Let's play Arty Dominoes.
It's kind of like my variation on the old Kevin Bacon gag where you could reduce all of Hollywood down to a connection to Bacon. Starting with China, who Trump had a lot to say about...
CHINA turns to crowdfunding in its bid to restore parts of the Great Wall.
AI WEI WEI, one of the Chinese government's favourite ever people, hits up Palazzo Strozzi in Florence with his Reframe installation, continuing his art-activism in service of the refugee crisis.
A Russian clone of David, Florence's beefiest resident, and owner of its best hairstyle ever, is being forced to cover up due to the some local prudes in St. Petersburg.
The Hermitage Amsterdam is hosting a show dedicated to Catherine the Great, including more than 250 pieces on loan from St. Petersburg's hallowed Hermitage Museum [which she herself founded].
Victorian era painting by Anglo-Dutch artist named most valuable painting ever appraised on Antiques Roadshow.

In keeping with the presidential debate theme, and with Trump in particular, I thought it was great timing that CLET, an artist whose work I've had the luck of stumbling upon in Florence in the past just posted the following image on his Facebook page.
I love the playfulness of what he does with street signs around Italy - he's certainly inspired a lot of copycats and makes those nights ambling around Italian cities that little bit more enjoyable as a result.

Sad that it has come to this, but gosh, they still have it, don't they?
Of course, some more Rosario would've been great, but who am I to complain with their brilliant chemistry and the writing that made Will and Grace so great for so long? It was like eight seasons crystallized into ten minutes with a lot of venting and great gags.
Meanwhile, did you watch the debate?
I did this morning, having gone to bed with that uneasy feeling about what the box of kittens would bring with it.
Watching it was like watching something on the Discovery channel. Where the big, bulky species was constantly being pushed back into its cage by the smaller but smarter opponent.
That said, is it just me, or do you increasingly get the feeling that Trump's boiling anger acts like some kind of catharsis for the wider population? Like he says everything people from anywhere have wanted to say to a politician - especially one like Hillary -  but never get the chance to because they don't want to sound like a rambling lunatic, or because reason,  intellect [and facts] stops them?
Watching him stab his words out is like listening to half a country getting everything off its chest in a group therapy session, amplified as it is through all that fake tan and that comb over.
The commentators and media have already decided it was a win to Hillary, but the response from, well, I don't know, a third of the world [hello China, Russia, Iran, Japan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia and congratulations on your special mentions] is going to be just as fun [and disturbing] to watch. If that debate doesn't justifiably make their blood boil in the process. Please America, make it end.

There has to be a motive behind what's going on at the health ministry in Italy at the moment. Surely the infantile approach to its fertility day campaign is a joke that we haven't been let in on yet. Or perhaps it's a marketing technique designed to get everyone talking about them irrespective of the consequences. Perhaps it's a case of even bad publicity is good publicity when it comes to public health.
At the beginning of the month I posted about their horrible online campaign which due to the public backlash was over before it began. The one which likened women's bodies to being public incubators.
Well, the ministry and its "graphic design team" are back at it again, achieving a status that is more virus than viral.
​This ad hit the Internet this week:

Let me break it down for you. It's from the new the right lifestyle campaign launched to 'combat infertility' and, um, 'sterility'.
​The top image is accompanied by a message that translates as 'the right attitudes to promote.' In it we have a kind of German poster child aesthetic kicking in.
Then, we have the other image. The one accompanied by the warning that the people depicted are examples of the kind of bad friends/company that you should abandon and avoid in order to achieve the goal of remaining fertile.
The ad immediately hit a nerve, touching off a storm of debate relating to its implied racism and its reliance on stereotypes. It's all the more disturbing given that it was issued by an arm of the Italian government whose stated mission is the promotion of health and harmony.
I mean, I don't know about you, but I think I'd rather hang out in the haze of second hand smoke from the second group than be surrounded by churchy do gooders with those sitcom white teeth that will leave you instantly blinded if you look into them. They're like modern day Medusa heads, just with bad styling.
If all that wasn't bad enough, there was something fishy about the whole thing. The feeling that there was something not right about the images led people to do a bit of research on the web.
​Savvy commentators - who availed themselves of a quick Google image search quickly worked out where they'd been sourced from.

Erm... Stock photos or blatant theft, no one is sure. But it's yet another strike against an agency that is completely out of step with Italians and is really making a mockery of itself, leading people to wonder: is it intentional?
At this point I might just start begging the ministry to look towards North Korea or China for inspiration. They should just delve into the propaganda archives and come up with a poster that at least has some kitsch or aesthetic appeal.
In the meantime, Italy has pulled off its fake at week so far this yet! Hurrah to fake values and outright plagiarism from government departments.
​#awkward

Finally, we have reached that point in history when we can associate Coldplay with a sense of humour.
I know, it's like one of those days that you thought would never happen: like hearing that person in your life finally utter I'm sorry and then you watch as hell freezes over right after.
I started noticing all these Coldplay concert events on my social media feeds and wondered what was going on.
The events were being set in places where even locals think twice about setting foot: Tor Bella Monica in Rome is a place on the city's outskirts associated with high crime and a general lack of any culture or safety. Just the kind of place I'd like Coldplay to disappear into, but that's just me.

