I'm mildly excited about getting to see my family in Italy, which... I know it doesn't sound like a compliment, but it is. Being all European, they're probably a lot more fun than my U.S. family — most of them are in their late, late eighties but I bet I can find at least one member of the Ciaglia or Colotti clans on the peninsula driving their Fiat along the Autostrada at over a hundred miles an hour. No, wait, that sounds terrifying.

But I'm optimistic about my potential social status in Italy, as if anyone over there's gonna know if I do that complicated hip-hop fist-slam handshake wrong or that I'm lying when I tell them that, yes, "Old Navy" is one of San Fransisco's most chic fashion labels. Just being American somehow makes you cool in the eyes of foreigners — and I will be so fucking pissed at George W. if his yee-haw Wild West foreign policy has changed any of that over the past six years. Hear that, Dubya? If it's 11pm at the bar in the Bulgari hotel and I'm not chatting up an anorexic supermodel who'd be way out of my league back in New York, it's gonna be on you. You can expect a bill from my next year's trip to Bucharest.