I did nothing but read when I was in the hospital. I needed to take my mind off of my predicament so I had to transport myself into another place and time.
One of the best books that I read was "The First Family" by Mike Dash. It was about the first real Mafia family in America which was the Morello/Terranova family of Harlem. They were the people of the famous murder barrel and the murder stable and a bunch of murders. Mainly counterfeiters they ran everything from around 1890 to 1918. A good run.
The main bad guy was Giuseppe Morello who was called the clutching hand because of his withered arm from when he was a kid in Sicily. According to the book he was the "Boss of Bosses" for a good portion of the beginning of the last century. When he got out of prison he was smart enough not to try to get his old spot back but became consigliore to Joe "The Boss" Masseria who is usually where most people start when they talk about the origins of the Mafia.
You find out about immigrant life and the gangs of New York and the Black Hand and lots of really interesting stuff. I highly recommend it to fans of the Mafia.
139 comments:
I call the mafia genre "Easterns." Books and movies.
Notice how there are no "mid-westerns", just sayin'...
Well, maybe Fargo qualifies as one.
Wisconsin gothic - yeah, that's got a nice ring to it.
Isn't Psycho a "mid-western"?
I thought that was set in Sacramento, specifically in the Governor's mansion. Maybe I am misremembering that.
Wasn't A Simple Plan (I think that was the name of it) in the M/W?
Sounds like a good book. I've got a few books ahead of it though. I buy way too many books.
In Cold Blood
In a lighter vein, we've been watching the Jesse Stone series (based on a R Parker character) and enjoying the one liners ("Plinking vermin?") and exchanges that are unique to Parker, and the best available when TY is down and side lined.
There are countless species of books and movies set in the Midwest, but not enough to amount to a genre. Did anyone ever see "Cedar Rapids"? Blake reviewed it here
Speaking of movies, I finally watched "Lincoln" the other night. My kids refused to watch it because they had been forced to watch it in school. My wife made me apologize for tricking her into watching it.
DDL did do a great acting job though.
That little Mass. town where Jesse Stone lives has gotta have the highest per capita murder rate anywhere outside of Inspector Morse's Oxford, which is apparently as dangerous as the south side of Chicago.
Notice how there are no "mid-westerns", just sayin'...
Yes there are. They're set all over the place, but movies about serial killers are mid-westerns. All the movies inspired by Ed Gein (Psycho, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, etc), Compulsion based on the Leopold-Loeb case, etc.
chick, let your kids watch "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter". It'll give them a proper fear of Democrats.
And I see ChipS beat me to it.
Don't forget Cabot Cove, Maine, where Jessica Fletcher lives. Lots of murders there, too.
We have "Westerns" and "Easterns" as the the two bracketing genres ( and ) with "Midwesterns" being the everything in the middle. Call them "flyover movies".
Southern movies involve fast cars, Burt Reynolds and/or banjos.
..and bigotry, Icepick. The south is big on bigotry and they grow big bigotrees
Since we're discussing movies, I'll move the Smokey and the Bandit remake discussion here. Remember, the remake is about Mexicans smuggling Dos Equis to Haz in a dry county in Kentucky. So unless Darcy is either Lebanese or Mexican, she can't play the Sally Fields part!
..and bigotry, Icepick. The south is big on bigotry and they grow big bigotree
Yeah, I forgot about that. We also grow girls with big hooters. See Hee Haw, or the car washing scene in Cool Hand Luke.
Isn't The Clutching Hand set in the Fens?
Easy fix: Name her character Zoey Zimmerman and make her one of those white hispanics everybody's heard about.
And cheesy fake accents, see George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke.
Man, I love that scene in Cool Hand Luke. A great movie, even if they did fuck up the part with the blue dog, much to the chagrin of the book's author.
If this is a Mexican movie that means I will have to repaint the roof of my pickup truck, again. So I'll have to go with an eagle and a snake or some shit like that? Man, it was lookin' sharp, too, cholo, yo!
