Meet The 3 of Us

My name is
Bruce Morano.

To see all the pictures better on my web sites, you can click on the pictures to make them grow to full size. That way you can actually see them.

If your here for a resume this is the 1st one, there are others on this web sight if you want to go on and read about me and my life. If not just click on this, enlarge it, and right click that image and save it as a jpg or a gif to your desktop, or where ever.  
This is me with Jigglypuff, just hangin'

Here are some other pictures of me.
Some older... some newer

As I'm sure you can guess, the ones at the top are the older ones, yea me as a kid, Cute huh?

The ones below are just a few pix of me in a photoshop kinda way.

Now It's Time to Meet My Better Half

Maria Helena Theresa Barbara Bogetti ...
"Morano"

(Well that depends on what state your in, We've been engaged for 14 years)
In NYC with "Common Law", we are married in the eyes of the state.
In New Jersey, were not.
Being that NYC is where we've lived for most of our time together, we consider it our home. Plus the fact that we love New York and don't like NJ all that much, except to visit. Hey It's like living in WWII Germany and  with the Guestopo alive and well doing road blocks every Saturday Night.

Don't forget that you can click on all the picture to "Blow'em-up"

This was Marie when we met in 1987
Boy how time does fly, Huh?

The Story about Bruce -N- Marie

Where we were, Where we are now, and how. 

Now Marie can be found to be very happy, working at a restaurant in Belmar New jersey called Amici's. On Main St. I have to say this for us, we have a way of always making the best of whatever situation we find ourselves in. We're adaptable and go with the flow, whatever will be, will be.  Of course we would rather be in our home... Manhattan, New York, New York, or New York City, (The city so Nice they Named it Twice) After all we are city people and always will be. Do to a couple of factors in 1998 we moved to New Jersey to help with a sick family member, Guiliani shut down the union that I was about to get back into (Carpenter Local #135 ) after working for myself for the past 5 years or so, and Guiliani also screwed with New York so much that it started to seem like we were in some small town, with small town mentality, and small town cops, with tall buildings. No fireworks by kids on the 4th of July, you'd now be arrested for drinking a beer or smoking a joint in the street, where NYC Cops used to have real crime to worry about and let small stuff like that go. Guiliani  had implemented a plan called "Zero Tolerance - Quality of Life". Now the bodega's only sold snacks and drinks, they passed another law where if you get pulled over for DWI They KEEP you friggin' car!! In other words, the city wasn't the same city that Marie and I had come to know and love in the 60's  & all thru the 80's. A thing called Political Correctness happened... It sucked... So seeing that I had lost one parent the year before, and the 2nd one as diagnosed with the "Big C" as well, I wanted to be there for her if she needed me. Plus if I wasn't going to be working union carpentry anymore, it was time to sit down, talk with the mirror, and see just what I wanted to do with the 2nd half of my life. I worked while Marie took a sabbatical about 4 years earlier to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, after being in Real Estate in NYC for the last 10 years. Now it was my turn. About a year passed and I still didn't have a clue. I knew that I wanted to get into law, but I also knew that the state wasn't about to pay for me to do that after seeing my past scholastic achievements.  I was a guitarist, singer/songwriter, in the early 80's, people used to love some of my songs. I'd done some acting off, off Broadway. I write poetry, and I used to draw rather well, so I knew that I was creative, at least a bit more than most people, and a classic "nonconformist" or "rebel"  or what some call "free-spirited". I was about to turn 40 rather soon and I was really interested in getting something with good benifits and something that i liked & wanted to do, rather than the summer job that I took in 1974 that wound up becoming my lifes work. The hourly wage don't mean a thing once you need to take time off due to illness or whatever. I used to make $60 an hour with medical and dental while I was in the union. Then i came here to NJ and all the contractors want to do is pay you $20 (at the most) with NO BENEFITS, and you have to pay for all your own tools, truck, insurance, no vacations, no sick days. It sounds OK until life does what life does, and that's makes you go to the hospital every 20 years or so. Then no hospital will even take you until you cough up the cash. If you've ever stayed in a hospital for more than a day, you'll know that what you thought was a decent bank account, aint shit after about a 3 days in the hospital. They don't give a shit about any Hippocratic oaths, no money, no honey. You can go to the clinic, sit there in pain from 6:00am, and hopefully they get to you that day, most of the time you have to start all over the next day, and hope that they get to see you and when they do it's for about 2 minutes, they don't speak English, or care. it lasts for about 2 minutes. or the 1st questions are "how do plan on paying for this?" and you get MINIMAL amount of care. IE: if you have a tooth ache you have 2 options...1)- they'll let you go and hope it gets better....or.... pull it!. That's it! No fillings, or root canals no nothing. Unless your on Welfare, and that takes at least 50 days before you get an answer as to weather or not you'll be accepted. And thats after spending 3 - 5 full days waiting in those dungy offices, (depending on how cold it is outside) on line for 5 hours for a meeting that lasts about 2 minutes, by someone that doesn't give a shit about you, or your pain or your troubles, seems to be pissed and over worked and jaded...it's degrading. This was in the early 90's it's harder now. 

