At the height of his fame (1978-1979) as a composer Sergio Blini was known from one end of San Marino to the other. Taste quickly improved and Our Most Recently Deceased Gracious Duke a(1950-1999) quickly removed all references to Blini in our National Library, a branch of Border’s Books, expunged from the post all records of ever having issued a set of Blini postage stamps and paid 30% of our national treasury to RCA Victor Red Seal Records to lose their master tapes of his works.

Like taxes, if the whole country fell into Washington, D.C., it would be permanently lost. Yet it has 12 regions and 14 political parties. It is totally surrounded by Italy. It cannot be a naval power, but at least it isn’t surrounded by Afghanistan.

As any well-versed music lover would know, Sergio Blini is the nomme de plume.of Murray Kaminsky. Born in Carnarsie,^[1] he attended St. Harmless Machete High School and impressed the music teacher in the lunch room one day. His teacher immediately reconsidered and recommended Kaminsky for a scholarship at Tough’s School of Music.^[2] His Tough teacher, Rocky Graziano.^[3] organist to the Boccagaluppe Family, suggested he take on a whole new identity under the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Graziano was a juvenile delinquent, and he later deserted from the U.S. Army after punching an officer. He was about to be sent back to Sicily when General Patton heard his march "Without a Patton Chaos Rules."^[4]

A 1993 "best-seller" at least in the neighborhood was Canarsie Murder Machine : A True Story of Murder, Madness, and the Mafia by New York Daily News reporters Gene Mustain, Jerry Capeci. Everyone was looking to see if they got named in the book.

First-rate story of a Mafia murder crew so deadly that even John Gotti turned aside a contract on its leader. New York Daily News reporters Mustain and Capeci (coauthors, Mob Star, 1989--not reviewed) tell the fascinating and repellently detailed story of Roy DeMeo and the gang he raised from teenagers in Canarsie--a Brooklyn neighborhood where death by natural causes is ``six bullets in the head,’’ according to one cop. Vivid, hair-raising, day-to-day-in-the-life-of narrative: the best mob book in recent memory. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) They always censor the best part, pictures of quiet, tree-limed streets and happy-faced children pointing real guns at each other.) Vivid, hair-raising, day-to-day-in-the-life-of narrative: the best mob book in recent memory
-- Kirkus Reviews. ^[5]

Blini renounced his citizenship with the State Department’s enthusiastic support and applied to Duke Bartolomeo, inflated lord of San Marino and all its domains as far as 200/400 uncorrected vision could see to be admitted as a Official Court Bootlicker. After washing out four times on San Marino’s half-paragraph psychiatric entry profile, he was cautiously granted voyeur status as an Italian day laborer.

When his chartreuse card expired, he settled in Pisa, where he learned the Italian vocal style of leaning.^[6] Having learned leaning a lot he wrote his first San Marinated national opera "Madame Butterfat".^[7] It was strangely reminiscent of Schubert, since it was really unfinished.^[8]

Duke Bartolomeo suggested it might be better for San Marino’s flagging economy to have its premiere at a foreign festival. His Graciousness’ second wife’s third cousin fourth removed married a former mayor of Turku, Finland. Duke Bartolomeo wrote the city’s Board of Nabobs a letter extolling Blini. But the Duke forgot to indicate for what. He was in such a frenzy to spirit Blini as far away as possible. With the Cold War in deep freeze, Russia was still eager to humiliate Finland. Massing 130,000 ice-immobilized troops on Finland’s border choked the Finnish windpipe and convinced Helsinki that Blini was better than being a Soviet Republic. Blini’s success at the Turku Short Summer Festival was about as bland as Finnish Swiss cheese.

Blini’s next opera was written for a domestic audience. Duke Bartolomeo decreed that the opera be performed before a secret court of the Inquisition^[9]; only 1247 carefully selected subjects of the Fiefdom attended. The audience went wild over Blini’s opera, "Deflate A Mouse".^[10] At each end of the vast concert hall the "crowd" threw rotten tomatoes italiana nella tradizione. That event marks the leap to republicanism in a venerated monarchy that survived even the American invasion of the boot with thousands of pairs of nylon stockings.

