It’s been crrrraaaazy, but we’re both incredibly happy. Will get more creative soon!  Speaking of which, my BOOK is released the same day Stefania arrives, September 27th.  That date will be meaningful for me until the end of days.

“Empire of Light” at Barnes & Noble

Peace!

These days people will throw that “Nazi” card just as soon as lookin’ at ya.

Any and all acts committed by these goose-stepping idiots, both innocuous and criminal, have become the metaphor flavors of the month. If there’s an idea you disagree with all you need is five good minutes on the Internet and you’ll soon discover that some Nazi has already tried it. HUZZAH! You’ve just found your counter argument.

Sucker: “How ‘bout Beef Bourguignon for dinner tonight?”

Adversary: “You mean the same Beef Bourguignon storm troopers consumed as they plundered Paris?”

Sucker:“Ah. Okay. I’ll assume Pierogies are also off the table, too.”

I’m as guilty as the next guy of this sin. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve compared Rumsfeld, Cheney & Libby to guys like Goebells, Göring & Himmler I’d be out of debt and own better shoes.

However recently I’ve made an effort not to use tragic world events to vilify my rivals. Instead, I use them to put my life in its proper perspective. As I sit at work, at 8pm on a Friday night feeling sorry for myself, I think about how it beats patrolling IED inundated roads in Afghanistan for a living. I remind myself that I’m working on “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid 2” (coming to a theater near you soon) on the historic 20th Century Fox back-lot and I quickly get over myself.

***

When speaking to our friends and family of our Visa journey thus far, Stef and I are often presented with the following Mrs. Kravitz-like statements and/or questions…

You two have been apart for THAT long?!  Jeeeezus!

With such little time spent with together, how do you know you two can live with each other?

Wow, I don’t know how you guys stay together during all of this. I’m surprised you haven’t broken up yet.

…And you’re sure he (or she) have stayed faithful?

You’ve spent HOW much money on lawyers/government fees/travel?!

If you had to do it all over, I bet you wouldn’t do this again.

Really?  The last statement is the kicker. As if Stefania would respond…

“No, I wouldn’t do it again. It’s not worth it, but I’m stuck now because the Negro bought me a ring.” *

*Note: this sentence was NOT written in Stefania’s voice. She’s never referred to me as a “Negro” although the idea does tickle me. I will slyly attempt to implement this word into her new English vocabulary. We’ll now return to the blog entry currently in progress.

They mean well, and I don’t deny that the time away from each other does suck. The lack of physical contact is enough to make a man go loopy. I talk to myself a LOT these days. It’s been a bit hellish, yet couples have endured worse.

I was raised in a predominantly Jewish community outside of Cleveland, and one gets to hear many a tragic Holocaust story over those years. But every now and then I’d hear a bitter-sweet tale about how a victim endured and survived the atrocities of those wicked days, fueled only by the hope of seeing their loved ones again, alive. He or she reaches the other side of the insanity and, shockingly, finds a loved-one who also miraculously lived to tell the tale.

So this is me now pulling the serious Nazi card…

Yes, going through the Fiancée Visa process has been incredibly stressful, but it beats us attempting to cheat death at Dachau and Buchenwald, each praying that the other is still alive. Brave couples have endured much worse, so I think we can handle the distance just fine. I think we can handle buying tickets to Italy just fine. I think we can handle the US Consulate in Naples, just fine.  We’re good.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shave and put on a clean shirt, I have a Skype date this morning.

Eh… Maybe I’ll just disable my camera.

And that, as I like to say, is the gist of it.

[Calvin & Hobbes "Best Friends" illustration by Space Coyote]

Okay, so I haven’t been updating this blog lately mostly because of how the process has murdered my soul. Honestly, if Stefania and had dime for each time either of us were asked, “When are you getting married” we could’ve  just bought a damn country, moved there and gotten married.

We’d call it, “Freedonia”.

Stef and I waited almost a year to see each other (I last saw her Christmas of 2009) because we were waiting for the Visa Petition to be approved. That way I could join her on her trek to Naples for her interview with the US Consulate.

Of course the stress became too much and we caved. I couldn’t bear the idea of not seeing Stefania for a solid year, so I bought a ticket on December 3rd I hoped on a Swiss Air jet to Milan, a mere three  weeks shy of Christmas 2010. I just got back in town yesterday.

Needless to say, the trip was fantastic! This blog was to be supposed to be about that adventure, however instead let me skip waaaay ahead to one of the last things I said to Stefania as she dropped me off at the airport to return home…

“What are you crying for?  That damn letter from the Government is probably in my mail box right now. I’ll be buying another ticket in a week.”

Of course I didn’t believe that garbage. It was a little white lie, said to make yet another airport drop-off a bit more bearable.

I get to my desk today and catch up with my boss/friend, Aaron. Upon talking about the frustration of waiting for the government to tell us when we can get married, Aaron says… “Hey! I got mail.  And there’s a letter from the Government for you!”

