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“Fare casino.” It’s an idiomatic Italian phrase that doesn’t have a straight English translation; it literally means “to make a brothel,” but could be translated as “uncontrolled confusion” or “to make a mess of things.” Or it really could just mean “party hard.” Do all these phrases remind you of anything?
As MTV’s Jersey Shore makes its long-anticipated, slightly delayed, reportedly controversial arrival in Florence, Italy, it shouldn’t be surprising that almost every Florentine local we interviewed for this story used the expression fare casino when describing their worries about the U.S. reality hit. “The general feeling towards Jersey Shore being in Florence is excitement that they’re shooting here, but also a bit of unease,” says Dasha Savage, an American college student studying abroad who served as my eyes and ears (and translator) in Florence. “I heard many older Italians express opinions of disgust for having these people come to their city.”
To get a sense of what the target MTV demographic thinks of the Jersey Shore‘s Italian invasion, we took to Palazzo Giovane, a hangout spot for young Florentine schoolkids. There the local students expressed a mixture of disgust and anticipation. READ FULL STORY »
With just a week before Little Brown’s release of James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’ warts-and-all oral history of ESPN, it’s becoming clear that former SportsCenter anchor Keith Olbermann is this story’s Chevy Chase. Recall that Miller and Shales collaborated on 