The opera revolves around the Duke and his wife trying to rearrange their thrones so they don’t hang out over into Italy. In the opening thunderous aria Philomena (also the basso understudy) sings how Duke Bartolomeo seduced her from her father’s efficiency apartment, which occupied half of Liechtenstein, and duped her to this pint-size principality where the one closet is too small and yet they have to pay an annual fee to Italy for overhang.^[11]

Together with a chori (the first known singing "group" in opera composed of one imported English choirboy), Philomena "struts" nimbly across a room the length of her husband’s dominions at home and abroad. She sneers that even Andorra has room enough for 12 goats to produce cheese. What is San Marino’s major industry, she snarls? "Postage stamps!"^[12] And the glue has to be applied across the border because of the width of the brushstrokes. Finally, Bartolomeo can take it no longer and commits self-regicide by jumping the six inches down into Italy.^[13]

1. A Brooklyn neighborhood made up of strongly knit family businesses, largely private waste removers and a thriving trucking industry out of Kennedy Airport who take the Second Amendment very seriously. It overlooks a large cemetery and Jamaica Bay.

2. In some ancient Viking texts, the spelling variant is Tufts. The School is located outside Boston, far enough from Carnarsie for its pre-eminent music school not to have to limit its curriculum to Neapolitan music.

3. Rocky Graziano made his mark on his boxing opponents. He joined the Toughs faculty upon his retirement. The school was quick to recognize his potential scholarship and interpretative ingenuity in Bach particularly when the school heard rumors circulating of a "contract" and Regressivo Foods, muscled in by the Grazianos gave the school a generous endowment which resulted in the only university library having a larger selection of beer than books.

4. Though he had used the name Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery to evade the Feds, he was miraculously found, sentenced to nine months in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, and dishonorably discharged from the service.

5. When a special NYPD/FBI task force cracked the DeMeo gang, it tagged the criminals for 75 murders. DeMeo (who was rubbed out by fellow mobsters as the cops closed in) bragged of one hundred personally, making him far more destructive than any known US serial killer. Vivid, hair-raising, day-to-day-in-the-life-of narrative: the best mob book in recent memory. More bad news. Someone suggested to the publisher that "enough is enough. Get my message?" The publisher did and the book is out of print.

6. Pavarotti is a leaner. That obscenely obese tenor has his handkerchief weighed each morning to make certain it doesn’t completely upset his center of gravity, causing grave injury in the orchestra pit rippling out far into the orchestra seats.

7. Madame Butterfat is a light opera. It has 1/3 fewer stabbings than regular Italian opera. It is over in less than an hour and you still feel hungry.

8. Some of the greatest composers tried their hand at completing Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, including Engelbert Humperdinck, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Carl Ditters Von Dittersdorf and Liberace. When Blini broached the idea with Graziano, Graziano replied "you try your hand at it and I see that it’s cut off. Understand?"

9. While little known, perhaps because it is not so easily missed, San Marino played a crucial role in European history. Fodor Travel Magazine relates a story of an American couple who stopped at one of San Marino’s leading industries, its off-brand service station and clean bathrooms. They relieved themselves without realizing they had twice crossed a national border. The Dukedom is believed to hold the record as the oldest country in Europe along with Monte Carlo and the Duchy of Guersey and Jersey. It is the only European country that still bases its civil code on the Inquisition.

10. Deflate A Mouse should not be confused with slightly better known Fledermaus by the Waltz King , Johann Strauss II. Fledermaus and Vienna at New Year’s go together like Abbot and Costello. Deflate A Mouse, on the other hand, seems more popular the farther it is from San Marino and the father the listener is from the music.

11. San Marino signed a Concordat with Mussolinio in 1932 giving its citizens free passage. But negotiations stalled on tax exemptions for property in both jurisdictions (70% of San Marino) when Mussolini got entangled on a trolley wire in Milan and lost his ability to breath. Since then San Marino’s part-time tax collector and the huge Italian State Tax Service and Bureau of Prisons have played a cat and mouse game. Thirty times as many mice have been eaten as cats choking on their fur balls. Each March 13th is the most popular of the seventy work holidays San Marino celebrates. The Duke ceremonially emerges from his log cabin castle with his consort on one arm and holds up either the shrunken head of the San Marino tax collector or the President of Italy. It is the national sport.