The parody events were inspired by the latest online hoax here in Italy: a fake listing for a Coldplay concert in Bologna in 2017 which got fans and the media worked up over nothing, which is not too different to the real thing if you ask me.
Of course after the Bologna incident, participants in the fake events are just playing along and if you can understand Italian you'll see that there's a fair bit of regionalism and piss taking going on in the comment fields.
And Italy can rejoice in the meantime: the economy sucks, the government is f*cked, but at least no one has to sit through a whiny Coldplay concert this year to boot! Hurrah!

If you ever watched Sex and the city back in the day, you'll no doubt remember Samantha Jones' altercation with a playboy bunny at the PB mansion over her Fake Fendi.
Fake Fendis are a dime a dozen around Rome. You practically trip over that shit when you walk anywhere in the Centro storico or through the metro foyers.
For shoppers they're like an unobtainable oasis. From far away they seem to glisten and sparkle but that delusion vanishes into thin air when you get up close or worse, when the vendor quickly conceals his wares in his blue garbage bag and abruptly ups and runs off - practically tearing out your hair extensions as he runs off trying to avoid the cops.
If you've been to Rome I know that you've been to the Spanish steps. You know, the gorgeous stairway that links the Church of the Trinity of Monti to Rome's high end shopping area.
Wait, I'm being too arty...
You know, the staircase where you can sit and catch your breath and watch nervously as glowing, humming pieces of plastic are thrown up into the air by street vendors and you remain in a horrified stupor, hoping that they won't land on your head even though you can't look down otherwise you're forced to watch as the guy's colleagues are busy throwing that other kind of plastic at the pavement, watching it ooze and stick to the floor like green vomit.
A classy place.
Well some Romans with money (the Bulgari folks) decided they were fed up with the condition of the steps so they financed their cleaning and restoration. After years of work, the steps were finally reopened this week to great fan fare and a nighttime unveiling, complete with a pack of journos in tow.
Awkward then that the city's cultural attaché - Claudio Parisi Presicce - gaffed his speech and thanked Fendi for their generosity in restoring the staircase before realising his mistake and thanking the Bulgari group instead. Bulgari, probably to avenge the slight [not the way to treat a corporate sponsor tsk tsk], are now demanding that the staircase be closed during evenings to protect its restoration.
Erm, isn't that like being gifted an expensive handbag at night, realising that you can finally go all Joanne the scammer when you get trashed, but then the person who gave you the bag threatens to take back the gift unless you keep it indoors, wrapped in tissue paper and, like, in a safe.
The debate about how and when the Bulgari stairs can be used will no doubt rage in Rome - Romans love a good ideological argument- but for a brief moment in time at least, Rome, in addition to so much inauthenticity in its city centre, also officially had its own Fake Fendi Staircase. #awkward

If you've never seen it and are looking for a great nostalgic ride back through the late eighties, there's a great documentary on Stock, Aitken and Waterman on youtube.
I guess if you grew up in the UK, Australia [or even some parts of Europe] you're more likely to feel the connection to the bubble gum/hi NRG music that those guys came up with while creating their empire.
For a few years they were everywhere - and their distinct sound proved to be huge, almost guaranteeing hits for their artists: among them Bananarama, Mel & Kim and... Jason Donovan.
A lot of their stuff was repetitive, similar and so sugary that it should've come with a warning. But they also came up with some of the period's most defining pop songs. They had a knack for making stars out of unknowns [though at one point even Donna Summer came their way]. Of course, their golden geese were Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue.
Pretty much everyone - bar Kylie - that was involved with SAW is now a distant memory [or on the nostalgic 80s tours that are snaking their way around the world] although Rick Astley has recently had a comeback.
People magazine recently profiled Rick Astley who had a comeback album earlier this year. Checking out the statistics on youtube, Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up has racked up almost 250 million views since being the target of the Rickroll. That's about $2m of revenue if you believe the estimates based on what PSY's video publicly made even if Astley, who sang and didn't write the song allegedly has seen a lot less than that.