I didn’t get too excited. With my luck, some politician I sent a effed up letter to figured out a way to get my old ass drafted.

But glory to God, Christmas has come early!!!

It was an I-797 Notice of Action: APPROVED!

YES!

Um, Santa, could ya hook a brotha up with a ticket? I have to get to Napoli, yo!

MILANO!

So in honor of Stef, Caravaggio and a hackneyed attempt to pimp my work, here is a chapter form my book. In this chapter, the characters happen to be celebrating the work of their hero, Caravaggio… So there ya go.  Enjoy!

Chapter 03 – The Gospel of Don Vittorio Storaro

Under the cover of darkness, beneath the tall oaks of Griffith Park, a group of Cinematography Fellows at the American Film Institute dropped the sacrilegious bomb and anointed famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro as their lord and savior. They saw him as a jealous prophet, one who didn’t tolerate any second-guessing of his belief system. So Don Vittorio gave them tangible proof that he was not to be fucked with, five masterpieces of cinematography…

“The Conformist” (1970),

“Last Tango In Paris” (1972),

“Apocalypse Now” (1979),

“Reds” (1981)

“The Last Emperor” (1987)

Simply put, if you’re ever blessed enough to finally see Vittorio’s light, you’ll get the spirit and jump around the Los Feliz campus like Aunt Esther in an Alabama Baptist church. It’s that moment where you evolve from being a mere photographer and you become a painter of light.

Born technician.

Born again artist.

For us, colors are not just various wavelengths of the visible light spectrum. Colors are mystical ingredients that when mixed right become a potion of seduction and enslavement. Storaro is the key. He’s Merlin, Moses and the Rosetta Stone all wrapped up into one.

The Bourgeois Pig coffee bar is the Church of the Cult of Light. It’s a cathedral full of Goodwill couches, pool tables and pretentiousness. We Fellows make camp in the Moroccan room, which looks like something out of 1001 Arabian Nights, with its long curtains, hung to make you feel like you’re chillin’ in a tent, pitched deep in the North African Desert. It’s our chapel and it’s decorated with the portraits of the artists we worship, the saints of our craft.

I know,  I know… There’s some fucked up idolatry goin’ on up in here.  Right? The Hollywood branch of the Church of Scientology is across the street. They won’t bring their children over here anymore. How messed up is that?

I share a table with Pan and this Directing Fellow from New York named Skylar, who came out of the documentary scene. The two entertain me as I listen to them babble on about bullshit.

“…Really? Your favorite sport is Little League Baseball?” asks an astonished Skylar.

“No. Just the Little League World Series,” says Pan.

“Why?”

“I like seeing ‘em cry.”

“What?” asks Skylar in disbelief.

“A couple of years ago, with the entire world watching, a ten year old Japanese pitcher got lit up by a walk-off home run in extra innings and lost the game. As the American player rounds the bases with complete unadulterated glee, the pitcher just crumples to the mound, man. He just collapses to the ground in a wet quivering mass of inconsolable grief,” says Pan blissfully.

“And you find this entertaining?” Sky asks.

“I laughed my fool head off. I watch it on YouTube at least once a week, the entire stadium on its feet cheering this kid’s humiliation…”

Pan fades off in reverie, no doubt re-living the incident within his bald head, as he stares down into his blue cream soda.

“You’re a sick fuck, you know that, Pan?” says Skylar. “They weren’t cheering the loss. They were cheering the walk-off home run.”

“Not if you squint while you’re lookin’ at it.”

We’re interrupted by a few of the Fellows as they suddenly drag a dinner table into the center of the room, dressed with a plate, flatware and a fat bottle of Chianti. They exit and then a shady looking character appears at the entrance of the room. Wearing knee length black boots and a cape, he swaggers into the room, tugging at his fake beard with his left hand, fondling the handle of the sword with the other. The guy looks like he’s perpetually piss

ed. As a matter of fact, he looks very much like one of the portraits hanging on the wall.

“CARAVAGGIO!” the room cheers.

“Shut up!” he bellows back at us. ”And you!” he screams at a Fellow playing a waiter. “Bring me a plate of Artichoke Hearts!”

“Si, Signore. Fried or sautéed?”

Today is September 29^th, the day Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was born. It’s one of the most important days in the Fellow’s calendar year. It’s sacred.

If Vittorio is our savior then Caravaggio would be our father in heaven. The alpha and the omega. He is the goddamn man. We adore this Baroque asshole of a painter who created a style of painting known as Chiaroscuro, a dramatic technique where the artist seems to carve his subjects out of blackness with a single light source. A technique we Fellows are desperate to master, student loan debt be damned; and we observe the day of his birthday by recreating one of the several incidents on his long arrest sheet, known as…

The Artichoke Incident.

The waiter re-appears with a plate full of food.

“Your artichokes, Signore.”

“Wait.” Caravaggio says before the waiter can leave. “Which are fried and which are sautéed?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you smell them with your big nose and find out?” says the waiter.

