Jarhead 2

We’re back!  Apses, domes, buttresses; neolithic ruins, Catholic iconography, wars, warfare, archeological remnants; sailors, sultans, knights, crown colonists.  Baby, you want it, we got it.  And it’s not what we posted last week.  Oh no, this is all new, this is all different.  That’s why there’s a number 2 in the title, so you know, so you don’t accidentally think it’s just the same old thing with new wrapping.

That’s right: We’re swapping out Gozo for Malta, rural villages for city fortresses, this is no Speed 2 Cruise Control bloated luxury liner drifting off to sea, oh no, this is full on Denzel Unstoppable Washington on a train that literally can’t stop, it’s culture like you’ve never seen it before in blog form.  Or never before since Tuesday.

First off, St. John’s co-Cathedral.  Sure, you’re thinking just another cathedral but oh no, this is the sequel, this is the co-Cathedral.  I kid you not. 

Of course we paid the entrance fee not for the gilt or crystal or Mattia Preti or tapestries but for not one but TWO Caravaggios.  Like I said, sequels gotta amp it up.

St. Jerome Writing, such an incredibly powerful painting so incredibly badly lit.  Can you see the figure in the upper right?  In the darkness?  No, you can’t.  Darkness upon darkness upon glare.  Sigh.

And here’s the thing about sequels. Just when you think it’s enough, we go all James Cameron liquid-metal T-1000 explosive with a second Caravaggio.

The Beheading of St. John the Baptist.  From the cheap seats.  Caravaggio fun facts: only painting he ever signed (he signed his name in the blood of St. John) and it’s his largest.  But you gotta be an A-lister to book an after hours tour and get up close to really appreciate it.  Double Sigh.

After our holy see (geddit?), we toured the Archeological Museum.  In the “original” version (the “classic” blog post from last week) we went to the sites, the actual places.  Pffffft.  Today, we went to all the finds and discoveries and uncovered bits and bobs that have been “saved” for restoration.  I grant you, the original was arguably better, but preservation is box office too.

So, two things about the collage above. First, the Phoenicians show up out of the blue and the artifacts become more like what we think of history as being; representative pottery, sarcophagi, etc. But the other thing is the skulls from the Hypogeum (a site we’re not visiting), have stirred a lot of debate (really fun, too exaggerated) that the elongated size represents aliens. Google >the Hypogeum skulls enigma< if that sort of thing is your thing…

Caravaggio?  Doubt it.  But so say Roberto Longhi, Maurizio Marini, Stefano Bottari, Renato Guttuso, Angela Ottina Della Chiesa, Cesare Brandi, Michael Kitson, Alessandra Marini and John Gash.  Convinced much?

It wasn’t even lunch and we headed off to MUZA which is an acronym with one word in the acronym indicating art and I am too hyped up by all the action to look up the rest of the words.  You need the art like you need the broad in film noir; she’s the glue.  Like in Sea of Love where Al Pacino gets into a relationship with Ellen Barkin—she doesn’t believe in wasting time, that’s the pace of a sequel–or in The Godfather where Diane Keaton gets the shutout, or in Cruising where Al Pacino is already in a relationship with Karen Allen but let’s face it, that relationship is on the rocks, or, spoiler alert, is it?

If you think this sequel is done and dusted you have never seen French Connection II.  [Wait, there was a French Connection two?  Yes there was.  Popeye in Paris so to speak.]  We went to the fort.  The battery.  The place where it all went down man.  We saved all the firepower for last.

This is of course sobering and deeply serious plaque/subject, but the names all ring like Epsom Downs (Tempest by a nose, Undaunted on the backstretch, Cachalot drops back…).

And that was so much sequel for the both of us that, after a short siesta, we took the ferry from Sliema back to Valletta for dinner, where we ate in a Michelin recommended sort of place called Grain where the food was rather stupendous and while all glitzed up, sequel-style (they say deconstructed in cheffy speak) the most amazing thing we ate was linguine, cacio e pepe, perhaps the original pasta, and it was, Godfather style, the best of the lot.