May 22, 2026 • 21 mins
Holly shares a quote from Daniela Lippi about the importance of ongoing learning in the restoration profession. There is then discussion of the nerve-racking construction of Disneyland.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about the Fizzi Gallery,
uh huh, and a yuckie bombing and some painting, some painting, restoration.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Love all of it.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, you know what, we only talked about a minimal
amount because he's not really germane to this one. What Caravagio, Yeah,
only a little.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Man's work, But like it was Sarah and de Blina
that did an episode on him, right, I think he
was a lot. I mean he was a lot. He
had a temper, just a temper temper. But what's really
interesting about that, and as it relates to Bartolomeo Manfredi
and other people that painted in the caravage Esque style,
(00:56):
is that the Kravashisti his followers couldn't really exist until
after he had left Rome, because he was apparently so
cantankerous about people trying to paint like him that they
probably all would have gotten in the crosshairs of his iron.
(01:17):
You know, he was a physically violent man, so they
couldn't have done it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I just think that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about at the end of
that episode Danielle Lippi, who did the amazing restoration on
the copiers, and in that interview that she gave with
(01:43):
Scala Archives in twenty twenty three, she made this statement.
It was not particularly germane to this episode, but I
really loved the mindset of it and I loved the
message of it because she said, like other professions, restoration
is the field where one cannot or should not feel
one has arrived. Each work of art is unique and
(02:06):
must be treated as such, depending on its creation technique,
its conservation conditions, and its problems intrinsic or due to
external causes. Materials and methods of intervention are constantly evolving.
Refresher courses should be followed each year, both regarding the
methods with the least environmental impact and above all, to
(02:27):
ensure the health of the operator. And I was like,
are you the best person on earth? Like She's just like,
don't rest on your laurels. Do you ever get cocky?
Keep learning, keep taking care of yourself and the earth.
And I'm like, what a great bunch of messages In
one quote. I was like, I think you ever anyway,
I just think that's amazing. She sounds amazing. Yeah, there
(02:49):
is also I didn't ever find any direct quotations of it,
any direct reference to it, etc. But I I really
feel like it seems obvious, but I want to point
it out that in the aftermath of the bombing, all
(03:10):
of those issues they were having with bureaucracy keeping them
from being able to like do basic updates to the
museum kind of fell away. So they got this like
post bureaucracy thing. That is exactly why they were able
to become a model for how you recover a museum
from a tragedy. Oh wow, when nobody's in the way anymore,
(03:34):
and they're like, yes, of course, do whatever it takes
to save the museum and restore pieces. And suddenly, like
the people who are actually like the conservators, the director
of the museum, when they're actually driving the bus decision wise,
everything got super efficient and like super quick but also
very careful. Like I'm just like, this is one of
(03:56):
those moments where you want to go, do you see
why sometimes bureaucracy is not great? Right?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
The people that are in charge of these things should
actually be allowed to be in charge of these things
and who know what that job is more than like
some bureaucrat in Rome who didn't really understand how the
museum ran or what it actually needed. I'm like how
quickly they overcame these problems. I will say the Ufizi
(04:22):
is still very crowded. Yeah, we didn't go when we
went to Italy for history class. I see why. Yeah,
that description of what it was like to like have
to elbow your way through reminded me of when we
(04:43):
did go to Versailles when we were in Paris. Yeah,
that is the most crowded museum I have ever been to.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It was pretty intense, really packed in their shoulder to
shoulder and kind of shuffling along in a mass. Yeah,
trying not to think about what would happen if there
was an emergency and people needed to exit quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, the Ufizi is. I don't want to say it's
as bad as versayes, because it isn't, but it is
a little like it in terms of how they have
kind of tried to solve the problem of crowd control,
which is that you know how when you go to
Versailles you're on a track, like you can't be like
I want to go back to the Hall of Mirrors.
(05:28):
It's like, no, no, you're bad. You go Forwards's that's
how it happens. And the Ufizi is kind of the same.