Yes, yes.
You - like most of the international press - were so excited about the prospect of Rome having its first ever female mayor. And one who has promised to make it a transparently run city free of graft and the sordidness of Mafia Capitale.
Romans on the other hand looked at the new mayor like the best of the worst- a rejection of the establishment more than anything else.
But Virginia Raggi is struggling and just a couple of months in has already been plagued by high profile resignations, accusations of improper process and, worse still in the eyes of Italians, incompetence.
After watching some of the Rio Olympics I've decided that I too want to become an Olympian. I'm thinking something sexy like archery or shooting or the like so that I get to maintain my current physical state and still get to be an Olympian.
But it looks like Raggi is going to quash my dreams of competing in Rome in 2024. It looks like Rome is not going to proceed any further in its bid to host the games. On this one, I can't say I blame the mayor. Rome is still having all sorts of woes with the basics that it has never been able to achieve; sanitation and transport. They're the issues that are as eternal as the city itself.
You might notice the occasional stink if you're in Rome, but if you're planning on visiting Rome you'll barely notice the transport problem. You can see most of its greatest hits on foot and there are a plethora of sightseeing buses that offer pretty comprehensive itineraries.
But if, like most Romans, your plans don't necessarily revolve around the Colosseum or the Vatican, you might just want to do as Romans do- or as Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck once did- and experience it from the back of the scooter.
"But Italian roads are terrible" I hear you cry! It's true. A lot of Italians drive like insane people but most Italians are capable of driving alongside the hoons and getting from A to B quite safely. And in Rome moving from A to B isn't always logical when it comes to transport. I have a friend who has to travel 15km as the crow flies to get to work. That takes her almost two hours by public means. So, to that end, the newish batch of apps that have hit the market make a lot of sense to Romans, and the more adventurous folk amongst you.
You see you can now choose from a variety of apps to organise a scooter pick up. You'll get picked up and taken wherever you want to go in the Eternal city for just €3 a ride. It's Uber, Roman style! Of course there are restrictions on how much of Rome is actually serviced, but if you want to see the sights from a scooter ala Audrey I can highly recommend it. It's bumpy but there's nothing quite like it!
So my Olympic journey is not likely to take me out into outskirts of Rome where they'll have spent millions making stadiums that will then go unused, but next time I'm in town, I just might treat myself to a little nip about town on the back of a scooter to remind myself how beautiful that city is regardless of its eternally incompetent administration.

There is something remarkable about being a fan of someone. How it predispositions you towards being in favour of their every move - and how it brings out the extremes in some of us.
Fandom these days is all about marshalling the troops. We watch as a generation builds an army and names it and then does all it can and must in the name of the war for supremacy.
Conscription is as easy as a hashtag, a vine or a cutting remark all in the name of elevating or protecting status, position and perception.
In the world of pop, die hard fans (or stans as they are colloquially known) usually duke it out online for boy bands and divas. There is some special thuggery also reserved for male artists but it doesn't seem to capture the imagination in the way that the great Diva battles do.

It's a tale as old as time (thanks Celine) but the diva wars as we know them now started back in the nineties. By then women were regularly chalking up multi-million sellers and competition amongst artists spilled over to the fans, the biggest fans amongst them choosing their allegiances carefully.
Twitter and Instagram would be dead and buried were it not for the endless armies that now wage war on their heroine's behalves. While the strategies and tactics have changed since the nineties, the end goal is always the same: utter supremacy at the cost of all competition.
This year there have been some brilliant misfires in the social cultural wars. With the release of her Lemonade album, Beyonce's fans went on the war path on the implication that her husband had cheated on her. The first assumption had been that he'd cheated on her with fashion designer Rachel Roy so her minions - the Beyhive - launched a stinging attack. Some didn't read the memo correctly and incorrectly targeted a TV chef - Rachel Ray- online stoning her with virtual lemons and making increasingly shocking threats - until their sub commanders got wind of their mistake.

While some armies famously take on those of rival divas (often with the circumspect complicity of the stars themselves) many use social networks simply to mobilise fellow fans, and to help manipulate the measuring sticks of success.
It's no secret that the great leveller - the pop music chart- has increasingly struggled to make sense of a world in which we barely need to buy music anymore. We can watch it free on YouTube, stream it on Spotify or, download it through official and unofficial channels. Concert attendances remain steady but record sales have plummeted to all time lows suggesting that we still consume music on the same level we once did but just in increasingly harder to measure ways. But just as the race to No.1 defined the diva battles of the 90s, the accolade of a No.1 spot is still highly coveted. It's like conquering a foreign land and taking it as your own in the diva wars, and when it comes to the battle of metrics and numbers - no army fights harder than the Little Monsters.
Time after time, Lady Gaga's Monsters have proven the extremes to which dedication pushes Stans as well as a kind of ingenuity that manipulates an already convoluted process of measuring commercial success.

You know when a news story just leaves you feeling, well, awkward?
A new candidate for Awkward! shuffled forward this week out of a court room in Sicily. From the minute you hear Sicily and 'courtroom' you know you gotta perk those ears up because you just know it's going to be juicy.
Well, I think it's more juicy as in moist. See? Got you feeling just the right kind of awkward now. Let's proceed.
Story goes a little something like this. A 69(!) year old man in the greater Catania area apparently just felt the need to throw a bit of caution to the wind and to, erm, give himself a little bit of pleasure in front of a group of teenage girls who are students at the university.
He was initially arrested for indecent exposure, but just this week had the charge overturned as the judge has ruled that it (i.e. the act of masturbating in public) is not a criminal offence. You see, in Italy, law is basically divided into two camps: criminal and civil. He'll be fined a few thousand euro for taking the liberty onto himself in front of others, but no criminal act will be entered onto his record. Which means, due to a change in the criminal code, masturbating in public is now technically not a penal crime.
So for you perves who want to get it on by yourselves outdoors and in front of Italy's greatest landmarks, the judge has basically paved the way for you to do it.
To avoid a fine, you might want to content yourself with just being out in the open air though, and not bother trying to get yourself an audience as it sounds like the law's interpretation is less about exhibitionism and more about the right to, erm, derive satisfaction in the open air.
Original report in Italian here, translated in English here.