprised at how efficient it turned out to be and also how short it was, just under 30 minutes, again one of the shortest of my recent creations since I have been doing the work at home using IMovie. However, I was very satisfied. I am not generally given to brevity, as you well know, but somehow felt compelled to be that way once to see how it went. You can be the judge of that, but in the final analysis I was quite content to view the finished product.

Now that I have completed that and am in the process of uploading to Youtube as I type, I will begin the show on the Amalfi Coast. Speaking of spectacular things to see, this region of Italy is chock full of amazing things to see and do, all within a small area of the region known as Campania. I have three weeks before I embark upon my 25th trip Italy. This is a well planned trip which I will not discuss (sticking to tradition of not discussing a trip before I take it), and will talk about more in June. For now I hope I can complete the Amalfi show # 142 before I leave.

Venice: Take Two

I didn't like the first version, so redid many of the aspects and what you now see will be more perfect than the first time around. Several people have already viewed the show, and you may go back and get a better glimpse of the majesty of Venice. I just didn't feel right letting such imperfection leak into what was intended as the "perfect" tour of Venice.

Perfect? Well, I am not so sure

One month to the day after I published show # 139, I posted show # 140: the "Perfect" Tour of Venice. It was not easy, but then again, it never is and probably never will be. These shows are never easy for any number of reasons that I have written of to a great extent in these blogs. This one just "got in the way" of many other things I was doing. Certainly when I am working, it is much more difficult to find the significant amount of time necessary to put these shows together. I suppose that the challenge is part of the lure to begin with. I sure do enjoy a challenge. When I first returned to teaching college after my three year hiatus, I told people I liked the challenge of returning to a job that I had just about given up on. Despite my almost continuous states of anxiety, apparently there is a part of me that enjoys a great challenge; I think the challenge might be what has gotten me through these many, many years of living with my levels of anxiety.

Nonetheless, using all my knowledge of Venice, I created a show that throughout the process never for a minute assumed I was producing a "perfect" tour. That might just be impossible. As I have said many times perfect for one person is not so perfect for another. Therefore, using the word is just a goof to begin with. I was creating a tour. Period. It includes some good stuff; don't me wrong. If you have never been to Venice or haven't spent that much time there, then you will find this helpful. I have produced many Venice shows on a wide variety of topics, the most recent the Sevan Melikyan show about the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Really those shows are my Venice legacy to my fans. All of those previous have been very esoteric and very narrow in the construct. This is a shotgun of information on the things a person needs to go to Venice for a few days and have a great trip. I talk about my favorite hotels, restaurants, methods of arrival, travel, and what to do when you get there. It is, as all my shows, very, very personal - Alan's Italy. I have tried to explain that many times. I hope you enjoy it!

My next endeavor will probably be Ric's show on the Ancient Roman site (that apparently not too many people know about) of Carsulae. I was supposed to have met with him today, but he couldn't make it. I sent him the photos that he had given me years ago (with the expectation that we would a show on this topic), and he will now get it together. When he is ready, which I assume will be soon, then we will shoot the videos, probably in the same manner as Sevan and I did the Peggy Guggenheim. Otherwise, I have no specific idea for a show, but am leaning towards one of those perfect shows on Milan, completing the major cities that I have been to extensively.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading and watching.

An Update on Show # 140 - Time Has Not Been on My Side

Busy, busy, busy with a thousand things which have prevented me from doing any show since the Botticelli Show # 139. With my college teaching the largest factor preventing me from doing any extensive work on the next show taken together with a variety of other things, I have tried to plod through a show on a Venice Tour, but have yet to finish. When I first selected Venice as the theme for show # 140, I thought it would be the easiest of the "tour shows" which have already included Rome, Florence, and Tuscany, but that has not happened and to be honest, that type of show is the most difficult to put together. To be exact and thorough a lot of work goers into those productions and it takes a very long time to get everything accomplished, especially when I am so busy. I did a lot of things today, and when I finally sat down to attempt to record and do all the myriad things that go into a presentation, I was not focusing the way I should, and so I stopped. Perhaps tomorrow, but then Tuesday through Thursday we will be away so that will prolong the final  creation as well. I will do my best, but it may take quite a while.

