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I was startled to discover Tuscany isn’t just a fictitious landscape crafted to sell wine to Americans. Perhaps with a little pizza, alongside your favorite emotional-support-substance. But, it really exists and it does look like your favorite bottle's label claims.
Tuscany is the area of Italy deriving its name from the Etruscans squatting there prior to banging into or being liquidated from the Roman population in the 8th century B.C. There is no “great conquest” in our sources to explain their absence.
Historically speaking, between empires and states, it’s generally one or the other when an entire population disappears. Typical human stuff. Having two extreme, opposite options which result in the same outcome. Sort of.
The one thing we know for sure about the Etruscans is they loved wine. Absolutely loved the stuff. They supposedly swilled constantly, which explains some of their ideas about problem solving and religion. Catholics suffer the same illness, generally.
The habit of cutting open animals to read their entrails like Bingo comes from these ancient winos, too. We further suspect the Etruscans picked up the habit of augury from Greece or Egypt, but who really knows.
Greece and Egypt claim to have invented everything China didn’t claim to create. Still, it is the kind of thing a particularly drunk fraternity would dream up for Pledge Week. Perfectly, gloriously Greek.
“All right, Chet. What you have to do is streak through the commons wearing only a surgical mask, spin around ten times, then catch this chicken, cut out its liver, and read its sorosis like tea leaves. We need to know which NFTs to buy. And yes, I guess we could have just used tea leaves instead of gutting a cock but that’s the kind of stinking thinking you’d expect from Sigma Cum Alpha, not Robot House. Go get em.”
All they had to do was flip a coin to get the same answers they saw in bloody bladders. That's probably too woke for them, though. Someone should have told them they could still flip a coin naked. I do it all the time with my tongue.
The Roman Emperor Claudius wrote a history on the Etruscans. He was an alcoholic, so that tracks. He also invented some of our letters. Of the alphabet. These were nutty, even so far as alphabetical characters were concerned. But he did create them. Have you? Have I?
Latin used to have a ton of characters we would consider odd today. Like AE is a letter, for instance. It is pronounced just like “eye” is. Feel free to correct your favorite vocalist’s pronunciation of Aenema. Heh, heh. Maynard again. Remember him? He still haunts me.
It always amused me in Austin Powers when Dr. Evil said his father claimed to invent the question mark. It's just so ridiculous. But someone did. I don’t know who. But Julius Caesar invented the period.
And you thought God did, just for Eve. So silly. A different god did! For all of us!
Alas, Claudius’ book is lost, having been written two thousand years ago. Too bad. I bet old, stuttering Claudius could conjure wit given two millennia. I suspect even I could be funny with that much time.
The point here is archaeology, guesswork, raging alcoholism, questionable testimony, and the name Tuscany is all that remains of the legendary Etruscans.
Well, that and weird prepper tunnels from three thousand years ago. I found some. I guess they were worried Romans would replace them. So silly.
We left Venice early in the morning and piled into a bus, hungover as always. The sun was already grinding us into dehydrated mists. Forced to leave our prodigal luggage behind, I prayed to Lorenzo the Magnificent it’d manage to find us in Florence. In contrast to Venice, it should be easy. Florence has streets.
But we hit a vineyard first for some hairy Etruscan dog and startling ethnic stereotypes. Specifically for the booze and happily for the stereotype. You'll see.
Tuscany is a fantastic smash of color. Green shrubs frame different green vineyards laid out against gold hills. This situation unfolds in real time under a blue Mediterranean sky. For more, consult the wine section of your local grocery store.
They don't tell you it's hell in August, however.
More fun, in all that scenic underbrush there could be a dozen wild boars. Mean ones, too. Greek mythology mean. But delicious. More on that later in Florence. Spoiler: We survive the Tuscan sex dungeon. Oh yeah! There's a sex dungeon. Again, more on that later.
We cruised among these hills and vineyards for a bit, marveling at how orange some things were in comparison to the greens, when we pulled up at a gorgeous grape growing villa nestled atop a tiny little hill. This vineyard was built upon the ruins of an old Etruscan settlement, I was told. Not exactly giants.
With some difficulty our chaperones poured us into a dining hall where I was pleased to see a video game character beaming at us all. It turns out Super Mario Bros isn't just a video game franchise loved by hundreds of millions. It's also a loving stereotype. This time in the flesh. Or maybe just the mustache.
