#casciari | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

axolotlhuman · 2 years

Text

Prank phone calls were known as cachadas and they were as old as the invention of the phone itself. We had a wide array of tactics, all aimed at annoying an unsuspecting interlocutor; pissing them off, riling them up. Somewhere around the middle of high school Chiri and I became experts in the art. We were telephone magicians. But then a sad event forced us to abandon our calling. To this day, the story is a reminder of the evil that resides within us.

We began, like everyone does, as children. When telephones were black, rotary, and state-issued. The first infantile prank calls are always made to someone with the last name Gallo, (no one knows why, but that’s the way it is). In the Mercedes municipal phone book there were nine listings under Gallo, which means rooster in Spanish. We called them one by one.

“Hello, the Gallos?”

“Yes,” they said on the other end.

“Is Remigio there?”

“There’s no Remigio here.”

“Sorry, I guess I have the wrong henhouse,” and we hung up, dying of laughter.

There are dozens of these basic jokes, and we copied our older siblings or cousins, who had already moved on to more elaborate pranks. As you can see, the main objective of our first incursions into the art of the prank call was laughter: a clean cackle that didn’t cause any major harm to the victim.

Oh, if only we could’ve remained in our childhood innocence, free from evil and guilt. But no: we have to mature. And mature we did.

There are always rumors circulating in small towns, facts and details about neighbors who are easy targets for prank calls. Neighbors considered “prickly.” It was generally a certain type of old man who, when he received a prank call, would unleash the full force of his fury and seemed incapable of hanging up the phone. Around age ten or twelve, we got a reliable tip: you have to call Mr. Toledo and say the magic word.

“Hello, is this the Toledo residence?”

“Yes.”

“Is ‘Trumpeter’ there?”

This was the word that triggered Mr. Toledo, who had a high-pitched, strident voice like a horn, to begin his steam of insults and curses, punctuated with hilarious huffs and wild neologisms. Chiri and I would crowd around the receiver and imagine Toledo at his house, in his underwear, his cheeks a deep red color and smoke shooting out of his ears. Ten minutes in, when his diatribe began to lose steam and his lungs to lose air, all we had to say was “don’t get so worked up, Trumpeter,” and he’d start all over again. Mission accomplished.

But a boy must grow, and with him, ambition, dramatic structure, and a still-dormant evil begins to take shape. It wasn’t long before Chiri and I became bored with invisible Gallos and Toledos, who were merely disembodied voices on the other end of the line, so we moved into the realm of three-dimensional pranks, with live victims.

Every afternoon the bald man who ran the shop across the street would close up for the day and head home following hours of total boredom without having sold anything. We could see him, resigned, from the dining room window. Right when the bald guy lowered the heavy metal shutter over his storefront, just before he wrapped the chain around the latch, we called him on the phone. The poor man, who didn’t want to lose a sale, desperately raised the shutter, ran to the back of the shop and, on the fifth or sixth ring, panted: “Pontoni Carpets, good afternoon.”

And we hung up.

A little while later we’d see him once again, humiliated and defeated, lowering his gigantic shutter; it was twice as heavy this time. His life was shit, you could see it in his eyes and in the curve of his spine. Then the bald man once again heard the phone ring inside the shop. “If it’s the same person who called before, they must need carpeting urgently,” the shopkeeper thought, and once again his heart pounded, and once again he raised the shutter, once again he ran to the back of the shop, and once again he said, “Pontoni Carpets, good evening,” with a thread of a voice.

We hung up. We always hung up.

One day we repeated the trick so many times that on the umpteenth fake call the bald man had no other recourse than to say, “Pontoni Carpets, good evening.”

We would’ve gone on like that until the end of time, but a year later we crashed headlong into the future. One day, on the first ring, old bald Pontoni pulled out a brick with an antennae on it and said “Hello.” He’d bought a cordless phone.

Far from deterring us, the advent of technology afforded new opportunities. When we got a second phone at my house (one with a cord, one without) Chiri and I invented something we called telecomedy. This type of prank involved two voices and a passive receptor. It consisted of calling any random number and making the victim believe they were interrupting a private conversation.

VICTIM: “Hello?”

CHIRI (in a woman’s voice): “. . . you like it when I do that.”

VICTIM: “Excuse me?”

HERNÁN (in a man’s voice): “What I like is to lick your ass.”

CHIRI: “Mmmm, don’t say that, you’re getting my nipples all hard.”

VICTIM: “Who is this?”

HERNÁN: “What’s getting hard is my cock,” et cetera.