There's nobody stopping you from backtracking, but there really is
a path that they have laid out that they kind
of tell you is the optimal path to take. And
it's a little counterintuitive because you go all the way
(05:49):
up and then back down to the second floor. Okay,
you work your way from the top down, and then
if you're doing if you have tickets to go into
the Vasari Corridor, which we did, oh I'll tell you,
I had a wild experience doing that one. And I
don't want to put anybody on blast, but it was weird.
Then you have to like kind of backtrack a little
(06:10):
bit to get to the entry to the corridor because
it's it's over near. It's on the same floor as
like what I was after, which was the Artemisia Gentiliski.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Oh yeah, jus Judas beheading Halo fair Nase.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
But even so it is it is quite crowded, but
not as bad as Versai, and it is a beautiful
museum on the inside. In particular, like it's a cool
building from the outside, but on the inside, like the
decor is like gorgeous, and some of the rooms that
you can see black and white photos of the explosion,
like they do not do the decor of those rooms justice,
(06:45):
pretending you're not looking at rubble. Like the colors are
like these beautiful candy colors and they're absolutely gorgeous, and
everything is just beautiful. Vasari Corridor. M So this is
another one where it's like they only take a limited
number of people. You have a guide in front of
you and another at the back to kind of make
(07:07):
sure nobody straggles.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
MMMM.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So your group kind of has to stay together. And
the man that was in the front of our group
that was doing the talking, and he's not talking a lot.
He's not like pointing out art. He's just like basically
stopping and saying like, here's what we're doing next, here's
what we're doing next. Occasionally he'll stop and say like
here's the room we're going or whatever. But he had
this very low, very resonant voice, and it was in
(07:31):
a way that would not carry oh in all directions,
so I couldn't hear him. Several of us couldn't hear
or understand him because it was like, because it was
so low, any of the plosives were kind of getting
clipped out, and you just heard like this beautiful wave
of sound. But I couldn't tell if he was giving
this important information. And I had kind of leaned forward
(07:52):
and he had looked at me and said, do you understand?
And I was like, what, You're a little hard to hear.
Your voice is so resonant. But after that, like, I
apparently flagged myself as the stupidest person on earth, because
every time we stopped, he would talk to the group
and then he would come over to me and get
in my face and go, did you understand? And I
was like, oh, my goodness, I'm mortified. I was like, down,
(08:14):
he thinks I'm the dumb dumb look. It was a
little weird, it was a little aggressive, but it was
also very funny after the fact.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Why I've really come to love the little whisper devices
that we have on We've had on all of our
trips that we've done.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
For the part, I don't have them.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
For that, yeah, but I'm assuming that if they did
have them for that, you would have used them, but
like they're the little devices where the person guiding can
talk at a typical volume and ideally a little microphone
picks it up and broadcasts it to everybody else. And
it's like we have had technical issues with them on
(08:52):
at different points on a number of trips, but like
there it still makes it so much easier to hear yeah,
what is being said, and also without disrupting things for
other people around who are not on your tour.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, in that case, there's nobody else around because it's
just your group in the corridor, right. I would also
be very embarrassed. I'm sure after we left he was like, man,
that lady with the purple hair was as dumb as
can be. Just the stupidest person I've ever encountered. Can't
understand a word I said. It was just it was
very funny. It was very funny after the fact, and
then we had a lovely meal and a waiter wanted
(09:27):
to compare tattoos.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It was great. It was the best. Yeah, the ifisi
is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I see why that was not a thing that got
picked on our trip to do because it is very crowded.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
It's hard.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
There are some groups that go through there, but they
are struggling, like h it's hard to keep everybody together,
and with a group the size of ours, it would
have been very difficult. Yeah, a little maddening, I think so.
I think that probably was what led to that decision.
But I want to go back there a million times
because it's beautiful. I mean, all Florence is beautiful. Florence
is so walkable. There's so many cool things you can
(09:59):
go visit without having to ever get in a car, right,
you know. We went to Michelangelo's tomb, we went to
I think I mentioned before. We went to the Borgello,
which was right across the street from where we stayed,
which is an incredible museum.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Just a million cool places that are gorgeous. And I
really like Florence a bunch.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I love not having to get in a car.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I do too.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
We also got a car service for every transfer we
had to do while we were there, which was funny
because in Rome, our hotel staff, which who were amazing,
they had said like, do you need us to call
you a car for I think we had to go
to the train station. We're like, no, no, no, we already
have a car coming. And they were like, oh, what
service did you use? And we told them and they
were like, did they overcharge you? And I was like,
I don't even care because they take care of everything.
