Look Out Bello!

Now that Maria Bello is starring on a primetime television show, we are seeing a lot less of her. Anyone who has seen her movies will know what I mean by that. Whenever I see Maria Bello nude in a movie I enjoy it and not for the obvious reasons. Rather, I enjoy it from a point of view that few people besides me can appreciate. Well, me and maybe a few hundred other men. For us, it is sweet revenge.

You see, I went to high school with Maria Bello. Will Smith also went to my high school but only freshman year then he left to go to another school. He punched me in the arm once in Spanish class. I wonder if I can sue him for extremely suppressed mental anguish. Note to all you high school students out there: Keep in touch with every person you meet while you’re there. You never know which one will end up becoming a huge movie star that just may be able to help your career. Or, at the very least, make you the Turtle to their Vince.

Anyway, I guess technically I didn’t go to high school with Maria because she was a year ahead of me. As I’ve mentioned before, back then my high school wasn’t co-ed. The thing that made this more tolerable was that, unlike some other boy/girl Catholic high schools in the area, ours was attached so there were opportunities to see members of the opposite sex throughout the day. Mostly in the library and during lunch. The other way to see members of the opposite sex was if you had an advanced placement class. The girls either came to the boys’ side or vice versa. I guess this was sort of a hormonal reward for the more cerebral students.

When I was a freshman, I would see Maria a lot in the halls but the reason I said I didn’t go to high school with her is because I never spoke to her. Not a sentence, not a word, not a syllable. And there is one very good reason for this: Maria had an older brother named Joe.

Joe Bello was a hulking behemoth of a man who was on the football team and was quite capable of crushing your face into powder if he so desired. Joe was also very protective of his little sister. I know this because I remember being in the hall during a class change and seeing Maria when I overheard another freshman remark to his friend, “That girl is hot.” His friend began to panic and said in a squeaky little voice, “Man, shut up! That is Joe Bello’s little sister. If he hears you say that or even sees you looking at her, he will kick the shit outta you!” Needless to say after hearing that, I was more determined than ever not to talk to Maria Bello.

Now all these years later, I have to relish the irony that back then Joe would kill you if you even looked at his sister in the hall, but now you can look at his sister in her movies. Depending on the movie, you can look at a lot of his sister. And thanks to the magic of digital clarity, you can pause it and keep looking. Gotta love that digital clarity. Many of my fellow alumni have gotten a long belated wish. We finally got to see Maria Bello naked.

Which makes me wonder, how does Joe feel about this? In hindsight, could it have been his over-protectiveness that pushed her to be such an exhibitionist in her films? Instead of resenting him all of those years, should we now be thanking him? More importantly, can he still kick our ass? And if by some freak chance of nature, he is reading this, all I can say is:

“Yo, Joe, I saw your little sister naked last night. Full frontal, dude! Full frontal!”