Hi. I'm Niro. But you can call me Gary.

Q: What's up with "NiroScene" and that wacky "Niro" handle? And shouldn't it be spelled "N-E-R-O" if that's the way it' pronounced?

A: About the "Niro" moniker (since a fellow just emailed me to see if we were related -- hi Jim!): I chose a variant of Niro as my first AOL screenname in 1992.

Having been a lifelong Robert DeNiro fan, when it asked me to select a screenname that premiere time I loaded the "free" AOL diskette, I found myself typing "DeNiroB" for "DeNiro, Bob." Within two months I went to work for them as a Room Host ~ FlirtDNiro ~ eventually becoming quasi~famous for my Flirts Nook parties. This was back when AOL was tres cool and people actually got to know one another there. Sometimes all too well.

One night, RaveOn (one of the Nook denizens) began shortening it to "Niro" and it stuck. I've kept it through several ISPs and generally use it on boards (gaming and bulletin), in fantasy sports leagues etc.



Q: Gotcha. But what about the real you?

A: Welllllll, born in Dayton, Ohio during the night of March 31, 1955 [the day all coupons expire], I was nearly an April Fool. Which might have explained everything.

Q: Is that a cigarette in your hand in that picture above?

A: Ahhhh... the "burning" questions this early? To be true it is, in fact, a Carlton Menthol but the photo was taken in 1999: my last drag on the filter was on May 30, 2001... nary so much as a puff since. Not of tobacco at least, but that's a mere smoke~screen, no?

Q: Any other pix to share with us?

A: Of course, you idiot! You think I spent all of this time building a website just to talk? Here's the earliest~known photo of me, still in my mother's womb, two months pre~Earth. Now how did I get this affinity for beer and cigarettes? Oh well. From left is my dad, my mom & me, my very favorite Uncle Bob, Grandma Nan and [barely] Gramps. The other one's Dad holding me at the pool. I know what you're thinking: "Wow Gary, you're barely five months old here, but I sure can see where you got your amazing abs & pecs! Seriously dude, that acorn fell so far from the tree that it turned all mushy over the winter and pretty much never developed into the oak it wanted to be." To which I retort: Yep. But it had a lot of fun trying. Do read on, McFluff.

As a youngster [in the early~to~mid '60s], our family lived in Chicago Heights, Illinois ~ one of several lily~white suburbs in which I grew up. During that vast bastion of Vietnam~era feel~good times, Mom & Dad trekked to the 1964 World's Fair in NYC. The image in this picture might be the very happiest I've ever seen my mother. But like all Republican dreams, this would turn out to be a fantasy. PS: nice socks, Dad ;)



My next door neighbor at the time, Craig, was my best friend: we spent most waking moments creating badges, race cars, and slimy bugs with the "Vac~U~Form" and "Creepy Crawlers" toys. Craig's family was the only one in our neighborhood which had an in~ground pool. Craig's parents, shown below at left, were way cool [ie. their barroom fridge always stocked with those great 7-oz. Coca~Colas];)

In February of 2000 I located Craig, his brother Jeff and sister Lynn via the 'net ~ unbelievable: I'd been looking for them for 30 years.

On the right is a shot of my mother in the pool back then. Mom couldn't swim if her life depended on it ~ and she's the world traveler of my family ~ she went to Spain this year: thanks for the castinets & maracas, Mom!




The baby in the below photo is my late brother, Scott, when he was a new~born [he died of non~Hodgkins lymphoma on June 1 of 1995, just after he turned 33] ~ my younger sister stands in the background.

Click HERE To Read An Essay About This Pic

Here's that topless shot of the kid with the incredi~pecs, taken in Ludington, Michigan, where we used to vacation when we lived in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin... ahhh, the good old daze...



We moved into this perfect Victorian house in Wauwatosa in 1965. 20' high beamed ceiling, balcony overlooking it, me and Scott on the third floor. I still want to buy this home eventually, even though this is where the perfect family happy ending pretty much crashed into an apocalyptic ball of flames for me. The good news is that 'Tosa's where I met my best friend, Mark, and his family ~ most of whom you'll see below a bit...



