Can the Venetian Carnival Become Any More Irrelevant for Venetians?

I've dissed Carnival before... and Venetians hate it. (Oh, and while we're at it, they despise masks too, and most of the ones you'll ever see were made in China, so there.)

And just in case you needed any proof that Carnival is completely irrelevant to the 60,000 or so Venetians (whose average age is somewhere in the 50s... Not a joke, a fact!)



Usually, a small fake dove (as you can see on the embedded video, when it works) flies down on cables from Saint Mark's belltower and release confetti from its insides to inaugurate the start of Carnivale. This year, it was apparently instead the rap star Coolio! (You can even see the picture at Venice Daily Photo.)

I'm (nearly) speechless!! And I don't even want to know how he released the confetti. Nothing against him personally, but it's not like all the resident octogenarian little old Venetian ladies I know are huge fans of hip hop!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Venice Carnival is now officially a sham...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Haha, like Tinkerbell coming down the wire from the castle at Disneyland/Disneyworld right before the evening fireworks (which, as was pointed out to me, if you stand in the right place you can hear the "wumph!" as Tinkerbell drops to a hidden mattress).

I think that same immortal little old lady who saved Venice by dropping the flowerpot on the invading admiral's head, and that other time by directing the invading fleet across sandbars, needs to chase Coolio from Venice, like St. Patrick chasing the snakes out of Ireland.

(Again, nothing against Coolio, he's just not a good dove substitute).