(10:41):
They literally come into the hotel and get your bags
and put them in the car for you, and like, oh, yeah,
worth every penny. It's the best, the best. Because I
didn't want to figure it out. I have friends that
are there right now who drove themselves from Florence to Rome,
which sounds slightly too terrifying to me.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, just because.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
It's a hard drive. Italian driving practices are not the
same as here, like the attitude about driving. So my
hat is off to my friend who drove that.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
But it's cool.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
The last thing I actually wanted to say, which kind
of hit my heart in all of this, there's a
unique thing that had me thinking about Bartolomeo ment Freddy,
which is that we don't know much about his life,
as we said at the top of the episode, and
reading about the way his work had to be pieced
(11:36):
together by Lippy and her team made me think about
the way his life has had to be pieced together
by biographers, and I was like, what a weird parallel
that his art got destroyed in this way, just as
the same way records of his life have, you know,
not survived or whatever, and we've had to We're just
trying to like put together who we think he was
and what exactly this art should look like. And I
(11:59):
don't know, just struck me as interesting. Yeah, art, talk
about it forever.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I have a problem. I do not wish to seek
treatment for my art addiction.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I'll go stand in cry in a museum all day long.
I'm sure everybody in Italy thinks I have emotional stability
issues because I cried art like nobody's business. I got
(12:29):
to talk to Leslie Eyeworks this week. You did a dream?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yay a dream?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I mean, I really she is somebody whose work I
have admired so much. We talked a lot about her
various documentaries. The one that she did about her grandfather
that was her first film about I works was like
the first time I saw it, I was just blown
away by how good it was, so I'm not surprised.
She mentioned in that interview how other people were also
blown away. And it went from kind of a small
(12:56):
project to a bigger project, which is terrific. This is
funny because we talked a lot when we were talking
about our Haunted Mansion episodes. In those episodes, we talked
a lot about how difficult the opening of Disneyland was
and how right up to the last minute they were
(13:16):
working and some of the work was, you know, literally
being finished while people were walking through the gates, and
how the asphalt hadn't solidified yet. And it's one thing
to talk about all of that, but then to see
all of the video that was shot was amazing and terrifying.
(13:37):
I mean it literally, like if you are a person
who is deadline driven and you know, like a project
management type person, it's got to be so scary because
it's all just there's a shocking amount of working on vibes, right.
(13:57):
We didn't we didn't talk about it in my interview
very much with Leslie because there was only so much time.
But like, one of the things that really jumped out
to me was the I mean, we did talk about
how there were only like ten percent of the plans
in place when they started on the park, But one
of the things that jumped out to me, and they
talk about it in the film, that comes up in
the discussion, is that they weren't always working off of
(14:21):
specific plans. In some cases, right, there was a lot
of here's what I want, and then the incredibly talented
and skilled workmen would just kind of be like, all right,
I guess we'll figure out how to make that. There
wasn't a lot of documentation of how they were doing
(14:42):
it because they were making it up as they went along,
which sounds slapdash, but also like these are people who
were very dedicated to it, very hard working. You can
tell in that footage like some of those people are
just really busting out work at an incredible rate and
an incredible lia little quality. But it was just like
this is this could never happen again, right, right, or
(15:06):
the odds are very long, right to put enough money
behind a project like that where you're kind of just
trusting the people involved, but also like bearing the burden
of if it's a failure, it's all on you. Like nobody,
very few people are would be willing to do such
a thing. It's astonishing kind of inspiring. One of the
(15:26):
other things that I really did like about it about
this film, and I hope everybody watches it because it's
just an eye opener in a variety of ways. About
you know what projects like that take like dream projects,
but it really does not pull punches about the fact that,
like everybody was not happy all the time, and everybody
(15:49):
was not like Walt is the best. Some people were like,
Walt is writing us way too hard, we don't know