The objective of this dramatic exercise was to get the interlocutor to stop saying “hello” and start listening to our obscene conversation, like someone hidden underneath a hotel bed. The better our stories, the longer the victim took to get bored and hang up. It was, I suppose, great practice in plotting, which would serve us—in the future—to keep our readers hooked. One day, after ten minutes of telecomedy, one of our victims started panting, and it grossed us out.

By age sixteen or seventeen, we considered ourselves radio theater professionals. We’d learned presence and emotional expression, and had developed a natural reflex for improvisation. Chiri and I skipped our afternoon gym class to shut ourselves up at home with two or three telephones, a little Sanyo recorder, and some props that could make sounds like rain, traffic, fire, or blizzard. We also had egg whites on hand, in case we wanted to change the pitch of our voices.

We didn’t need to talk to each other: we communicated solely through gestures and glances, like radio announcers behind the glass. We worked magic. We could send a stranger down to City Hall to pick up a non-existent tax bill, seduce the receptionist at a doctor’s office, make a firetruck siren sound whenever we felt like it, and convince the owner of the kiosk on the corner of 19th and 30th that he was speaking to us live on-air from a radio station in Luján.

We thought we were gods, and perhaps this hubris is what caused us to fall so quickly from the zenith of our glory and hit rock bottom.

It was the middle of 1988. I remember because we were wearing digital watches to time ourselves. It was dark and my parents weren’t home. For hours, Chiri and I had been playing an enthralling game: make the victim stay on the line as long as possible at all costs. When you become a professional prank caller you go back to the basics. The game consisted of calling a random number and pulling a conversation out of thin air. The clock started at “hello” and ran until the click of the hang up.

That night Chiri had put on a perfect performance: he’d maintained a conversation for seventeen minutes twelve seconds with an old lady, telling her he was calling from the dry cleaner’s. They’d had a hilarious exchange about ironing and drying and ended up singing a duet of “Nostalgias” together. Chiri had the woman wrapped around his little finger, with masterful winks and touches of genius. It would be impossible to outdo him.

I rolled the dice. I got 24612. I dialed the number. Chiri had the stopwatch in his hand and he looked smug. When the voice of an old lady said “Hello” the seconds began to tick away.

I had developed a system—my house brand if you will—that I could pull out at any critical moment. It was a risky strategy that involved using a standard male voice, a monotonous, slow voice, and urging the victim to guess my identity. That night, in what would be the last prank call of my life, I used this technique.

“Who is it?” the old lady asked after my “hello.”

“Oh great,” I said. “You don’t even recognize my voice?”

This was a king’s pawn game. A classic opening. It generated a feeling of familiarity in the other. There’s always some grown nephew whose voice has changed, or a godson. Always.

“I don’t know,” said the old lady. “Who are you trying to call?”

“You, you old bag!”

Super risky move. I was placing the queen in the center of the board. Very few people would call a lady “an old bag.” But if I wanted to beat Chiri’s time, I had to behave like a kamikaze. It worked:

“Daniel?!” she said, in that tone halfway between a question and an exclamation. The tone is called “wishful thinking.”

The way she pronounced that name gave me a million clues. Daniel wasn’t a nephew or a godson, because the old lady’s scream had been deafening. It could be no less than a son. Possibly an only son. And that same piece of evidence led me to another conclusion: the son lived far away and he didn’t call his mother often. I dove in headfirst.

“Of course, Mom! Who else would it be?”

“Danny, little Dan!” the old woman sobbed, as Chiri silently took an imaginary hat off of his head, surrendering to my move.

Now, time was on my side. I paced around with the cordless so that Chiri couldn’t try to make me laugh. He sat listening in on the regular phone. After five minutes I’d learned that Daniel lived in the South (“is it cold down there?” the old lady asked in the middle of September), and also that in recent years the relationship between them hadn’t been very warm.

“Dad would’ve liked you to be at his funeral.”

“It’s not easy, Mom. There are open wounds, life isn’t that simple.”

I learned that Daniel had a wife—Negra—and two kids. The youngest, Carlitos, had never met his grandmother. I also learned that the city Daniel lived in was Comodoro Rivadavia, and that he worked in a television factory. At twelve minutes into the conversation, when I was on track to beat Chiri’s record, the old lady began to suspect something was up. She started asking ambiguous questions, I had to improvise.

“How is it that you sound so close, son?” she wanted to know.

She left me with no choice. “Mom,” I said, surprised by my cruelty. “I’m here, at the station.”

