T O P   5 ' S

 

Just for fun... if you really have 
nothing else to do than learning
about my tastes and hobbies. 
Highly recommended if you want to 
buy me a present, but don't have 
the slightest clue of what I like.

In constant update...  

(caricature courtesy of Aras Jarjis)


Top 5's, in purely    alphabetical order 

Don't miss the
vegetarians special

 

The best... 

Animals
--- Beavers
--- Cats
--- Ducks
--- Humpback whales
--- Penguins

Bands
--- Beatles
--- Ben Folds Five
--- Pink Floyd
--- Wings
--- XTC

Cartoon/comics characters
--- Dylan Dog and Groucho
--- Heidi's dog
--- Julia
--- Linus
--- Sturmtruppen

Cartoon musical themes
--- Galaxy Express
--- Goldrake (endtitles)
--- Sandybell
--- Sampei
--- Supercar Gattiger

Classical pieces
--- Anything by Bach
--- Mahler's 9th symphony
--- Ravel's Bolero
--- Reich's Music for 6 pianos
--- Satie's 1st Gymnopedie and 1st Gnossienne

Drugs and addictions
---
Hair-washing (against hair-loss: seems trivial, but I stopped losing hair when I started washing my hair everyday, despite doctors' advice that too frequent washing weakens the roots)
--- Lip-balm (cheap and efficient against chapped lips)
--- Nexium (against stomach acidity: it kills it for at least two days!)
--- Shopping (against depression)
--- Wind (against sea-sickness: the only remedy, by far)
 

Ethical values
--- Animal rights
--- Ecology
--- Fair trade
--- Peace
--- Welfare

Food
--- Cicoriette ripassate
--- Orecchiette e rape
--- Melanzane alla parmigiana
--- Pizza (particularly at Il Veliero, in Bologna)
--- Pizzoccheri valtellinesi

Football players
--- Bruno Conti
--- Johann Cruyff
--- Alex Del Piero
--- Michel Platini
--- Gaetano Scirea

Football teams
--- Holland 1974
--- Hungary 1954
--- Italy 1982
--- Juventus 1984
--- Juventus 1997

Guitar solos
--- Books are burning (XTC)
---
Echoes (Pink Floyd)
--- Gimme some truth (J.Lennon)
---
Highway Star (Deep Purple)
--- My Sharona (The Knack)

Hobbies (besides sports)
--- Calcio-balilla
--- Cinema
--- Collecting musical instruments, versions of Ravel's Bolero, and football jerseys
--- Computer graphics
--- Fantacalcio

Indie songs
--- Complicated game (XTC)
--- Everything means nothing to me (Elliott Smith)
--- Philosophy (Ben Folds Five)
--- Save (Ben and Jason)
--- Seagulls screaming (XTC)

Italian pop  songs (performers, not necessarily authors, between brackets)
--- Azzurro (Adriano Celentano)
--- Com'è profondo il mare (Lucio Dalla)
--- Ritornerai (Bruno Lauzi)
--- Se telefonando (Mina)
--- Vacanze romane (Matia Bazar)

Movie actors
--- Micheal Caine
--- Dustin Hoffman
--- Licia Maglietta
--- David Niven
--- Gian Maria Volontè

Movie directors - foreign
--- Alfred Hitchcock
--- Jean-Pierre Jeunet
--- Elia Kazan
--- Todd Solondz
--- Peter Weir

Movie directors - Italian
--- The fab three Antonioni/Fellini/Visconti, particularly Antonioni (I know I'm cheating here, but I can't pick only five italian directors)
--- Mario Monicelli
--- Nanni Moretti
--- Ettore Scola
--- Silvio Soldini

Movies - foreign
---
Dirty Pretty Things (S.Frears)
--- Dogville (L.von Trier)
--- Happiness (T.Solondz)
--- A streetcar named Desire (E.Kazan)
--- The rope (A.Hitchcock)

Movies - Italian
--- Caro Diario (N.Moretti)
--- Che ora è? (E.Scola)
--- Mediterraneo (G.Salvatores)
--- Pane e Tulipani (S.Soldini)
--- La vita è bella (R.Benigni)

Musical composers - Classical
--- Johann Sebastian Bach
--- Frédéric Chopin
--- Philip Glass
--- Maurice Ravel
--- Erik Satie

Musical composers - Popular
--- Burt Bacharach
--- Sergio Caputo
--- Paul McCartney
--- Ennio Morricone
--- Andy Partridge

Paintings
--- Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights
--- Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa
--- Magritte's La Grande Famille
--- Picasso's Guernica
--- Schiele's Embrace

Places
--- Castel del Monte (Andria-Corato)
--- Bologna's Piazza S.Stefano (Bologna)
--- Laajasalo (Helsinki)
--- Villa d'Este (Tivoli)
--- Wherever Lina is

Pop albums
--- Abbey Road (The Beatles)
--- Chips from the chocolate fireball (XTC, as Dukes of Stratosphear)
--- (R)esistere (Anna Maria Castelli... I know that's bold, but really, I love every second of it) 
--- Skylarking (XTC)
--- The Beatles (aka The White Album) (The Beatles)

Sports
--- Basketball
--- Beach Volley
--- Football (the real one, not the American football) 
--- Tennis
--- Table-tennis

Transcendental conditions
--- Being inspired (in art as in work)
--- Hugging Lina
--- Playing (both sports and music)
--- Watching movies
--- While reading a good book, reaching that particular stage when you can't take your eyes off of them