My father left in 1972. I'll spare you the sordid details and just say that Dad married a witch, was divorced again a year or so later and moved back to Illinois. Fortunately, his story has a mostly~great ending.

Meanwhile, Mom, "the best gourmet~cooking housewife before gourmet cooking was hip," who hadn't worked since she helped to put my father through college some 20 years earlier, was forced to take a job at a bakery, selling doughnuts to pay the mortgage on the cool house and to put food on our table, juggling parent~teacher meetings with raising us. For which we will never stop loving you, Mom~boy. Thanks for every little thing...

Following this turn of events, I didn't speak with my father for several years.

Mom met a great guy at "Parents Without Partners" in 1972. She and Bill moved to Columbus, Ohio, while I went to college at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh [by gosh] in September. This next photo is of Mom, Kim, Scott and me during a wacked moment: Mom had ordered some sculpture~dealie and it was filled with those round styrofoam packing things. So we stuck them in our eyes and had Bill take a picture.



Here's Kim and me in her first apartment, circa 1978. Note the "rock 'n roll journalist" hair on moi. Also the Springsteen "Darkness on the Edge of Town" tour T. Kim baked me and Bill the birthday cake at right [our birthdays are two days apart], as well as a dinner I'll never forget: perfect mostocciolli. Mmmmmm.



In 1979 I brought Scott with me to the VIP section of one of my good friends, concert promoter Joyce Halasa's "Legend Valley" concerts. This one featured Def Leppard, the Scorpions, J. Geils and Ted Nugent. I took him to my interview with Def, who were 21 or so at the time. The first words out of their mouths were "got any pot?" Fortunately we did, and my interview was picked up by several rock 'n roll stringers. At right is Scott, jammin' at home.




Here's a photo of me in 1981, in my 2nd apartment. Nice 'fro, eh?



Eventually, I reconciled with my father of course: from left in this July 4, 1982 shot is Grandma Hochberg [my dad's mother], Scott and his girlfriend at the time, Dad, moi, Kim and Mike...



Same beach, my dad's mom, Jamie [my girlfriend then], me, dad's wife's kids and his third and present wife, a pretty cool woman named Kay...



Cut to 1999: Kay & Grandma, with Kay's grandson Blake, son of that cutie on my lap in the pic above [my step~sister Michelle]... Grandma passed away after an incredibly long and mostly very happy life on August 11, 2001. She was 96.



Here's the power of image editing, especially when the original scan is too yellow: Chelle [mother of Blake] and her eldest son, Tyler, before and after ~ it's not perfect, but the pic she sent me was a 300k bitmap and now it's a 19k pic with better color ;)



This is Bill and Scott building what has to be the most earthquake~proof multi~level deck ever created in Ohio ~ 6 x 2's for the substructure? Oh yeah ~ turns out that Scott got the pecs after all.



Scott & me chillin' in the hot~tub at our mom's surprise 59th birthday party on the structurally~sound deck he and Bill built. I'm the one having a seriously bad hair year, while surprisingly yet simultaneously wearing Ray Milland's specs from "The Man With The X~Ray Eyes"...



Same party, Mom & my niece Kinzie, who fortunately has lost her passion for popping her top whenever she's offered a free piece of gum ;)



Me and the coolest pet we ever had, Mindy Sue, who split for the Pet Sematary several years back. She gave new meaning to the term "woman's best friend." We miss you with all our hearts, Mindy. Oh. And still another haircut on me.



March 8, 1989: Grammie Barb holding the newly~introduced Kinzie Marie. Mindy, unfazed, feigns disinterest. Mom really isn't orange: this pic was a lot worse quality before I edited it.



This is a shot of my mother and Scott, on his last Thanksgiving with the family in 1994.