Silence from the other end of the line, and then a muffled sob. I turned around and made eye contact with Chiri, who was staring at me, his face pale. He wasn’t smiling. I felt, from deep inside, the pull of evil. I felt it for the first time in my life. It came from my stomach, my cock, and my brain all at the same time, like a diabolical holy trinity. With a gesture, I asked Chiri how long I’d been talking. Sixteen minutes.

“Don’t cry, Ma,” I said.

“Have you come to Mercedes before?” she asked in a broken voice. “Sometimes I dream that you come, at night, and you don’t stop by the house . . .”

“No. No, no . . . It’s the first time I’ve been back, I swear. But I didn’t want to just show up, out of nowhere. That’s why I called.”

“Son!” she shouted, heartbroken. “Hang up and hurry over, come home!”

Almost seventeen minutes, I needed something else. I clenched my left fist as I decided what to say. I think the evil had taken full control of me by that point. I don’t think I was even the one speaking. Something indefinable, the thing that makes us human and horrible, was now rooted deep within me and I was its puppet.

“I have to do a few things first, then I’ll come home,” I said. “Listen, Mom. Will you make cannelloni? I’m starving.”

“Of course, Danny.”

“I miss your cannelloni.”

“Hurry up, I’ll make them now.”

“Bye.”

“Bye, son. I’m trembling all over, hurry up.”

And the woman hung up the phone.

I looked at Chiri, who was staring down at the floor. He refused to make eye contact, I guess he couldn’t look me in the face. He didn’t remember to stop the clock, so we never even found out who won. We sat on the couch for a while, not saying a word. Half an hour later we knew that somewhere in Mercedes there was a house, and in that house there was a table, and on that table sat a steaming dish.

And we knew that our childhood would be over the moment Daniel’s cannelloni grew cold.

- Cannelloni by Hernán Casciari. 19 april, 2007

#short story #literature #latin american literature #latin american authors #cannelloni #canelones #argentina #argentine literature #hernan casciari #coming of age #family drama #prank calls #pranks #fiction

2 notes · View notes

portalvallenato · 1 year

Text

Hernán Casciari invita a: todos los buenos lectores

Hernán Casciari (Mercedes, 16 de marzo de 1971) es un escritor, editor y creador de contenidos argentino. Se hizo inicialmente conocido por su trabajo de unión entre literatura e internet. Creó la Editorial Orsai, la productora Orsai Audiovisuales y dirigió la revista Orsai, de crónica periodística y literatura. Publicó más de una docena de libros y se caracteriza por leer sus historias en voz…

View On WordPress

#Cultura #Featured #Hernán Casciari

1 note · View note

givemegifs · 2 years

Photo

#Gifs #gif #follow #giphyupload #reaction #funny #caja negra #filo news #fijate #hernan casciari #cas

1 note · View note

gaysessuale · 5 months

Text

Eccoci qui, come l'anno scorso, il masterpost di Sanremo 2024 per quando la Rai toglierà tutto da RaiPlay. Qui il masterpost di Sanremo 2023, qui invece tutti i Sanremo passati dal 2022 al 2012 (con delle clip del 2001 e del 1987)

Annuncio dei cantanti al telegiornale, edizione del 3/12/2023

Sanremo Giovani 2023 (puntata intera, esibizioni, clip, videoclip, interviste)

Conferenza Stampa

Prima Festival con Paola e Chiara

Prima Serata (Clip, Esibizioni)

Seconda Serata (Clip, Esibizioni)

Terza Serata (Clip, Esibizioni)

Quarta Serata (Clip, Esibizioni)

Quinta Serata (Clip, Esibizioni)

Radio2 a Sanremo con Ema Stoccolma e Gino Castaldi (puntate intere, interviste)

Viva Rai2... Viva Sanremo! con Rosario Fiorello, Fabrizio Biggio e Mauro Casciari

Gli Autogol: Missione sanremo (puntate intere, clip)

DomenicaIN (esibizioni, interviste)

Dietrofestival 2024

Perché Sanremo è Sanremo - Speciale TG1 2024

Extra (scalette, interviste, M'AMA non M'AMA)

Il masterpost rimarrà in aggiornamento fino a che ci sarà materiale.

