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Real Crime Overlooked

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A new dispatch has arrived from sensation loving, factually impaired journalist Bud Buck, as he attempts to capitalize on the latest headlines.

Midwestern Crime Families Remain Untouched By Federal Probe
By Bud Buck

Yesterday’s FBI roundup of New York and New Jersey crime families has sent shockwaves through national syndicates of biologically related people who engage in illegal activities, but so far the ruthless crime families of the American Midwest are untouched by this latest probe.

“Are we looking over our shoulders?” asks a source who demanded that he remain unidentified, and is definitely not Joey Erickson of Shoreview, Minnesota.

“Sure,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Always.”

The Erickson crime family is reputed to be a major player in the following areas:

* Cartnapping (The reckless use and subsequent abandonment of grocery story carts outside cart corrals)

* Transfer Laundering (Illegal exchange of unexpired bus transfers to riders who are not the initial recipients of those transfers)

* Yard Waste Embezzlement (Systematic, secret disposal of organics in improper trash containers)

* Library Book Racketeering

The “godfather” of the Erickson syndicate, Duane Erickson, is said to run the book racket using a network of “lieutenants” who approach people at local libraries and offer substantial cash payments to “sublet” the books they have already withdrawn on their personal library cards. Once the “mark” is enlisted in the “program”, the return of these “sublet” books is refused until tributes are paid or illegal activities are conducted. Failure to comply with the mob’s demands can lead to the destruction of previously spotless personal reputations, the accumulation of vast library fines, and even the complete loss of one’s library card.

Anguish and despair are often the lot of those who become enmeshed in the Erickson crime family’s web of deceit, and yet federal and state authorities continue to do nothing while spending their time and precious resources attacking the same old suspects in New York and New Jersey.

When will law enforcement get serious about the true extent of organized crime? Time will tell!

This is Bud Buck!

I think Bud is in love with the whole mob movie genre and would like to be a Godfather, although I personally can’t think of anything that would be less fun than having to follow the rules, take the risks and live with the uncertainty of being a member of a crime “family”. I guess that means I’d be the kind of sniveling wimp who gets bumped off in the first ten minutes.

If you were in a mobster movie, what sort of character would you play?

104 thoughts on “Real Crime Overlooked”

  1. Rise and Freeze your toes Baboons!

    Being a female in a mobster movie really sucks, Bonnie or Bonnie and Clyde excepted, but she dies. Usually you get slapped around (Lorraine Brazzi–forgot the name of the 1980’s mobster movie), you are very unhappy with your personal mobster of your primary relationship (Diane Keaton–Godfather, Edi Falco Sopranos), or you are an overweight, clueless Italian Mama stuck in the kitchen. So forget those roles. So, having shed my gender, I’d want to BE the Godfather–Marlon Brando or Al Pacino. If I’m living on the edge I want the power, money, and the glory, including minions kissing my hand.

    But I gotta say, I’m not a crime kind of gal. When I was age 7 I tried shoplifting a box of cherry cough drops (then $.05). I felt so guilty that I went back to the store and sneaked a nickel onto the counter and ran for it. That incident includes my entire life of crime.

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      1. I have to admit I’m too squeamish to be very knowledgable about the genre. Isn’t there a female-led crime family anywhere in the collected mobster oeuvre? With so many of the guys getting shot and thrown in the river, you’d think it would have to turn out that way at some point.

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      3. Just checked out Ma Barker on Wikipedia-there is the school of thought that she was just a cover and M. Jedgar Hoover made out she was the boss to justify the killing of an old woman. According to one of the gang, she could not plan breakfast, let alone a heist.

        Ma Cajeta, now, she would be another story-any woman who can trick goats into wearing their jackets is a force to be reckoned with.

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      4. I wonder if there might not be a better role for you, Jacque. Maybe you’d enjoy being Edna “The Kissing Bandit” Murray, a character from Saint Paul’s criminal past. Edna found that holding up banks made her so hot she would grab random victims and smooch them during the heists. Criminals called her “Rabbit” because she escaped from three prisons. Whereas Ma Barker was uglier than M Jedgar Hoover in a dress, Edna was easy on the eyes. And rather than becoming Swiss cheesed in an ambush, she lived a long life and was pardoned.

