A Little More Italy

Twenty-five years ago, crankyjewishguy (CJG) took a trip to Italy. He loved it. Great food. Beautiful scenery. Friendly people with a real lust for life. If CJG could be reincarnated he'd come back as an Italian painter and live in Umbria in an ancient stone house with a view of the hills, the vineyards and the cypress trees.

Speaking of lust, readers will recall that CJG had a few comments several weeks back about Italy's current prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who's in a bit of hot water for his alleged involvement with an underage girl (seventeen at the time). Now, a court in Milan has ordered that Berlusconi stand trial for sex crimes and for abuse of power for intervening on the young woman's behalf when she was arrested on an unrelated charge. With a record like that it's amazing Berlusconi isn't a member of the U.S. Congress, or maybe even President. But all this has really made CJG wish he (a) understood Italian and (b) had whatever cable channel is going to broadcast this trial. It's going to knock the Amanda Knox affair right off the front pages. (In case you missed the latest chapter in that saga, the parents of Amanda Knox, the American student convicted in Italy on sexual assault and murder charges, have been indicted in Perugia for allegedly libeling Italian police whom they accused of abusing their daughter while she was in custody.)

A typical party at the Berlusconi mansion.

If you ask CJG, Berlusconi doesn't have a chance. All three judges who will hear the case are women and will, CJG suspects, be less than favorably disposed towards a 74 year old man who was fiddling, and apparently even diddling, while Rome burned. It sounds as if Amanda Knox may have been the only young woman in Italy Berlusconi hasn't been linked to. Berlusconi, of course, sees all this as an assault on Italy's good reputation. The allegations, he says, "have offended the dignity of the country." Without prejudging the outcome of the case, CJG would say the Prime Minister has been doing a pretty good job of doing that all by himself.

A Shout Out to...

CJG is at a loss to explain it, but suddenly his blog is getting gazillions of hits from Germany, many more, in fact, than from his native USA, and as far as he knows no one is translating his brilliant musings into German. Why is this happening? Who are these people in Germany who find CJG so amusing? If you know the answer, please e-mail CJG! In the meantime, Ich danke Ihnen, Deutschland!

Palm Trees, Blue Skies, Azure Waters: It Must be Wintertime in New England

It must be so nice being married to crankyjewishguy (CJG). Most mornings he rises early to get his son, who is also Mrs. CJG's son, up and out to school, so that Mrs. CJG can get her beauty rest. And, boy, is she beautiful after all that rest. Yesterday, when CJG got in his car, the outside temperature monitor reported that it was one degree below zero. CJG's friend, Joe, posted on his Facebook page that where he lives, about a mile away, it was zero. Why CJG doesn't move to the warmer side of town he'll never know.

The view outside CJG's kitchen window yesterday morning.

Now that it's nearly February, and seeing as how CJG is getting into his late 50s (despite looking more like 40 and acting more like 80), he's starting to think about life in a warmer climate. His younger son will be off to college in a couple of years, so anything is possible, especially given how rich CJG is getting off his blog. But where? And since Mr. and Mrs. CJG are very social people, what will life be like without all of their friends around?

Just to prove that CJG looks much younger than
 his years, he offers this self-portrait for your inspection.

CJG isn't especially keen on Florida for the simple reason that there are too many cranky jewish people there. CJG wants to stand out. But not so far out that he wants to be the only Jewish person on the Mississippi Gulf coast, for example. CJG loves the beach, but he fears even he would soon grow bored watching the waves for three straight months, only to be interrupted for an occasional game of Scrabble. CJG once went to Hawaii, to the island of Kauai to be precise, and that's a great place except that it's about 6,000 miles away and CJG doesn't want to have to find a new barber. Over the past couple of years, CJG has really come to love New Orleans (his older son goes to Harvard on St. Charles down there, otherwise known as Tulane University), and there's no shortage of things to do and great restaurants to eat at there. But, there's no beach nearby. How about Italy? CJG went there once, too, and he fantasizes about Italy the way Silvio Berlusconi...oh, never mind.

For now, it looks as if CJG is going to have to contend with a few more winters. But he's optimistic that a week from tomorrow, on Ground Hog Day, that varmint, who has his own web site by the way, is going to tunnel up through three feet of ice and snow, look around and demand a condo in Miami Beach because whether he sees his shadow or not, there's gonna' be at least ten more weeks of winter in these parts.