what we're doing. Yeah, we're exhausted and freaking out.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Now they did.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Pull it off, right, There's always that thing. There's you'll
hear like both sides of that coin. Sometimes if you
do a lot of reading of Disney history and Park's
history in particular, that like, on the one hand, there
are people who are like, you know, Walt would just
see things in people and he would trust that they
(16:19):
could do what he needed them to do, and so
he would ask them to do it even if they
didn't believe they could, which is kind of a great
thing in some ways, right, But then this also shows
the light people going, we don't we're so tired, we
don't know what we're doing. Please let us we're asking
so much all the time, Yeah, which is just interesting. Also,
what a good bit of fortune that he did hire
(16:43):
camera crews to document the entire thing, But then all
that footage until this well one of Leslie's earlier projects
uses some of it, but that foot has just sat
around for decades unused, and now like we finally all
get to watch these people carve you know, tea little
lines in various pieces of faux you know, European brickwork
(17:05):
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
And it's just sure.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I could watch that stuff all day long. I could
watch it all day long. It's fascinating. And now the
parks are everywhere and huge and entire giant teams and
building codes, building codes, building codes. I did have a
wonder and I don't want to speculate too much because
I don't know, but for anybody in our audience that
(17:29):
doesn't now, who isn't a giant Star Wars nerd like myself.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
It has been in the news the.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Disneyland's approach to Galaxy's Edge, which is the Star Wars
section of Disneyland, is changing a little bit in terms
of like what on the Star Wars timeline can be
in the park. And one of the things that happened
in that changeover, and I won't get into that.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Because that is a whole discussion.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Listen, there's a lot of I've talked about it a lot,
very but they're One of the things said happened is
that Ogu's Cantina closed there in Disneyland for a while
and then reopened, and we were all like, I wonder,
is it getting a makeover? Is this changing? There were
some speculation on my part certainly and others about things
(18:16):
in the cantina. I'm trying to talk about this generally
without getting in the weeds. Hard for me because I'm
like everybody knows this.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
They don't. I understand, I'm the weirdo.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
But we thought there were things that were gonna have
to change within the cantena to address this shift, and
like how they were managing timeline. But in fact, like
Brian and I were out there at the beginning of April,
which was after it had reopened, and we went and
we didn't notice anything. If there are changes, they're subtle.
But it made me wonder if some of that wasn't
(18:47):
circling back. I did have a point to code. I
don't think I was ever not to code, but I
do think there were elements of their infrastructure that might
have needed updating in terms of like they're electrical and stuff.
Not necessarily because there's any danger, but just to meet
the needs of like modern machinery that gets used in
places like that. Right, Anyway, that's strictly speculation on my part.
(19:10):
I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm I'm guessing.
I'm playing a guessing game. So don't anybody think I
just told you some big piece, right, But I sure
love Ogus and I love Disneyland disney World. Disney World
is our close ones, so it feels like home to me.
Disneyland feels like an adventure, even though it's a much
(19:32):
smaller footprint andier to traverse. You know, We've talked about
this as well, Like if you're in disney World, it's
four parks.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You have to bust between the parks if you're going
to go to more than one park in a day.
Disneyland you just walk back and forth across the plaza
if you want to.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Go to the other. It feels so tiny to me
in that, right.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Both fun both great, different different adventures. Yeah, pros and cons, right.
I like the bubble of the big property. I like
knowing that I am in Disney at all times, whereas
like in Anaheim, you can just walk out on the
street and you're just in Anaheim, m less bubbling, all.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Good, well good.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
In any case, if this is your weekend coming up,
I hope that you get time to go to an
amusement park, to watch a movie you like, maybe watch
a good documentary I know one to recommend, or just
you know, engage with whatever ignites your creativity or your
imagination or your inner spark, or just makes you feel peaceful.