Mexicans? Jesus.
That means no one can be in it but Lem. And that means it's gonna be a shitty no nuts romcom.
I beseech you, Icepick--change your plot.
Easy fix: Name her character Zoey Zimmerman and make her one of those white hispanics everybody's heard about.
Conquistador Americans, we call them. Steve Sailer had a fun post about that a few months back. Here's another post on the same theme. So if we want to call Darcy a white Hispanic, she's going to have to look a lot more ethnic!
Hey, the plot came from Haz! And it's great! We'll get Rodriguez to direct it and it'll be full of blood and guts and tits and stuff.
My wife made me apologize for tricking her into watching it.
LOL! I was the one apologizing for letting that one down the chimney and onto the screen at our domicile.
Good thing Trooper has a pacemaker - otherwise the way the Gints are playing might cause him some distress.
Nah. If everyone's gotta be Mexicans, there's still only gonna be one boob.
Keep settin' em up.
Have the Giants lost yet?
It's Sunday, right?
Sixty Grit said...
I thought that was set in Sacramento, specifically in the Governor's mansion. Maybe I am misremembering that.
When I first saw Psycho, I got the distinct impression it was somewhere out west because of the plants and trees. Arboreality strikes again.
Now if the Cowboys can just beat that other goober....
I just checked. The Giants are 0-5. That's worse than the Packers. That's gotta hurt.
Lions are doing OK so far.
And Baby Goober threw another three INT's.
I'm tellin' ya--they might need to medicate Coughlin. I feel for him.
EPR - I know you didn't watch Breaking Bad, but the scenes filmed in "New Hampshire" were really bad - they were obviously filmed in New Mexico or some other western mountainous region - nothing about them suggested New Hampshah. But what are you going to do, am I right?
It's like the snow covered mountains visible in the background of the movie Rumble in the Bronx - because what says you are in the Bronx better than seeing mountains in the distance?
The Royal Chicken didn't watch Breaking Bad?
I thought I was the only one.
And it's arena football in Texas.
The great flick, A Simple Plan, was filmed in Ashland, Wi. In his biography, Billy Bob Thornton said he almost froze to death filming it. His bio is interesting. Billy Bob was a baseball player and is buds w/ LaRussa! The book was penned by Kinky Friedman. Thornton is honest. He has SEVERE OCD and dyslexia. And real eating disorders.
Kinky wrote the Billy Bob bio?
Dear Lord.
You don't like Kinky?
It's like the snow covered mountains visible in the background of the movie Rumble in the Bronx - because what says you are in the Bronx better than seeing mountains in the distance?
I don't remember them being snow-covered, but I remember the mountains! That was an AWESOME movie, though! No one uses props like Jackie Chan. Uh, I mean no one outside of porn. Wait, I don't think that's quite what I mean either.
I had two buddies @ The Classic today. We call Giant/Eagle games The Classic. I've been to them @ the Meadowlands and Veterans. They were drunken brawls in my youth. These 2 guys, one a Gint, the other Iggle fan, behaved. One is a Friend of Bill, the other just a man of moderation.
But for bad scenery, there was nothing to beat Drive. It was a show about an illegal cross-country car race. The drivers are blackmailed into driving. It starts in Miami and is supposed to go to LA. There's a scene where they're supposed to be driving near Gainesville Florida. Just to the south of Gainesville is a large wetland, and in general the areas around Gainesville look like they could be out of Cool Hand Luke, or maybe a Gator McCluskey movie. Instead, in this scene, what you saw was a desert in the foreground, and mountains in the background. It looked remarkably like driving through the Mojave with the Tehachapi Mountains in the background. Which is to say, NOT Florida.
Everybody likes Kinky.
And never forger: they ain't makin Jews like Jesus anymore.
The movie, A Simple Plan is very much as if Sam Raimi had re-filmed his old school chums' (the Coens) Fargo. Though the movies are tonally very different, with ASP being thoroughly bleak and Fargo being a tale of good vs. evil.
