The trouble with Italian food.

NEW! With fresh technicolor PHOTOGRAPHS! Immediately following the POST!

The evening began, as most good ones do, with food.

When my parents caught up with my girlfriend Tara and me at the St. Anthony's Italian Festival, we settled beneath the tent at Cafe Antonian, near the steps of the Father Roberto Center. Tara and I already had eaten a slice of pepperoni pizza from Frankie's Pizza at Cafe Nona Strada and a small, disappointingly cold pizza fritta from an adjacent booth. Next, we thought, was the real meal.

Few things sap my mood more quickly than an overpriced, poorly prepared dish on a paper plate.

Each of them got spezzato, a sandwich that's supposed to carry flavorful chunks of veal, mushrooms and peppers. I nearly followed their lead but opted for my festival standby, the sausage-and-pepper sandwich.

I'm glad I did.

At our picnic table, which was missing one bench, we sat four on one side. Soon after taking her first bite, my mom delivered a scathing critique of the food.

You wouldn't know it by looking at my name, but I'm half Italian. I grew up on a steady diet of linguini, chicken parmesan and homemade pizza. I cannot buy bottled gravy -- that's tomato sauce, don't you know -- because the recipe my mom and grandma passed to me spoiled my palate long ago. It's so delectable I'll find any excuse to spoon it directly into my mouth, with or without pasta or bread.

My mom is a wonderful cook. I learned upon leaving for college just how good I had it back home. Every dinner, it seemed, included four side dishes. So on the rare occasion when my mom speaks ill of prepared food, I know she's not simply complaining.

Last night, she was palpably disappointed to find that her spezzato sandwich included just two little pieces of meat -- and even worse, they had no flavor.

"It's terrible," she said. "I'm only eating it because I'm hungry."

This, my friends, is the death knell for Italian cooks. You don't muscle through Italian food. You delight in it, you bask in its caloric grandiosity.

We didn't do that last night.

The sausage-and-pepper sandwich was decent. I thought so until Tara and I capped our evening with a spin on the misleadingly named "Rainbow."

We already had tried the Sizzler and the bumper cars, the latter of which gave me great joy in sideswiping little kids at 3 miles per hour, watching their heads flop around and snapping photos all the while. (I hold that I outdrove Tara. She disagrees. So that's that.)

Tara had to pick up another four tickets to join me on our final ride, which we carefully selected based on the thrill factor and the line.

Before I get to the Rainbow experience, an aside about festival culture: I had forgotten about the ticket economy. You hand a 20 to the lady in the booth, she slides you a sheet of 20 tickets not much bigger than postal stamps, and this is supposed to be the bargain.

You amble about the grounds, looking at the stampeded trash, wondering if teenage girls wore such revealing strips of cloth when you were in school, and you clutch your sheet of tickets, feeling confident that you're about to enjoy a solid hour or so of vomit-inducing fun.

And then you see the signs calling for four tickets per ride, and you remember you're paying for two people, and those ideas about sampling the biggest rides vanish like your disappointingly small portion of dinner.

The difference between my childhood adventures at the St. John's/Holy Angels carnival and those of my adulthood is that I can afford to add to my bankroll of tickets. And still, I choose not to.

But I didn't have it as bad as the guy manning the Rainbow

A note to whoever designs the layout of the carnival section at St.
Anthony's: If you must park rides atop the dirt infield of the baseball field, don't make it the one with a giant, swirling arm. It's like placing a fan before a pile of dust and switching the speed to "high." And the poor dude who has to stand at the bottom for hours, tilting the switch to the left, then the right, then the left, again the right, is forced to swallow that airborne dirt again and again.

And people wonder why he sounds crabby when he says to your kid as he's trying to secure the harness, "Lift your arms into the air. Lift your arms into the air. Lift your arms into the air!"

So Tara and I are snug in this little seats, and to our left is a girl, maybe 6 years old, and a boy no older than 10. The ride begins, swings left and up and over and right and down and under and left and up and over andrightanddownandunderandleftandup -- and at first, it feels great. I mean, really great. The kind of great you feel when you drive at a decent clip over a sharp little hill, when you sort of free fall beneath your seat belt for a nanosecond, and you smile a bit and say, Ooooh!

I wondered for a moment whether I was supposed to be enjoying the feeling that much. Then I stopped wondering. My stomach -- wherein danced a slice of pepperoni pizza, a beer, pizza fritta and a sausage-and-pepper sandwich -- went on a ride of its own. I didn't get sick, technically speaking, but my smile and ooooohing stepped aside. I no longer thought about the pretty twilight or the tiny police officers on the ground below or my parents looking skyward for their spinning son and his girlfriend. My energy was focused on why the hell I was starting to sweat despite the cool breeze.

And I looked to my left, and that little girl's arms were in the air, and she was laughing.

But not at me. I think.

|||

Soap's. And if you pay $10, maybe you'll get "12."


Maybe it was the thinning crowds that made it seem there were more cops than usual.


St. Anthony brought his candles outdoors.


Dad and Mom. ................... Power grid.


Tara crashing. ..... Tara hitting someone. ......... The scene.



I did not enter the ................. Hello up there!
port-a-potty garage.


Tara learning the rules. ....... Tara losing a dollar.


It was a celebration of Italian culture, as these lovely shirts show.




Faithful Friends does a fine job, and I love my own pets, but I couldn't help but laugh at these mugs and, um, quotations.


Moon over Ferris wheel. (Title courtesy of Dad.)


Yeah, this is one I didn't ride.


Dad pointed out to me 1) the monkey on a cell phone, 2) Larry, Moe and Curly, and 3) the monkey chick applying makeup.