The Roman Roundtable Lives

Some may recall how this whole cdt/roundtable nonsense began: Oscar (superhero name: Blogistuta), Andrea (superhero name: Supernarutocatsupman), and myself (Wonder Woman) had discussions centered uponoccasionally involving Roma. Something like a podcast without a pod. And they became publishable. Well, we thought they did, even if the internets might disagree. Then Andrea disappeared to conquer the high seas and things sort of fell apart, along with life impacting the remaining twosome; but mostly, Google killed us, because they killed Google Wave, our collaboration medium of choice. And then something was found. And we were found. And two lines of trialing between two of the original three turned into hours of life-sucking conversation. And suddenly...the inevitable is upon us?

If you're looking for actual info on AS Roma and/or intelligent discussion...well, this is not the place for you. The roundtable returns. With Michael Caine. (As Michael Caine.)

* - May contain spoilers from The Dark Knight Rises, though all quotes seem to be from trailers, and definitely contains spoilers from The Dark Knight, and if you haven't seen that, well, you need to reassess your life, if only due to its omnipresence.

[Enters room]

chris: Nostalgia.

oscar: Wow. An alternate universe where Google Wave lives on.

chris: Totally forgot how dangerous Wave is. My mind is pregnant with all these ideas and I just want to give birth to them.

Nevermind.

oscar: My mind hasn't been able to stop thinking what else of the past is still out there, in an alternate universe.

Ranieri's luck?

Mèxes' space mullet?

All attackers who fell into the Bermuda Triangle® between 2007 and 2010?

chris: Was this how it all began? Just shooting the shit and all of a sudden, it became publishable? (Liberal use, of course.) I sparked one for the New Kids last evening and Dhaw hopped on. Two hours later, I came to the realization we'd been lost in conversation and I hadn't accomplished anything I'd set out to.

This is like internet cocaine; it'll tear your life apart, but when it's good, it's good.

oscar: I think this is how it began, yes.

I wanted to say "with lots of editing", but I recall tons of stuff of questionable relation to Roma, or logic, being published. So maybe not.

chris: I believe the first ever post centered around manga and condiments. Which is just fantastic in hindsight.

What it did remind me of was the nerve-wracking panic of writing in real-time with others watching; something like writing in the nude for anyone who publishes on the internet.

oscar: I'm being a gentleman, and switching to a different tab on the browser for a while after I'm done.

Because I would hate to imagine anyone seeing my fumbling towards a coherent point and correctly spelled words.

chris: What, you're not used to neurotically attempting to write faster, better, stronger in your daily life because everyone else might be watching?

The gentlemanly thing is a good idea. Two years on. Behind the curve, Iyam.

oscar: Behind the curve, ahead of the curve...who can tell?

chris: I am the curve?

oscar: I'm beginning to fear being trapped in this platform for 2½ weeks straight. I'll come out on the other side with a DDR beard and torn clothes, the whole works.

Not that I'm complaining, this is amazing.

chris: Google Wave's Rapture plus Zeman in T-minus...four days? The title will need be amended from 'Outro' to 'Intermission is now over' rather quickly.

I could get lost in here until May. Easily. Mumbling to myself, bearded and still not having put on a shirt.

oscar: This could easily become the most common words spoken/mumbled by me to other people in my vicinity: "I just need to check something real quick onlinehmmmmm"

Did the theme from Indiana Jones just play where you're at too? No, just my head? M'kay then.

Aw man! Record scratch in my head now.

chris: Sterling's getting in fairly shortly and I'm scrapping the outro idea. There is no way this platform can exist and not be a crucial, all-consuming portion of my life. It's like finding lost love.

Is this The Notebook redux?

oscar: Yes, yes, a million times yes.

chris: I can see him dropping 4000 words on how the movements of Zeman's system in the final third mirror the BPM structure of some entirely obscure TECHNOMUZIK. (Everything is house gets capped, right?)

oscar: Once Andrea gets on this, I hope they start debating the merits of the TECHNOMUZIK and this.

chris: (Somewhat tangential: the I. Jones theme music is blaring right now in my loft.)

And I keep expecting Bojan to pop up in the Catsup video, shoulder shimmying and all.

Yes, I watched the whole thing.

No, that may not be repeated.

oscar: I'm gonna need a minute here to recover from that laugh attack.

Okay, functional personal again.

chris: Testing... [image uploading]

...buffering...

...buffering...

...There's commentary in Enrique's football here somewhere...

(Hoping image...uploads work. And there we go. This is, I am, complete.)

oscar: Can we establish some ground rules, post fact?

No mention of last year. Like, at all. Or only if it's really funny.

chris: This is about to turn into a psychological experiment, then. "What is one Romanista's cracking point? How long can he last?"

oscar: Oh, I'm denying I know what Roma is if a student or psychologist ever asks. I know we're prime goods to them, they're not getting their hands on me. They'd have me in there for decades. One of them would be spent on Adriano alone.

chris: Speak of the devil, I came across two very curious things yesterday:

i. Adriano signing on as both a player for Flamengo and head spokesman for The Mansierre.

ii. Adriano, AS Roma right winger.

We should get medals for surviving this club.

oscar: My. God.

This is beginning to feel like 6th Sense or something; I may be dead already. The stress and heartbreak this club produces is like none other.

My God.

chris: Is this a dream within a dream within a dream? Romaception.

Catsup song is on fourth repeat.

I fucking need help.

oscar: This is why we're here.

(Not to help. But to point, laugh and aggravate the hurt. As friends do.)

chris: Wait...

What if Christopher Nolan directed/coached AS Roma?

