Cassone Entertainment and Media

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cassone2007's YouTube Channel Invitational

Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings!

I invite you to check out my YouTube channel, watch a few webisodes and perhaps Subscribe.

I promise I will also check out your channel and Sub you too.

This is an online, networking event...which you can do from the comfort of home.

Check out http://www.youtube.com/cassone2007

Please Rate, Comment, Subscribe & Share - Thank You!

Highlights from the channel include some of my photography, poetry, the online reality series Getting Ready NOW in it's 9th season, the 2009 Cassone Channel Honors, and two new series Spotlight Showcase and In Memoriam.

There is a little something for everyone.

I look forward to sharing and watching your works of art as well.

Best wishes,Cassone

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Prepared Awareness (Excerpt 1 of 5 from "The Naked Window: Exposed/Revelations")

My memoir series continued with a combo of books (seasons) 3 & 4 in The Naked Window: Exposed/Revelations. Remember the premise: What if your life were a made-for-television drama series (or, in my case made-for-cable)? It is where the books are referred to as seasons and the chapters are episodes ...from my life story. Here I bring to you a passage from Season 3, Episode 1 Prepared Awareness.

~

So, one stormy Saturday afternoon the beginning of October that year, as I sat in Tiger's lavish apartment overlooking Grand Circus Park...I had a moment. It came crashing down on me quick and in fierce fashion. Tiger was cooking another fabulous meal in the kitchen and I was in the bedroom looking out the window, suddenly it dawned on me that my father was definitely going to die and very soon. I felt so childlike. I wanted so much to be a kid again.

As difficult as my childhood was, as much as I felt belittled and put into a petrified state on that yellow school bus and all the pent up sexuality and hands touching me when I didn't want them to and wanting to touch when I couldn't; in that instant I wished for it all again. Even though I really was ready, I didn't feel ready for that bitter truth. Sure, my mother would be somewhat okay financially. He made sure she would, but I would still have to be the one. Be the man of the house. Can you imagine how I felt in that one moment in time?

Crippled.

Devoid of any kind of wit.

I was so glad that Tiger didn't walk in on me and disturb the moment. True friends have a way of knowing when to give you your moment. Lord knows, my father had passed the baton of manhood to me years ago. It happened one spring morning when he was going through man-o-pause, as I like to call it. Oh, for days he was really giving Mom a hard time and even though, at first, it was from years of pent up frustration, but as much as my mother could have been a hindrance she was a blessing - especially to him.

They had a very strange and strong love for and with one another. It is a love that I have envied in my adult life - to be that into one another, at that level of intensity and it not be based on sex. It was purely spiritual and very emotional for both. They would laugh, cry, yell, cry and laugh during a fierce argument or an intensified conversation, but it always ended in laughter. My God, it was like watching a dance seeing the two of them. So, when things started to go in another direction for a bit when I was like sixteen, I didn't like it.

The fire had happened, so there was that added pressure and you already know my mother didn't work, so a lot of the financial burden rested on his lap. However, he enabled that behavior and my mother did keep our home together, paid all the bills, took care of his business, saw that his clothes were cleaned, cooked memorable meals. Sure, I was given a lot of tasks to do, but she made sure between the two of us he wasn't bothered by much of the house issues. And as time went on and she got out of her funk, she got better at being a wife and mother. That's the woman I wished my siblings would have witnessed coming into her own.

So, this one particular Sunday, we were all preparing dinner in the kitchen and my dad was getting a little out of hand with disrespectful comments to my mother and she'd fire back, but after while he just went on and on. I just sat there wanting to punch his lights out. Hey, she had her flaws, but he was talking about my mother! So, I asked him what his problem was. Well, he wasn't having any of that and before I knew it we were toe to toe in the kitchen ready to box. My mother was beside herself, trying to break us up. Honey, we ended up in the pantry and I wasn't giving in.

I told him I was too big to whip, so now what? He didn't need to talk to her like that when he helped to make her who she was. He needed to get over whatever uphill battle he felt the need to be battling at the time. I told him maybe pimpin' some prostitute might put his house in order, if he was thinking about steppin' out on Mom, "then do it and be done with it, but you better never let her find out about it." We were choking each other, practically wrestling - neither willing to let go.

"That's the problem, I can't...I won't do that." He said he had always been faithful to her. There was no physical release for him. There was no getting past her comments anymore and the romance just wasn't where it was before. Then we were just standing there in the pantry talking about their relationship like I was a sex therapist. My mother was disgusted and said she was disappointed in both of us.