Verses from a song
--- "All the lights of the cars in the town form the strings of a big guitar / I'm the giant who plays you a tune for wherever you are (Stupidly happy - XTC)
--- "E per quei giorni felici che nessuno ti toglierà, per le strade del mondo che ti riportano alla tua città / Per quell'ombra di dubbio che ti segue dovunque vai, per le cose che forse per le cose che ormai" (Quando un amore va - Sergio Caputo)
--- "Mi consigli un buon veterinario, che il pediatra non mi accetta più?" (Effetti personali - Sergio Caputo)
--- "Si sa che la gente da' buoni consigli, sentendosi come Gesù nel tempio / si sa che la gente da' buoni consigli, se non può dare cattivo esempio" (Bocca di rosa - Fabrizio de André)
--- "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead" (Two of us - The Beatles)

Vegetarians special

Actors

--- Clint Eastwood
--- Richard Gere
--- Dustin Hoffman
--- Robert Redford
--- Peter Sellers

Beauties
--- Brigitte Bardot
--- Claudia Cardinale
--- Nastassja Kinski
--- Ornella Muti
--- Twiggy

Musicians
--- John Cage
--- Leonard Cohen
--- Bob Dylan
--- Peter Gabriel
--- Paul McCartney

Philosophers
--- Gandhi
--- Porphyry
--- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
--- Peter Singer
--- Voltaire

Athlets
--- Fausto Coppi
--- Carl Lewis
--- Martina Navratilova
--- Paavo Nurmi
--- Gianluca Vialli

Writers/artists
--- JM Coetzee
--- Leonardo Da Vinci
--- Franz Kafka
--- George Bernard Shaw
--- Henry David Thoreau

Scientists
--- Thomas Alva Edison
--- Albert Einstein
--- Pierre Gassendi 
--- Jane Goodall
--- Pythagoras

... and the worst

Animals
--- Flies
--- Human beings
--- Mosquitoes
--- Nocturnal moths
--- Very small rat-sized dogs

Bands
--- Any boy-band (except Take That's last album)
--- Any heavy-metal band, when they play ballads
--- Manowar
--- Matia Bazar (the later versions, without Antonella Ruggero and Carlo Marrale, otherwise I love them)
---
Pooh

Cartoon/comics characters
--- Heidi (she should be prescribed tranquilizers)
--- Mickey Mouse (sooo arrogant)
--- Popeye (it's more about the series than the character: it's so silly)
--- Sampei (I like the musical theme a lot, but please, a cartoon about fishing!)
--- Tex (never understood why he's such a legend)

Deseases
--- Flu
--- Labyrinthisis
--- Prostate desease
--- Stomach acidity
-- Sunburn

Drugs and addictions
--- 15 minutes of celebrity (from reality shows to starlettes: a real epidemic)
--- Alcohol (go and check how many car accidents and domestic violence are related to it)
--- Anxiety (one of the widest-spread diseases of this century)
--- Cigarettes (such a stupid habit)
--- Marijuana (because everybody underrates it, and yet it makes people very dumb)

Ethical values
--- Any religion
--- Extreme nationalism
--- New-Age
--- Tradition
--- War as lesser evil

Food
--- All fish
--- All meat
--- Full-grain pasta (must be white: I don't care if it's less healthy)
--- Parsley (when it's too much, otherwise it's really fine)
--- Porridge

Football players
--- Fabien Barthez
--- Fernando Couto
--- Diego Armando Maradona
--- Sinisa Mihaijlovic
--- Francesco Totti

Musical composers and/or performers - Popular
--- Any black rapper
--- Any teen-pop singer
--- Any white country singer
--- Nek
--- Vasco Rossi

People types
--- Those who always say "I" at the beginning of a sentence, and have serious problems in listening to what other people have to say
--- Those who play the "troubled ones", as if they have problems that you would never understand
--- Those who 1) point out that you are over-weight, and 2) offer a solution for it
--- Those who talk all the time about their kids, and consider exceptional everything they do
--- Those who wake you up by asking "Are you sleeping?" repeatedly, until you indeed wake up

Places
--- Banks
--- Men toilets
--- Noisy, full-of-smoke pubs
--- Trani (as people, not as place)
--- Swings, rollercoasters, etc.

Politicians
---
Silvio Berlusconi
--- Umberto Bossi
--- George W. Bush
--- John F. Kennedy
--- Francesco Rutelli 

Speech clichés
--- "In qualche modo"
--- Rhetoric questions in newspaper titles ("Casini? Non rispetta i patti!". For goodness' sake, why not a straight "Casini non rispetta i patti!"? Where is the advantage?)
--- "Assolutamente"
--- "L'ultimo dei...", everytime someone dies ("Morto Alberto Sordi, l'ultimo dei comici". I definitely know a lot more who are alive!)
--- "Veramente incredibile"

Sports
--- Baseball (what the hell are the rules like??)
--- Golf (so pathetically snobbish)
--- Fishing (not even to be considered a sport, in fact)
--- Hunting (see fishing)
--- Wrestling (as smart as Paris Hilton)

Transcendental conditions
--- Being in crowds
--- Being overweight
--- Filling up applications
--- Losing a football game with golden goal or penalties
--- Waking up early

VIP's (Very Imbecile Persons?)
--- The concept itself of VIP
--- Anyone coming from Reality Shows
--- Flavio Briatore
--- Maurizio Costanzo
--- Paris Hilton

Words
--- Aristocracy
--- Bureaucracy
--- Business-class, first-class, etc.
--- Diet
--- Postmodern