What to see in Venice

She dances like Britney, sings like Beyoncé, her black makeup and her long face remind us of Amy Winehouse, she has a touch of gothic – just like P!nk -, is as provocative as Madonna, rock’ n ‘roll like Avril Lavigne, she likes the white wigs style of Gwen Stefani, but doesn’t have the exoticism of Shakira … the brand Lady Gaga seems to be a mixture of elements inspired by today’s pop stars, but when you looked closer, that feeling disappears: Lady GaGa has a very specific style of her own. What is it that we have never seen before and yet like so much about her? A penis?

She’s 24 years old, her name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, she’s known as Lady GaGa ( Inspired on the song of Queen, ‘Radio GaGa’) and cannot live without her Great Danes Lava & Rumpus. Ever since the American magazine Rolling Stone wrote that she’s a hermaphrodite (like snails), paparazzi are anxiously waiting for a photo to proof this. Moreover, in an interview she said she was a bisexual, but her love for woman is only physical attraction. Does she really have two sexes or is it just a brilliant marketing strategy?

What most defines Lady GaGa is her style: futuristic as an alien, eccentric as a transvestite and glamorous as a pin-up. It’s fascinates and repulsing at the same time is this enigmatic mixture that creates a kind of unrealistic model of a women. Is she merely a product of modern society or truly innovative?

Lady GaGa’s Music Videos

To discover all the facets of this new specimen, it is essential to watch one of her clips, Just Dance, Poker Face, Bad Romance or Telephone for example. The choreographies often imitate a robot dance, in a luxury and cool décor where the sexy singer conveys both fear and fascination. She just started a tour through Australia and Japan, after which she will visit Europe before finally going back to the United States.

Discretion is the sworn enemy of Lady GaGa, who dresses up with pink or white wigs, sunglasses, very high heels in all colors and above all, the most unusual costumes. She loves leather, lace, tattoos, nail polish with diamonds and surrealistic hats. A more than unique style!

Her songs are not going to rewrite music history, but if something about them catches our attention, it’s the lyrics. Like most singers, Lady GaGa talks about love, sex and drugs, work and loneliness, but sometimes she cries out in a way we have never heard before: wawa, mamama, gaga ulúlala … This is called electro glam or just pop.

If you had no idea who Lady Gaga is, your imagination will now have enough facts to reconstruct her image. To summarize, Lady GaGa is a darer. Finally, her song ‘Bad Romance’ is a wink to Marilyn Monroe, who sang ‘Fine Romance’! She does have a little something of Marilyn Manson too, don’t you think?

If something is not disputed is the charm of Italian cities and especially Venice. Plan a getaway in Italy with your partner and rent the best apartments in Venice, it’s prices and amenities are as dazzling as Lady GaGa.

Sex is a topic which can be discussed indefinitely and each one of us would like to spend hours practicing and exploring the thousands of different positions there are. But in this universe of infinite positions, there are some practices which cause more controversy than others, for example the ‘Golden Shower’. As a matter of fact, this practice is included in what is known as BDSM (Bondage, Discipline and Domination, Submission and Sadism, Masochism) because it’s considered an extreme. I would like to say that, in my opinion the Golden Shower is more than extreme, it’s different, but it seems that in a lot of minds everything that appears to be different is extreme, so we’ll remove this “definition”. But, what’s the appeal of this practice? What exactly is the pleasure that the Golden Shower has to offer? It merely is a practice of submission, because you are either the one who submits or the one who is submitted.

Rainbow showers

What do we know about this practice? Well, there are many varieties of the famous Golden Shower which can be performed with semen “White rain” or urine (urophilia) and in which the other person’s face or body is directly subjected to semen or urine. There is also the so-called “Brown rain” that is performed with excrement (coprophilia); other practices include “Roman rain” which is performed with vomit and the “Milk Rain” where lovers use breast milk. Perhaps the most known and used shower is the “White” and the “Urophilia Rain”.

Zeus, the first one who practiced the Golden Shower

But, what is the origin of the Golden Shower? Who gave this sexual practice its name? The origin of this name is found in Greek Mythology. Zeus, the God of all Gods, wanted to seduce a beautiful young named Danae. She was locked in a tower by her father inapproachable for humans. To gain access to her, Zeus transformed himself in a Golden Shower. In this new form, Zeus was able to get into the tower and forced himself upon the girl getting her pregnant. The consequence of this sexual encounter was Perseus. So, believe me, this oractice must have this special “something” because the young Perseus succeeded in killing the famous Medusa, one of the three Gorgons, who had the terrible power to turn onlookers to stone

And, which city is better than Venice to enjoy any kind of rain?! It’s a city full of contrasts…and full of water everywhere! And there’s no better way to enjoy this city than to take advantage of accommodations in Apartments in Venice. Go there and enjoy the kind of shower that best suits you!

If you are so lucky to visit the beautiful city of Venice in the near future, you must know you have the chance to enjoy Veneto Jazz Winter 2010, a complete programme full of acts linked to the jazz world, which brings the best current artists to different cities in the Veneto region. The proposal includes not only the jazz genre but also features contemporary music through concerts, exhibitions and conferences.

If you are one of those people who own the whole discography of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Chet Baker or Thelonious Monk, and you would rather sell your mother-in-law on eBay before parting with your jazz collection, then you can’t pass up this opportunity.

Jazz ‘made in Italy’ and much more
In its 13th edition, the festival organizers have planned a line-up with the best of Italian jazz, international artists, up-and-coming talents and even special productions in order to find out about different Afro-American music expressions.

