mbf tod@y

And now back to our regular broadcasting

Life is funny.

Starbucks in Italy? 10 years of hopes and fears

"Following its UK launch in October, US coffee shop chain Starbucks is said to be considering large-scale European operation, which will also target Italy. The business daily Il Sole 24 Ore said that Starbucks, with some 1 500 outlets in the United States, may be aiming for 500 points of sale across Europe, but they are likely to be points rather than shops, meaning machines at strategic places." (Eurofood, December 3, 1998)

Possibly, the first false-alarm about an alleged imminent launch of the Starbucks coffee chain in Italy. Starbucks did open in the UK that year and in many European nations, but not in Italy. A decade later, the chain giant has not yet annexed the Land of Persimmons. For some Italians, the Seattle-based corporation is the equivalent of the proverbial barbarians at the gate. For others, it is the equivalent of the US Army liberating the nation from an oppressive, fascist coffee culture. The saga continues.

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Cool Mix

• Music - Last.fm Seals Deal With All Four Major Labels, Amazon Reaps the Benefits (Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone)
• Movies - Andrew O'Heir on the adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke (Salon) Sam Rockell is da bomb
• Booze - UK Study: More Successful People Drink More reports The Independent. Yeah, right... But that makes me feel better.
• Games: Earthrise, one MMO that looks awesome. For a change.
• Movies. No Country For Old Men has been beaten to the top spot at the UK box office by Aliens Vs Predators. Now, this is very, very scary.
• Games: Forget SimCity Societies and get City Life 2008 instead. Here.

La Tartaruga

Warning: Italian Folk Music of the 70s. I still have the 78, somewhere. I used to sing this song about the little turtle when I was in kindergarten (sigh).(Grazie Gianni!)

Official: Starbucks Set to Rock Italy's Cafe Culture

"The Seattle-based coffee powerhouse, Starbucks, has announced plans to expand its 4,000-strong empire with some 650 branches planned for continental Europe. [...] Starbucks is currently opening new branches worldwide at a rate of three per day. "We're taking a softly, softly approach when it comes to Europe," explained a spokeswoman for Starbucks Europe. "We expect to open shops in the big four countries - Italy, Germany, France and Spain - in the next 24 to 36 months." In Italy - where one city has already formed an association to protect historic cafés - a battle lies ahead. For Italians, drinking their coffee is as routine as breathing - a recent survey found that 70 million cups of espresso are drunk in Italy each year. That's 600 shots per person, consumed in any of Italy's 110,000 coffee bars. Milan, nexus of the fashion world, has some 600 cafés alone. And Italians' cafés are a source of pride and joy. In this country where sidewalk cafés are firmly entrenched in the national psyche, Starbucks' announcement has caused an uproar. "The Italian café is a culture that the Americans have repackaged," said a spokesman for one of Starbucks' European competitors. "They concentrate more on their image than the coffee." Italy's La Stampa newspaper chided: "We thought we had everything in Italy, but it turns out we lacked one thing: American coffee," (Jennifer Askin, ABC News, April 30, 2007)

Sorry, guys. It's over. The Frappuccinos are coming.

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Background info: here and here

Comic Strip of the Day: Pinocchio's new life

(From Michael Carter)

giannicanova 2.0

"La cosa che so fare meglio - credo - è insegnare. Cinema, ovviamente. Mi piace contagiare gli altri con le mie passioni. Mi piace che gli altri mi contagino con le loro. Ho avuto la fortuna di avere grandi maestri. E la possibilità di trasformare una passione in professione." (gianni canova)

Leggi

LOL!

Mitico. Tutto vero. (fonte: Ars Ludica).

Leggi

Slow Traffic till July

Summer has finally arrived and that basically means crunch time. I'll be mostly offline to finish up various projects - including a new book. emails: I'll be slower than usual to respond. Very slow. blog: Expect sporadic posts on mbftod@y until mid-July at the earliest. sites: videoludica will be regularly updated (more or less), but we are currently redesigning the site, hopefully version 1.1 will be online this September. See you soon!

Postcard Italy 101

"On Saturday, 21st of July at midnight a special force of Carabinieri raided the Diaz school in via Cesare Battisti in Genua, where people taking part in the demonstraton against G8 were sleeping. Police acted with extraordinary brutality. At 11.56 pm about 200 policemen came running into the building, opening the gate violently and destroying a side door.  All of the people inside the building have been beaten up, most of them so hard that they had to be carried out on stretchers into an ambulance. Just a few people where still able to walk. Those were brought to police stations. During that action, which lasted about two hours, people outside the building could hear screams of pain from the inside. Additionally a helicopter was just a few meters above the builing all the time, looking for people trying to escape. When the police raid was finished and journalists from the building opposite were allowed to enter the school, they found a lot of the things inside the school destroyed, peoples' belongins spread everywhere on the floor and blood everywhere on the floors, the staircases and walls." (starhawk, indymedia)

That was Italy, in 2001. I was living in California when that happened. I watched some sanitized videos on CNN because YouTube had not been invented yet. I saw Genoa burning on tv and I realized that the new millennium had really began.

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PS

Today the police chief admitted that the assault on the Diaz school has been a bit "rough". The trial started in 2005..

PPS

Meanwhile, in Rostock, Germany. at the G8 summit - More info here