"You, Tony, I can actually kind of understand, but you..." With one look she left the room and the wuss was back. He went right after her and they worked out whatever the hell that was about. I often wondered about my father trying to get with some younger chick. I mean this was right on the heels of Aunt Priscilla and her little discovery from hell, so it was on the subconscious at least. I just stood there bewildered and once I composed myself, I finished peeling the potatoes.

About an hour or so later, my Dad and I were on the front porch laughing and carrying on, comparing boxing scorecards. He said I was his son, indeed. He would stick up for his mother, too. He said he bet I thought he had lost his mind. I thought I had disrespected him. He told me, far from it - I gained his respect. See, where he came from it was almost commonplace to go a few rounds in the garage with Uncle Steve, who practically raised my dad and uncles after my grandfather had a crippling stroke and eventually died. Then we went on joking and talking about the Detroit Tiger's game. It was weird and delightful all at once and he was okay towards my mother after that.

So, fast forward to Tiger's bedroom October 1995, I stood there quietly crying to myself that my father would be gone soon and I would have to prepare myself for that fact. It's not like I didn't know. I mean he had been sick for such a long time, but it just came crashing down on me right then and there. What was I going to do? I certainly wouldn't be able to chase my theatrical dreams without his support. At the time, my mother was very supportive, but there was a little something holding her back. He, on the other hand, was all the way in my corner. He wanted me to fulfill things he only dreamt of doing on the stage. Too bad he wasn't able to share in the little success I was having at the time.

So, as time went on over the next week and a half I carried on. I watched my mother labor over taking care of him. When he was coherent he spoke gibberish most of the time and we would get a nervous laugh or two on his behalf. Her lady friends, Mary, Irene and Genevieve were all great sounding boards. My brother, Sean, started to come over more and more and that was good to see and good for me to have a sibling on my side. I went to work. I went to rehearsal. I even had a date with Blue. And I had a date with Ken.

They were great for the body and emotionally it was nice to just lay in bed with a man, any man and both did their best to provide a chest to lay my head upon.

Usually, sex with them was fast, hectic and raunchy to the hilt - which was fabulous, Mary, but then - at that time - they just provided much needed tenderness. It was very natural and not what I expected from either of my booty call, (expletive deleted for this post) buddies. They both told me I was much more to them than that. I had personality. I was deep. Intense. I told Blue I didn't need any more responsibility right then. He told me, as he caressed my shoulders ever so gently.

"Just go with it. Be prepared. Be aware and you will know what to do next. It will just come to you, man."

Like my mother said, help - whether financially or fundamentally - comes from the sources we least suspect and Blue's mere utterance helped me tremendously.

My eyes were wide open and I was seeing the forest for the trees for the very first time.

I was becoming...

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The Naked Window: Exposed/Revelations 2-in-1 combo is available at Amazon CLICK HERE and other fine online retailers.

Friday, December 4, 2009

When Will It Ever End? (Excerpt 5 of 5 from "Opening the Naked Window" - Book 2 of the Memoir Series)

I bet you thought I forgot to post the fifth/final segment/sample from book 2 of the memoir series. No - as promised, this passage takes place in book/season two, chapter/episode 20.

July 31, 1995

My dad was unusually chipper when we awoke that morning. He nonchalantly told my mom and I that his mother, Grandma Cassone had passed away and it was like he had seen her like one would see an angel. I was red with anger. I never felt much like an outcast until I dealt with my father's uppity, extended family and I wasn't looking forward to yet another 'Cassone funeral.' I grew tired from a very young age of all the weddings and funerals and weddings and funerals and weddings...you get the picture. We were the only ones who remained behind in Detroit. Aside from my Uncle Don and Grandma Cassone, the rest of them pretty much seemed forgetful of their own humble beginnings. I knew in my hardest of hearts that when it was my father's time, Mom would force me to keep in touch with them. However, I found them all to be a bunch of fake asses and they made my stomach turn on many occasion.

So, we'd be going to yet another funeral and I was certain there would be high drama. You see, Uncle Rosario was the 'black sheep' of the family, had a very bad gambling problem that took all his money and in time sent him crying to my parent's front door late one night. He wanted to stay with us and I heard a bitter, yet understanding display of words from my father. My father wanted nothing to do with Rosario's problem, not Rosario himself, but his problem. I ran into Rosario a few months before Grandma Cassone's death and he told me to tell my father he didn't have a little brother anymore.

My father being the soft hearted man he could be would have been devastated by the notion, so Mom and I decided it would be best to keep that little bit of information from him. What gives, though? Would Rosario not speak to him at their mother's funeral? It would surely be the measure of his manhood if he could over look my father's rejection of him, which my father viewed as helping Rosario more than hurting him, but sock-it-to-me if Rosario didn't utter one word to my father at the funeral or the social that followed. I was quick to inform him he didn't have a 'weird nephew' any longer.