As bleak as it is, the movie A Simple Plan is nowhere near as bleak as the book. When it came out, it was critically reviled. Stephen King went on a mini-crusade to rehabilitate its reputation, which resulted in my mother buying it for me. (I don't read a lot of modern fiction.)
It's well-written but relentless. It's like Crime and Punishment without Raskolnikov's redemption. Since it's basically a tale of what happens when you compromise your integrity, even just a little, I suppose that's fitting.
But I can only recommend it reservedly.
I know you read my review, EPR, so you have only yourself to blame for Lincoln
Well, yourself and Steven Spielberg.
I would have thought what's-her-name's name was unique enough but I stumbled across two Facebook pages with that name.
Exhibit 1.
Exhibit 2.
Exhibit 3.
Though looking at the link for Exhibit one, I see that there have been at least 98 entries with that name on Facebook?!
Exhibit 4.
Hmm. They're not using a standard REST addressing scheme, so maybe not. Still. That there's at least 3 or 4 out there is...sorta weird.
Trooper can take solace in the fact that there are two teams worse than the Gints. First, the Jags, who are epically bad. I believe the only lead they have held this year was when they were up 2-0 against KC, before getting blown out.
And then there's the Tampa Bay Bucs. My Bucs are so bad they even managed to lose to open date this week, when they fired the wrong guy.
Blake: Common names (in Germania).
blake, You are a big contributor of culture here. But, could you just swear once in awhile?
Denver in a shot-out with the 'Boys. Here's hoping Mailbox head loses. (That would be Manning.)
blake, You are a big contributor of culture here. But, could you just swear once in awhile?
I swear it's an East Coast/West Coast thing. New Yorkers love to spice their language more.
Blake - I watched Contempt the other night - well, not the whole thing, you know, but the intro, certainly, then I went and worked for a while, then I came back and saw that one should not ride in an Alfa with Jack Palance behind the wheel.
I must say, that the movie within the movie was the worst Odyssey evah!
At the very least I should stop hearing how galactically awesome the Broncos are after today. Gave up 48 and counting.
Nick,
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
{Bonus points for naming the movie.}
Yeah, chick, that's why west coast gangsta rap is so clean.
I'm going to guess The Departed.
I spent most of the day riding the hills an hollows and back roads of Harlan County, Kentucky.
Nice touch, giving us tourists a gift of meth when we fill our gasoline tanks. Not sure why they want me to take it to someplace in Philly, though. Something about a free sandwich.
You're wrong, Cody, but you're not an asshole.
(And that's a hint, not a warranty express or implied.)
Sixty--
I've seen one Jean-Luc Goddard movie, and that's Breathless.
Since it epitomizes--and probably inspired--what I despise about movies of the '60s and '70s, I haven't been clamoring to see any others.
I might see Alphaville. But French ennui is just not my bag, baby.
I actually do swear, but I try not to do it gratuitously.
Asshole.
Someone either here or over at TOOP recently posted the first few minutes of that movie - Bridget Bardot's buttocks - what's not to like?
As the reviewer wrote - contempt - the film maker sure had it for his audience.
Sixty Grit said...
Someone either here or over at TOOP recently posted the first few minutes of that movie - Bridget Bardot's buttocks - what's not to like?
The was the missed yashu.
The Dude, Blake, responding to the cowboy's complaint of his swearing. Way too easy.
@Michael: Since you're in KY, but sure to check out the jelly.
Are looking for the ghost of Raylan Givens in Harlan County? I'm right here.
Haz, Did you find any adult beverages?
Were you able to watch the Packers?
I mentioned to my masseuse yesterday--she's barely old enough to remember pre-Internet times--that one positive aspect of readily available porn is that movies and TV don't have to act as ersatz porn anymore.
I mean, when I was growing up, every film had to have a sex scene. Even the Disney flicks. The gratuitous sex scenes were awkward, but not half as awkward as the ones that weren't gratuitous.
