Cameo appearance

Here’s the dilemma I find myself in every October.

It just so happens the wife’s birthday and our wedding anniversary fall four short shopping days apart. And as I’ve been reminded many times, under no circumstances will one gift stretch across those four days to cover both occasions.

So because I love my bride as much as I do, and don't want to get docked marriage points, I spend a great deal of time and careful thought deciding what would be the perfect presents to get her. Usually they’re very specific gifts for each event. However this year, I had an idea for a gift for both that would be the same, but different.

”Mom! Dad’s talking in riddles again!” Fine. I’ll explain.

Because I know you commit each and every fabulous post on here to memory, you may reacall reading about the wife and I recently bingeing The Sopranos twice in a row, back to back. And besides the headliners, she has a couple characters she really likes.

One is Johnny “Sack” Sacrimoni, underboss of the Lupertazzi crime family, elegantly played by Vincent Curatola.

The other is Ralphie Cifaretto, member of the DiMeo crime family, viciously played by Joey “Pants” Pantoliano.

Because the wife and I had gone hard down The Sopranos rabbit hole, watching all the YouTube clips, listening to all the episodes of the Talking Sopranos podcast, reading all of creator David Chase’s interviews about that remarkably unsatisfying series ending, I thought a Sopranos-related gift would be in order.

Thanks to my son, young Mr. Spielberg, I'd been the recipient of a Cameo.com video for one my birthdays a while back. For those of you unfamiliar with Cameo, it’s a site where, for a fee, the actors, comedians, musicians, politicians and more celebrities ranging from A to D list will make a short video to give as a gift for whatever occasion you choose. If you're willing to pony up more, they'll even do a live call with you.

I decided to see who was available from The Sopranos, and come to find out Vince and Joey Pants were both on Cameo. I gave them each a short write up about my wife, told them what the occasion was and generally what I'd like them to say.

A hit list if you will. See what I did there?

Cameo says to give the talent five to seven days to get a video back to you, but both Vincent and Joey had the videos back to me within a couple hours. And both gentlemen were generous with their time and messages, going more than four times the average video length.

Needless to say, the wife was thrilled and surprised and loved both videos.

So if you're looking for a gift that's a little more personal and off the beaten path, I highly recommend perusing Cameo and checking it out. With celebrities ranginng from Snoop Dogg to Kevin Pollak to Richard Schiff to Paula Poundstone to NOT Tom Cruise, there's something for just about everyone.

And should your tastes run a little more to the marketing side, and you're willing to pay for a creative director/copywriter to record a short video for a loved one, I'm pretty sure that can be arranged too.

Back-to-back Tonys

I’ve often said my wife has a criminal mind. She’s demonstrated that many, many times in the course of our long, solid, loving, wonderful marriage (Ding! Ding! Ding! Marriage points!).

In the traditions we’ve come to cherish as a couple, one we always look forward to every couple of years is our binge of The Sopranos. Romantic, amIrite?

We recently finished this year’s viewing, but here’s where things took a turn. The minute we saw the very last scene in the final, controversial episode, she turned to me and said, “Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, and being married to you makes me the luckiest girl in the world!”

Nah, I’m just funnin’ ya. She said let’s watch it again. The wife wanted to watch The Sopranos start to finish again after we’d just watched it start to finish.

What’reyougonnado?

So back to the beginning we went. This time, she took a deep dive, listening to the Talking Sopranos podcast with Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltesanti, and Steven Schirripa who played Bobby Baccalieri.

This allowed her to give me the play-by-play and behind-the-scenes inside story to each episode we rewatched, while we were watching it.

And who doesn't love someone telling a story and talking over the tv when you're trying to watch one of your favorite shows.

Now, as you may know if you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time — and if you have, you might want to reconsider your priorities in life — I’ve binged Breaking Bad a crazy number of times (16). But Breaking Bad is a solo binge for me, because the wife finds that show too dark.

However, she has no problem at all with the plethora of inventive murders, strangulations, cursing, dismembering, horse-burning (we still miss you Pie-O-My), car crashes, strippers, raw sex, nudity and drug addiction portrayed on The Sopranos.

Now that I think about it, that either makes me the luckiest guy in the world, or someone who needs to sleep with one eye open.