User:Cousinvinny10/sandbox

"Cousin Vinny," the pseudonym for author Louis Anthony Agnello. "Cousin Vinny" is best known for his critically acclaimed novel, "THE DEVIL'S GLOVE". Linda Tuccio-Koonz wrote this critique about the novel in the NEWS TIMES of Danbury, Connecticut on Tuesday, February 25th, 2014: "A brokenhearted baseball player stuck in the Minor Leagues loses all hope and seeks Satan's help to pursue his dreams, only to find himself trapped in a living hell.

He's forced to coach the devil's next victim, a young boy who has similar dreams of Major League glory. The story is told in a new book called "The Devil's Glove" (Tate Publishing). Author Louis Agnello Jr. will sign copies this weekend at three events in Southbury and Danbury.

The book's title refers to ball player Billy Green's "magic" baseball glove, which 11-year-old Eddie Romano finds buried in Chicago's Comiskey Park when the ballfield is demolished in 1991. He and his father are poking around for White Sox souvenirs when they unearth Green's glove.

They don't know Green had been a poor kid who grew up near the ballfield in the 1930s, played in the Minor Leagues, and then disappeared.

When Romano becomes convinced the glove has special powers, his baseball skills quickly improve. But problems ensue when he goes from being a likeable though not-confident player to a cocky, meanspirited kid who is convinced he can't play without his glove.

Meanwhile, his nightly dreams are filled with instructions from a coach he assumes is an angel. And he claims to also be receiving advice from the spirits of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

In reality, heaven and hell are fighting for the young man's soul. Though it sounds preachy, it's not that kind of novel. Rather, it's a mystery about a boy who is growing up, chasing his dreams, and struggling to find the right path. It's about human nature, with baseball as the backdrop." http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Devil-s-Glove-author-to-sign-books-5265710.php

Sheila Selman of the GOSHEN NEWS of Goshen, Indiana in her feature on "COUSIN VINNY" from Monday, August 11th, 2014 wrote:

"Life can be an ugly game — a game based on illusion and occasionally, a deal with the devil. But ultimately, God is the umpire and decides who is safe and who is out. God offers redemption and declares life’s player safe when the player asks for it. That doesn’t mean that Satan won’t try to tag the players as they’re running home — it means he’ll try even harder to make sure they are out of the game permanently.

In “The Devil’s Glove,” Satan employs all of his dirty tricks to keep the souls of those willing to make a deal with him for a little fame. Written by someone who knows that chasing fame has its dark side, “Cousin Vinny” Louis Anthony Agnello said, “One of the things in the novel is too many characters are chasing this illusion — an illusion of success.” The main character, Billy, a AAA ballplayer realizes he won’t make it into the Major Leagues. He feels he is a failure and cannot accept it. “In reality, this ballplayer was a tremendous success,” Agnello said. “ How many people play AAA?” Instead of being content, Billy makes a deal with the devil to play in the Major Leagues. The devil wants his soul — and something more. Billy, who wants nothing more than to be loved by his fans and be on baseball cards, would be one of the most hated and he needs to corrupt a child, Eddie, in order to save his own skin. “The lesson of the novel is success and failure rest inside of you,” Agnello said. “If you are waiting to be Kim Kardashian — if that’s what you consider success — you’re probably not getting there and maybe you should be happy about it.” And as the cover of the novel warns: Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

The pitfalls of fame — or wanting to be famous — is something Agnello’s lived. Agnello — Cousin Vinny — was one time the Stripper King of New York. He was the self-described “piece of meat” people were going to watch. He was on billboards and was a non-contract actor on soap operas. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to be a celebrity — for everyone to know you?’” he said. “I thought being a household name would be the end all.” That contract actor he wanted to be — “I never got there. … I got treated like a piece of meat.” And then in 1991, Agnello was given a message from God — “The Devil’s Glove.” It’s not like Agnello was looking for God. “I was given this message in 1991 when I was a complete bad boy. I had no redeeming value — a mother’s nightmare.” When the vision came to him, Agnello was in Harrison, N.Y. A young lady was next to him. “My heart pounded. I started to sweat,” he said. “I became completely lucid when it hit the twist ending. … It shocked me it was just so good.” Agnello knew he was meant to let others know about the vision and so at Hollywood parties, while he was working, he would tell anyone who would listen to him about his vision. “They looked at me like I was crazy at the time,” he said. “It sounds crazy and it seems crazy.” But Agnello knew it was real. The strange thing about the vision, he said, was why Billy was an ostentatious player. He looked like a modern version of Deion Sanders and this was in the 1940s to 1952, he said. That look was not for that time period.