Next up is my fully~grown sister and her wacky family; from left: my nephews Paul Jack, the latest actor of the family, aka PJ, and his bro Andy the loon [both of whom are pretty computer literate, but more interested in gaming]; to their right is their sister and my favorite niece, the stunning Kinzie Marie, whom we lovingly call The Kinzelator. Behind her is her dad and my dear belly~bumping~brother~in~law, Mike, who's a really terrific family man and one of the truly good guys. Far right is my wonderful sister, Kimberly, who's helped me through a lot of life's foibles, both good and evil. I love you, Kim.



Here's a pic of TWBM [token white boy ME], circa 1997, with one of my best friends in the world, KD, and his Uncle Bobby, & Kenny's step~son Roland, for whom I used to babysit. This shot was taken during Roland's senior year at Syracuse, where he was the starting tight end. You may recognize him as the starting tight end for the Y2K Super Bowl Champions, THE ST. LOUIS RAMS ~ although Roland signed as a free agent in 2001 with the Raiders (for $12 MILLION -- that's a lotta bonez, RW). KD was my next~door neighbor during much of the time I spent in Columbus, Ohio, where he still lives. Hey Kenny, my brutha! Whasssssssaaaaahhhhh.....




Roland, on the sidelines and catching a pass at the Silverdome vs. the Lions, September 2, 1999...






These are the Leunig boys, in front of their Wauwatosa homestead, where I spent virtually all of my time from 1965 through 1972. This is my other family: they taught me all I know about politics, activism, social conscience, music, and partying. In other words, they're liberal Democrats [or at least were back then]. From left is my oldest and best friend Mark, brothers Dan, me, Tom and John. This photo was taken the day before John's wedding.




Here are the Leunigs' parents, George and Anne, who have treated me like a son since the day I first set foot in their home. I really wouldn't be who I am without them. They even let me stay at their house the summer before college, when Mom and Bill moved to Columbus. This one's also from John and his lovely wife Patty's wedding.




I've saved the best for last, in this Leunig chapter: this next pic's of me, dancing with the sole Leunig sis & daughter, Diane, who to my mind never looked more beautiful. This was at Mark and the wonderful and gorgeous Kate's wedding (that's them on the right). Diane was the one who baked us cinnamon sticky~buns and made Kool~Aid for us when we got finished with one of our legendary marathon basketball games. She's the one we paid so that she wouldn't tell George or Anne that we'd been making out with our girlfriends on the family sofa.

Diane was diagnosed with cancer at almost the exact time that I was involved in a near~fatal auto accident, in late 1986 or early 1987. It was a very eerie period of my life: each time Diane made progress, so did I. The first time I walked again, she was announced as in complete remission. When I had bad weeks, she had them as well. To my great sadness, the best little sister this side of my own passed away a year or so later. We love and miss you, gorgeous.




On April 18, 1999, Mark, his son Joe, and my father all came to town to see Mark's Yankees play the Tigers in historic Tiger Stadium, which closed that year. All are huge baseball fans and this was the first time Mark, Dad and I were together since 1972. It was a blast. In 1969, Dad had gotten me and Mark out of school to drive to Chicago to see the Mets win their 100th game for the first time ever. We got to meet all of the Miracle Mets, including Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Tommy Agee and the rest. Now that was an unforgettable day.




After the ballgame we headed to one of the most legendary baseball bars in America, Hoot Robinson's, for a few pops. It's always incredible to be in the same place where virtually every ballplayer from Babe Ruth to Ken Griffey, Jr. has tipped a glass. I like the guy in the foreground, the dead~drunk one who thinks he's fooling me by giving me the finger.



This is my buddy Joey ~ a most excellent dude and the one who taught me to love hockey & the Wings. We work together and he's also in a lot of the Fantasy Sports leagues we have in the office. He's the Simpsons afficionado who finds most of the Simpsons links you'll see on my Fun & Oddities page. The connoisseur will note that Joe's got a 1999 Harley Fatboy. He also has a cool Jeep. And a pair of Jet~Skis. And a life. Man, this is beginning to make me sick. Middle~age really sucks.