    Well here we are back in New Jersey" the police state full of white, sheltered, know nothing about the real world except for what they read in the papers or see on the nightly news, prejudice, basically educated but still ignorant, alcoholic, high school mentality, opinionated, sheep." (Excuse me, but, this is how New Yorkers see the people at the Jersey Shore) but as I said we make the best of a crummy situation. I answer an ad for "Cable Installers"  I thought it would have good benefits. I get to the office's address in the ad and they tell me to take this test, it was called JTPL or something like that. I do. I come back in 2 weeks. The counselor says to me..."Your test results say that your creative. (It was an aptitude test) "What do you want to do?" I said, I thought that this was for cable installers, she said, well, if that's what you want to do. I asked, what are my choices? She hands me a book full of jobs that I'd be good for. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Then it hit me. I've been sitting home watching my documentary programs on A&E, Discovery, The History channel, PBS, TLC. etc...I saw about 40 computer commercials everyday, and had never even seen one (a computer that is). I said well, is there something that I can do that creative people can do with computers? She said Computer Graphics. Next thing I knew was that she had me signed up with Henkles & McCoy, where I learned the basics on Office 98. Then the next school was Teksolv where, I learned about Computer Graphics, on Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, QuarkXPress, PowerPoint and FrontPage 2000. After another year of job hunting I sw how competitive this field is and decided that I needed more schooling. I applied for Financial Aid, and started with Katherine Gibbs. It is a very complete, intensive, course called "Viscom" (Visual Communications) Where I work with the same graphics programs as Teksolv, plus Director, Flash, Dreamweaver, Go_Live  and Lightwave 3D computer animation. So here I am about 3 years after moving here going for my AA Degree then my Bachelors Degree. If you told me about 4 years ago that i'd be working with computers, getting Honor roll, straight "A's", and a college Degree, I'd have called you crazy. Thats what I mean when I say that we are flexible, and adaptive. Hit us with a curve and we (Marie & I) usually knock it out of the park. Whatever we put our minds to we wind up doing better than most and to say the least different than most. We don't hold, "having kids and doing the 9 to 5 thing, having a large bank account and all that suburbia stuff" as dear as most of our relatives seem to. We think that if your saying "kids bring more happiness to your life", that your living your life wrong. Nobody with children will admit this, but the main reason for having children is vanity. If it wasn't due to conceit then they would adopt, but they usually have a reason like, "I want to feel a life inside me, we would have such a smart or good looking child, we could be better parents than others", etc... the key words there being "I" or "We" If they truly just wanted to raise a child, for the reason they always give (love) They could give their "love" to an adopted child, they could help the overpopulation problem, the poverty problem, the hunger problem, the unwanted children problem, etc...but no, they want their own kids. VANITY...See what I mean. Anyway to get back to what i was saying,   we couldn't be happier with each other and being able to do whatever we want to whenever we want to, we can actually be broke and still be happy. We just aren't the material type and we don't really care about what the "Joneses" think. Actually I think the jones are stupid vain assholes, who spend more money on their landscaping, than helping a human being.  Oh sure we were at one point, but we grew out of that when we had all the money we wanted in the early 80's and almost self destructed. We learned that true happiness comes from inside. It sounds corny but it's true. People that think money will make them happy never had it, or they'd know it doesn't. Sorry to sound belligerent  but it's true. Whatever we put our heads to we do great. We are highly motivated and have alot of experience to bring to the table. We're engaged for about 14 years now. We feel that marriage is an outdated institution, except if you want to have kids. I still do some volunteer work at the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center. I believe in giving back to the people who saved my life and the people that I can relate to, New York has some of the best programs for addicts, abused children, alcoholics, abused wives, the homeless, etc... New Jersey should try helping some of the less fortunate in their state, but that might actually put the money that everybody in this state pays to good use. I find it funny that when I listen to talk radio here in NJ that most of the people think that junkies, convicts, homosexuals and people of color and foriegners are something that they have to control or get rid of. While this state has the highest racial profiling and alcoholic rate in the US. They all have someone that fits into one of the categories that I mentioned, somewhere in there families yet they don't want to admit that say, a methadone clinic would be a great idea, to have in their town. NIMBY state = NJ...Not In My Back Yard. "Just make "more prisons and put them all away" I ask you, have you ever heard something more ignorant in your life? what good does treating a medical issue as if it were a legal one do anybody? Imagine if everybody that needed glasses had to do 9 months for having bad eyes? Whats that got to do with anything you ask? Well having a faulty character flaw that caused someone to need drugs to feel comfortable, than become an addict, came from the same place that caused someone to have crappy eyesight and then need glasses to feel comfortable. So lets punish addicts that need medical attention and people that need glasses the same way as well. Right? sonds dumb when it's put that way doesn't it. Thats because treating drug addiction with jail time is dumb, and useless.  Just look at the stats, and see how many junkies that have had their freedom taken away came out of jail and stayed away from drugs. Usually that is the 1st thing they do on their 1st day out.  They Get high!!! I'll save the political arguments for another page, at a later date. For now, lets just get back to our story....

