Hi, Ava. I am writing to you to assess your website, avajayne.com. At first glance, I see that you haven’t done any intensive editing on your homepage yet. Your content is still unpublished or inaccessible as well. I’m using your website description in the PUB101 Google Drive document to contextualize my feedback for your website.
The template you chose is decent, although depending on what type of content you are doing, I would choose something with simpler elements. This template appears more suited towards a business or event hosting. I would suggest deleting all the blocks on the homepage and Strat from something super simple. It would not only help get your website presentable much faster, but having a dry background would make your photos pop better. Consider how these websites style their photo galleries:
Aside from this I don’t have much feedback to offer, as the only signs of your authorship I can find is the website name in the top-left and the navigation menu. None of the links in the navigation menu work, so if you have completed other pages on the site, I haven’t been able to access it.
Good luck, Ava! WordPress is difficult to get a handle of, but once you get all the main elements up and running, things will hopefully start coming together! I look forward to seeing your website thrive!
Bob, as portrayed by Comedian and Actor Roberto Benigni in Down By Law .(1986)
Roberto, who goes by “Bob” to friends, is an Italian restauranteur and artist based in the United States. Originally immigrating to New Orleans in 1986, he was tried and convicted for manslaughter after an altercation in a card game went sour. Several months later, he escaped the Orleans Parish Prison and became a fugitive of the law ever since. The events surrounding his first year in Louisiana serves as the basis for Jim Jarmusch’s film Down By Law. In the film, he is portrayed by Roberto Benigni, who co-starred alongside Tom Waits and John Lurie.
This interview took place in an undisclosed location in a small-town coffee house somewhere in the Deep South.
I: Hey Bob. How are you?
B: Hello, my friend, I am doing wonderful! And yourself?
I: I’m doing alright. I’m still getting used to the heat down here. I’m trying not to itch the mosquito bites.
R: Yes, yes. Lots of mosquitos. We don’t have so much mosquitos in Italy. But you know, I have a secret for the mosquitos, to make them go away.
I: Do tell.
B: Garlic. Lots of garlic.
I: I think that’s for vampires.
B: Vampires! A-ha, is good for that too! Maybe mosquitos and vampires, they’re not so different. My wife Nicoletta, she cooks with lots of garlic, and the mosquitos, they never want touch us. I eat so much garlic sometimes people don’t want to come near me either!
I: So what have you been up to since the events of Down By Law?
B: Many things, my friend, many things. I ran a restaurant in Louisiana, near Texas border with Nicoletta. It was a very beautiful place, we lived there for almost twenty years. But, eventually we had to move.
Bob, Nicoletta, Zack, and Jack at Luigi’s Tin Top, a remote roadside restaurant near the Louisiana-Texas border.
I: What happened to the restaurant?
B: Well, it had many problems. Not a lot of people come to the restaurant, it was very far away from the city. We have travellers come by sometimes. Nicoletta is so happy to feed them, sometime she forgets to charge! Anche, there was one time when the criminals who escape the prison came to the restaurant. They escaped just like I did so many years ago, and just like me, they found this restaurant in the middle of the Bayou. Nicoletta, she says to me, “Betto, you know if the fugittivi from the prison can find this place, then so can the polizia.”
There was one time the policemen did come into the restaurant! They were doing the patrol, and they came in because they were hungry. And they did not recognize me, che fortuna, because this was many, many years after my escape. But my heart, it was a pounding like a rabbit! I stayed as much in the kitchen and I never looked them in the eyes! I was hoping they would eat quickly and go away. But they kept ordering more food because they loved the cooking so much! Our children would keep coming to the dining room to play, even when Nicoletta told them to stay upstairs! But the policemen were so kind to the children.
After they paid, they wanted to see me so they could thank me! I was so overjoyed by their kindness, I almost forgot about my situation. I wanted to kiss them on the cheek and shake their hands. But Nicoletta told me, they would recognize me. I was a very unique prisoner in Orleans, because I was the only Italian, and my personality was so big.
Nicoletta told the policemen, “Bob is sick so he cannot come see you, but he is very thankful.” I had Nicoletta give them a wood carving of a bird that I make, so I could still show my gratitude.
But the reason we had to move away from the restaurant, was because of this terrible storm. It destroyed everything we had. Many people had died that storm. Still I think about that restaurant, it is now only a very beautiful memory.
I: What did you do when you left?
B: Well, we traveled to many places, in Mississippi and Carolina and Florida, like in a Mark Twain book. Our family, we had not a lot of money, but the memories were beautiful. We made it like a game for our children. We had a big adventure, where they learned to read maps, and collect insects and leaves from every town we passed by. They never knew we were poor! Eventually we found a new place to live in Georgia. I found work in the city and I was able to take the children to school. It is difficult work, and I don’t have very much time to read poetry and do woodworking, but it was also a beautiful time.
I: Do you have more time these days?
B: Yes, I have a lot more time now, because my children are more old and they help with the house a lot. I have much time to read and make art.
I: Who’s your favourite poet?
B: Walt Whitman. I read many of his poetry in Italian when I was a young boy, but now I can read English better, and I see a new beauty coming from his words.
I: Where do your best ideas come from?
B: In Italian.
I: What do you do when you are stuck?
B: I go for a walk, I look for the birds, and sometimes I go for a swim. The best ideas, sometimes they are found in nature. Nature is full of beautiful ideas.
I: How do you find love?
B: Love, you don’t need to find. You just need to see, it’s already inside you. But sometimes when people are young, they are told it’s somewhere else. So sometimes it takes a very long time to find.
I: Thank you for your time, Bob, it was very nice to meet you.
