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Two weeks into their Florentine visit, and the knucklehead cast members of “Jersey Shore” have absorbed more carbs than culture.
“You want a pizza?” Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino asks tourists and locals strolling the historic center of Italy’s most beautiful Renaissance city.
“Vuoi una pizza?” he tries again in pidgin Italian, sweating inside his bright blue tracksuit — a garish sight amid the medieval stone splendor — and doing his best to ignore the heckling taunts thrown his way by unhappy locals.
PHOTOS: ‘JERSEY SHORE’ IN ITALY
“Why don’t they get out of town? They’re all idiots. All this fuss for eight idiots,” snapped one irate Florentine, disgusted by the chunky crucifixes, micro-minis and saggy sweats the eight reality-TV stars flaunt during their daily antics.
Sorrentino, along with his castmates, peddles pies for a local pizzeria as part of his “job” on Season 4 of “Jersey Shore,” MTV’s trashtastic ode to the beachy Italian-American musclehead lifestyle.
“I can speak a little Italian,” he said to another group a few minutes later, neglecting to mention that what he knows of his ancestral tongue came from “Dirty Italian,” a book he bought his first night in Florence.
“I’m tryin’,” Sorrentino, 29, said with a shrug, before swaggering home to the luxury palazzo MTV rented for the cast in the ritzy Duomo district.
The hard-partying, hair-gel-loving “Shore” kids are brawling and sprawling around Florence with their signature abandon — but to fed-up Florentines they’re personae non gratae.
Their stay has yielded one cultural insult after another for Italians, who fail to identify with the “Guido” mantra of palestra, abbronzatura, lavanderia (gym, tan, laundry). On Day 1, the Italian press labeled them “supercafoni,” or superboors.
Locals turn up their nose when they pass O’Vesuvio, the pizzeria where Snooki, Deena, JWoww, Sammi, Ronnie, DJ Pauly D, Vinny and The Situation trade shifts making stone-oven pies for the tourist crowd.
“Jersey Shore? No thanks,” reads a window sign in a pizzeria across the street. “Only real Italian pizza.”
Florence’s mayor, fearing for Italy’s artistic wonders, banned the bronzer-loving group from the Uffizi Gallery and other landmarks. After viewing prior episodes, he also nixed filming the supercafoni drinking on city streets and in bars.
Naturally, that hasn’t stopped the cast from whooping it up.
They made an indelible impression with a visit to an old-fashioned carousel in Florence’s fashionable Piazza Della Repubblica their first night in town. The Guidos and Guidettes rode horses backward, then the whole crew descended on a nightclub, Otel, to boogie and slam shots in true Jersey style.
By Monday, the crew was ready to go to work at O’Vesuvio, where much of Season 4 has so far been filmed. Snooki has been seen elbow-deep in dough, while DJ Pauly D and The Situation frequently work the streets, passing out fliers with ham-handed charm to Italian girls.
Between shifts, however, things have not been molto bene among the Italian-Americans and their Florentine paisanos.
The Guidos are “super muscular, tattooed beer lovers,” and the women “over-made up, with sharp heels and micro-skirts,” sneered La Nazione, a leading newspaper, adding that Snooki and crew use “vulgar language and violence.”
The boys, unable to read Italian signs and befuddled by serpentine alleys, racked up three parking tickets totaling $350 in just a few days.
Vinny, The Situation and DJ Pauly D hit clubs like Central Park and Otel in their usual tank-tops, and do their best to bring home girls (nationality unimportant).
One night, Sorrentino was caught swapping open-mouthed smooches with a cute blonde in full street view, and the next, showing up at his palazzo door with two other girls, drunkenly buzzing for entry.
Four days into the trip, the girls stopped for one of their regular “family lunches” of bruschetta, salad and pasta dishes at a trattoria, and swilled free limoncello shots from the owner.
Other restaurants haven’t been as friendly. One night, Snooki and JWoww — dressed in their usual harlot-couture — caused a minor imbroglio at upscale eatery B. Gallo when a waitress refused to seat them.
A simmering Snooki insisted on speaking with a manager and demanded a coveted table outdoors, while JWoww, looking embarrassed, turned her head away. They were eventually given a seat inside, where locals couldn’t see them.
JWoww turned herself into a national laughingstock during an interview with Italian TV presenter Simona Ventura, who asked the busty dimwit to look into a wishing well and describe her future.
“I don’t see nothing. What do you mean?” a puzzled JWoww said, peering into the ornamental well and then frowning in confusion.
“I can’t wait for them to go back to the US,” said Pasquale, a local resident who belongs to the Fit Village Gym where the “Shore” kids work out.
Deena is the only cast member to actually take a look at some of Florence’s celebrated art — she had a brush with Michelangelo’s nude masterpiece, “David.”
But she didn’t get anywhere near the statue itself — just a picture of it copied onto a cheap, plastic apron she bought at a tacky tourist trap. She then inexplicably wore it for hours while exploring Florence’s poshest area.
Sammi and Ronnie are the source of a major Season 4 storyline; MTV producers hope Florence will rekindle their romance, which ended on a sour note last season when Sammi caught her muscular Guido cheating.
Their on/off relationship is rumored to have caused a violent brawl in Florence between the short-tempered Ronnie and his best bro, The Situation.
Sorrentino was spotted with bruises and a hangdog expression the night after the crew hit up a club to dance and drink (Deena likes to plonk a penis-shaped hat on her head while searching the crowds for boys to bring home).
Ronnie was also spotted the next day nursing several gashes on his knuckles.
Things had started out calmly enough with a private dinner date to the Vincanto Pizzeria and Wine Bar for Ronnie and Sammi. The two then strolled hand-in-hand to join the rest of the cast at a club.
Their camera-ready reconciliation lasted only a short while, however. Sammi and Ronnie reportedly got into a screaming match back at their townhouse. But it was Sorrentino who got the brunt of Ronnie’s temper when he tried to intervene.
With only about 10 days left in Italy, producers are hoping to pump up the interaction between the cast and Italians by moving the gang to a more familiar setting — the trashy, seaside resort towns of Riccione and Rimini on the Adriatic Coast. They’re also looking for relatives of the Italian-Americans who might be willing to admit on camera that they are actually famiglia with the supercafoni.