One day in 1998, a few weeks after Joey and I had front~row standing positions at the last turn of the newly~crowned two~time Stanley Cup winners' celebratory parade in downtown Detroit [which drew more than a million fans, only a handful of whom were shot dead by street~gang members]...

Zzzzz... where was I? Oh yeah. Joe heard that a woman from our company's billing department was having lunch with the guy who drives the Stanley Cup from town to town: each player gets to spend a day or so with the Cup in their hometown, their favorite bar, or just hanging with it. In between it's featured around the city who's won it, where hockey fans spend hours and hours waiting in line just to see the bloody thing.

Shocked and elated were we to find out that our billing gal had talked Stanley~boy into bringing the Cup into our offices. Everyone grabbed a camera and ran to this conference room where we all got to raise Lord Stanley's Cup. Unless you're a hockey fan, you can't comprehend this never~in~a~lifetime dream. Unfortunately, the gal who shot this picture had a camera whose film had been damaged by heat, so the photo is awful [much like my hair]. But the feeling was beyond words. Oh yeah: the pix of Joey hoisting, kissing and generally doing things to the Cup which can only be described on the pages of Penthouse Forum came out perfectly [lucky bastard]... I'll scan one of them eventually.




This is my photographer/drummer buddy Rob, working my kits in the basement. The best drummer I know, he moved to Seattle in 2000 to work on a CD at the same studios Alice In Chains uses. He also helped me pick out most of my drums. Thanks homey!




Hey look! It's the Moores! These poor people never get out. At least not to Hungary. Where this photo was taken. They used this as their Christmas card and I still can't find a reference to Christmas here: do they even celebrate Christmas in Hungary? And if not, was it really worth my spending 47 minutes trying to enhance the horticultural background on this pic before giving up entirely? Guess what? Turns out that Hungary's as bland as we saw in those David Wolper WWII documentaries! Anyway, Tim's my dentist, my magic partner and my adult~life~long friend. I've been trying to steal his knockout wife, Nancy, for years [and trust me, she ain't going nowhere ~ the Moores have the 2nd best marriage of which I'm aware ~ the lead belonging to Mark & Kathy]. Tim won the International Brotherhood of Magicians' competition as both a so~called "junior" and as an adult, one of very few magi who can make that claim. We've spent more hours together practicing and talking magic than one could Elmsley Count, and I smile warmly whenever I think of them. Now Tim's also among the most noted magic collectors in the country. He's also a great dentist (more nitrous, please). Almost forgot their boys, Ryan & Michael. We always play computer games when I visit. And they win.




This one, from 1984, stars the hat boyz: bareback Scott is in the foreground while bearded me is in back [I'm still pissed that he inherited the "build" genes]...

The Last From Me...For Now

Nowadays I'm in the far north Oakland County lakes~area suburbs of Detroit, toiling away as the Sr. Network Routing Engineer for a major global telecommunications company. We've got ships!

I'm also a coming~out~of~retirement professional close~up magician, specializing in dice magic. I began studying the magical arts (sleight of hand, not the current "Magic: The Gathering" card fad) when I was eight and now I spend some time mentoring a talented young magicienne named Megan Carol Gennette [see my Magic page for more on all of that]...

My past also includes rock journalism: I interviewed virtually every band which toured from 1978~82. I'm not mentioning names here because if I forget one, their record companies' AR departments will email me for failing to do so. Suffice to say that I can't listen to classic rock... because, HEY! I lived it the first time!

On a side~note, I was one of the journalists interviewed on the radio the night that Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon (12/8/80) and was barely capable of words... fortunately Chapman's now 45 (my age) and was just denied parole on his first attempt at it (10/3/00). Lennon might have been the greatest true rock singer ever. At the time I even said that he should have gone after Paul if it was that big a deal to kill an ex~Beatle ~ but that was when McCartney had moved on to wretched "Silly Love Songs" and was about to sell the rights to the entire Beatles catalog to Michael "Hi! I'm A Pedophile!" Jackson. So when you hear a Beatles tune in a TV ad (which Lennon would have vehemently opposed), you're seeing "smell my one~handed glove" Mike collect a few more bucks to stock his Neverland Ranch with more kiddies.