“WHAT?” says Caravaggio as he leaps out of his chair and smashes the plate of hot Artichokes into the waiter’s mug.

The waiter collapses to the ground, claws at his face and shrieks in pain as if he was punched in the face with a bag of indignant bees.

Horrible acting job. …Just fucking horrible.

As Caravaggio regally settles back into his seat, the Fellows begin to sing his praise.

“For he’s a jolly good fellow! For he’s a jolly good fellow! For he’s jolly good felloooow! Which nobody can deny!”

A couple fools in cheap Roman soldier costumes march into the room and promptly arrest Caravaggio causing the Fellows to whistle and boo in protest.

Victor stands on a chair and begs for quiet.

As he begins to speak, plastic cups filled to the brim with the cheap Chianti are passed around the room.

“It was Vittorio Storaro who introduced us to this artistic god, this crazed Italian painter who was cinematic centuries before cinema existed. If you like films like The Godfather or Blade Runner you have to like Caravaggio because it all began with him. He is Noir. To say he was ahead of his time is an understatement. He bitch slapped time and left it bleeding in a dark alley of Rome.”

The Fellows cheer in revelry!

“Tonight, we celebrate our god, Caravaggio! Salute!”

“SALUTE!” responds the entire room, raising their plastic cups into the air.

We drink.

We sit.

We chat like none of this silly bullshit every happened.

My line of sight clears as everybody settles back into the comfy couches. I spot Dani Gruber. I wonder when her sexy little ass arrived on the scene?

Sky noticed her, too. “Stop your grinning and drop your linen, the dreamiest dame on campus has arrived,” Skylar says as he nods towards Dani, her long black hair cascading towards her perfect tits.

“Eh, if you like that type,” Pan says as he takes a sip of his Blue Cream soda.

“You’re such a beach bum, man,” says Skylar. He turns towards me to explain. “Pan can’t dig on girls east of the Pacific Coast Highway.”

“Goddamn right. Blonde hair and beach volleyball abs.”

“A nice Aryan girl to take home to mother,” mocks Skylar. “You have the same taste in women as Joseph Goebbels. How’s that make you feel? In fact, with a name like Gruber she’s probably perfect for you.”

“Screw you, Sky. Besides, that girl is all Italian.”

This grabs my attention. “How do you know?” I ask.

“We made small talk at the bar,” says Pan.

“And how did that work out for you?” I ask.

“Shot me down like a Kennedy.”

“Jason. Don’t you parli the eye-talian?” asks Skylar.

“A little…”

END – CHAPTER 03

Happy Birthday, Merisi… You insane son of a bitch.

There are very few pieces of modern technology I love as much as I love my laptop, especially when powered by SKYPE! Let’s just say that my passion for Skype is equal to, if not greater than, my unadulterated loathing of a certain vile cell phone carrier.

AT&T is a minion of Satan. It’s crappy service makes for all kinds of malicious mischief, especially for a guy who is desperately trying to navigate a long distance relationship, and already fighting against an nine-hour time difference. There are times when I think I’m paying AT&T for the privilege of making my life hell (see link below regarding AT&T’s attempt to break up my engagement).

On the other hand, Skype is my communications savior. Skype is the reason I can maintain said long distant relationship and not have to sell my organs to pay m’ mobile bill. It not only keeps me in voice communication with Stefania, but I also enjoy the perk of seeing her smile, too. And it cost nothing. It’s gratis. On the house. It’s Free.

FREE! [insert maniacal laugh here]

But of course we all know that nothing in life is really free. Right? Every once in a while, Stef and I have to pay back the Skype god (lower case “g”) for granting us hours upon hours of divine gratis video & voice communication. During this atonement period, Skype transforms into a tool of suffering, as Stefania and I are forced to talk about the trials and tribulations of the K1 Visa Paperwork.

In the current round of the Fiancé Visa process, Stef was bombarded with mounds of paperwork…

I had one page to her dozen.  Not only had she been busting her butt all week combing through it, but last weekend she sacrificed a precious Sunday night to go over it with me.

In turn, I missed watching my Browns play the first game of the NFL season. Okay, so NOT watching the Browns blow a 14-3 lead against the Tampa Bay isn’t much of a sacrifice. In fact, I think I might owe the good people at the USCI a steak dinner for helping me miss that fiasco. But I digress…

This past Saturday was one of those days of communications compensation. I woke up that morning conflicted. On one hand, I was going to speak to my fiancé. The night before my Stef Skype time, I jonze the way seven year old Greg jonzed the night before Christmas.  Skype time with Stef is the best part of my week, easy. However I knew this upcoming call was going to be different. It was going to be less laughs and “I miss you’s” but more “turn to form DS-230 space 7…” This video call was gonna be all about business and government paperwork. Fortunately, her first question was an easy one, a softball pitch, an easy warm up fight before the championship match. Right?

Stefania: “So on the previous paperwork we sent into the Government, I wrote ‘Milan’ on the forms, but I read on the internet that I was supposed to write, ‘Milano’!”

