Sick zings: Jacko, bubbles & the Italian tit ride.

WHEN A GROUP of dudes get together, even those who consider themselves tight bros, the mood can quickly shift from brotherly love or relaxed indifference to one marked by a round-robin tournament of insults. Everyone knows those groups of friends who constantly diss each other, where every statement is an opportunity to get in a quick zing, and everyone's a regular Don Rickles. Some people thrive in those environments, but they tend to wear me down. Which is why after the first day on the RVCA Italy trip I switched from the big van with all the dudes to the smaller one with RVCA team manager Jimmy, our Italian host Davide, and the gear. Josh Harmony joined us the next day, clearly worn out.

MAN, IT'S A TOUGH RIDE in the zing van," he told us. In all fairness, Josh was partially responsible for starting the zing fest. It was he, after all, who told Cairo that his passport photo looked like Michael Jackson.

"Oh, sweet. Now I'm Jacko," he responded.

And so he was, at least according to the rest of us. In revenge, Josh was named Bubbles, after the King of Pop's pet chimpanzee, though that one didn't stick quite as well. My name was temporarily changed to Mark Brunette, following an emerging revival of the word "mark" as a term of derision--either from carnival or early hip-hop vernacular, though I suspect the latter. Anyone else was referred to as Mark-ovich, Mark-Ass Wyndham or Mark-Ass Bandy, mostly by Neck Face, who was along for the ride and the undisputed zing leader. No offense to any of those great skaters, I don't think, it was just one of those things that happens when everyone's in the mood to be a dick. It sort of petered out towards the middle of the trip, seeing as how everyone really was bros, but Leo was always ready to offer a high five to whoever got in a real good one.

"Sick zing, bro," he'd laugh, with the slap of a palm. "Cool zing."

TALKING ITALIAN

MAN, ITALIAN PEOPLE can talk! It's not like Americans are known as a particularly silent folk, but our Italian hosts were conversation maniacs. Everything we did took three times as long simply due to the ridiculous amount of time they would stand around and talk about it. And God forbid you get sandwiched between two of them in the front seat of one of the vans (as happened to Spanky at least twice).

"It was like they were shouting at each other for hours, completely ignoring the fact that my head was in the way," he told us.

Our stereotypes were confirmed when we happened to eat dinner with an American expat living in Rome.

"Is it just me or do Italian people talk a lot?"

I asked her.

"Oh yeah," she said, shaking her head. "These people can talk forever."

Not only are they chatterboxes, but they really do all those funny hand gestures that Italian people use in the Godfather movies and on spaghetti sauce commercials. After a few sentences into a brief half-conversation with a gentleman at a truck stop, he was hooking the back of my neck and slapping it and doing that gesture where you put all your fingers together in a point and shake your wrist from side to side. Realizing he was friendly, I smiled and gave him a few neck slaps back. And although neither of us cried out "Mamma Mia" it was a wholly satisfying Italian moment.

VENICE

AN AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL city sliced up by ancient canals, Venice is also as blown out as the spare on a '76 Subaru Brat. It looks like a movie set, or exactly what you think Venice would look like, which is what drew us--along with a zillion other tourists--all lurching along to gaze into shops selling identical selections of horrible souvenir crap, eat ice cream, and take the same digital photos over and over again. Yes Venice, she is lovely, but she is--how you say? A whore.

COTTAGE INDUSTRY: DAVID'S PECKER

IN A TRUE EXAMPLE of the free market and give-the-people-what-they-want-style commerce, the souvenir vendors of Italy now offer literally hundreds of different keepsakes featuring the private parts of Michelangelo's famous statue of David. Not the whole nude dude, just the genitals.

I'll admit that when I first saw an apron featuring David from the waist down, I pointed it out to the group with a hardy guffaw. "Would ya look at that!"

My reaction quickly dulled as I realized that a different penis-y item was available practically every 10 feet. Boxer shorts and aprons were the most common, but magnets, postcards, hats, T-shirts, tote bags, pens and pencils, oven mitts, and glow-in-the-dark miniatures were also up for grabs. One of the sadder things I saw was a very elderly woman shuffling from one group of tourists to another, her claw-like hand opening to display a selection of different sized dick key chains.