So Agnello started researching. “God doesn’t play around when he gives you a story,” he said. In 1946, the AAA team for the Chicago White Sox was the Hollywood Stars. They called them the Twinx — and that was Billy’s look. William Frawley, also known as Fred Mertz from the “I Love Lucy” Show, was one of the owners. That was the highest baseball team in California at the time, Agnello said, adding, “There was no L.A. Dodgers, no Angels.” That and its association with the White Sox — “what other team could you have done the storey with?” Agnello said. After getting his vision down on paper, in 1992 Agnello self-published “The Magic Glove.” It didn’t go anywhere. And the manuscript sat on the backburner until 2011. God still had more work to do on his writer, according to Agnello. Agnello had to walk through some of his own hell first. He had some national legal trouble while the owner of a stripper management firm; he had a falling out with Subway restaurants; he was a taxicab driver; and in 2008, he was shot (credit cards stopped one of the bullets). “In 2011, when I picked up that manuscript again and started working on it, my mother turned around and said, ‘That bullet that hit you in the credit cards — maybe this is your wake up call, maybe God wasn’t done with you.’” Agnello took a second crack at the story and retitled it "The Devil's Glove". What Agnello had gone through deeply affected his work. “It gave the book such resonance, such profoundness,” he said. “If I had done it and finished it on time, I don’t believe it would be the piece of work it is now. I think it would have been a good story about not cheating and not cutting corners and not buying into the Madison Avenue thing. But I think it would have missed the pain and suffering of these souls fighting against the devil. That’s the battleground. This book is a war — a war for Billy to step up. He can either do what he’s done — cheat, that’s why he used the Devil’s Glove.” Or he could be the hero. “These characters, they’re just us,” he said. “They’ve got every pimple, every mole. They’ve got everything. The country turns around and says they are not heroic, but I love them. Why? Because you are looking at you. We all carry the serial killer in us and the angel in us. It depends on what you want to show the world. … Billy is a conflicted character. But if Billy can somehow find God — if he can somehow go through the adversities he’s got to go through and somehow make amends for what he’s done — then any of us can. It really gives people hope.” He added, “The message was that God was trying to include us, not exclude us. God wants everybody with us some day. Everyone except for Satan’s friends.” So, Agnello is going city to city on a mission to sell his book and spread the message that no matter where you are at in life, God still wants you.”" http://www.goshennews.com/news/local_news/the-devil-s-glove-author-signing-books-locally/article_b7167aa0-1dc9-5f2b-b4a8-a4242ca2833c.html?mode=story Linda Sickler of the Savannah Morning News of Georgia wrote on Thursday, March 27th, 2014: "Louis Anthony Agnello Jr.’s life story would make an amazing book.

At one time, he was known as the “Stripper King of New York” and also as the “King of Bling.” He studied acting with Lee Strasberg.

But he has been arrested. Mugged. Shot. He’s walked a salacious path and he’s walked the straight and narrow.

Today, Agnello is a novelist with a debut book titled “The Devil’s Glove.” He’ll be in Savannah and Rincon on March 29 to sign copies.

The book came to him in a dream: A white-haired man showed Agnello a movie of the events in the book. He told Agnello it was his job to write the story down.

“The dream was about this heartbroken minor league ballplayer who believed that God had forsaken him in his quest to play in the major leagues of baseball,” Agnello says. “He desperately and delusively asked for Satan’s help.