And Lennon wrote what is probably the best revenge song ever made: "How Do You Sleep?" re: McCartney.

Back to Chapman ~ for me the real comedy is that he murdered Lennon in a vain attempt to gain the attention of Jodie Foster, who is among our greatest actresses ~ but who is clearly a lesbian, so MDC really never stood a chance. A true asshole, and one prays that now that he's lost his entire youth, he's someone's bitch in the maximum security prison in Attica.

Back to what I was talking about... the rock gig led to my helping to put together and managing an amazing band called The Sting (Get Stung!), which broke all of the club attendance records in Cowtown at the time. We were putting major metal spins on classic oldies before Van Halen made it popular [our incredi~drummer & co-founder, Dave Smith, walked into practice one day and suggested a serious version of Orbison's Pretty Woman several months before VH released it]. The band was a two~girl front [knockouts Linda Kerr & Kay Harris] with two ace guitars [Mike Nugent & Ed Means]; the bottom was provided by the excellent bassist, Pat Jeany, and David on the skins. Add Rusty's full light show and Bruce Kerr's ultra~sound and what we had was essentially the best local group in the midwest. I've gotta find some pix of the band to post here [my brother Scott took a boatload of them, so I know they're around]. We were also the first local act whose debut was covered by the major Columbus newspapers. Ours was the band that the national acts stopped by to sit in with after their shows: Rick Nielsen & Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick and Steve Marriott of The Faces and Peter Frampton's old band, Humble Pie spring to mind. T'was among the best eras of my life. Except for that fight between club owners Jed & Dave Pallone's bouncers vs. The Sting [we lost that one]. Hey Jed & Dave! BLOW YOURSELVES!

Sorry about that outburst but it's deserved. I'd post their frigging phone numbers here if I still had them [but there's always Directory Assistance for those who care]. Here's the next breast thing: their club manager, who ordered the "hit," a fairly~hot~yet~frigid witch named Kathy who'd just been doused with a full bottle of wine in the VIP section of one of Joyce Halasa's Legend Valley mega~star concerts: this one featured Def Leppard, the Scorpions, J. Geils and Ted Nugent. Eat this, Kat ~ revenge on the 'net is sweet ;)




Screw it ~ I'll post all three of the pix from that show on my Fun & Oddities page.
The guy in the left foreground is working a crossword puzzle I wrote for a contest of the paper I edited at the time. I called the enigma RockWords. First prize was a $1,000 stereo system. Remember, this was 1980 or so ~ when $1K grabbed a lot of equipment.

These daze I write the occasional poem and am working on a couple of never~to~be~finished screenplays.

I've also been a drummer/percussionist since I was 10 or so [thanks for that 1st red sparkle four~piece Kent kit, Dad!]. Pix of my current kits can be found on the Drums, Percussion & Music area of the site. Film has been my most serious passion for several years. Visit my Cinema page to see what I like (and what I don't): I have 4,000+ films in my house, which says a bit about my obsession.

On May 3, 2001, at precisely 7:20 PM, I finally met the woman I'd been waiting 45 years for: my one-and-only ~ the gorgeous Laura ~ at MagiFest, a magic convention in Columbus, Ohio no less. Completely unbelievably, she too lives in MI.

This is the same convention where I performed in 1976 (see the Magic page for pix).

The same convention where Laura's mother Susan, a magician at the time, won the adult competition in the mid '60s.

The same convention over which Laura's grandfather presided as President of the International Brotherhood of Magicians in 1962...

Tim Moore, Jep Hostetler and even Megan had a hand in our meeting in a night that quite literally cannot be explained here.

Laura and I will be married August 30 of 2002 ~ somebody up there still has a soft spot for me, which is puzzling but certainly appreciated beyond words. Psssst.... if you click on the twirling candy heart above you can see a pic of us just after arriving at this year's international magic convention in Orlando.

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