Greg: “No biggie,” I’m say. “Just write ‘Milano’ on these forms and move on. The immigration folks will figure it out. Next!”

Before I explain on to how that “Next” grenade blew up in my face, it’s important that I explain one thing where Stefania and I are worlds apart.

When it comes to paperwork, Stef is meticulous and exacting. She doesn’t waste time and she attacks any and all forms with a vengeance. She is surgical and a perfectionist. To Stef, the question of whether to type “Milan” or “Milano” was of vital importance. She understood that this question could be one of those seemingly insignificant details that could create an anomaly, a glitch, within the computer system of a bureaucracy that holds our future in its hands. It must be correct. She’s right.

Me? I’m a procrastinating slob. If it were up to me, I’d just scribble one of the two choices in the space and be done with it so we can flirt over the webcam like goofy teenagers.

“What color underwear are you wearing?”

She ignores this boorish question and continues to the matter at hand. The next thing I know, we’ve spent a good hour on “Milan” vs. “Milano”.

By the way… What’s up with white men messing around with other countries’ names?  Why can’t they ever “discover” a foreign country or city and accept the name the locals give them?

Western Man: “My word, old chap. Your landscape is simply bully? What do you call your home?”

Citizen of Nippon: “We call our country ‘Nippon’!”

Western Man:“Nippon? Harrumph!  I don’t care for that name. How about we call you… ‘Japan’!”

Citizen of Nippon:“ Excuse me?”

Western Man: “Bully! ‘Japan’ it is!  And would you mind bangin’ this bronze oriental gong every time I say word JAPAN? Bully! Good day to you, sir.”

Citizen of Nippon: “But-”

Western Man: “I SAID GOOD DAY!”

So anyway, after about an hour I just about had it and I finally explode and I begin yelling like an idiot.

“Do you think we’re the first people to apply for a marriage visa from Milan?! The immigration officer has seen it all! Rome! Roma! Florence! Firenze!  Naples! Napoli! We’re not really throwin’ anything new at these people, Stefi!” I scream.

So… Stef has this habit of smiling when I start yelling. At first it makes me feel kinda good (Cool! This ain’t so serious anymore), but then I begin to feel incredibly weak. It’s the kind of smile Muhammad Ali in his prime would’ve given me if I had punched him in his stomach. It’s a smile that says…

“Cute pudgy man, are you yelling at me? Oh, yes you are! Oh, yes you are! Aren’t you cute trying to be such a big man? Who’s my big man? Who is my big man?! Are you my big man?! Mio Dio! You’re so cute!”

Like bullets off a Kryptonian’s chest. Right? My rant was nothing more than comedy relief.

“Well let me give you something to REALLY stress about!” I continue. “I have to submit Pay Stubs and my most recent Tax Return. Yeah! They want to see if I make enough money to support us if you can’t find a job, and you’re gonna stress over the letter ‘O’! They could deny our application because I don’t make enough money! “

Stef’s reply? “Boh. You have worries, I have mine.”

I’m rolling on the floor

Her stress on the letter “O”, Milan or Milano, that’s a healthy hour of serious discussion. However my stress concerning salary and the IRS? … “Boh.”

By this point I’m laughing to keep from crying. Stef is laughing at me laughing. All is right with the word again. So lessons learned on that day? Hell if I know. I still don’t know what the hell went down. And if I ask guys who have been married for decades to explain it to me? They all give me the same answer.

“Welcome to my world.”

And what a wonderful world it is. You say Milan, I say Milano. You say tomato…

And that’s, as I like to say, the gist of it. Bully.

****

AT&T… You’re killing me.

****

I feel I have to say something, not so much because I’m from Cleveland, but because I need to talk about the guy who first told me of this basketball phenom.

Eddie Robinson has sinced passed away, I miss him very much, but I’m glad he’s not around to see all this bullshit.

Eddie was one of the coolest of my dad’s friends.  I have fond memories of him holding court in my pop’s old bar room with the fellas. He’d sit there watching the Browns, making off-color jokes and giving everybody in the room the inside dope on all of Cleveland sports.

He was Richard Pryor and Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly all wrapped up into one, droppin’ science and entertaining us all as he sat royally in my pop’s old black leather rocker, rum and coke in one hand, a cigar in the other. He sat there like he owned the joint and he was one of the few adults us kids were allowed to call by his first name, because respect was a given. Placing “Mister” before his last name was redundant.

Eddie was the man.

When it came to high school sports the guy was especially dialed in. He’d take me and my big brother Julian to see these great Cleveland area High School football games, JFK, Cleveland Heights, Shaw… Eddie was able to give the 411 on a freshman running back as if the kid’s attributes had already been scouted, vetted and published.

One year, when both Julian and I were home from College for Thanksgiving break, my pop came into the family room and told us to throw on our coats.

“We’re going next door to see Eddie. He’s not doing that good and you two knuckleheads need to visit him.”