#sanremo 2024 #sanremo2024 #l'archivio continua l'archivio non si ferma #l'archivio non si ferma l'archivio continua #un giorno tutto questo sarà utile #italian tag #italian post #italian music #masterpost

49 notes · View notes

saruzzo · 3 months

Text

LA GONNA ✨️ feat. Biggio e (i) Casciari

#fiorello #viva rai 2 #my dad looks gnc af and i love him so much #però luci del glass fate schifo è stata una tortura colorare le gif :/#mine

13 notes · View notes

omarfor-orchestra · 4 months

Text

Cioè praticamente loro dopo Sanremo sguinzagliano Fiorello Biggio Casciari e Marcuzzi e vanno avanti finché non svengono

#in che senso 'sull'orario vedremo'

3 notes · View notes

delectablywaywardbeard-blog · 1 month

Text

Da Fiorello un tuffo nel 1997: Natalie Imbruglia canta dal vivo la sua hit "Torn"

E’ un tuffo nel passato quello vissuto questa mattina nel glass di Viva Rai2! Natalie Imbruglia insieme a Jack Savoretti ospiti speciali di Fiorello, Biggio e Casciari. E si torna subito al 1997, alle immagini del Festivalbar e a due giovanissimi Fiorello e Alessia Marcuzzi che dal palco annunciano la celebre cantante pop e la sua hit del momento: “Torn”. source

View On WordPress

0 notes

notizieoggi2023 · 3 months

Video

https://notizieoggi2023.blogspot.com/2024/03/fiorello-la-copertina-ferragni-joker-la.html Fiorello: «La copertina Ferragni-Joker la strategia vincente per far tornare il pubblico dalla parte di Chiara. La vuole anche Schlein» Si chiude la prima settimana di marzo a VivaRai2!: Fiorello, Biggio, Casciari e tutta la banda hanno dato il buongiorno alla loro maniera tra musica e l'ironia sulle notizie del giorno anche in questo venerdì 8 marzo, giornata internazionale della donna. Continua a tenere banco il tema Chiara Ferragni, truccata da 'Joker' nell'ultimo numero de 'L'Espresso' che tanto sta facendo discutere. Fiorello dice la sua: «Siete dei geni - ironizza Fiorello - La prima uscita fu la tuta grigia, valanghe di odio. Poi 'avete frainteso', e ancora odio. Poi da Fazio, ancora odio. Poi l'idea: la copertina 'violenta' da 'L'Espresso'. E signori, finalmente dal primo 'Balocco gate' i primi risultati: il pubblico si è spaccato, alcuni addirittura a favore della Ferragni! Ce l'avete fatta, eccola la strategia vincente!». «C'è stato davvero un momento in cui qualsiasi cosa portava alla sua distruzione - prosegue lo showman - Il mondo crolla per l'inquinamento ambientale? Era colpa della lacca della Ferragni. Ora invece finalmente le prime cose positive: bravi! Pensate che la Schlein ha chiamato L'Espresso e ha detto 'voglio la copertina da Joker'...».

#youtube

1 note · View note

tarditardi · 3 months

Text

Il 24/2 su San Marino RTV Una Voce per San Marino, conducono Fabrizio Biggio e Greta Marchetto

Fabrizio Biggio e Melissa Greta Marchetto sono i nuovi conduttori della finalissima della 3^ edizione di "Una Voce per San Marino", il festival che premia con la partecipazione al prossimo Eurovision Song Contest che si terrà dal 7 all'11 maggio 2024 a Malmö in Svezia.

Dopo lo spoiler iniziale di Fiorello lo scorso 25 gennaio, è ufficiale: Fabrizio Biggio, volto di Viva Rai 2 con Fiorello e Mauro Casciari e de I Soliti Idioti con Francesco Mandelli, e Melissa Greta Marchetto, conduttrice televisiva e radiofonica e attualmente speaker di Virgin Radio, sono i nuovi conduttori per la finalissima di "Una Voce per San Marino" che si terrà sabato 24 febbraio 2024 alle ore 20.30 presso il Teatro Nuovo Dogana e in diretta su San Marino RTV (visibile sui canali 520 di SKY e 93 di tivùsat, sul canale 831 del DDT, in streaming su www.sanmarinortv.sm) e che decreterà il vincitore che rappresenterà la Repubblica di San Marino al prossimo Eurovision Song Contest che si terrà a MALMÖ in Svezia dal 7 all'11 maggio 2024.

La serata, organizzata da San Marino RTV e Media Evolution e trasmessa in diretta nazionale, vedrà otto artisti Emergenti e otto Big gareggiare tra loro. Una Giuria qualificata decreterà, sulla base dei meriti, liberamente e senza vincolo alcuno, l'Artista Vincitore di "Una voce per San Marino", con indicazione anche del 2° e dal 3° classificato.

Ospite d'onore della serata sarà Riccardo Cocciante.