“Satan eagerly granted his wish under specified conditions, and he soon realized that the price he was going to have to pay had taken away all the fun of achieving the goal in the first place. So he naively decided to break Satan’s rules and found out the hard way that the devil doesn’t aid rebels.

“He fails miserably and finds that he has a one-way ticket back to the minor leagues,” Agnello says. “Mysteriously, he never makes it there; instead, he finds himself all alone, in a living hell.”

Now there is a new condition to Satan’s contract.

“He’s forced to coach the devil’s next victim, an 11-year-old boy with similar dreams and aspirations,” Agnello says. “This nightmare scenario explores some vital issues, like what could we be coerced into doing to save our own skin and what would we be willing to do to have all our dreams come true?

“It was an exploration into the dark side of human nature,” he says. “It also embraces our most valiant qualities and makes you realize how close we all are to God.”

He has no doubt the dream was divinely inspired.

“I believe the message came from God and if not, from one of his messengers,” he says.

Born in Flushing, N.Y., Agnello was a student at Western Connecticut State University when he became a stripper. In addition to performing solo, he sometimes appeared with Mr. Mike, the Stripping Monkey.

In 1986, the two appeared on “Regis and Kathie Lee Live.” Not long after, they were mugged by a thief who held a knife to Mr. Mike’s head and threatened to kill him.

At about the same time, Agnello dabbled in acting, appearing on the soap operas “Guiding Light,” “Ryan’s Hope” and “One Life to Live.” He also finished college, earning a bachelor’s degree in English in 1992.

“The days I spent with Lee Strasberg in New York City were truly magical,” he says.

“The sad part for me was that I didn’t realize where I was and that I was surrounded by the talent that the world sees every time they pop in a DVD.

“Bridget Fonda was there at the time and so was Adam Sandler. Some lesser names were there, too. Larry Romano, who played Richie on ‘The King of Queens,’ was my scene partner and Joe Maruzo, who played Joe Peeps on ‘The Sopranos,’ is still a friend and got me the guest appearance with Regis and Kathy Lee.”

There also was a missed opportunity that Agnello regrets to this day.

“Al Pacino’s acting coach offered me a job to drive Al and him around town and I foolishly turned it down,” Agnello says. “I thought I was above all that because I was the top private male stripper in New York City at the time and was stripping for the Rockefellers and the soap actresses on their birthdays.

“Larry Romano took the job and became a working actor throughout the 1990s,” he says. “Turning down a job with Al Pacino was the biggest blunder of my life. I didn’t realize the doors that would have opened and the powerful people I would have met, but I’ve somehow landed on my feet again.”

At one point, he began writing “The Devil’s Glove.”

“I finished about 80 percent of the first draft in 1991 and 1992,” he says.

But Agnello put his manuscript away. After stripping for 13 years, he retired and formed a management company for strippers.

Agnello found himself in hot water after he sent a stripper to a party for high school football players in Chappaqua, N.Y. The case received national media attention, in part because Bill and Hillary Clinton lived in Chappaqua.

“I became known as the Stripper King of New York because Jeanine Pirro, then District Attorney of Westchester County, N.Y., needed me to be a Lex Luthor, large-than-life criminal so she could look like a superhero when she went on her crusade to put me in prison,” he says.

“It was all just hype.

“I ran a mom-and-pop-sized striptease agency that got caught up accidentally in a national scandal,” he says. “Anything that had sexual overtones with Bill Clinton in the neighborhood was national news.

“Some morally inappropriate parents hosted a stripper party for a high school football team and Pirro wanted to hang them from the highest tree,” Agnello says. “I believed it was blown all out of proportion and opened my mouth on national television, challenging Pirro by saying, ‘Why don’t you arrest some real criminals, Jeanine?’”

The outburst caused even more problems.

“She never forgot about it and two years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she directed a $1 million prosecution of little old me,” Agnello says. “She charged me with five serious felonies and got back a $1,000 fine, a misdemeanor conviction and no jail or probation for me.