After considerable consideration, Leo finally entered a shop and chose a pecker refrigerator magnet as well as a pair of silky boxers, the latter of which featuring an image of David's wang that had been digitally elongated to absurd proportions. He posed with them proudly. Then we went and tried to cut in line at the Sistine Chapel.

NEK FART VERSUS NECK FACE

MANY OF YOU might be marveling at how much coverage this dude has been getting for his stoner, little kid art, but Neck Face keeps showing up in the van so here it goes again. I think his identity is supposed to be secret or something, as goes the code of the streets, but for all the time he spent wearing T-shirts over his head he spent just as much time posing for cell phone photos and skating at the demos, so I'm not really sure. Neck treats the entire world like it's a seventh-grade substitute teacher: muttering insults under his breath, yelling things out of speeding ears, and scribbling on walls when no one's looking. He's really funny--or a pain in the ass, depending on which side you're on, but we all had a cool time having him as our artist in residency.

One night in Milan after choking down at least three beers (Neck is a new drinker, so the bitter beer face is still in play), he went on a rampage--painting a large demon on a nearby door, stealing a gallon bottle of Jagermeister from a roadside snack wagon, and then throwing a bunch of shirts and shit at the other van driving behind us. Trying to get in on the action, I wrote my own tag, Nek Fart, in permanent marker on the back of the front seat headrest as we sped through the night. I was pretty happy with my first venture into street culture, but the next morning we learned that our hosts were not so pleased. It seems the van wasn't a rental and that Neck had not only thrown out all the promo gear, but had accidentally sprayed the back of the seat with black paint.

"Burnett handed that shit to me!" Neck cried, trying to pass the buck. "He kept handing me shit so I figured it was cool to throw out!"

Taking a different approach (after being unable to scrub the marker off), I tried to convince our hosts of the value of a Nek Fart original.

"If you like Neck Face," I explained, "You'll love Nek Fart."

They seemed doubtful. Luckily for us one of the other Italians crashed the van into a parked BMW in Rome, and the next day Gypsies smashed the rear window out. This largely took the heat off both Nek and Neck, though not in the way anyone would have preferred.

Interested parties can make an appointment to view Nek Fart's work through RVCA or Thrasher. Though he works in several mediums, his primary canvases are mini-van headrests.

BAD ETHAN

OVER THE YEARS I've written a couple of different pieces about dealing with the new nice Ethan Fowler; the responsible and friendly skateboard star who has replaced the extra-harsh dick that many knew from the early '90s. I'm not going to say that Bad Ethan was back on the Italy trip, but Nice Ethan was definitely taking a vacation. Hammered by back pain, Ethan came on the tour with high hopes he would heal up in the first few days and be able to join his bros on the hubbas. When it became obvious this wasn't going to happen, Ethan checked himself onto the Tilt-A-Whirl during which time he punched Spanky in the ear (supposedly out of joy), focused his laptop computer (damn thing kept turning off), and harshed Josh on the literal nature of the Holy Bible while waiting in line for the Sistine Chapel (which Jimmy and I probably had a hand in too). It was kind of fun to have Bad Ethan around, especially since he was directing the bulk of the abuse at himself, and I listened in awe as he captivated a dinner table of 15 detailing a complicated plan to someday rule over his own dictatorship. By next trip I'm sure Nice Ethan will be back, but it was fun to go back in time, if only for a week.

WHORES & HORSES

DRIVING THROUGH the countryside, past green and khaki-colored hills swelling with ancient farms and vineyards, I kept seeing women in lawn chairs posted up on the freeway shoulder. My first reaction was that we must be approaching a construction zone and that these were the people who hold the slow signs and talk on their walkie-talkies to direct traffic. The next woman I saw, however, had neither a sign nor a hard hat and was wearing a turquoise tube top and white hot pants. As I sat up and craned my neck to look farther up the road, I noticed another gathering of women standing just across a fence from a field of horses. One was wearing a bikini top and the other, one of those one-piece crisscrossing swimsuits favored by the women in James Bond movies of the 1970s.

"Wait. Are those hookers?" I asked Davide.