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  2. Let’s not get bogged down by a lot of facts and history here, folks-this is a movie!

    I’d want to be the very smart and determined investigator, Eleanor Ness (mostly because I want to wear a snappy suit)-wouldn’t want to carry a gun though.

    I do love Chicago, but on Sunday, we must cheer the Pack.

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  3. a gracious good morning to You All. one thermometer says minus 28 and the other minus 34. jackets are going on this morning (can’t at night because i am afraid they’ll hang themselves – a very real possibility)

    on to the question: yes, Jacque – i’m another painfully honest person so a life of crime would be difficult. but i guess my character in the movie would be the tough woman who is providing un-inspected dairy products to the Don (Jacque) unless she is lactose intolerant?? my character name? Ma Cajeta

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  6. I think I’m with mig – I’d like to be the crime fighting g-person (can’t be a g-man being, well, female…). Especially if I can get a swell trench coat with a big collar to flip up and a good self-righteous speech somewhere in the film.

    I’m too honest to even pretend at a life of crime, I think. I didn’t even steal a candy bar on purpose – just followed my friend out of the store with the candy bar I meant to buy in my hand without paying (she left abruptly and I ran after her). Once I was outside with both bar and dime in my hand, I stopped cold and commenced crying. I was a thief! Oh the horror. I eventually worked up the courage to go back and explain what had happened – the cashier, who lived across the street from us, was quite kind about it as I recall.

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    1. congrats on achieving taos,
      i looked it up and 18 degrees has got to be cold for those new mexicans but not you minnesotans, enjoy

      Weather for Taos, NM – Add to iGoogle
      18°F | °C
      Current: Clear
      Wind: N at 6 mph
      Humidity: 68%
      Fri

      44°F | 16°FSat

      45°F | 13°FSun

      41°F | 13°FMon

      41°F | 9°F
      Detailed forecast: The Weather Channel – Weather Underground – AccuWeather

      Weather for Minneapolis, MN – Add to iGoogle
      -14°F | °C
      Current: Snow Showers
      Wind: N at 0 mph
      Humidity: 66%
      Fri

      6°F | 0°FSat

      7°F | -2°FSun

      13°F | 9°FMon

      21°F | 12°F

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  8. Good morning to all,

    I guess I would pick the role of Inspector, as in Inspector Clouseau. I would fumble around and act stupid like the Clouseau character and then somehow, maybe by mistake, catch the mobsters. Inspector Fouseau might be a good name to use. I would have to act extremely stupid because mobsters are usually kind of stupid themselves. I could do something strange such as trying to arrest the God Father with a toy gun which make an odd sound as it fires a ping pong ball.. Maybe the mobsters would throw me in the river and I would be saved by my pet monkey. By the end of the film the mobsters might just turn themselves in because they can’t stand to watch any more of my dumb tricks.

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  9. this is the most pathetic group of criminals i have ever met. we gotta go whack somebody eh, we can have our choice sell drugs, sex, rob, kill or blackmail, we can, extort money any number of ways, pay for protection from guys like us is my favorite, we can launder money, make dog food out of the people we killor we can pay the truck drivers to bring cases of wine, womens clothing and stereo equipment to our warehouse. i think i’m gonna have to head up this mob if we are ever going to get anywhere in the criminal world. cmon baboons get with the program

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    1. All right. Lead the way, but I hope we don’t have chop up any bodies or do anything like that. I might faint.

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    2. Keep running your mouth like that against your fellow Baboons, and you’re liable to find yourself in a cement snowmobile suit at the bottom of Lake Phalen, with an Ice Palace built over you at the expense of the taxpayers with imported eelpout nibbling at your nose.

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      3. If a baboon troop wants to discipline an unruly member, isn’t the right thing to ignore him when he comes around and wants to be groomed? It is a tad less violent than the eelpout nibbling at the nose option.