In the meantime on Friday, April 14 Ric Hirst and I will begin work on show # 141 which will focus on the long forgotten Ancient Roman town of Carsulae in Umbria, a place I never even heard of until Ric told me about it. He has some fascinating photos, and I am looking forward to working on that. I would have liked to finish Venice before working on that, but it may not happen quite that way.

On The Trail of A Great Master

Having experienced the thrill of analyzing the work of a great artist of the Florentine Renaissance during my research for Raphael, I ventured a bit further by trying to do the same for Botticelli. His work was overwhelming in numbers and although my initial inclination was to abandon the idea, I stayed with it, did a tremendous amount of research and still came to the conclusion that this was too much to accomplish. I tried to narrow the scope to just the work in the Uffizi, but that great museum had a tremendous number of Botticelli paintings. Then it struck me. Although most people who visit the Botticelli Rooms in the Uffizi gawk over the Birth of Venus and Primavera and rightly so, I have always been taken by the painting just to the right of Primavera, the Adoration of the Magi. In addition to its being a beautiful work, the historical significance of containing in it some of the great Florentines of the 15th century was overwhelming. After all no fewer than six Medicis were depicted, plus the donor, the humanists who created the Medici Academy, and none other than Botticelli himself. The latter being the only self portrait he did, and indeed the only existing "realistic" likeness of the great master himself. I therefore decided to first talk about the difficulty in creating a show around this theme, summarize the prodigious number of paintings that existed throughout the world, focus on my inability to visit a museum without finding a Botticelli quite by accident, give a biographical sketch of Botticelli, analyze a few of his work, and then finally to do an in-depth analysis of the Adoration and my own "theories" of who's who in this great work. What at first seemed impossible began to flow quickly once the plan was set in my mind.

The editing process held no great moments as I have become adept at correcting mistakes by cutting and pasting fresh voice-overs. Other than that nothing special occurred. My friend Ric suggested a desire to do a show soon about an obscure Ancient Roman site in Central Tuscany named Carsulae, which we will do soon. The advent of a ferocious snow storm with two feet of snow keeping everyone indoors helped to give me the time to get the show accomplished quickly. My next show will focus on the "perfect" tour of Venice, LOL, and that's that.

Driving in Italy Confidential: The True Story

Well, laboring through Ed's death, my own time constraints, and unending editing, I finally finished this show that I have been desiring to do since I started Alan's Italy back in 2011. Not wanting to focus too much on the traumas I experienced during driving, I spent about 1/3 of the show talking about my wonderful experiences traveling through Tuscany, Umbria, the Dolomites, Cinque Terre, and Lake Como. The show was so effective in helping me to remember the extraordinary moments Laura and I shared during some of these amazing car rides, that I am actually thinking seriously about renting a car and doing it all again!!!! OMG! I must be crazy; well, I know that's true anyway. The show focuses on three aspects of driving, some basics that everyone who will drive in Italy should be aware of, my own great moments, and a list of some of the strange and awful things that occurred. That's the gist of it.

I was slightly displeased with the final product. I videotaped several different segments, and apparently kept changing the camera angles, causing different visual perspectives, and changes in lighting. The latter was probably more caused by the fact that the taping took place over several hours during which time the lighting kept changing. Even during one segment the sun kept fading in and out, thus the disadvantages of not doing the show in a studio which is completely windowless and always the same camera angle. There is no happy medium, and I cannot have it both ways - either I do the show at home in my living room or in the studio. One way to solve the lighting difficulties would be to do all the videotaping at night when there would be no sun issues. Of course I have most of my time to do these shows in the afternoon; I would have to change that. I also was a little less than pleased with my manner of speaking. I liked the relaxed and easy manner of presenting in that chair for the 40 minutes total, but there is something I wish not to indicate because probably most people wouldn't pick up the problem unless I pointed it out; or perhaps they would.

Anyway, here it is, my total driving experience from 2003 until my last drive in 2014. I will now think seriously of renting once again and of course will keep you informed.