While recently lounging about in the Noi hair salon (everyone at the eCool Compound LOVES the Noi Boys on Piazza del Popolo) and reading old magazine–like the February 2008 issue of Conde Naste Traveller–we came across a most wonderful graphic novella about Naples and its unbelievably good pizza.

A mystery created by Tom Downey and Neil Gower, “The Case of the Stolen Starters” takes you on a hunt for one of Naples treasures–the perfect slice of pizza–and on a delectable tour of other insider spots.

It’s a great read that revolves around a search for a missing mound of dough used as a starter for pizza crust, patron saints, insider deals, and the ultimate power of the Neapolitan mama. You won’t want to miss it.

So, click over to the Conde Naste website where you can download the novella in three parts. You’ll be hungry by the time you’re through reading–and ready to board a plane or train to Napoli.

It’s no surprise when Alessi introduces a drop-dead gorgeous product and makes you believe you simply can’t live without it.  That’s how we feel about Taste-Huile,  a brand-new olive oil taster introduced at this year’s Milan International Home Show (MACEF) and designed by Lorenzo Piccione, a Sicilian olive oil producer, and Köbi Wiesendanger.

Though the stainless steel vessel can be used as a small oil cruet, it was really designed for tasting olive oil – that is, drinking the oil directly from the taster without pouring it onto food, for the graceful shape of the vessel is designed to bring out extra virgin olive oil’s flavors and aromas.

Instructions for Use:  After filling the taster with about half a demitasse of oil,  hold it for a few minutes in order to warm the oil and to bring out its aromas. Then, sip the oil from the taster much as you would wine at a wine tasting.

Covering something with one’s hands is an instinctive protection response, and that’s what’s suggested by 1861 United’s cool (but also kind of creepy) print ads for Bye motorcycle helmets. (Is it just us or is there a bit of a Medusa quality to those hand-covered heads?)

Agency: 1861 United, Milan
Art Director: Giorgio Cignoni
Copywriter: Luca Beato
Creative Directors: Pino Rozzi / Roberto Battaglia
Photographer: Fulvio Bonavia

Seen on the I Believe in Advertising website.

Clever, clever ad campaign from Intrecci Salon in Milan at Via Larga, 2. The copy reads, “Vanity Never Stops” and the images are of “nuns” whose elaborately shaped veils hint at exotic hairstyles beneath the drapery.

Agency: 1861 United, Milan, Italy
Creative Directors: Roberto Battaglia, Pino Rozzi
Art Directors: Federico Pepe, Micol Talso
Copywriters: Stefania Siani, Luca Beato

Discovered on the I Believe in Advertising website.

Ever have one of those mornings when you wake up feeling Goth? If so, you’ll want to hire Piergiorgio Robino, chief designer at Torino’s Nucleo, to trick out at least one bathroom in your home. Prefer a Baroque-Byzantine style with touches of Hollywood flair? Nucleo’s got that on offer as well.

Meant to fulfill your every bathroom dream, the ultra-luxe atmosphere of Nucleo’s bathrooms is achieved by means of gold and white tecnoril sinks, gold and stainless silver faucets, stainless steel and glass mirrors, and laser-impressed tecnoril furniture.

The Dreams bathroom series is produced by Cima Arredobagno, but that’s not all that Nucleo does. In recent years the firm has designed a gorgeous line of chocolates, Preciouss, as well as innovative jewelery.

For years, Italian photographer Massimo Vitali has been taking large format photos of the relaxation rituals that punctuate our lives. A native of Como, Vitali presently lives in Tuscany. He was born in 1944 and studied photography at the London College of Printing. A 1960s meeting with Simon Guttmann, the founder of the Report agency, prompted him to begin a career in photo journalism for Italian and European magazines. In the 1980s he worked as a filmmaker for television and cinema, and from the mid 1990s onwards, Vitali turned his attention to photography as a means for artistic research, shaping it into an original tool for portraying the world.

Many of Vitali’s photos show vacation destinations, applying a topographical clarity and a wealth of detail to the rites and rituals of modern leisure. His particular technique allows him to combine the minute detail of view-camera photography with a fascination for the fickle world of appearances, for his large-scale color images are shot from from a 12-to-15-foot platform.

Vitali says of both his process and his philosophy of photography:

The images must have a magical dimension in which perhaps sociology intermingles with play, and which have a story to tell. In the final analysis, I am happy when the ways of interpreting my pictures are complex and sometimes contradictory. A beach, where there are people playing in the water, with a factory in the background can be seen as a criticism of leisure-based society just as it can be seen as showing up the destruction of nature – mindlessness in the face of environmental issues. At the same time, the same image shows a contrasting set of notions: pleasure, games, bodies, loving relationships and the sickly sweet color of the water evoking the lost idea of beauty, or those ancient pictures in which bodies float like purgatory. I am so curious I let myself get pulled along to almost voyeurism. The way people behave fascinates me but I don’t try to understand what it’s all about. My part is neutral – all I do is take note of what comes to me. I am rigid because I take a stance and then I wait for things to come to pass in front of me. I am open because the image is defined by what happens. The experience of photography becomes an open practice for experiencing the world.

via Zoomata:

Oh to be in Capri! Everyone who’s anyone has wiled away hours on the isle, for it’s been home to Roman emperors as well as more modern celebrities like John Singer Sargent, Norman Douglas, Axel Munthe, Claude Debussy, Graham Greene, and even Mariah Carey.

