I AM COLORADO'S COUSIN VINNY WHETHER I LIKE IT OR NOT

By Vinny Del Giudice
Editor, Daily Sketch

I am prone to being misunderstood, even disdained, here in Colorado as I am indeed a loud Italian-American stereotype from “Back East.”

It’s not intentional.

Far from it:

My name is Vinny, born in North Jersey, Exit 16W on the NJ Turnpike, generous nose, 5-foot-6, 177 pounds, curly - albeit now gray - hair. I like slapping on cheap after-shave. Copious amounts.

And, of course, there’s “That Voice” as they call it here - my memorable North Jersey dulcet tone, which has generated acclaim far and wide over 30-plus years on Bloomberg Radio.

Yes - “That Voice!”

I am an “anomaly” in the Centennial State.

I am a walking, talking, wise-cracking and occasionally profane character. (No gold chains or pinky rings, though.)

I am a genuine “Cousin Vinny” - ala the Joe Pesci character navigating life far from New York in the Deep South in the 1992 comedy “My Cousin Vinny.”

For those living in a cave, the character Vinny Gambini was a hapless but street-smart Brooklyn defense attorney working on a murder case in rural Alabama.

I can identify with his travails.

I once referred to a bovine’s "antlers" (they have horns), cringed when I learned of the contents of the local delicacy “Rocky Mountain Oysters,” bent over in front of a snorting bull on my in-laws’ farm - and accepted as fact that there is such a thing as a “Colorado Jackelope” roaming the land. There isn’t.

(Cousin Vinny’s gems included: “Sure, I've heard of grits. I just never actually seen a grit before.”)

I have also been elbowed repeatedly over the years by my Colorado farm girl wife for offering sociological commentary in the presence of genuine cowboys and farmers.

Nonetheless, I do like it here. I enjoy Colorado as a journalist and a resident - adopted (by marriage) by the descendants of a homesteader. My wife’s grandfather arrived about the year 1913 DHD (“Damn hard days,” as they used to mutter) on the Eastern Colorado prairie.

And I avoid Colorado Jackalopes.

[Photo: Wikipedia]