(Matteo Caccia)

I break an unwritten rule, presenting something in Italian. It’s worth it.

Vendo Tutto (Everything for Sale): a radio program written and hosted by Matteo Caccia on Radio 24.

You can listen the podcast and the archive of the previous episodes. The sale, real, was on Ebay.
The signature tune is: Ten Millions Slaves by Otis Taylor.

Above: Matteo Caccia, photo from his page on Ebay, detail.

Here, the English summary of: L’orologio da parete (The wall clock, © Il Sole 24 Ore)

The wall clock

“The first time I went to dinner with Giulia’s parents was a very awkward evening.

They had both graduated in philosophy and were both teachers.
They inherited a fortune and never touched a penny of it.
From the little Giulia had told me, I realized that in their youth they had been a couple of hippies.

One Tuesday, Giulia said it was her mother’s birthday and it was about time we met.
I hadn’t done anything all day other than wait for that single most important of events: the Champions League match between Valencia and Inter Milan.

Giulia had to repeat herself three times for her words to sink in.
The third time wasn’t exactly in the politest of terms.
I tried to find an excuse, and found none.

So I got up, pulled on a jumper, a pair of jeans, my old pair of Nike trainers and shouted:
“Let’s go!”

Giulia gave me that look only she could master, and said:
“No way are you going dressed like that.”

She cursed my ex-girlfriends and chose instead a light-blue shirt, a dark blue pair of trousers and a velvet jacket.
I had to admit, I didn’t look half bad.

Giulia’s mother exuded radiance. She was clearly one of life’s enthusiasts.
I gave her my wishes and she said Giulia never told her anything, she knew precisely nothing about me other than that I worked in the world of cinema.
She then took me by the arm and said:
“Come, I’ll introduce you to the cook.”

We went into the kitchen; and I was about to graciously greet the father of the woman I loved when the guy turned round and, stood in front of me, was a dark-skinned man of indeterminate age.

The various possibilities whirled round my mind: a second husband, a white daughter born of a mixed marriage, a lover. She then said:
“This is Anaoura, he’s from Sri Lanka and a fabulous cook.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, partly because now I understood his role, but also because I noticed Anaoura had the television on and tuned in to the match.

In the dining room, I finally met Giulia’s father.
Unlike her mother, he did everything in his power to make me feel ill at ease.
I tried to ignore him, though I had the feeling that, somehow, he was taking the mick.

The dinner was agony though Anaoura’s food was delicious.

While Giulia’s mother was telling us how she yearned to take a course in drama, I excused myself to go to the bathroom; I stood up and as soon as I was round the corner, I made a beeline for the kitchen. Anaoura was watching the screen with his mouth hanging open.

I went in and asked:
“Inter?”
He shook his head and said:
“They’re out.”

Back at the table, Giulia was on her feet and bidding her father farewell.
He then did the oddest of things. He faced the wall and took down the clock. He turned round and handed it to me. For a moment, time stood still. I wasn’t sure if this was a joke, or what. He held the clock out at arm’s length, saying:
“Take it, Matteo. This is yours now.”

In the car, I didn’t trust myself to speak, but a question kept going round and round my mind: what the hell was the meaning of that clock?”

(Oscar Wilde, Reality Is Unrealistic)

“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés.

Tropes transcend television. They exist in life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere.”.

TV Tropes: “a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.”.

“So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever.
Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.”.

Gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. By Hugh MacLeod.

Above: Dinosaur (2006), print on paper, © gapingvoid gallery.

The Dollar ReDe$ign Project: “It’s time to rebrand the buck.”. By Richard Smith.

Instead we created a new system, the famous red band on the M1 line , for the signals.
Before then, the station’s name appeared only once in the middle of the quay.
I proposed to repeat the name every five meters so that, with the train still in motion, one could immediately see it.
This was a world first.”. “I believe that my work is always a work of communication.
Communication means that I have to do a service to another, to be able to make readable a text, and to make understand enough.

That’s not to say that it is boring and you can’t do anything.
No, there are many possibilities.”.

(interview for Rai Educational, 2002)

Top, right: Milan metro sign, 1964.
Bottom, left: Bob Noorda (Amsterdam, 1927 – Milan, 2010), designer.

He is the author of several Personal Annual Reports that collate countless measurements into a rich assortment of graphs and maps reflecting the year’s activities.”. “He is the co-founder of Daytum.com, a site for counting and communicating daily data, and frequent designer of information graphics for numerous corporations and publications.”.

Top: The 2008 Report: Dining/Drinking, detail.
Bottom : The 2009 Report: Relationships/Activities, detail.

“A winter’s day I was going to wear a heavy wool jacket, and there was a cat that was watching me and I thought: this cat doesn’t understand what I am doing, it knows nothing, it knows neither what is a jacket, nor that there is the winter, nor what is the cold, it doesn’t know anything, and it will never know anything because its brain is structured in a manner such that it doesn’t go beyond certain boundaries, it is useless to want to go further.
We are in the same situation, we are under one roof and we fail to never go beyond.”.

(Ettore Sottsass: Conversation under a roof, translated from Wikiquote)

Bender: “I tried helping them. I tried not helping them but in the end I couldn’t do them any good. Do you think what I did was wrong?”

God: “Right and wrong are just words. What matters is what you do.
Being God isn’t easy, if you do too much, people get dependent.
And if you do nothing, they lose hope.
You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

Godfellas: the transcript at the Internet Movie Script Database.
From Futurama, episode 52: Godfellas, written by Ken Keeler (2002).

Above: Always. Everyone. Everywhere.

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