But, if a jet-setting trip to Capri isn’t in your plans this summer, there’s no need to fret. You can pay a virtual visit and have some online fun at the same time when you play the about-to-be-released video game, AnaCapri: The Dream, the brainchild of Got Game Entertainment.

You’ll assume the role of Dr. Nico N, an expert in ancient civilizations who is summoned to the town of AnaCapri in order to find an ancient artifact believed to have been lost ages ago. As you search the island, from the depths of the beautiful Blue Groto to the panoramic gardens of Villa San Michele, you’ll be aided by some of the islands most famous and colorful residents.

Will it be fun? We have no idea (and, frankly, it doesn’t seem that promising). But the trailer promises that it will be beautiful. Too bad it doesn’t come with cocktails and a private boat.

It’s August in Rome and that means that the city is quiet, as many of its inhabitants have packed up and headed to the sea. Among the most popular of vacation spots is the island of Sardinia, for its pristine beaches, crystal clear waters, and dramatic landscapes are the stuff of which vacations dreams are made.

We’re not headed off to Sardinia this year (darn!), but in celebration of the vacation season and that beautiful island, we decided to see what kind of delicious summer treat we could make using mirto, the traditional Sardinian liquor. Made from myrtle berries – which give the liquor a distinctive aromatic flavor – mirto is usually served ice-cold as a delicious after-dinner drink.

Because mirto is usually served in a frosty glass, we thought it best to make something icy and refreshing – and eventually we settled on a Mirto-Blueberry Granita. In case you want to follow suit, we include the recipe here:

Mirto-Blueberry Granita

3/4 of a cup of mirto

2 cups of blueberry juice

1/2 cup of water

juice of 1/2 of a lemon

Mix all liquid ingredients together, then pour into a plastic container approximately 13 x 9 inches, which was then placed in the freezer. As the mixture begins to freeze around the edges, stir, breaking up the ice. Then stir every 15 minutes until the mirto-blueberry mix turns into a deliciously addictive icy treat.

Scoop into glasses or bowls and eat with a spoon.

Liquor-infused granitas like this one make great aperitifs and even better desserts. We’ve been getting rave reviews as the combination of the aromatic mirto with the sweetness of the blueberry juice is an almost perfect combination. As well, the Mirto-Blueberry granita has a deep purple color that’s drop-dead beautiful.

So, if you’re not joining the jet-set in Sardinia this summer, find yourself some mirto (available at better liquor stores) and treat yourself to a taste of the island.

Neapolitan artist Sergio de Rosa makes photos out of Italy’s favorite food, spaghetti. His work also features other pasta shapes and another food esteemed by the Italians, rice. For more images, visit today’s online version of the La Repubblica newspaper and watch the slide show featured under “immagine.”

While everyone else has spent so the last months talking about Damien Hirst’s $99,000,000 diamond encrusted skull, For the Love of God, visitors and residents of Venice are face-to-face with another skeletal momento mori that’s spookily floating in their Grand Canal, in front of the Palazzo Grassi exhibition hall.

Subodh Gupta’s 1000 kilo sculpture, Very Hungry God, is made out of aluminum pots and pans and it first apparated last fall in Paris in the Eglise Saint-Bernard church during Nuit Blanche. It’s currently on show in Venice as part of an exhibition of Francois Pinault’s collection.

In an interview on the Saatchi Gallery Blog, Gupta explains the forces that motivated him to craft this symbol of death out of objects that are used to sustain life:

The piece in Venice, “Very Hungry God”, was made in 2006 for the Nuit Blanche annual all-night festival in Paris. My work was conceived to be shown in a church in Barbes on the outskirts of Paris which is largely inhabited by an immigrant population.

I made the work in response to the stories I read in the news about how soup kitchens in Paris were serving food with pork so that Muslims would not eat it. It was a strange and twisted form of charity that did not continue for long but raised conflicting ideas of giving and the way we have become now.

Outside the church I served vegetarian daal soup as a form of “prasad” (in India when you go to a temple or a guduwara you are offered food with the blessing). I liked the mix of the Catholic church and my intervention using a symbol that many artists have used before – the skull – and its many connotations.

‘Very Hungry God’ is like a vanity, but also the idea of food and the utensils is very much part of my language dealing with ideas of the everyday and turning them into iconic symbols.

The piece is on exhibit until 11 November 2007.