Mario looked us all up and down individually as we entered. I got the once over, Megan got it thrice. That bushy mustache twitched with the family-friendly misogyny we've come to live and expect from Nintendo. Once he'd had an eyeful of each and every female possible, he clapped his hands and started shouting something about Etruscans and wine.
Our ears perked up as we were definitely there to get smashed. Enthusiastic discussions about wine is a good sign. We were beginning to feel an excess of liberty now our luggage had left the nest. And it was hot. Liberty ran down our backs.
We were coping. You care, you nurture, and your bags grow up anyway. So, wine it is. And occasionally, an ancient sex dungeon. My kind of sex dungeon.
While cracking about a dozen bottles of the local Blood of Christ and passing them around, Mario began a mildly slurred yet loving Etruscan eh-history. Apparently, back in the early days, just after living in caves, alcoholics existed already, and they made wine.
They said wine gave them energy. No doubt it did. If they had the language to say kidney stones, perhaps they would have said that, instead. Language is funny. Who knows?
I say the same thing about the comments section on Pornhub. That gives me energy. I've read some great book reviews on Pornhub. Written a few, too. But never had the stones to publish my work.
The way this beloved video game icon told it, Etruscans just loved to party. But sometimes, it can get warm on the Mediterranean. To combat climate change, these winos dug tunnels. This is the North Korean solution to climate change, as well.
Mario’s story seemed plausible. He was certainly enthusiastic about it and if there’s anything the modern day has taught me, it is what you say doesn’t have to be true as long as you look like you really mean it when you say it. According to a room full of drunks, anyway.
Aside from the panoramic views all around the hilltop, the interesting part of this little stop was not the over-priced yet perfectly acceptable pinot. The interesting part came when he showed me his cellar. And no, this is not a euphemism for his penis. Yet. His eh-penis, rather. Eh-yet.
“Eh-would you eh-like-eh to see eh-my cellar?” He asked in a horribly tone-deaf and socially acceptable if stereotypical accent. I dutifully translated our host for my companions. I'd logged around two hundred hours on Super Mario Sunshine in my youth.
I was met mostly with faces assuming his cellar was his penis rather than a cellar. I, no stranger to cartoon genitalia however, opted to dive in face first.
Our plumber-moonlighting-as-vintner then pulled up a rug, tugged on the heavy ring hidden beneath, and exposed a gods damned cave. Sure, a ladder snaked the cavity for a semblance of civilization, but that was it.
At this, Megan found opportunity to assert her most favorite of assertions. “What you're about to smell is… history.” She does this to annoy me. What she doesn't know is I love to be annoyed. Particularly with bad jokes.
Obviously.
In my annoyance, I lunged for it and slid down the damned thing like the gayest firefighter you ever wanted to kick in your door and just hold you. Besides the sick pale light from sad little bulbs strung across the ceiling, it was also about twenty or thirty degrees cooler than topside.
That explained the cellar comments. There would be no penis. Not even a little carving or a statue. I was hoping maybe one with angel wings. That was a real thing. Bigger than Kim Kardashian in its time. We’re talking festivals. A penis with wings. A penis with history.
That kind of thing gives me energy.
Looking around I did find several stacks of bottles just chilling, getting winey. The place was dusty, cold, cobwebs lined the tunnel ceiling a few inches above you. You could bump your head on some dangling horror any moment and I realized the place reminded me of somewhere I'd been before in another life.
The last time I'd been in a tunnel this dark, cold, and inhospitable, my ex-wife was shouting, “More! Just like that! I love you and I'll never leave you!”
It was my ex-wife's lying vagina all over again. But cleaner, which I appreciated from Mario.
He may have been a complex individual with a rich personal history I reduced to a cartoon. He may have eyeboned my wife without the least hint of fear. But he managed to keep those tunnels clean and never once showed me his fat Etruscan hog.
I was told the Florentines handle that kind of thing. Mario also got me so bloody smashed in Tuscany I honestly remember the affair as a cartoon I co-starred in for a day. I played six characters.
Salut, Mario! You were a blast for real and I do apologize for not recalling your name. It is, after all, your gods damned fault in the first place with all the Bacchus, Bacchus talk. Thanks for letting me into your tunnels.
But I do have one last question. Are you sure they weren't just called the Truscans? And where did the R run off to?
The Adventure Continues in Florence.