It was the last time I would ever see Eddie alive. He had lost weight and was frail. Still, he was funny as shit. What was ailing him or how he was feeling never came up. All we talked about Cleveland sports and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“You haven’t heard about Lebron James?!” He asked us in shock.

Julian and I had been buried deep in college life, him at Howard University and me at Norfolk State (two Historically Black Universities… Holla.) And we didn’t know Lebron James from Adam.

But for those folks firmly on the pulse of the sports world, this High School phenom from St.Vincent-St. Mary was heir apparent to Michael Jordon. Eddie was the first person I ever heard utter his name, and I had never seen him so excited by an athlete.

“That boy… That boy is bad.”

The Cavs were horrible back then, and everybody in town was excited at their chances of snagging the local golden boy with their potential first round pick. As you know, Cleveland won the draft lottery,  Lebron was ours and the city lost its collective goddamn mind.

It was euphoric. After all the bad luck, the worm had finally turned. We had just landed the NBA equivalent of the great Jim Brown.

Unfortunately, Eddie didn’t even live long enough to see the draft. He died of prostate cancer soon after our last visit.

Again, I miss him very much.

Every time I saw Lebron I thought of Eddie. Every time Lebron made some amazing pass, or a last second shot to win the game, every time Lebron defied gravity with some insane dunk, every time Lebron chased down some fool from behind and slapped his weak shit into the stands, I thought of Eddie…

“That boy is bad…”

Lebron left Cleveland.

Bolted.

The brotha is ghost.

GONE.

But so what? That behavior is par for the course these days, and I’m not talking about Free Agent athletes.

I almost know just as many Clevelanders living here in Los Angeles as I know back in Ohio. If there’s a group of people in this USA that understands the concept of packing up and leaving town for a better opportunity it’s the people of Cleveland, maybe a close second the Detroit.

Eddie would’ve understood him leaving.

Besides, getting punched in the face in nothing new to us folks from C-Town. Allow me to remind you of our rich sports history…

Red Right 88 – January 4th 1981

The Drive – January 11th 1987

The Fumble – January 17th 1988

The Shot – May 7th 1989

The Move – 1995/1996

The Mesa Meltdown – October 26th 1997

What we Clevelanders never expected was the sucker punch, The fact that the next concert date would come from one of our own.

The Decision – July 8th 2010

WTF?

Lebron decided that a low-key announcement, a carefully worded statement placed on his website wasn’t good enough for “King James”.

Instead he opted for an hour-long masturbatory fiasco, nationally broadcast on ESPN.  An hour-long whorish spectacle, full of posh ESPN sets and state of the art electronic packages celebrating King James, the King of Akron, and his abandonment of his home town for the glitz and glamour of South Beach. The prodigal son.

To add insult to injury, he surrounded himself with a crowd full of squeaky clean brats from The Boys & Girls Club from some upscale city in Connecticut. As if their innocents would soften the blow. ESPN and Lebron had tacked on a half-assed charity element to the event.  You know… for the kids!

But why did they stop there? Why not have Lebron make the announcement with a box full of shelter puppies sitting on his lap? Maybe place AIDS ribbons on the dog collars and make the kids wear pink Breast Cancer t-shirts? That surely would’ve staved off the stink of villainy.

Unlike in the bible, this prodigal son will never return home. Lebron will find all he has ever desired on the beaches of Miami. An embarrassment of riches. He will win multiple championships and will create a World Wide brand.  The entire planet will eventually forgive him for his “announcement slight”, that is except for the people within his home town.

“What a bitter ugly little town.” Some kid in Tokyo will say to his best friend about C-Town (while wearing a number six Miami Heat jersey). “Why don’t they just let it go?”

When Lebron dies as a blessed old man, he’ll be surrounded by people who love and worship him.  ESPN, MSNBC and even Fox News will have live helicopter footage of his casket being driven to it’s resting ground, not too far from South Beach.  Flowers and candles will burn next to his statue, outside of American Airlines Arena. He’ll transcend mortal life, blissfully ignorant of all the pain he left behind in Cleveland, Ohio.

And the day he passes away, Cleveland might still stand as it is today, poor, maligned, with no championships.

Life ain’t fair.

Well, Eddie never lived to see any of this, so I guess we can all feel good for at least that.  However, please allow me to express what I think Eddie might say to Lebron as the honored Miami Heat champion walks through the Pearly Gates of heaven.

Eddie will already be there waiting for him, sitting on a cloud, rum and coke in one hand and his cigar in the other, as if he owned the joint…

“Hey, Lebron. Fuck you and fuck the horse you road in on.”

And that, as I like to say, is the gist of it.

What makes this bird so interesting is that the male of this species is extremely pussy-whipped. To attract a female it builds a structure called a “Bower”, a cone-shaped hut-like structure with a “front lawn”. The bird complete clears all of the debris at the entrance of the hut and then carpets it neatly with moss. This is his blank canvas

The bird then proceeds to decorates his lawn and entrance with all kinds of colorful objects, like flowers, dead shinny beetles, whatever, and actually arranges them in a pretty artistically way in order to attract a female.

