internships and the nextech festival

I got it! I am now an intern for The Florentine, Florence's bi-weekly expat newspaper. The internship is through Syracuse, and my first story is going to be about the locations that Spike Lee used when shooting Miracle at St. Anna, which is set in a little Tuscan village. I'm hopefully doing internet research on Sunday and travelling around the actual places next weekend. Tomorrow and Saturday I am going to two school trips, to Assisi on Friday and Ravenna (!) on Saturday. And, fingers extra extra crossed, I am emailing Scott Schuman to see if I can interview him, because Florence is so frequently featured on the Sartorialist.

Starting tonight, the Nextech Festival starts in Florence. It's festival of "musica elettronica e ambiente visivo" so basically DJ sets, live electronica and lots and lots of projection screens. And even though we are leaving for Assisi at 7:30 in the morning tomorrow, I am still going to this show tonight. I will sleep on the bus. Plus live music of any sort is so very few and far between in Florence, that I should take advantage of it whenever the opportunity presents itself, right?And Chicks on Speed are playing tomorrow, so I might go to all three nights? I'll have a full report after the weekend.

you know how to flatter a man

Okay, so I'm all for Michael Phelps, USA, rah rah rah and all that good clean patriotic fun, but these photos are too much:

Photos: New York Times

looking forward:

If you happen to read the Sartorialist, you will understand my giddy anticipation of arriving in Florence. That blog will have you believing that Florence is crawling with nothing but nattily-dressed men and women of all ages, kitted out in impeccable haberdashery and most endearing knitwear. No amount of cloth sacrificed to the manpri will depress me as the hope of a man as dashing as this fellow lounging about the next corner will linger. I'm hoping to get at least a crash-course in analog photography before I leave and shilling around in piazzas, being That Foreign Creepster taking pictures of all the little old gentlemen in their straw boaters.

Also, these make me wish most desperately for outsize man's feet. Purple suede with tassels? Who could resist!?