(20:38):
That is also valuable.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I hope that.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
You get time to hang and relax. Even if you
don't have time off the next couple of days, I
still hope you get time to hang and relax and
that you do something really nice and maybe a little
indulgent for yourself, because that's the good stuff. That's what
life is about. Find your joy wherever you Can'll be
back on Monday with a brand new episode.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
We will also be back tomorrow with a.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Classic Stuff you missed in History Class is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about the Fizzi Gallery,
uh huh, and a yuckie bombing and some painting, some painting, restoration.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Love all of it.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, you know what, we only talked about a minimal
amount because he's not really germane to this one. What Caravagio, Yeah,
only a little.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Man's work, But like it was Sarah and de Blina
that did an episode on him, right, I think he
was a lot. I mean he was a lot. He
had a temper, just a temper temper. But what's really
interesting about that, and as it relates to Bartolomeo Manfredi
and other people that painted in the caravage Esque style,
(00:56):
is that the Kravashisti his followers couldn't really exist until
after he had left Rome, because he was apparently so
cantankerous about people trying to paint like him that they
probably all would have gotten in the crosshairs of his iron.
(01:17):
You know, he was a physically violent man, so they
couldn't have done it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I just think that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about at the end of
that episode Danielle Lippi, who did the amazing restoration on
the copiers, and in that interview that she gave with
(01:43):
Scala Archives in twenty twenty three, she made this statement.
It was not particularly germane to this episode, but I
really loved the mindset of it and I loved the
message of it because she said, like other professions, restoration
is the field where one cannot or should not feel
one has arrived. Each work of art is unique and
(02:06):
must be treated as such, depending on its creation technique,
its conservation conditions, and its problems intrinsic or due to
external causes. Materials and methods of intervention are constantly evolving.
Refresher courses should be followed each year, both regarding the
methods with the least environmental impact and above all, to
(02:27):
ensure the health of the operator. And I was like,
are you the best person on earth? Like She's just like,
don't rest on your laurels. Do you ever get cocky?
Keep learning, keep taking care of yourself and the earth.
And I'm like, what a great bunch of messages In
one quote. I was like, I think you ever anyway,
I just think that's amazing. She sounds amazing. Yeah, there
(02:49):
is also I didn't ever find any direct quotations of it,
any direct reference to it, etc. But I I really
feel like it seems obvious, but I want to point
it out that in the aftermath of the bombing, all
(03:10):
of those issues they were having with bureaucracy keeping them
from being able to like do basic updates to the
museum kind of fell away. So they got this like
post bureaucracy thing. That is exactly why they were able
to become a model for how you recover a museum
from a tragedy. Oh wow, when nobody's in the way anymore,
(03:34):
and they're like, yes, of course, do whatever it takes
to save the museum and restore pieces. And suddenly, like
the people who are actually like the conservators, the director
of the museum, when they're actually driving the bus decision wise,
everything got super efficient and like super quick but also
very careful. Like I'm just like, this is one of
(03:56):
those moments where you want to go, do you see
why sometimes bureaucracy is not great? Right?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
The people that are in charge of these things should
actually be allowed to be in charge of these things
and who know what that job is more than like
some bureaucrat in Rome who didn't really understand how the
museum ran or what it actually needed. I'm like how
quickly they overcame these problems. I will say the Ufizi
(04:22):
is still very crowded. Yeah, we didn't go when we
went to Italy for history class. I see why. Yeah,
that description of what it was like to like have
to elbow your way through reminded me of when we
(04:43):
did go to Versailles when we were in Paris. Yeah,
that is the most crowded museum I have ever been to.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It was pretty intense, really packed in their shoulder to
shoulder and kind of shuffling along in a mass. Yeah,
trying not to think about what would happen if there
was an emergency and people needed to exit quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, the Ufizi is. I don't want to say it's
as bad as versayes, because it isn't, but it is
a little like it in terms of how they have
kind of tried to solve the problem of crowd control,
which is that you know how when you go to
Versailles you're on a track, like you can't be like
I want to go back to the Hall of Mirrors.
(05:28):
It's like, no, no, you're bad. You go Forwards's that's
how it happens. And the Ufizi is kind of the same.
There's nobody stopping you from backtracking, but there really is
a path that they have laid out that they kind
of tell you is the optimal path to take. And
it's a little counterintuitive because you go all the way
(05:49):
up and then back down to the second floor. Okay,
you work your way from the top down, and then
if you're doing if you have tickets to go into
the Vasari Corridor, which we did, oh I'll tell you,
I had a wild experience doing that one. And I
don't want to put anybody on blast, but it was weird.