“I would have pled guilty to the Manson murders for that, figuratively speaking, slap on the wrist,” he says.

“I became a walking, talking legendary outlaw in the public’s eye and therefore became the larger-than-life Stripper King of New York.”

The whole thing was a case of mistaken identity, Agnello says.

“Pirro had me connected with the Gambino crime family simply because my last name was Agnello, the same name as John Gotti’s son-in-law, Carmine,” Agnello says. “But that’s another book.”

Because of his newfound notoriety, Agnello renamed his business World Famous Cousin Vinny’s Gorgeous Strippers. He also became known as the King of Bling because of his jewelry.

“I was attempting to be the striptease agent for the hip-hop generation,” Agnello says. “I was always reinventing myself. “I believed the old adage that you’re not anyone without a handle,” he says. “Cousin Vinny would forever be my handle.”

“I wrote a screenplay with a really wonderful character named Vinny Roberts,” Agnello says. “He was my alter-ego. He was bold and brazen and everything I wished I could be.”

At the time, Agnello still dreamed of being an actor.

“I didn’t want the stripper agency to interfere with my acting dreams so I called myself ‘Vinny Roberts’ while working there,” Agnello says. “The customers for years called me ‘Cuz’ and that’s how I dreamed up my Cousin Vinny handle.”

In 2007, Agnello opened a Subway franchise, operating it as a sub shop by day and a strip club by night. The Subway corporation stripped him of his franchise and a judge ordered him to pay $90,000 to its corporate parent, plus another $7,900 for its legal fees.

But Agnello tells it differently.

“I was attempting to go mainstream,” Agnello says. “Before they learned that I was the Stripper King, everything was great, but problems arose immediately upon their discovery. They immediately trumped up allegations to warrant kicking me out of their training program, although at the time I had a 99 average.

“Only after I promised to expose their discrimination toward me to my media connections did they acquiesce,” he says. “Begrudgingly, they allowed me to take an open book test.”

Agnello passed the test and was allowed to take over the franchise.

“I was ill-prepared and poorly trained, so I broke many rules,” he says. “That was exactly their plan to get rid of me. Their district manager wrote me up for every violation of the franchise agreement he could think of.”

As a result, Agnello was terminated. “Hard times would follow because I lost everything,” he says.

“I didn’t get a penny back on my $250,000 investment. I even defaulted on loans. “A lawsuit is currently outstanding in this civil matter out of Bronx, N.Y.,” Agnello says. “Before I completed this novel, I had to resort to driving a cab in Sarasota, Fla., and was even on public relief for a while.”

In August 2009, Agnello was escorting some strippers to a bachelor party in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., when two masked men approached and fired shots.

One bullet hit Agnello’s left upper thigh and another was blocked by the wad of credit cards he was carrying in his pocket. At the time, he was wearing $100,000 worth of jewelry and police determined the shooting was a botched robbery.

But he says otherwise.

“When I started venting my spleen about this flagrant violation of my rights on radio and in the press, I was lured to an ambush where I was shot twice,” he says.

“Nobody asked for money or jewelry as the press speculated and no one was ever apprehended for the shooting.

“It was the most humbling moment of my life and I got a great new appreciation of what the downtrodden went through in life. I remember a day and night that I worked 15 hours and cleared $17 after expenses.

“I used to talk up the self-published version of the book to my passengers and showed them pictures from my soap opera and stripping days,” Agnello says. “My patrons couldn’t believe my story until they saw the proof with their own eyes.”

The shooting turned Agnello’s life around.

“In 2011, I went back to the manuscript that had been printed out from a floppy disc years ago and remembered what a truly remarkable story it contained,” he says.

“The best thing though was that I remembered the ironic twist ending. I finished it because I promised the messenger I would.

“This book is bigger than me and contains some of the most important messages ever,” he says. “I believe it is a bible for the troubled and addicted souls of this world and it will save lives. If it saves just one troubled person from bringing their life to a premature end, then I have done my job.”

Even now, he insists he’s not an author, he’s a messenger.