The female Bowerbird will spot this desperate need for attention and swoops down upon the lawn to critique his work. If she admires the decor, then she’ll stroll inside the bower and the two will knock boots like it’s going out of style. However if she finds the decor to be be borish or uninteresting, she’ll raise up and fly the hell away, laughing at him.

Watching this display at the same time amazed and disgusted me, aghast as such a display wussiness. All I could think about is how if I witnessed this event I would seriously consider shooting the male with buckshot and put him out of his fool misery.

So then last week a friend and co-worker of mine, named Dana, passed by my desk and asked me what I was up to for the weekend. I told her how I had prepped for Stefania’s move to California by moving into a new place.

“Really?” She said.

“Yep!” I replied proudly. “It’s a two bedroom house near Venice Beach, right off Rose, so she’ll have all these cool places to walk to. This weekend I’m gonna be clearing out my storage so that I could give her the second bedroom, for her clothes and stuff. And I had the previous tenant leave this cool little desk that will make a bitchin’ make-up table for Stef and…”

I trailed off as I slowly began thinking of the Vogelkop Bowerbird. Almost on cue, Dana says with a big fat “gotcha moment” grin.

“You’re NESTING!”

Daaaamn it.

I believe in life on other planets; and I suspect there also exist at least one Alien zoologist who has dedicated his live to the study of human beings in the Venice, Ca area. He’s probably set up cameras in and around my new crib, invisible to me due to his advanced technology.

He will edited and broadcast the video on his home planet of me, with Oprah narrating, of course, ’cause that bitch is everywhere these days.

Somewhere out in the Universe, an alien couch potato will sit and watch a documentary of me “nesting”. He will be amazed and aghast at my display of pussitude. I know what you’re thinking…

“Dude… Somewhere in the Universe? Try your boys right down here in Earth. You punk…”

Go pound sand.

If you like the Bowerbird illustration, you can find it here...

If you like the Bogelkop illustration, go here.  

http://www.sallyelford.co.uk/prints/vogelkop-bowerbird

Back in the day, during a brief window of insanity, Richard Pryor was given his own prime time TV show on NBC, opposite Happy Days. It was short lived, lasting only four episodes…

Folks back in 1977 weren’t ready for Richard on prime time and judging by the current climate I’m not so sure we’d be ready for him now.

I wasn’t allowed to watch it. Not because of its racy content, but because I was being punished for all manner of hell raising. For the four brief episodes of the show’s existence I was imprisoned within my room, forced to listen to the laughter of my family, wafting up through my floorboards.

Eventually I caught the show courtesy of pop’s VHS deck. My favorite skit was “The Reverend James L. White”. Pryor played a ostentatious TV preacher trying to raise money for his church, volunteers manning the phone bank behind him, which was all dead quiet. The show wasn’t bringing in a cent.

The good reverend then slyly notes that problem has to do with the fact that most of his donations come from minorities from all around the word, and even though there are a lot of them, they didn’t have as much money as ONE rich white person. It was at this point that he declared that the night’s donations were solely for the B.T.A.M…

“The Back To Africa Movement.”

The phone bank fucking explodes.

Donations from white people all around the country pour in as if he just announced a cure for short dick. It was classic. I rolled.

Thinking about this skit reminds me of the current Tea Party Movement and how there is just as much anger and fear in the white community today as there was back in the 70’s. In fact, the atmosphere is arguably worse since there’s an “African” in the White House. This uppity negro President who invades Tea Party member’s living rooms every night, accompanied by commentary which details his nefarious socialist plan of taking guns out of their hands, murdering grandmothers with death panels and IRS and Census agents bursting down their doors to steal their coffee cans full of rainy day dough.

I could get depressed about this nonsense, but frankly I’d rather cash in on it!

That’s right, Uncle Jerry! I’m buying in, yo!

By the way, Swamp Dogg is my Uncle, not by blood, but my pop grew up with him back in the day back in Norfolk, VA. Dude is as cool as the other side of the pillow. Seriously, look at the damn album cover. Did you look at it?  Damn right.

But I digress…

Here’s the deal, I’m sure Stef would love to stay in Italy close to her family. And I wouldn’t mind spending some time there and picking up the language. Okay, it’s not all the way to Africa, but you could spit from Italy and hit Tunisia. Throw a rock and ya hit Tripoli. So I figure I’d be meeting the Tea Partiers more than half way. Hell! It’s almost 99% all the way there!

So I’ve linked this blog onto some Tea Party and White Power sites. If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna speak to them for a second…

[ahem]

Hey you surly bastards!

I’m going to let you in on a little secret… Glenn Beck is right. This election of Obama was a Socialist / Nazi / Communist / Pacifist / Wig Party / NAMBLA / AFC West conspiracy to take over the United States of American. You got us. Seriously, can’t get anything past you guys.