Then you have to like kind of backtrack a little
(06:10):
bit to get to the entry to the corridor because
it's it's over near. It's on the same floor as
like what I was after, which was the Artemisia Gentiliski.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Oh yeah, jus Judas beheading Halo fair Nase.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
But even so it is it is quite crowded, but
not as bad as Versai, and it is a beautiful
museum on the inside. In particular, like it's a cool
building from the outside, but on the inside, like the
decor is like gorgeous, and some of the rooms that
you can see black and white photos of the explosion,
like they do not do the decor of those rooms justice,
(06:45):
pretending you're not looking at rubble. Like the colors are
like these beautiful candy colors and they're absolutely gorgeous, and
everything is just beautiful. Vasari Corridor. M So this is
another one where it's like they only take a limited
number of people. You have a guide in front of
you and another at the back to kind of make
(07:07):
sure nobody straggles.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
MMMM.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So your group kind of has to stay together. And
the man that was in the front of our group
that was doing the talking, and he's not talking a lot.
He's not like pointing out art. He's just like basically
stopping and saying like, here's what we're doing next, here's
what we're doing next. Occasionally he'll stop and say like
here's the room we're going or whatever. But he had
this very low, very resonant voice, and it was in
(07:31):
a way that would not carry oh in all directions,
so I couldn't hear him. Several of us couldn't hear
or understand him because it was like, because it was
so low, any of the plosives were kind of getting
clipped out, and you just heard like this beautiful wave
of sound. But I couldn't tell if he was giving
this important information. And I had kind of leaned forward
(07:52):
and he had looked at me and said, do you understand?
And I was like, what, You're a little hard to hear.
Your voice is so resonant. But after that, like, I
apparently flagged myself as the stupidest person on earth, because
every time we stopped, he would talk to the group
and then he would come over to me and get
in my face and go, did you understand? And I
was like, oh, my goodness, I'm mortified. I was like, down,
(08:14):
he thinks I'm the dumb dumb look. It was a
little weird, it was a little aggressive, but it was
also very funny after the fact.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Why I've really come to love the little whisper devices
that we have on We've had on all of our
trips that we've done.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
For the part, I don't have them.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
For that, yeah, but I'm assuming that if they did
have them for that, you would have used them, but
like they're the little devices where the person guiding can
talk at a typical volume and ideally a little microphone
picks it up and broadcasts it to everybody else. And
it's like we have had technical issues with them on
(08:52):
at different points on a number of trips, but like
there it still makes it so much easier to hear yeah,
what is being said, and also without disrupting things for
other people around who are not on your tour.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, in that case, there's nobody else around because it's
just your group in the corridor, right. I would also
be very embarrassed. I'm sure after we left he was like, man,
that lady with the purple hair was as dumb as
can be. Just the stupidest person I've ever encountered. Can't
understand a word I said. It was just it was
very funny. It was very funny after the fact, and
then we had a lovely meal and a waiter wanted
(09:27):
to compare tattoos.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It was great. It was the best. Yeah, the ifisi
is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I see why that was not a thing that got
picked on our trip to do because it is very crowded.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
It's hard.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
There are some groups that go through there, but they
are struggling, like h it's hard to keep everybody together,
and with a group the size of ours, it would
have been very difficult. Yeah, a little maddening, I think so.
I think that probably was what led to that decision.
But I want to go back there a million times
because it's beautiful. I mean, all Florence is beautiful. Florence
is so walkable. There's so many cool things you can
(09:59):
go visit without having to ever get in a car, right,
you know. We went to Michelangelo's tomb, we went to
I think I mentioned before. We went to the Borgello,
which was right across the street from where we stayed,
which is an incredible museum.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Just a million cool places that are gorgeous. And I
really like Florence a bunch.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I love not having to get in a car.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I do too.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
We also got a car service for every transfer we
had to do while we were there, which was funny
because in Rome, our hotel staff, which who were amazing,
they had said like, do you need us to call
you a car for I think we had to go
to the train station. We're like, no, no, no, we already
have a car coming. And they were like, oh, what
service did you use? And we told them and they
were like, did they overcharge you? And I was like,
I don't even care because they take care of everything.