My father was a wreck at the funeral. He just writhed in pain. Mom and I would have even preferred if he hadn't gone, but we knew better than to fight him on it. Hell, it was actually something he wanted to do. My brother, Sean, was great to Mom and I then. He drove us to the funeral. He was the only of my siblings that my dad's extended family took to. Again, aside from Uncle Don and Grandma, my father marrying my mother who had children from a previous marriage was a complete and total no-no. They nosed down at us every chance they had, like my mother was the whore of the Amazon or something. It would really get to me after while, but my mother was better than all of them.

I would be so proud of her, even when I was too young to really figure it out. At all those weddings and funerals, she would always be the one sitting next to Grandma Cassone laughing and carryin' on like two Judy's. And out of all my numerous male cousins it was I who danced with Grandma Cassone first. It was tradition for the youngest grandson to dance with Grandma first. I would laugh to myself thinking they would try to look down on us, but they couldn't be blind and surely saw we were what the backbone of this family was made up of. Hardworking. Middle class. City folk. Not white collar, rich suburbanites - that's what they worked for and became.

I swear if my writing ever takes me anywhere and I get rich and remotely famous one day, I pray I don't ever forget where I've come from, because it can happen. When it does...it's sad. I didn't know my Grandpa Cassone. He died when my father was just 16. However, from all the stories my Dad told of his father, I am sure he would be spinning at the sight of how the family treated us. Not Grandma Cassone, though, she saw beyond the simple mindedness. My siblings were like any of her other grand children. They got Christmas cards with the rest of us. I truly believe there was an unspoken respect for my mother in her eyes. Kinda like those who are last are first.

So, there we are at her funeral. My dad was a wreck. My brother, Sean, and I kept making faces at one another, which made me almost burst into laughter. We would always do that sort of thing, to break the monotony and I was sure my Aunt Donna remembered the time I embarrassed her at my Uncle Steve's funeral. Uncle Steve, like so many men in my family, had a bad history of heart disease and stroke. He had seven heart attacks and when he died; my mother broke my heart at how sad she was. She really respected him and what he had done for his family over the years. He kept them real. This was some years before, when I was just a boy and I remember he was the one that practically raised the family with Grandma Cassone, when Grandpa Cassone got sick and eventually died.

I remember Uncle Steve and I having a very deep conversation about Meryl Streep. It's funny how I remember that so vividly now. He could see I had some sort of talent for acting and he told me to make something of it. Then he went on and on about how great this Meryl Streep would be. It strikes me funny because this was like back when she was in The Deer Hunter. He had an insight about everyday people too, that he got from Grandma Cassone for sure and Uncle Don and my Dad had it too, but the rest of them... You already know. So, Aunt Donna and I were praying by Uncle Steve's casket and it was quiet and I started trying to sniff out this scent that came across my nose.

"What is that?" I said sternly.

Aunt Donna, my Dad's sister-in-law said, "Oh, you must be smelling my perfume."

Then I said, slowly (which added to the hilarity), "I thought it was formaldehyde."

After Aunt Donna and I shared a hysterical laugh, right over Uncle Steve's casket mind you - we thought he would actually bust a gut with us; we were carrying on so much. She 'thanked' me and I never lived it down. You know how something was once funny, but every time you see them and they tell the story again...it isn't funny anymore. So, she of course just had to tell everyone the story over and over again.

What I noticed so much at Grandma Cassone's funeral was what all my dad's siblings obviously did not want to see and that was how sick my father was. Aside from Uncle Don's wife, Aunt Sandra, asking probing questions you would have thought my dad looked normal. That was so not the case. He had to walk with a walker and with my brother's and my help. My mother seemed a bit rebuffed once we got to the car, to go to the cemetery, at their sudden case of nearsightedness. See, what our side of the family is made up of...by the time we got to the cemetery we were all practically in tears from laughter, my father included. I would always throw a sarcastic remark out there to get laughs and Sean was always certain to practically do pratfalls to get a snicker or two - that time he had burned himself with the car's cigarette lighter, trying to get it for my mother.

So, there's my mother bitchin' about my dad's family, my dad trying to talk her down, then I throw out a snarly insult and Sean's screamin' and hollarin' because he burned his finger and didn't quite know where on the car floor that hot cigarette lighter went to. We just all started to laugh and we were once again perceived as the 'weird ones.'

Which was fine with me...

I'd rather be weird than snooty any day of the week.

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Opening the Naked Window and other books by Antonio Cassone are available at Amazon >>>>CLICK HERE<<<< and other fine online retailers.