12. Philomena knows nothing about financial matters and many other things, but when you see her strut her equipment across the face of Bartelemo’s empire you pick up quickly that he didn’t marry her as an advisor on economic policy. Stamp collecting is the third most lucrative form of collecting, right behind pornography. It surely produces more revenues that Andorra’s goat cheese.

13. The Duke was childless, although the same cannot be said of the Duchess. Since there were only 30 bastard pretenders to the throne and no legitimate heir, the dynasty ended after a record 1700 years. A Republic was proclaimed in 1998 and Italian-style elections conducted. Last month the tally was completed. The new president is Roger Clinton, although he wasn’t even on the ballot and every San Marinated swore an affidavit he not only never voted for the Roger Clinton, but never even heard of him. However, 70% heard of Chad Florida.

Andrew E. Carlan
Farmingdale, New York

Judges and other lawyers practice the Playdough version of family law because it is so malleable. The author contributes to Opinionet, where you are no doubt reading this. Like New York family law, this website, must have a very flexible standard or be desperately in need of columnists who will write both for nothing and about nothing. For some of the best examples of legal pomposity and circumlocution (obviously redundant) read our Court of Appeals decisions on family law matters rather as failed attempts at humor like the unforgettable lectures of Professor Irwin Corey, Ph (withdrew before he completed his "d"). To get a flavor of Professor Corey, (Tutti Frutti) go to http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/pynchon/corey.htm

THIS IS MAINLY FICTION. JUST EXPLOITING CANARSIE’S REPUTATION FOR BEING DEATH-DEFYING AND A NAME SO COMICAL

HYSTERICAL NOTE: In 1980, I put my life up in limbo for a proverbial long ride in a dented Chevy before "they" decided where to dump my body. I ran and kept running as fast as I could on three lines against James Scheuer, the crookedest Congressman ever. He only campaigned BETWEEN elections. His father left him rich as a prince of Sodom or Gomorrah and he used all the money to "dignify" public service. He paid off a twelve year old girl who he tried to seduce and he had a stable of boys and a stash of drugs in Washington. The New York Times supported him without sending a reporter out, like it reported the disappearance of the Kulaks in the Ukraine based on handouts in Moscow. I challenged Scheuer in a letter to the Times to prove that he wasn’t deaf and dumb. Naturally, sharing many of his genes, the Times ignored my letter as his only major party opponent. The NYT managed to fit into print "all the news" of their endorsement of him. They were so pleased that he voted 100% the liberal line although the Washington Post called him "the most notorious slumlord in Washington."

Canarsie registers about 8 to 1 Democrat. I ran on the Republican, Conservative and Right to Life Parties. The party leaders found in me a sucker willing to take on such odds. But I got 1/3 of the votes. Never had Scheuer been so embarrassed. And when you consider, as in Chicago, the Democratic machine votes tombstones, I probably came close to winning. Part of the surprising closeness was that I grabbed onto to Reagan’s coattails and wouldn’t let go.. He did very well in the district. Even the RNC began to worry I might just win and they weren’t looking for a loose canon in the House. They flew up to Kennedy Airport and promised me $10,000, which they never delivered. I had ideas of my own. If you were a Republican in the 80s minorities in your district weren’t your major backers. The doughnut shaped district surrounded Kennedy Airport. It was more than Canarsie. The Rockaways are largely black.

I got to like the Canarsie neighborhood. Straightforward. "Sure Scheuer is depraved, but we gotta stand together just to make ends meet. But if it makes you any happier, I’m voting for Reagan and maybe I will vote for you." Outside of Manhattan in the forgotten boroughs, New York is really a collection of small towns. Canarsie was staunch (with two bullets lodged in your brain, what else would you be?) Catholic, working class and patriotic. These are the guys who had to be dragged out of the Mekong Delta in the 80s like Japs on deserted islands still manning their posts in the 1970s. They spent their lives in gang fights in Canarsie. "No one could whip us Americans." They put their every effort into making Canarsie tidy and they maintained a sense of neighborhood long after it disappeared in the faceless suburbs.

You can e-mail your comments to Andrew at acarlan@optonline.net.

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