(10:41):
They literally come into the hotel and get your bags
and put them in the car for you, and like, oh, yeah,
worth every penny. It's the best, the best. Because I
didn't want to figure it out. I have friends that
are there right now who drove themselves from Florence to Rome,
which sounds slightly too terrifying to me.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, just because.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
It's a hard drive. Italian driving practices are not the
same as here, like the attitude about driving. So my
hat is off to my friend who drove that.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
But it's cool.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
The last thing I actually wanted to say, which kind
of hit my heart in all of this, there's a
unique thing that had me thinking about Bartolomeo ment Freddy,
which is that we don't know much about his life,
as we said at the top of the episode, and
reading about the way his work had to be pieced
(11:36):
together by Lippy and her team made me think about
the way his life has had to be pieced together
by biographers, and I was like, what a weird parallel
that his art got destroyed in this way, just as
the same way records of his life have, you know,
not survived or whatever, and we've had to We're just
trying to like put together who we think he was
and what exactly this art should look like. And I
(11:59):
don't know, just struck me as interesting. Yeah, art, talk
about it forever.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I have a problem. I do not wish to seek
treatment for my art addiction.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I'll go stand in cry in a museum all day long.
I'm sure everybody in Italy thinks I have emotional stability
issues because I cried art like nobody's business. I got
(12:29):
to talk to Leslie Eyeworks this week. You did a dream?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yay a dream?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I mean, I really she is somebody whose work I
have admired so much. We talked a lot about her
various documentaries. The one that she did about her grandfather
that was her first film about I works was like
the first time I saw it, I was just blown
away by how good it was, so I'm not surprised.
She mentioned in that interview how other people were also
blown away. And it went from kind of a small
(12:56):
project to a bigger project, which is terrific. This is
funny because we talked a lot when we were talking
about our Haunted Mansion episodes. In those episodes, we talked
a lot about how difficult the opening of Disneyland was
and how right up to the last minute they were
(13:16):
working and some of the work was, you know, literally
being finished while people were walking through the gates, and
how the asphalt hadn't solidified yet. And it's one thing
to talk about all of that, but then to see
all of the video that was shot was amazing and terrifying.
(13:37):
I mean it literally, like if you are a person
who is deadline driven and you know, like a project
management type person, it's got to be so scary because
it's all just there's a shocking amount of working on vibes, right.
(13:57):
We didn't we didn't talk about it in my interview
very much with Leslie because there was only so much time.
But like, one of the things that really jumped out
to me was the I mean, we did talk about
how there were only like ten percent of the plans
in place when they started on the park, But one
of the things that jumped out to me, and they
talk about it in the film, that comes up in
the discussion, is that they weren't always working off of
(14:21):
specific plans. In some cases, right, there was a lot
of here's what I want, and then the incredibly talented
and skilled workmen would just kind of be like, all right,
I guess we'll figure out how to make that. There
wasn't a lot of documentation of how they were doing
(14:42):
it because they were making it up as they went along,
which sounds slapdash, but also like these are people who
were very dedicated to it, very hard working. You can
tell in that footage like some of those people are
just really busting out work at an incredible rate and
an incredible lia little quality. But it was just like
this is this could never happen again, right, right, or
(15:06):
the odds are very long, right to put enough money
behind a project like that where you're kind of just
trusting the people involved, but also like bearing the burden
of if it's a failure, it's all on you. Like nobody,
very few people are would be willing to do such
a thing. It's astonishing kind of inspiring. One of the
(15:26):
other things that I really did like about it about
this film, and I hope everybody watches it because it's
just an eye opener in a variety of ways. About
you know what projects like that take like dream projects,
but it really does not pull punches about the fact that,
like everybody was not happy all the time, and everybody
(15:49):
was not like Walt is the best. Some people were like,
Walt is writing us way too hard, we don't know
what we're doing. Yeah, we're exhausted and freaking out.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Now they did.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Pull it off, right, There's always that thing. There's you'll
hear like both sides of that coin. Sometimes if you
do a lot of reading of Disney history and Park's
history in particular, that like, on the one hand, there
are people who are like, you know, Walt would just
