I never took Charles Gasparino for a scheming, vindictive, even terribly inventive man. That all changed when I found myself curled up on the bathroom floor circa 2 am this morning. But let me start from the beginning. As most of you who read this site with any regularity know, we're obsessed with chronicling the eating, iron-pumping and fiber-expelling habits of CNBC reporter Charlie Gasparino. Since he clearly has a Google alert set up for himself, he's well-aware of the enthusiasm with which we cover his professional and personal life. I don't want to say that we were told by several well-placed sources that Chuck liked all this attention we were lavishing on him, so I'll say this-- we were told by several well-placed sources that Chuck LOVED all this attention we were lavishing on him. Is "went to his head" the correct turn of phrase to use in this situation? I'm not sure, but nothing else comes to mind, and it's a pretty fair assessment of what began to happen.
And that was okay. Annoying, but okay. We'd created this belle of the ball in Gasparino, and we were willing to take all the credit (/Pulitzer nominations) and criticism that came with the coverage, in addition to your standard starlet behavior. We were fine with the fact that we would get calls complaining about running certain photos that made a certain someone "look bloated," and that beginning last month, not a day would go by when Charlie wouldn't contact us to say "It's 7 am, I've already worked out, showered and had breakfast, why haven't you written about me yet?" to which we replied, "Well, Charles, when you work out with the sleeves cut off, and not in this hoity toity Under Armor shit, as our moles at Gold's Gym where you whaled on your pecs today tell us you did, that's when we'll write about you," to which he would inevitably respond, "I've already taken out my clippers, and scheduled additional reps on the Bow-Flex for noon. Write the post now so it's ready to go at 12." We would write the post and it would be good and this parasitic-yet-beneficial relationship would continue.
Lately, though, meaning like last week, Charlie was becoming obsessive. Emailing us at three, and four, and five a.m. to make sure we'd received the photos of him leaving the studio "drinking a delicious Myoplex shake (out of one of those plastic gallon containers, of course)," so he could get his free monthly shipment of powders and bars, the "building blocks of any fitness plan worth its salt." Asking if we'd noticed how much more "cut" he looked on-air compared to Kernan. Not shutting the fuck up about how braciole isn't something he requests during bathroom time ("It's thinly sliced pieces of mortadella while I'm on the can or it's nothing at all!").
And we're not easily rattle-able people, but it was starting to piss us off. So we didn't exactly put our all into our regularly scheduled "Where in the world is Charlie Gasparino" feature on Friday, just to give him a taste of what life would be like for him if we started half-assing it. And he didn't like that one bit. Told a friend he was ticked that we didn't mention the throbbing veins in his forearms. The rippling pectorals as ripe as two grapefruits out of the alluringly yet tastefully vivisected Champion sweatshirt. The way the children in the gym's play room cowered when he howled 'Ba fungool!' after every bench rep. The musky, pheromone-concentrated odor he emits when working out that draw women the way chum lures sharks. Said he was going to make us "pay" for this egregious offense, which I took to mean he wouldn't make sure we got comped at Sarge's on 27th and 3rd next time we got sandwiches.
So when the shipment of soppresata arrived at the office, we thought for a second that it might be some sort of threat, but only in the sense that "something's coming," and not that "this actual piece of meat has been poisoned." Oh, but the ever-conniving No Sleeves knew he didn't even have to actually tamper with the meat, knowing full-well that the typical Jew, famed for a delicate digestive tract, wouldn't be able to handle the saltiness and nitrates. (We've heard from well-placed sources that he picked up this little trick from Grasso, who sent capicola to Spitzer and all the Jews with NYSE board seats, as chronicled in his latest book, "King of the Club".)
Which would explain why, at 2 am this morning, after having only sampled a tiny piece of the soppresata earlier in the evening, we were rudely awoken with a thirst so great we were forced to chug the month-old, half empty bottle of peach Snapple next to our bed, before projectile vomiting the offensive toxin from our mouths (ending our five month no-puking streak), and subsequently spent the next several hours on the cold tile floor. And we didn't like the ending of our no-vomit streak one bit.
So. In keeping with the time-honored tradition of the Jewish and Italian mafias battling over Wall Street supremacy (as chronicled in Charlie's book "King of the Club," available on Amazon and wherever books are sold), Levin will now demonstrate to No Sleeves once and for all that despite the fictional comeuppances of Shylock and Hyman Roth by guineas, the Jews wrote the book on revenge.
The question is how. I leave the answer to you. (Write-ins by Chosen People given extra weight.)
Posted by NotNasser, Feb 05, 2008 11:50AM
Didn't Tony Soprano put it best? Revenge is a plate of cold cuts.