Ignore the fact that every coach for the last umpteen years has been a puppet for David Fincher Lynch. (I will never not get those two confused. Never.)

oscar: I don't even want to know whose dream Adriano was, or the various layers of hurt we'd find on that level.

Bottomline: meeting Michael Caine/having him narrate the hurt would be appreciated. We should get on that.

chris: So given Nolan's "stable," if you will...

Leo: Francesco

Joseph G. Levitt: ...err..come back to this.

Tom Hardy: Daniele De Beardo (simply done by recreating his character from Bronson)

Marion Cotillard: Rosella

Michael Caine: I want to put Saba here, but their personalities don't mesh. Baldini?

Cillian Murphy: Bojan

oscar: I didn't even catch this at the time, but it just made sense to me. Very few outlets reported on it, but this is what Sabatini told Preziosi during the Destro negotiations: "Theatricality and deception; powerful agents to the uninitiated. But we are initiated."

Holy f.

chris: That trench Hardy is always sporting makes a lot of sense now, presuming he's simply been practicing for his role as Sabatini and wears nothing underneath by an insatiable lust for teenaged South American boys.

oscar: I'm gonna derail this soon, because I could match Bane quotes with a whole lot of people in Roma. I need to be constrained.

chris: All I've got is Marco Borriello, "The fire rises."

But the balm helps?

oscar: You win. Everything.

Ok, one more:

"No one cared who I was until I put on the mask."

chris: I can see Baldini saying, in perfectly mimicked Bane voice, "It doesn't matter who we are; what matters is our plan."

oscar: Yes. Yes. Yes. God yes.

I can also see someone--maybe even myself--saying about Roma, come May: "You fight like a younger man, with nothing held back. Admirable, but mistaken."

That's all I ask this team be remembered for.

chris: That might be real, prescient genius.

oscar: And Zeman has probably already reassured Stekelenburg during the preseason:

"Now is not the time for fear; that comes later.

Most likely about five seconds after this happened.

chris: Burdisso: "Ohhhh, you think darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding."

This, of course, after shattering someone's fibula, tibia, etc, etc.

oscar: So that's indisputable proof that Nolan is inceptioning us all: I can totally see Burdisso saying that afterthat tackle in 2010 on Daniele Conti.

chris: "There's evil rising from where we tried to bury it."

Mirko? Mexes? Christian Panucci circa January 2009?

oscar: I'm trying to think of who Mirko would be in a Nolan universe. Struggling with it.

chris: Harvey Dent.

Do we have the organizational funds to hire out Ermes to overlay this soundtrack and dialogue over a Roma reel, with De Rossi as Bane and anyone else as I-don't-really-care?

oscar: Never would the organization's fund have been better spent. This has to happen.

(The first 10 seconds of that trailer is about Zeman, if you didn't know. Set back in May.)

I just thought of an idea that could would make football the best thing ever: instead of insisting on that terrible countdown to kick-off thing they did in the Euros, every game everywhere will play a recording of Bane saying "Let the games begiiiin!"

chris: Bane makes everything better. Just...everything.

I would pay incredible amounts of money to see DDR put the Bane mask on while walking out of the tunnel.

oscar: He'd pull it off, too.

chris: True.

And Bojan can be Rachel. All of them.

So does this make Lazio the League of Shadows and Lotito Ra's al Ghul?

oscar: Ra's al Ghul has to be someone genuinely brilliant. Lotito would be miscast, kind of. No?

chris: "Kind of"?

There's no other evil entity I'd like to cast as "genuinely brilliant," at least as far as the upper reaches of Serie A goes, so perhaps we can bring Heath Ledger into the fray here. The league is short on neither clowns nor insanity.

oscar: De Laurentiis would do a pretty good Joker. A dog chasing cars, and all that.

Can we get Michael Caine to be Michael Caine? I know I obsess, but in my defense it is Michael Caine.

chris: Only so long as he spends the whole time doing Michael Caine impressions.

oscar: I would pay more money than I could afford to see that. Scene: I think he's dead. I buried him a long time ago. Then one day, at a café in Firenze, where I've gone to practice my Michael Caine impressions. I sit down, and look up. I see Pek and his girlfriend. We nod, and smile.

THE END

chris: Can Osvaldo be the homeless dude who gets Bruce Wayne's coat in the first movie?

This began as actors from Nolan films as Romans but has spliced in Romans playing characters from Batman films. I am entirely confused and my mind is slightly inside of itself.

ROMACEPTION.

oscar: Registering that domain right goddamn now.

chris: Speaking of acquired domains, cdt recently acquired a Photoshop specialist who's tagging along some mint baggage.

He could probably ink a Roma-Batman hybrid comic book.

(Trying not to get too excited.)

oscar: This is one of those times I feel handicapped by my not using emoticons. I need something to visually communicate my body language turning into that of the wolf from Droopy Dog.

chris: What needs to happen, right now, is a Kickstarter to launch an AS Roma graphic novel, of which we'll then sell the film rights to Christopher Nolan as we name Michael Caine acting as Michael Caine doing impressions of Michael Caine as company president.

oscar: I don't know how to improve on that. At all.

chris: My mind is exhausted from an overload of awesome.

oscar: It's been thrilling. Had to check that I hadn't spent the previously mentioned 2½ weeks here, but no DDR beard so probably not.

When can we go back into the matrix?

chris: Can I admit that I've never really seen it - The Matrix? Bits and bobs, but nothing continuous. Plus I can barely handle comic book-derived films without my head melting into a pool of IQ four.

I also had to go searching. It has been, and I have been as well, found.

(And this is absolutely getting published.)

oscar: We're not what the Internets need, but what it deserves.

chris: Cut.

[To be continued.]