see things in people and he would trust that they
(16:19):
could do what he needed them to do, and so
he would ask them to do it even if they
didn't believe they could, which is kind of a great
thing in some ways, right, But then this also shows
the light people going, we don't we're so tired, we
don't know what we're doing. Please let us we're asking
so much all the time, Yeah, which is just interesting. Also,
what a good bit of fortune that he did hire
(16:43):
camera crews to document the entire thing, But then all
that footage until this well one of Leslie's earlier projects
uses some of it, but that foot has just sat
around for decades unused, and now like we finally all
get to watch these people carve you know, tea little
lines in various pieces of faux you know, European brickwork
(17:05):
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
And it's just sure.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I could watch that stuff all day long. I could
watch it all day long. It's fascinating. And now the
parks are everywhere and huge and entire giant teams and
building codes, building codes, building codes. I did have a
wonder and I don't want to speculate too much because
I don't know, but for anybody in our audience that
(17:29):
doesn't now, who isn't a giant Star Wars nerd like myself.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
It has been in the news the.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Disneyland's approach to Galaxy's Edge, which is the Star Wars
section of Disneyland, is changing a little bit in terms
of like what on the Star Wars timeline can be
in the park. And one of the things that happened
in that changeover, and I won't get into that.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Because that is a whole discussion.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Listen, there's a lot of I've talked about it a lot,
very but they're One of the things said happened is
that Ogu's Cantina closed there in Disneyland for a while
and then reopened, and we were all like, I wonder,
is it getting a makeover? Is this changing? There were
some speculation on my part certainly and others about things
(18:16):
in the cantina. I'm trying to talk about this generally
without getting in the weeds. Hard for me because I'm
like everybody knows this.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
They don't. I understand, I'm the weirdo.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
But we thought there were things that were gonna have
to change within the cantena to address this shift, and
like how they were managing timeline. But in fact, like
Brian and I were out there at the beginning of April,
which was after it had reopened, and we went and
we didn't notice anything. If there are changes, they're subtle.
But it made me wonder if some of that wasn't
(18:47):
circling back. I did have a point to code. I
don't think I was ever not to code, but I
do think there were elements of their infrastructure that might
have needed updating in terms of like they're electrical and stuff.
Not necessarily because there's any danger, but just to meet
the needs of like modern machinery that gets used in
places like that. Right, Anyway, that's strictly speculation on my part.
(19:10):
I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm I'm guessing.
I'm playing a guessing game. So don't anybody think I
just told you some big piece, right, But I sure
love Ogus and I love Disneyland disney World. Disney World
is our close ones, so it feels like home to me.
Disneyland feels like an adventure, even though it's a much
(19:32):
smaller footprint andier to traverse. You know, We've talked about
this as well, Like if you're in disney World, it's
four parks.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You have to bust between the parks if you're going
to go to more than one park in a day.
Disneyland you just walk back and forth across the plaza
if you want to.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Go to the other. It feels so tiny to me
in that, right.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Both fun both great, different different adventures. Yeah, pros and cons, right.
I like the bubble of the big property. I like
knowing that I am in Disney at all times, whereas
like in Anaheim, you can just walk out on the
street and you're just in Anaheim, m less bubbling, all.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Good, well good.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
In any case, if this is your weekend coming up,
I hope that you get time to go to an
amusement park, to watch a movie you like, maybe watch
a good documentary I know one to recommend, or just
you know, engage with whatever ignites your creativity or your
imagination or your inner spark, or just makes you feel peaceful.
(20:38):
That is also valuable.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I hope that.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
You get time to hang and relax. Even if you
don't have time off the next couple of days, I
still hope you get time to hang and relax and
that you do something really nice and maybe a little
indulgent for yourself, because that's the good stuff. That's what
life is about. Find your joy wherever you Can'll be
back on Monday with a brand new episode.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
We will also be back tomorrow with a.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Classic Stuff you missed in History Class is a production
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