I admire your fight, but can I make a suggestion?

Spending all that dough on Mid-Term elections… Tsk. Tsk. To what end? To merely regain power within the House? Come on! That’s just a band-aid solution. Wouldn’t it better to just get rid of Obama and his Obamaphiles all-together? My suggestion? Your money is better spent shipping all us black progressive liberals away to a place that actually embraces our silly beliefs, like affordable health care.

Ship all us bourgie negroes back across the Atlantic.

I propose you start by floating a test balloon and see where the wind takes it, using me as a guinea pig, of course. Take that money you’d waste on all those goddamn Lipton tea bags, danglin’ from your hats like old man balls, and instead buy me a one way ticket to Italy. Stef and I would also require a posh living allowance for, say, two years.

I know, I know, that seems extravagant, but what you’re buying is propaganda gold!

Show the American Black Bourgeois set video of me sipping espresso in my spacious apartment off the banks of the Navigli river and watch all of those HBCU graduatin’, sushi eatin’, well speakin’, uppity negroes move the hell out of Baldwin Hills and hit the slow boat (Carnival) to shores of the Old Worlde.

I’ll go on Fox News and wax poetic about how grateful I am to the Tea Party for funding my move out of the country. Glenn and I will cry together, split screen, over a satellite feed.

“Thank you, Mr. Beck. Thank you Tea Party.”

Before you know it the USA will begin to look like 50’s television, except for the Mexicans. However with the black voting block gone I’m sure you’ll have that problem licked before ya can say Jan Brewer. Errrrrrrrrrr! I mean Jack Robinson.

So to the Tea Party, the NRA, and all the wonderful followers of Rand Paul, let’s work together to gentrify this once great country. Below is a Pay Pal link to help fund my move to Europe. Spend your money to help make America for Americans… Again.

Click early and Click often, folks.

Click Here And Donate If You’re A Racist Jerk!

I miss the 70′s.  And that’s, as I like to say, the gist of it.

Richard’s Awesome Reverend Skit On Youtube.

Swamp Dogg’s Awesome Music On Youtube

So one of the visa forms Stef and I had to fill out was entitled “I-129F – Petition For Alien Fiancé”, and I’m very tempted to write a post regarding the mass amounts of red tape generated when requesting permission to marry an extraterrestrial from a “Men In Black” styled shadow government.

However I fear a post about Stefi being an “alien” would be way too on the nose and infantile, the sign of a lazy writer. It’s the tell of a novice and a simpleton. Having said that, of course I’m gonna write it. It’s 3AM I’ve got nothin’; and I am infantile and lazy. Not only that, but also I found the bitchin’ drawing above of Jedi Knight Aayla Secura, drawn by Chris Battle. So, yeah, I’m gonna go with with the “What if Stefania was really an alien?” thing.

So if you’ll excuse me…

First of all, I wouldn’t be like those jerks in those old sitcoms who couldn’t seem to embrace their wives’ supernatural feats of awesomeness. Not only would I encourage the use of these powers I’d down right demand it! Remember that jerk Astronaut on I Dream Of Jennie who would actually chastise Jennie after she’d have the audacity of blinking into existence a stack of crisp untraceable bank notes? Even as an eight-year old I couldn’t wrap my head around that bullshit.

Picture the child version of me screaming and pointing at the TV…

“Hey! Why the fuck are you still working?! You’ve got a GENIE! Quit your damn job! Drive to NASA, punch Dr. Bellows in his stupid face and quit – your – job! And why have you not asked for a dick the size of a Wiffle Ball bat yet? Are you kidding me?! You have a GENIE! A hot one!  And the fact you refuse to tap dat phat genie azz leaves me suspect.  DAMN YOUR UNGRATEFUL SOUL! ”

And remember Gladys Kravitz, the nosey next-door neighbor on Bewitched?  That woman wouldn’t have survived our first day on the block. I would’ve caught that shrew peeking through my window and I would’ve had Samantha turn that bitch inside out. Literally. I’d have that woman literally pulled out of her own skin, slowly, so the entire neighborhood would hear the screams of unadulterated horror emanating from my well manicured front lawn.

My neighbors would all come rushing out onto the street and find her preposterous corpse lying upon my grass. Then I’d levitate out my front door and rebuke them, pointing down upon them from the sky…

“You people are beginning to work my last nerve!”

Then I’d turn around, float back through the door and slam it shut.

I guess Stefania would be more in the calm My Favorite Martian vein, which would still be dope. Yet in the end, the cute terrestrial alien from ye olde world is probably my best bet. Let’s not get greedy. And she may not be able to levitate my couch and fling it at the Jehovah Witness standing at my door, but the woman can cook a MAD Fegato alla Veneziana. That’s a push.

Above is an actual picture of a plate of liver and onions she made for me last September. Tasty Mmm-lasty. I loved it and I don’t even like liver.

GASP!

Zounds! I be da victim of witchcraft!  I’s be witched!

And that’s, as I like to say, the gist of it.