"What?" he replied.

"Prostitutes. Are those prostitutes?" I asked.

"Yes. Prostitutes. Do you want to stop?" he asked plainly.

"No, but why are they all the way out here in the country?" I asked.

"For the truck drivers, I think," he replied. "You want to stop?"

I still didn't, but found it fascinating that in Italy you don't go downtown to pick up a lady of the night, you head out to cow country. I wonder if you have to go out there to buy crack, too?

LEO ROMERO, NO APOLOGIES

THOUGH A GOOD-NATURED young man, Leo is one of those people who takes great pleasure in stirring up uncomfortable social situations. He's also virtually impossible to embarrass.

In Rome, Leo went up to a Gypsy couple and aimed his camera at the dude's massive dog that was nursing a large litter of pups. Though the man shook his head and waved his hands angrily, the flash fired. As Leo turned to walk away, the Gypsy leapt up and karate kicked him in the small of the back. The dog--undoubtedly accustomed to such punch ups--sprang to life, but instead of chasing Leo it spun around excitedly and started mauling a random person walking by.

The line for the Sistine Chapel was about eight blocks long--easily the longest line I've ever seen in my life. Although it was Jimmy who suggested we cut to the front, Leo took the brunt of the abuse when a tour leader noticed our subterfuge and started blowing her whistle in his face.

"Let's go," he deadpanned. "This bitch is calling the cops."

On the plane ride home, Leo drank eight or so miniature bottles of red wine, the last of which spilled down the front of his white T-shirt, settling suggestively on a crude line drawing of a naked woman in full Beaver Hunt formation that was the shirt's design. While waiting to clear customs in New York, I overheard an elderly couple talking about him.

"They should have never given that boy so much to drink," the woman whined loudly.

"It was a safety hazard!" the man barked back, seemingly to everyone. "And that filthy shirt!"

Later, while standing in a second hour-long line to get our connection, Jimmy and I were making small talk with a businesswoman just ahead of us.

"If you think this is bad," she told us, leaning in, "you should have seen what happened to us at the Sistine Chapel the other day. We waited in line for hours, and then this American boy thought he could cut directly to the front!"

"Oh yeah?" we asked.

"Yeah. So our tour guide started blowing her whistle to get the cops!" she continued.

"Well," Jimmy said, "if you're gonna cut, you might as well cut to the front."

Somewhere, far ahead of us in line, in his stained, pornographic T-shirt, we knew Leo was smiling.

DARIO

ACTUALLY BORN IN ROME, video wizard Dario is soundly a product of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, and it was fun to see a California kid dealing with his first time in Europe--a place where the convenience culture we're used to is practically non-existent.

"Do you guys have Hot Pockets?" he asked our hosts one morning, "You know, Hot Pockets. Like pepperoni or ham and cheese?"

They stared at him blankly. "Or any sort of good microwavable food," he continued. "Hot Pockets?"

Not only did they not have Hot Pockets, they didn't have 7-Eleven, In-N-Out Burger, or Taco Bell either.

One night after arriving late at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, a starving Dario asked if he could take the van to go find a quick bite to eat.

"I just want to hit the closest drive-thru," he said.

Had we let him go, that could have been a story in itself seeing as how he would have had to make it at least to Germany before finding anything that remotely resembled a Wendy's. Surprisingly, Dario ended up being the most adaptable of us all, and by the end of the trip he was barely even riding in the vans because he'd made so many friends among the local skaters. "I'll catch up with you guys later," he'd yell from a car bumping Italian gangster rap.

ROME

THINK YOUR BROKEN iPod screen and that zit on the end of your nose are big problems? Well, one trip to Rome is a powerful wake up to the fact that your pitiful concerns don't amount to a fart in a school bus in the grand scheme of human existence.

We woke up extra early (for us), and went on a Bataan Death March of Roman tourism that went from the Vatican, through St Peter's Basilica, the Panthenon, Trevi Fountain and the ruins of the ancient city to the Colosseum with nothing but ice cream and beer to sustain us.