“My characters seem so real because they are,” he says.

“You might as well look in the mirror, because you’ll find yourself in everyone of them.

“This is a message book that gently guides the reader to truth,” Agnello says. “It’s not preachy, but you and everyone else who reads it will be affected by the character’s actions and decisions.”

A sequel to “The Devil’s Glove” is in the works.

“I have plans for an autobiography but I do not believe my Christian publisher will want anything to do with it,” he says. “It will not be PG-13 rated and will be way too racy for my spiritual fans.”

A film version of “The Devil’s Glove” could be in the works. “Any producers interested in the project shouldn’t have a hard time finding me,” Agnello says. In the meantime, he’s thrilled with the reaction to his book.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the responses I’m receiving,” Agnello says. “I feel like I’ve touched every reader’s heart and made them delve into their souls.

“I hope the world will view life differently after they finish this special novel and I thank God every day for giving me the privilege to enlighten the world to these special messages,” he says. “My greatest hope is that I can save some troubled lives before it’s too late.”" http://m.savannahnow.com/do/2014-03-27/former-stripper-king-new-york-writes-inspirational-book#gsc.tab=0

Carol Bicak in her feature/review of "THE DEVIL'S GLOVE" for the Omaha World Herald wrote on Sunday, July 27th, 2014: "We know Channing Tatum used to work as a male stripper and gave us his movie "Magic Mike" to tell us about those experiences. But about the time Tatum was born in 1980, a New Yorker named Anthony Agnello was making his presence known on New York and New England stripping stages. The "Stripper King of New York" was a prized performer for more than a dozen years, during which he accumulated a lot of bling and was quite a womanizer, he says.

However, when Agnello decided to tell a story, it was not about himself.

In fact, he may the most unlikely person to write a spiritual novel about the fight between good and evil.

The idea for the book came to him in a dream, he says. A spiritual messenger told Agnello that he had been chosen to tell the story in "The Devil's Glove." Agnello, who now writes under the name Cousin Vinny, calls it a spiritual mystery, set against the backdrop of baseball.

He started the book several years ago, but got side-tracked by other things, including a so-so acting career. But after accepting the fact that he had grown too old to continue stripping and that he had trouble sticking with anything to its conclusion, after getting shot in a mysterious attack and eventually losing his fortune, he turned back to his manuscript. This was one thing he would follow through on.

Being an author is not as big a stretch as it seems for Agnello, who actually has a degree in English from Western Connecticut State University.

He's a personable raconteur, who readily admits to making mistakes in his life and taking a long time "to become an adult." One of his biggest regrets is turning down a job with A1 Pacino years ago, a job that went to a fellow acting student who now shows up in feature films.

He's also extremely serious about how the story in his book came to him: The dream visitor was real, he says, and told him the story in "The Devil's Glove."

Dream messengers also play a part in the story, which recounts how a good man is lured by Satan into selling his soul for a day in the Big Leagues, and how he's assigned to lure another promising young baseball player onto the same path.

Satan is called the Manager and God is the Light. Dead players from the past - Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson - put in ghostly appearances. Agnello says the book is nondenominational and non-reglion-specific. He thinks any faith can accept the message of good trumping evil.

How a lost soul becomes a hero is the theme, and Agnello feels it applies to himself a bit. In fact, most readers see themselves in many of the characters, he said.

The book started life as the self-published "The Magic Glove." But Tate Publishing, a Christian publishing house, picked it up and changed the title. Now Agnello is touring the country in support of the book.

It's an easy and entertaining read, and has garnered many kudos on Amazon and Facebook. Agnello thinks people like it so much because "I write like me ... like I'm talking on the phone. I'm not gong to preach."

But he does hope readers take away the message that there is a price to pay for one's actions, that it's how you live your life that counts. "Good is good and evil is evil. It's never too late to change."" http://m.omaha.com/eedition/iowa/articles/leaving-stripper-life-behind-author-puts-dream-into-glove/article_b88e371d-c979-5ed9-b2af-2d0ca3777868.html?mode=jqm

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