~

Chapter 14 – Cleveland is a Chiaroscuro City

Painting 1 :: The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew (1607) – Cleveland Museum Of Art

Chiaroscuro is a painting technique where the contrast between light and dark is jacked-up to spectacular levels. It comes from two Italian words, chiaro, which means light, and oscuro, which means dark.

Many artists had dabbled in the technique before Caravaggio, but he was the first to manhandle it by working in a completely blacked-out studio. His scenes are carved out of the darkness with a single light source, a 3D effect that shoots the models out towards the viewers while throwing the background into hostile blacks, an innovation used centuries later by cinematographers to create Film Noir. With Caravaggio, the subject matter might have been 1^st Century Judas Iscariot, but the lighting is a straight up 1940’s Warner Brothers.

You can’t live in an unlucky little town like Cleveland and not figure out how to embrace darkness. Even when it comes to our sports, instead of celebrating our few victories we instead wallow in their most crushing defeats, cryptically listing them on the backs of t-shirts like concert dates…

Red Right 88 – January 4th 1981

The Drive – January 11th 1987

The Fumble – January 17th 1988

The Shot – May 7th 1989

The Move – 1995/1996

The Mesa Meltdown – October 26 1997

Even when Cleveland imports a ringer, a bona-fide winner from another city, it some how manages to fuck up beyond all recognition.

Submitted for your approval, golden boy, Elliot Ness.

After Ness put Al Capone behind bars in Chicago he was hired to clean up the City of Cleveland, which at the time was known as the criminal safe house of the country. He arrived in town like a white knight just in time to match wits against the serial killer, the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.

Ness promptly got his ass handed to him on a plate.

The poor guy was so stymied by the killer that in the end he decided to just set part of the city on fire, hoping lady luck would do him a solid and burn the son-of-a-bitch to death. However the Butcher survived and taunted Ness for years with post cards.

The great Elliot Ness caught Capone, but he never caught ME.

And Cleveland lived happily ever after.

With a history so dark, it’s no wonder that most people are shocked when they discover that a town like Cleveland has a world-class museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, in contrast to the bleakness that haunts the city, glows like the face of the Christ child in a Caravaggio painting. Cleveland is a living breathing chiaroscuro.

~

I could’ve performed a Google search to make sure there was, indeed, a Caravaggio in Cleveland, but I wanted the surprise. I want to experience the discovery of it all, as if I discover it hiding behind an old wardrobe in my parent’s attic.

I walk the grounds of the museum and pass by an original casting of Rodin’s The Thinker, perched on the stairs leading up to the Museum’s entrance. His legs are blown off and the base is horribly disfigured, plumed out by a bomb set by a member of the Weather Underground revolutionary group in the 70’s. The town decided not to restore it, instead opting for a statement on the destruction of meaningful objects. The statue now sits disfigured; a symbol of how public art is vulnerable to “jerks with agendas”.

I burst through the CMA doors, drop a few bucks into the donation bin, grab a map and head towards the gallery called, Baroque. I stand a good 12 yards from the entrance, but even from here I can recognize the word “Caravaggio” in bold letters on the gallery sign.

Wow!

Could this really be a gallery full of nothing but Caravaggio paintings? I go giddy as I jog towards the room, but as more of the sign comes into focus my hopes are dashed on the rocks.

The Followers Of Caravaggio

“Shoot,” I whisper to myself.

This is like showing up to a concert and instead of getting U2 you get the tribute garage band from around the block. They were smart to put the word Followers in the title and not students. The man was too goddamn cantankerous to have students. The only way you could’ve leaned from Caravaggio was to bite his style and risk him giving you a beat down.

But you gotta feel for his imitators. How could you possibly go back to your old ways after seeing his new style? I imagine a Caravaggio victim lying in the street, nose beaten to a pulp, screaming at the top of his lungs as Caravaggio swaggers away.

“It was fucking worth it, asshole!”

I cautiously enter the gallery, still hoping there’s a Caravaggio hanging in the room somewhere. Out of the corner of my eye I spot the gallery jewel piece. It’s a crucifixion scene, massive and dark. If there’s a Caravaggio here, that’s it.

However, I try to ignore it. I want to save it as my ace in the hole. I instead scan the other paintings, and I sincerely try to give the paintings their due, but they’re too much of a dick tease. screw it. I make my bombing run on the jewel piece, reigning over the room like a king sitting at the head of his Christmas table.

The Crucifixion of St. Andrew – Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.

The painting is of St. Andrew who was to be crucified for trying to convert the Greeks to Christianity. He survived for two days, preaching the gospel to upwards of 20,000 people the entire time. The crowd was so moved that they demanded his release, but Andrew wanted to die on the cross like his savior. When his executioners tried to release him they were instantly paralyzed by God, allowing Andrew to die on the cross as he asked.

A miracle…

© 2010 Gregory Earls

The Cleveland Museum Of Art Blog

And that’s, as I like to say, the gist of it.