The only part that I didn't mention is where we got Mushie. (A Lhasa Apso...Dog) We had credit cards in the early 80's while the Real Estate business was kickin' (it was good)  the union had all the work I could take, and I had a business renovating the brownstones on The Lower East Side. Marie called me at work one day and said that she just stopped in a pet store on 2nd ave. and 54th street. She said, "Honey, I'm holding the cutest little Lhasa Apso Puppy in the world!" I'm going to buy him. He's $900. I screamed NO WAIT!!!!. I promise, if we don't see a better one this weekend by going to local private breeders. See Marie was always a big dog lover, as was I until about 3 years earlier when I was living with an "X" of mine who had a Lhasa Apso. I fell in love with Lhasa's then. I turned Marie onto them in the city by every time I saw one, I'd stop and talk to the dog, and Marie was with me most of the time. So she got to hear about the breed through others that own them and love them, and me. We went to answer an ad for Lhasa Apso puppies in Brooklyn. The lady was the greatest lady that I ever met. A single parent, with birds, Hamsters, gerbils, cats and dogs, and the apartment was spotless and odorless. We took the most adorable looking little puppie home and he didn't even go through the anxiety of leaving his Mom n Dad. He never even bark for the 1st 3years. I'm sorry, but to all you dog lovers out there that think they have the best, you don't...I do...Sorry. 

    So that's the story about how a Real Estate agent and a Union Carpenter have one career for 22 years then at about midlife, adapt to the changes in their lives and become, a waitress, and a graphic Artist, computer graphics specialist, animator. I have to say that I've had a very full life this far. I've been a in-ground pool installer, waiter, busboy, guitarist, singer/songwriter, actor, mason, union finish carpenter/cabinet maker, millionaire before I was 30, Welfare recipient (6 years later) addict, and drug counselor. Up & Down Top To Bottom, I'm enjoying' myself. I finally found what it is that I'm here to do.
 Computer Graphics.

Here we are today as we live and breath
with our "Son" Mushie" a Lhasa Apso 10 years old.

Here is the part where I let you get board with looking
at pictures of my dog. The best dog on the face of the earth.
(except for maybe Gromit)

Here He Is
-Mushie -
The Lhasa Apso

(Click to enlarge)

Mush is with me ALL the time. dats me buddy!

No that's not the dog, that's me being dogged.
Ahhhh....Sushi ....(murrrppp...bahh)  n saki  (N butts) ---Jes call me "Ol Dead Eye"
Sometimes I still revert back to that "Rock -N- Roll Lifestyle"

Marie, Clara, and Marlene
The 3 Bogetti Sisters

A collage of Marie, Me, Mushie, Marlene, Clara, Nikki, and a puppy at St. Marks Place
(Only Marie and I were really there, (right) ...Thanks Photoshop!)

On the "links" page you have a section at the bottom to add your comments and to e-mail us  or you can do it right here.   Briamor@hotmail.com

Bruce's Graphics,
Animations
 Graphic Artist and Web Designer