Among the Italian masters of jazz, we must high light the prestigious trumpeters Enrico Rava and Paolo Fresu, pianist Ludovico Einaudi and composer Remo Anzovino. There will be also key names in current jazz history, such as double-bass player Eddie Gómez, who will pay tribute to the great Bill Evans, with whom he collaborated for long time. And for female jazz and soul vocalist lovers, you have an appointment with Sarah Jane Morris and ‘the Janis Joplin of jazz’, Térez Montcalm. Sounds good, doesn’t’ it?

So, if you want to try to draw attention to yourself and show off your elite musical taste, away from the crude radio hits, your place is the Veneto Jazz Winter. Don’t fall asleep at the wheel! You have time until halfway through April, so if I were you, I would book accommodation right now and rent Apartments in Venice, the cheapest way to stay in the City of Canals. The best jazz is waiting for you!

Many artists create pieces that are only understood by them. This is not the case with Jim Hodges, an American talent who’s work catches our attention because of its simplicity, its nature poetry and its ode to fragility. This simple artistic language will move you and you have until April 5th to see it at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice. It is “Jim Hodges. Love, eccetera.

Contrasting work

This artist is usually defined as a bipolar character because of his minimalist and baroque style at the same time. His works can be made with various materials and sophisticated colours or can be reduced to a simple cobweb or a picture of a tree trunk. He likes the simple means such as paper, cloth flowers, music partitions, broken mirrors with which he makes collages, sculptures, sewing… But since the late 80s, his favorite medium is drawing.

His art provokes emotion and sweetness, he talks about love and about sublime things, like death, disease and temporality. His artistic resources express the beauty of simplicity and fragility, an aspect reflected by the 60 works that can be seen in this sample in Venice.

Nature is his muse

The main inspiration of Jim Hodges (1957, Spokane, Washington) is nature: the fusion with nature and its shapes. Maybe his art results easy and relaxing to you and the exhibition will leave you with the feeling of having received a massage. Jim Hodges enables you to appreciate the beauty of things as they are, without looking beyond the natural.

Before travelling to Venice, the exhibition was in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, revealing the prestige of this artist in the contemporary scene. Take advantage of this event in Venice to spend your holiday in Italy, the cradle of art history. Nature and love are also gathered in the city of canals, a cocktail that will be explosive if you rent apartments in Venice.

We use to envy those people who do frequently business travels to New York, Japan or Latin America. But all that glitters is not gold… Have you thought about how many hours do all those people spend in an airplane in their life? They have to bear hours and hours of flight, squeezed between two rows of seats, with barely enough space to read and drink at the same time. We forget we have legs, except when we get up… And this is the moment when the economy class syndrome appears: this is a pulmonary venous pathology that concern very much to the World Health Organization (WHO) since the late 90s.

Economy class or business class?

While the people in the business class enjoy a hot meal huddled under a blanket in a comfortable seat, people in the Economy class try to survive. They have to endure nearly a day sitting like sardines, trying not to go to the toilet in order to not annoy their neighbour who is also struggling when turning the newspaper pages without invading space. When landing, your legs hurt and you can’t move right… The Economy Class Syndrome can cause edema, tingling, fatigue, numbness, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in severe cases.

WHO suggests that 3% of the people who frequently travel for long hours under these conditions, suffer from economy class syndrome. In 2001, the media alert about a case of the young Emma Christoferson (28 years old), who died suddenly after landing in London after long hours of flight from Australia. The autopsy revealed that she died because of a pulmonary embolism. Why do they not widen the spaces between the seats? Only the business class tourist have the right for more space?

Flip-Flow

In order not to make travelling a synonymous with torture, there is a solution. This remedy is called Flip-Flow, and is a inflatable circulatory stimulant that allows the economy class passengers to feel more comfortable. This
is an appliance for the feet that favours the venous return, the blood flow and the feet area microcirculation.

According to the researchers, the reason of the dangers of flying during long hours might have something to do with the conditions of the pressure and the oxygen of the airplane cabin. And especially in the case of predisposed people as obesity, chronically ill heart, pregnant women, diabetics, tumour patients, the elderly…

In order, wear comfortable clothes, do circles with the ankles, flexion the feet, raises the knees, try to walk, drink water, etc. so that your blood flows with normality, to prevent your numbness in your legs. Your body deserves a minimum of care!

And now you know how to avoid any problem during the flight, travel to Venice. It awaits you! For a relaxing and comfortable stay, without having to pay a business class price, rent apartments in Venice.

‘Paranormal Activity’, a horror film that follows a young couple coping with supernatural activity in their home, is causing an almighty uproar in Italy after a string of people who watched it were paralyzed by panic attacks. The problem is that the film opened in Italy with no age restrictions, causing the complaints of Italian parent’s associations, who are on the warpath. They are calling for an age limit of 18 to watch the movie.

Paralyzed fear
Italian emergency services received hundreds of calls from cinema-goers having prolonged panic attacks after watching the film. Some of the attacks lasted more than half an hour. An emergency services spokesman told the most serious case was a 14-years-old girl, in Naples, who was brought to the hospital in a state of paralysis.

Parents say the trailer alone is enough to terrify children and claim it is being screened ‘obsessively’ on Italian television. ‘Paranormal Activity’, which is shot like a home video and with a shabby aesthetic, just like ‘The Blair Witch Project’, was filmed in director’s house with a budget of only 11.000 Euros and it has become a box-office hit around the world, collecting almost 100 million Euros.

Do you really want to experiment your fear resistance? Are you one of those who enjoys watching horror movies, immune to terrible frights and who have fun of viewers panic faces next to you? Well, if you are so brave, when you come to Venice, go into the first cinema you find and show everyone it’s not that horrifying! And remember book your accommodation on Apartments in Venice, the best way to enjoy your stay in the city.