Among the occasional contributors to MiniMediaGuy are entries from Der Cuz, aka Deep Cuz, a person whose geography shall remain secret, whose gender is of the belching, beer-guzzling sort, and whose genetic material contains, as does mine, a healthy dose of the pasta-twirling, hand-waving Italian-American DNA. The image (left) of the 1984 film, “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” has always been one of our shared memorie, for its lovely rendition of guinea culture (I’m thinking in particular of the scene in which the two protagonists, cousins as I recall, buy a pound of salami and a loaf of Italian bread and proceed to make and consume a three-foot-long hero sandwich while seated on a park bench — and they don’t need no stinkin’ Grey Poupon thank you very much!).

Anyhow, when we were young my father would not let me read comic books. He figured they’d rot my mind. So I’d walk down the block to visit Cuzzola — which is his civilian name when he is not contributing to this blog — and he would let me read from his vast comic collection (Wouldn’t that be worth something today?).

Fast foward 40 years and here I sit with brain rot setting in and I am still taking in reading tips from Der Cuz, who wrote:

“I saw this article in TechDirt – “LA Times; Publishers think Google worse than Osama bin Laden,” which made specific mention of the SF Chronicle which, of course, made me think of blood who works there. You’re still hangin on, aintcha Cuz?”

I am sorry. I thought I had informed Der Cuz and any other readers who might have been aware of the one-in-four job cuts at my newspaper (achieved through buyouts as opposed to firings) that I remain in the three who still write news stories and not in the quarter of former colleagues forced into early retirement or else looking for other work.

In any event had I been laid off, I would proabably be minutes away from losing my house in which case I would have packed the entire family of five into our Taurus station wagon, loaded the pets (only three and thankfully all mammals) into the trunk, and presented ourselves at Der Cuz’s secret location to live off the fat of his land. This is exactly what I did in 1990 when the family was smaller (just one child and two pets then) and we mooched off my mom for the one year it took to get through graduate school and the second year it took to land this job.

So if any other readers are worried about my welfare and have spare rooms to accommodate me or my tribe (did I tell you about the gaggle of home schoolers, hippies and neer’do’wells who seem to make up our friendship group and tend to pay us extended visits) please do message me your whereabouts. And don’t worry about our dietary requirements. We eat like locusts.