So, if I wanna see Bridget Bardot's ass, I'll google it. In my mind, it will be an ass free of ennui.
I like yer style, Dude.
Seriously, Blake? Lebowski quotes?
Never seen that movie. Never plan to, as long as it remains some sort of touchstone for so many.
Nick, I bought a couple of beers from the waiter at the Mecican restaurant last night. He was selling them out of his car.
I'm in Tennessee tonight, where grocery stores can sell beer (but not wine or liquor). All is good.
Blake, Cody is a being from another world.
All humans are able to recite lines from the Big Lewbowski.
Thanks for reminding me to watch The Big Lebowski again - great movie, and I haven't seen it in a while.
"That rug really tied the room together."
Truer words were never spoken!
Never seen that movie. Never plan to, as long as it remains some sort of touchstone for so many.
I was lucky enough to see it when it came out and liked it before it became a piece of black quartz. You probably view "The Big Lebowski" like I see "Young Frankenstein."
"Blake, Cody is a being from another world."
I'll buy that.
Yes, Chick.
Although I'm only inferring how you feel about Young Fronkensteen.
I'm fascinated that blake has a masseuse. Which probably indicates how limited my life experience is.
chickelit: blake, everybody has their shomer shabbos shibboleths when it comes to movies, am I right?
blake: What are you talking about CL, you're not even Jewish.
blake has a masseuse?
Does his wife know?
Inga would send her an email.
To get back to the "white Hispanic" thing for a minute: I am an example. I am half-Spanish. My grandmother was a village girl from Asturias, and my grandfather was middle-class Basque from San Sebastián. I say this because Spain is a very divided country, with lots of regional history/pride/animosity, not to mention three official languages, and several carefully-cultivated dialects just waiting to help local autonomy along.
Otherwise, my ancestors are Scots and Irish. The odd thing is, all of my traceable ancestors came from WEST of the Prime Meridian, and were mostly Celtic, or aboriginal European in the case of my grandfather. My Spanish grandmother had dramatic red hair and deep green eyes, and came from a region of Spain where they play bagpipes, traditional dress includes something like a kilt, and a Celtic cross festoons the local coat-of-arms.
The Celts and the Basques got pushed to the western edge of Europe by all you other invading bastards, and there's a Celtic fringe that runs all the way from the Western Isles of Scotland to Spain. The Basques were a little more hard-core and tended to ambush outsiders, slitting their throats or crushing them with boulders. But in the end they headed for the hills and made life miserable for anyone who happened by, including, all at the same time, Charlemagne, his buddy Roland, and the Moors. Until very recently, they've still been blowing things up and killing government officials to make a point.
My grandmother's village resembles the west of Ireland: Rural at best, where things haven't changed much in 1200 years. The last excitement was throwing the Moors out in 787, and the biggest thing that happens every year is the Cow Festival, an echo, no doubt, of some neolithic cult.
So, the "Hispanic" world stretches from former Phoenician and Greek colonies, inhabited for a time by Sons of the Prophet, to the lands across the Western Sea ruled by the likes of Shield Jaguar II. Oddly enough, the defeat of the Moors, and the building of churches like San Miguel near my grandmother's village in the year 805, coincide nicely with the best times for Shield Jaguar and his people. They all met up some 600 years later, and everyone concerned is now "Hispanic." Seeing as we took in as many folks as we could find bordering the Atlantic Ocean in the mid- to southern latitudes, it's a pretty big swath of humanity.
People say to me, "You don't look Spanish!" I reply, "Oh, yes I do. We were the white oppressors."
BTW, Ted Williams and I share a similar ethnic make-up. His forbearers hung out in Mexico for a while before coming to the US. Mine came directly to San Francisco in 1907.
Was your mom a Salvation Army soldier, also? Ted was so embarrassed by that.
It's a new thing. I hurt my back before a race back in April.
Got some nice massages from some women who, naif that I am, I did not realize offered bonus services for small fees.
But I did finally find one that was JUST a masseuse.
