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Singing “Our Father” in Latin on camera is too much for this extra in “The Young Pope”

The 140 cardinals wait to take center stage in the filming of "The Young Pope."

Have you ever read Latin? It reads like something off an Egyptian wall. It’s a language nearly as dead as Gaelic. Even the Catholic Church campaigned to bring it back into services around the world.
Now try memorizing it.
Now try singing it.
Now try singing it for TV cameras which are currently showing to millions of people around Europe and, in February, all over the U.S. It is my second scene of my “acting” debut. I am one of 120 men dressed like Vatican cardinals inside a hangar-sized studio in Cinecitta, Rome’s legendary old movie complex.
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Playing an extra in “The Young Pope” teaches me the cardinal rules of film business

Director Paolo Sorrentino needed tall Americans. I'm tall. I'm American.

I play an American cardinal, one of the many nameless bodies that form a fluid red or black background as Jude Law maneuvers through scenes. We’re shooting a breakfast scene and I’m sitting two chairs down from a cardinal who’s about to die. My job is to eat slowly, look over calmly and appear expressionless as the cardinal falls to the floor. But did I eat too many grapes? Could Sorrentino tell I was choking? I KNEW I should’ve eaten the breakfast roll!
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My five favorite restaurants in Rome

Mamma Venerina in the historic Borgo Pio neighborhood near the Vatican is inexpensive elegance that reminds you of old Rome.

Cutting down to five required some ground rules. I ruled out pizzerias. I wrote about those in May. I also included nothing that’s listed in Lonely Planet. I trust Lonely Planet’s restaurant recommendations but I’ve walked on every path in Rome. The best restaurants are on the paths less beaten, even by LP. Making it easier is including a disclaimer that these may not be the five best in Rome. They may not even be my five favorite if I went back to all of them with a more critical eye. I have a whole new list by Jan. 1. The depth of restaurants in Rome is that good.
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Italian soccer needs a Colin Kaepernick to illuminate racism problems

A fan holds up a banana, a frequent occurrence in Italian soccer stadiums.

Italy badly needs a Colin Kaepernick. Racism has been as much a part of Italian soccer as corner kicks. Italy doesn’t play its national anthem before Serie A contests but it would illuminate the problem if someone, some time, showed up at a stadium wearing a red Kaepernick jersey. Who could do it?
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Looks are deceiving from the Borromini Perspective

The architect/artist Francesco Borromini designed this colonnade in 1653 to make Cardinal Bernardino Spada's courtyard look bigger.

On the first floor of the Palazzo Spada, in a small, quiet courtyard, is the real thing. I stared at it for 30 minutes before I finally figured it out. It’s a colonnade, an open-air hallway lined with columns that looks at first glance about 25 meters long. In actuality, when you get closer it’s about 8 ½. How? Why?
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Saving Bolt: A near-dead kitten atop a gutter becomes highlight of a Greek holiday

We found Bolt near death atop a rain gutter. Photo by Marina Pascucci

“Andiamo.” (Let’s go.)
I said that when Marina started walking over to pick it up. I wasn’t worried about her catching a disease from a dead animal. I just didn’t want to break down after watching a dead kitten lay limp in the palm of her hand.
But women have maternal instincts. She broke from my hand and bent over. When she picked it up, a remarkable thing happened. It moved. It moved its tiny, little arms and legs, one of which looked deformed, horribly bent under its scrawny body. It was as skinny as a baby bird in an oil slick. Its elongated neck was as out of proportion as E.T’s. The way his ears dwarfed his tiny head made him look like a bat. I could put my thumb and middle finger around his torso.
And he was near death.
He didn’t meow. His eyes were fused shut from mucous. He didn’t fight to break from our hands. He just moved his three tiny workable legs and his head up and from side to side, straining to see who was helping him. He didn’t need to mew. We knew what he wanted to say.
“Please save me.”
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Skiathos: Greek gods’ gift to Hades-like August travel

Skiathos is only 90 minutes from Rome and 90 miles north of Athens. Photo by Marina Pascucci

Traveling in Greece gave me my definition of freedom: Freedom is deciding what Greek island you want to go to on your way to a boat dock. You can do that in Greece. I didn’t do that on this trip. I took one look at my hotel in Skiathos and had a hard time imagining sleeping anywhere else. Besides, traveling to Greece in August is problematic. It’s bulging with backpackers, partiers, lovers, historians, sun worshippers and shoppers. Zeus would not approve.
But, unlike Greece’s beauty, Zeus is just a myth.
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A new soccer season beckons and Rome’s fans still disgrace the city

Olympic Stadium's Curva Sud was barely half full for last May's crucial match with Napoli.

This city has the worst soccer fans in Europe.

For a tip of the fan base’s melting iceberg, consider Roma opens its Serie A, or national league, season Saturday at home against Udinese. Roma is picked as the best bet to stop Juventus’ string of five straight titles. It’s the last season for Francesco Totti, the native son who will spend his 25th season wearing the Roma jersey and is the most popular figure in Rome since Augustus. Yet 72,000-seat Olympic Stadium Saturday will not sell out. They are frantically selling individual seats in Curva Sud, which is usually filled cheek to cheek three hours before kickoff. As of Tuesday they had sold only 17,000 season tickets, a shocking number considering the passion I see in this city rivals that of the Denver Broncos’ in my old stomping grounds.
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Think Trump would be disaster? Ask Italy after Bunga Bunga Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi giving the Italian gesture for cheating.

Silvio Berlusconi was Italy’s prime minister three times for nine years, from 1994-95, 2001-06 and 2008-11. He had all the trappings of Donald Trump before he took office — and proceeded to run the entire Italian peninsula into the Mediterranean. I wanted to write this as a warning to all the racist, fascist, sexist, uneducated, angry white men who will vote for Trump what could lay ahead.
(To read more, click here.)

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Trastevere: From a violent, fiery past to Rome’s giant souvenir stand

Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere is the heart of the Trastevere neighborhood.

Last week I learned a lot about Trastevere’s history going way past the ‘70s. It goes back to before the birth of Christ, to the height of the Roman Empire. Back then Trastevere was a neighborhood of slaves, violence and graft. I went with Rome Explorers, a wonderful, learned Meetup group dedicated to the history and nature of Rome and beyond. Leading the group again was Massimiliano “Max” Francia (guideromax@virgilio.it), Rome’s ubur guide whose library of Roman history could fill the Colosseum.
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What I miss about U.S. — and what I do to compensate in Rome

College football Saturdays, such as here at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colo., is the one thing I miss most about the U.S.

People ask me that all the time. What do you miss? They are little things, not big things. I never knew happiness until I woke up with a cappuccino on my terrace looking out at the Tiber River with birds chirping and then deciding what pizzeria I want to eat at that night.
But some things America can provide that Italy can not. However, I have learned to compensate.
So for those dreaming of a life in the bella paese, here’s a list of things that occasionally cross my mind, like the train passing your window every day back home and you always took for granted.
(To read more, read this.)

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A weekend in Spain: Confessions of a Marriott whore

The pool at the Denia Marriott, located on the peninsula across the Gulf of Valencia from Ibiza.

We settled on Denia, a town in Spain I’d never heard of which, if you’re seeking a path less beaten, is always a good sign. A map showed it’s on Spain’s famed Costa Bianca, on the point of a peninsula just across the Gulf of Valencia from hip Ibiza. On its website, the Marriott’s swimming pool looked like something out of a Las Vegas architect’s sexual fantasy. We were sold. I bought two more nights for a Wednesday through Saturday stay. It was the perfect extended weekend in a sexy part of the world.
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