Ecco gli artisti della categoria "big" ammessi alla finale:

Aaron Sibley

Aimie Atkinson

Jalisse

La Rua

Marcella Bella

Pago

Wlady, Corona, Ice Mc, Cameo: Dj Jad

Loredana Bertè

Dopo le dichiarazioni fatte dall'artista in molte interviste sul fatto che se avesse vinto Sanremo sarebbe tornata volentieri in Svezia, noi di UVPSM abbiamo provato a contattarla, nella speranza di un suo sì. La sua fortunata partecipazione a Sanremo e le migliaia di segnalazioni dei suoi fan e dei fan eurovisivi che ci sono arrivate ci hanno convinto a provarci. Stiamo parlando di Loredana Bertè. L'intenzione di partecipare c'è, stiamo capendo insieme al suo staff se i tanti pregressi impegni privati e lavorativi dell'artista le permetteranno di essere a tutti gli effetti l'ottavo big in gara. Lo sapremo nei prossimi giorni.

Questi sono i big selezionati da Media Evolution con la forte collaborazione di San Marino RTV e la Segreteria di Stato per il Turismo della Repubblica di San Marino. A questi si aggiunge il nono partecipante "big" proveniente dal Contest di Casperaki per l'intelligenza artificiale, la piattaforma di produzione musicale ibrida basata su algoritmi e intelligenza artificiale che consente ai musicisti di esprimere il proprio potenziale. Fondata da Mathias Strasser, imprenditore londinese, la piattaforma aiuta i creativi a generare prime bozze di tracce personalizzabili ed esenti da royalty che gli artisti possono modellare in canzoni complete. Nell'autunno del 2023, Casperaki ha lanciato un bando pubblico per bozze di canzoni da inviare a "Una Voce per San Marino" utilizzando i chatbot AI di Casperaki. L'artista vincitrice è Dana Gillespie, cantante blues britannica, che canterà "The Last Polar Bear", un brano che affronta il tema urgente dell'inquinamento ambientale. La canzone, inizialmente creata dalla piattaforma musicale AI di Casperaki, è stata trasformata da Dana Gillespie in un potente inno ambientale, evidenziando il suo impegno nei confronti delle preoccupazioni globali attraverso la sua arte.

A completare il cast degli artisti che si esibiranno durante la finale di sabato 24 febbraio 2024, si aggiungeranno altri 7 artisti "emergenti" e un artista sammarinese provenienti dalle semifinali che andranno in onda su San Marino RTV a partire da lunedì 19 a venerdì 23 febbraio alle ore 21.40.

Con il format Marlù #RicaricAmore, Marlù si impegna attivamente in un progetto sociale per il nostro territorio. - dice Marta Fabbri, Responsabile Corporate Governance Marlù - L'obiettivo di questa partnership è quello di creare una sinergia tra collettività, territorio e azienda, andando a supportare una realtà che opera nel campo del sociale nel nostro Paese".

Si ringraziano:

San Marino Outlet Experience

Casperaki

Marlù

VW Reggini

Isobox

Febal Casa

Banca di San Marino

Promopharma

Grazie alla firma di un accordo di sinergia pubblico-privato tra San Marino RTV, la Segreteria di Stato per il Turismo, Poste, Cooperazione ed Expo della Repubblica di San Marino e Media Evolution srl, riparte il contest-festival che porterà il vincitore all'Eurovision Song Contest dal 7 all'11 maggio 2024 a Malmö in Svezia, in rappresentanza della Repubblica di San Marino.

1 note · View note

silence-book-and-tea · 2 years

Text

“Ayer finalmente se ha vendido la casa vieja. Y ahora nos ha dado una especie de impotencia. Como si se hubiera muerto un pariente y nos hubiésemos enterado seis meses después. Ganas de llorar para atrás: de haber llorado a tiempo. De ahora en adelante y para siempre nos va a faltar lo más importante del paisaje.”

Más respeto que soy tu madre - Hernán Casciari

#books #libros #quotes #frases #literature #literatura #literary quotes #frases literarias #más respeto que soy tu madre #hernán casciari #home #hogar

2 notes · View notes

djs-party-edm-italia · 3 months

Text

Il 24/2 su San Marino RTV Una Voce per San Marino, conducono Fabrizio Biggio e Greta Marchetto

Ospite d'onore della serata sarà Riccardo Cocciante.

Ecco gli artisti della categoria "big" ammessi alla finale:

Aaron Sibley

Aimie Atkinson

Jalisse

La Rua

Marcella Bella

Pago

Wlady, Corona, Ice Mc, Cameo: Dj Jad

Loredana Bertè

Si ringraziano:

San Marino Outlet Experience

Casperaki

Marlù

VW Reggini

Isobox

Febal Casa

Banca di San Marino

Promopharma

0 notes