We're supposed to crap our pants because someone doesn't like The Big Lebowski?
Fuckin' amateurs.
When did I suggest you should crap your pants?
Naw, Nick. Good Catholics all around. I understand Ted's embarrassment, though.
In my family talking in tongues kind of changed down through the generations.
What about chucking snakes?
TT - Have you ever been to the Basque country? If so I'd be interested in your take on the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, architect Frank Gehry. I haven't been there. The photographs of it are appealing, to me at least. It's a wildly radical building and yet not harsh or brutal. Which is rare. Anyway, I'm wondering if you've seen it up close and if so what you're reaction has been. I think it houses a combination of Basque art and the standard international modernist stuff.
From what I've read the Irish don't cling nearly as fiercely to the Irish language as the Basques cling to Basque. In fact it's just a barely hanging on tiny number in the west of Ireland who speak Irish any longer. But Basque is a real living tongue.
Sixty, you might like this.
Saw a snake just two Sundays ago. Was on a former NASCAR speedway, not in church, although one might make the argument that I was on hallowed ground. Regardless, I know for a fact that some righteous spirits were involved in that whole deal.
But that's a story for another day.
But why I have called you all together today is to relate a story of a culturally deprived Italian from the midwest, Ohio, specifically.
I had hired him to help remove and replace the gutter and fascia board on one side of my shop.
He worked his way down to the far end of the gutter, where the downspout connected. While disassembling the joint he was stung by two wasps. Up he pipes "Hey, you should build a Methodist church over here!"
Why is that, asks I?
"Cuz you got wasps!"
So I piped up in my best The Departed sort of way "That sounds just like something a mackerel snapper would say!"
He looks at me, and in all seriousness asks "What's a mackerel snapper?"
Really, dude, really?
Dude has never even watched even one Eastern! I had to tell him the whole story of his people, like that time Tony ran into a rat up in Maine while driving Meadow around to colleges, then he ended up garrotting said rat, and so on. He knew nothing of his rich cultural heritage. For shame!
What makes a man, Cody?
ricpic: I haven't been to Spain since I was 14, so I'd really like to see the Guggenheim in Bilbao. When I was there, it was pretty scruffy, but that was deep in the days of Franco and there was still such a thing as "European poverty." I never made it to Bilbao to visit, just passed through on the way to San Sebastián after having visited my grandmother's bemused relatives. A lot of people like to think of their European ancestors as opportunity-seekers going to build a new country. In fact, my grandmother was 17 and a runaway, and my grandfather was about 19, and who left in the dead of night a Seminary in Oviedo, where he was being forced to study for the Priesthood. They literally ran away to America, desperate kids escaping lives they did not want.
Basque is quite a bit different than Gaelic. The Basques are really, really conscious of their ancient heritage, and will keep the language alive no matter what. I know several Gaelic-speakers here in Boston, but it's true that it's fading in Ireland. Oddly enough. my son ran in a road race this summer sponsored by the Malden (MA) Irish-American club (he came in 4th overall and 1st in his age division), and we were hanging around in the parking lot at the finish line, and there were several knots of people all chattering away in Gaelic. Of course, the Boston Irish thing is very, very thick, if slightly ridiculous to my Irish friends from Ireland.
Whatever it is, I bet you don't know, Blake.
Dean Martin grew up in Steubenville, Ohio. That's all I know about midwestern wops. Does Ohio qualify as the midwest? Well, to a New Yorker everything west of PA is foreign.
uh oh flo-bot is ... broken....
You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Cody. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon. With nail polish. These fucking amateurs.
LOL, Blake.
James Trafficante and his hair pet are from Youngstown.
Ohio is Midwest.
c-o-w
e-i-e-i-o
dagnabit
Shut the fuck up, Cody.
No, Blake, this Cody is a nihilist, there's nothing to be afraid of.
What brought that on?
Icepick, Cody is a Little Lebowski Achiever, and proud of him we are.
