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Life as an extra is as dull as a cardinal’s but working with actor Jude Law makes it worth it

Viewers won't notice us individually but tourists sure did one day as we walked to work.

Being an extra is like being a bird. You do nothing for hours and then must provide a few moments of window dressing before flying away without being noticed. Sometimes you are. Take the cardinal whose cell phone went off twice during one of Law’s speeches. Or the cardinal who wouldn’t stop talking after “ACTION!”
Or me blowing a scene with one turn.
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Italian rugby: The new trend goes All Black with visit from New Zealand power

New Zealand's All Blacks are two-time defending World Cup champs and defeated Italy Saturday, 68-10.

As I sat in jam-packed Curva Sud, the A.S. Roma ultras’ one-time home that has long since gone quiet, I sensed for the first time this growing phenomenon on the Italian sporting scene. Italy, the winner of four soccer World Cups and where soccer rivalries resemble provincial wars, has gone rugby mad. And on Saturday, the rabid rugby fans were treated to the Alabama Crimson Tide of world rugby. New Zealand’s All Blacks won the last two World Cups in 2011 and 2015. They won the inaugural one in 1987.
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Reaction in Italy soothing as I wonder when sun will rise again

trump-election-night

When you’re retired in Rome, you don’t have many bad days. Mine usually consist of not getting enough foam in my cappuccino or getting in a fight with my landlady. Stress and anger left my life when I left America nearly three years ago. But for one horrific 12-hour stretch over Tuesday and Wednesday, I was in the middle of a country I no longer knew. I was trying to ward off a right-wing mob scene’s maniacal fervor of uneducated, fascist, sexist and racist Americans from towns I’ve never heard of and now never want to visit. Donald Trump’s election was the worst day of my life since 9-11.
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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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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.
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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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Police ride around Rome a glimpse inside a non-violent city — but watch your wallet

Gerardo Mastrangelo and Gian Cristian Salimbene before their Saturday night shift.

Salimbene and Mastrangelo were going to further impress upon me the safety of my adopted city. I’ve always been fascinated by the soft underbelly of touristy towns. What’s it like behind the back-lit monuments, art galleries and romantic piazzas? Where’s the graft? The violence? The danger?
Growing up in America, you can find that in any city. Every metropolitan area in the U.S. has neighborhoods where guns are rampant and murder is common. For the last 10 years, Detroit, a city of 700,000 people, has averaged 345 murders. Oakland, Calif., (pop. 404,000) has averaged 106, Baltimore (pop. 622,000) 234. From 1990-2014 I lived in Denver. It averaged about 150 murders a year.
Rome, with a population of 2.6 million, has averaged 35. Two years ago it had only 27.
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