Even though I'm not the type of person who can stand around and get deep just staring at the Grand Canyon or a painting in a gallery, I was floored by the grandeur of Rome. The halls of the Vatican are clogged with ancient sculpture; most so life-like it feels as if you're walking through a living cemetery or a people zoo. There's so many you get numb to it after awhile, but then you'll look up and lock eyes with a statue that seems so real, you could imagine sitting next to them on the bus. As dumb as it sounds, I even had an "I know that dude!" reaction when I first spotted the image of God in the cloud on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Sure, we got kicked out a few seconds later because Jimmy and Leo disobeyed the no-photos rule, but for a split second I felt a faint connection with something greater than myself; or at least something older and more famous.

I don't know anyone who goes to church anymore, but St Peter's Basilica is a testament to the monstrous force that is organized religion. You could have blimp fights in there that place is so huge. It's the largest church in the world, and the gigantic angel statues that seem to sail along the edges of the gold-domed ceiling are the most amazing pieces of art I have ever seen. St Peter's is so fantastic, my initial reaction was, "I can't believe they let us in here."

The ancient city and the Colosseum were equally awesome, but I really wish I had some sort of book or tour guide to tell me the details of what I was looking at. Even with our cumulative shabby knowledge of Roman history, it was sort of like staring at one of those big, complicated walls of flashing lights and buttons that computers in the '70s used to look like. You know there's a lot more to know, a story or plan in every little detail, but all you can do is just stare at it and say, "Ooh, pretty."

GYPSY CARNIVAL

WE ENDED UP at a two-day contest in a small town high in the Italian Alps, which meant a quick victory for Leo and two days of drinking beer, wiping mayonnaise off of French fries, and wandering up and down the quaint streets among lederhosen-bedecked Germans for the rest of us. It was a fine time, made even finer by a Gypsy carnival set up just around the bend from the skatepark. Though largely empty, the carnival had a nice group of janky-looking rides, made even sketchier by the noticeable lack of safety measures, the sort that have all but choked the fun out of most American fairs. On the swing ride, for instance, there was a nearby pole from which a foxtail dangled just out of reach. In addition to the fun of normal swinging, riders had the bonus challenge of trying to snatch the tail from the pole, which could only be accomplished by grabbing onto a neighbor's swing and having him slingshot you skyward as the tail came around. After smacking into Cairo's knees several times, Jimmy kicked hard and triumphantly plucked it from the pole.

Next up were the bumper ears where we bashed the living shit out of each other, especially Jimmy, who used his martial arts training to really put his weight into every bump. I think he gave Leo a bloody nose. We took about 10 turns on those and then moseyed over to the shooting games where Eagle Eye Ethan unloaded a good 300 rounds, most into a line of cans, but with at least two ricocheting out to pop the elderly woman running the game in the face. She snarled and swatted as the pellets plunked off her fleshy jowls.

The closer for the evening was a fantastic thrill machine no American had ever had the joy of paying two bucks to get sick on. Imagine, if you will, a large backboard as high as a drive-in movie screen. Painted on this backboard are two sexy space women brandishing phasers, one of whose right nipple is halfway popping out of her space blouse. Below these 20-foot-tall temptresses sits a row of seats, each with a heavily padded bar that swings down over your shoulders to clamp tightly to the point directly in front of your groin. Now imagine this entire row of seats lifting up and rotating both clockwise and counter-clockwise, rising 20 feet in the air, faster and faster, until the arms and legs of its occupants are tossed around like flailing flagellum. This, my friends, was the Italian Tit Ride. Making the entire experience more personal was the equally chesty Gypsy girl who leered at us from the control booth as we begged for more, more, more. Though the bar continuously pinched and bit into our groins as we spun and flung, we rode the Tit Ride over and over, not ready to dismount until our pockets were empty and our suppers up to the very tops of our throats. As we wobbled from our perches and laid out on the warm asphalt I knew that despite the heights of the Alps, the mystery of Venice and the majesty of Rome's ancient treasures, what I would remember most from my trip to Italy was this moment--half drunk, dizzy, and barely able to catch my breath from laughing--looking up to the still-spinning skies, frantically digging through my pockets to find some forgotten coins, some misplaced bill, so I could take me and my friends for one more turn on the Italian Tit Ride.