Cody, they're all quotes from the movie. Pretty much everything from the point you said you've not seen The Big Lebowski has been from The Big Lebowski, except for TT's geneology.
Alternately, I'm just an ass.
You're not wrong, Icepick, you're just an asshole.
Cody is fragile. Very fragile. He's a pacifist!
Actually, my favorite quote hasn't been used, and at this late hour I'm too tired to try and tie it to anything:
"Oh boy, how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus."
It is rather dependent on context, but I really love that one.
Can I be Jackie Treehorn? On a serious note, we must all help our friend to make sure he's not Donny. Who is Walter Sobchak, Sixty maybe?
I could see Sixty drawing down on a guy for going, "OVER THE LINE!!"
Hell, I want to be Walter. First, he's based on John Milius. Second, I totally get drawing down on a guy for going over the line. You have no idea how much self-restraint I need to get through most days without killing some stupid ass or another. If I didn't have a family to watch out for I'd probably have racked up quite a body count by now.
I'll be Karl.
"Meine dispatcher told me there was a problem with deine kahble?"
We have may other roles to fill. No female roles have been cast yet. Palladian?
Blake, I bet you yell that to all the girls. But be warned, Bunny may not be cast the way you like. Let's see, we need a bottle-blonde who's a special kind of dumb. Hmmm....
I'll be The Stranger. Los An-gell-eez.
Which of the Lewbowski female roles is reserved for Darcy?
Inga can be Donny.
I think as long as her roommate is Asia Carrera, I'll be fine.
There aren't really a lot of great females characters in Lebowski.
We can save Darcy for our production of Fargo...
Bloody bell, Haz! You really want to get Inga ashes all over people?
Titus can play Jesus.
Wait, Donny?!
Donny who loved bowling?
Jeez, at least the Coens only cremated him.
Haz is perfect for The Stranger.
Donny, because every other character gets to say "Shut the fuck up, Donny".
If I can't be The Dude then I don't want to be in your movie.
Well, Sixty, I just have to ask: How good are your interior decorating skills?
Heh. Someone needs to suggest a player to be "Woo".
He's kinda the catalyst.
"Ever thus to deadbeats, Lebowski."
I want to be Otis P. Driftwood.
Much better character, much better movie.
Just say you wanna be Groucho. Everybody wants to be Groucho.
Though Chico was the ladies' man.
Also, I love "Much better character, much better move." when you haven't seen TBL.
Troll, much?
Yeah, well, ya know that's just like, uh, your opinion, man...
And just so we are clear, that a quote from TBL where The Dude was speaking to Jesus, nobody fucks with the Jesus, not in any way intended to be part of the ongoing feud here.
Got my own Hatfields and McCoys thing goin' on, don't need more.
^that is a quote
I didn't say I wanted to be Groucho.
I said I wanted to be Otis P. Driftwood.
There is, you know, a difference.
One could google it, if they cared. But I know you don't care.
And don't call me a troll. That's not cool.
It's a good thing that were casting TBL.
Otherwise we'd be trying to figure out who should play Dirk Diggler.
What is it with Julianne Moore movies, Haz?
Sixty--
Ha! Excellent!
Cody--
I didn't call you a troll, I said you were trolling. As was I when I started quoting TBL in the first place.
Take it easy, man. Waving a fuckin' piece around.
As for Otis Driftwood, I know of two:
1. Otis B., which was just an alias for Groucho, along with Rufus T., and all the rest.
2. Bill Mosely in that Rob Zombie movie. He might've been Otis P. But that's a kinda weird role model.
Though Mosely's a fine actor.
Nothing gets past you, Blake, nothing.
Yes, Otis P. Driftwood was the alias used by the Mosley character that "that Rob Zombie movie".
Consider me Willie fucking Wonka, this is my chocolate factory.
And that's not a piece I'm waving around, that's my pecker. Flattered that you mistook it for a firearm. I think Full Metal Jacket will be on IFC this week (wed?), maybe you can refresh yourself which is which?
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