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    3. In a long lifetime of watching TV, I’ve never seen an “import/export” businessman in a drama who wasn’t crooked. You are fulfilling a stereotype, tim. I have visions of secret compartments in the stuff you import. God only knows what is stored there.

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    4. I think you must lead this Congress into crime. But if you hit me, I’m telling mom and I will secretly scratch you when she can’t see me doing it.

      So there.

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      2. She is actually not sleeping very much, which proves she is doing too much work at home. I will have to do battle with her to take over all of the laundry when we get home, which is the only thing which demands much physically that she does. Good thing to learn.
        She just looked out the window at the mountains. I was having trouble getting her to grasp what it is like here. Now she gets it.

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      4. I just liked the sound of the mobster name-also think “retired children’s librarian” makes a great alter-ego for a mobster.

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      1. Posting is out of sync right now.
        Anyway, judging from last night, to hide out as a yuppie mob here we would have to able to talk rather pretentiously about intellectual topics–WE GOT THAT NAILED. And we have to look anorexic. That leaves me out. But the Women’s Art Coop could be our headquarters.

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      1. interesting i should have known that from the ski hills near by. enjoy the skinny intelligent artsy babes of taos. maybe they’d like to join the gang. we could be the mauls eh clyde ,steve, jim, ben, tgith, chitrader et all?

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  11. found a few

    Woman Mafia boss arrested
    Frances Kennedy in Rome
    Tuesday, 13 April 1999

    SICILIAN POLICE arrested one of Italy’s few female Mafia bosses yesterday as she was having breakfast in her home town near Catania.

    Surprised in a friend’s apartment, Concetta Scalisi, 45, did not lose her head. As members of the anti-Mafia squad told her she was under arrest, she smashed a glass and began slashing her stomach and hands with one of the shards. The aim of the well-dressed Sicilian matron, one of a handful of female mafiosi, was apparently to ensure she went to hospital rather than to Catania’s high-security prison.

    Ms Scalisi has been on the run since September. She is charged with belonging to Cosa Nostra and organising a triple murder. Unlike other women, who are increasingly active in what was once a male domain, she was not said to be simply passing on orders from a jailed husband or having Mafia properties put in her name.

    “Concetta is the boss, the number one of the Scalisi clan,” explained Enzo Montemagno, head of the Catania anti-Mafia squad. “She is brains of the organisation. It is one of the few cases in Italy where a woman is really running the show.”

    He described Ms Scalisi as a well turned out, conservatively dressed matron “whose expression made it clear she was not someone to be messed with”.

    Married with two adult children, Ms Scalisi grew up adoring her father, Antonino, the charismatic and powerful local boss. When he was shot dead in a Mafia vendetta in 1982, her brother Salvatore took over. When he, too, was killed five years later, she stepped in to reorganise the family. In deference to the Mafia’s patriarchal traditions, she brought in two nephews – but she was the decision maker.

    It was during this period that investigators say Ms Scalisi eliminated three “family” members who had stepped out of line – providing the weapons, a refuge and logistical support for the killers. She faces a possible life sentence if convicted.

    When her nephews were arrested in 1997, Ms Scalisi reportedly took complete control of mob operations in the hill town of Adrano, with a population of 20,000, near Catania. That included loan sharking, drug dealing, extortion and controlling public works contracts. She also came into contact with her family’s traditional allies, the clan of Nitto Santapaola, one of Sicily’s most ruthless mobsters.

    Ms Scalisi’s arrest came after a difficult and frustrating undercover operation. “In a small town where the Scalisi can count on considerable support, it is not easy to trail or observe those close to Concetta without being noticed yourself,” Mr Montemagno said.

    Three times police thought they had her, only to burst into a building and find no trace. Yesterday morning at breakfast time, however, their painstaking work paid off.

    Caught after 20 years, Mafia queen in need of haircut
    By John Lichfield
    Tuesday, 26 December 2000

    A Naples Mafia leader who outwitted Italian police for two decades has finally been run to ground – in a secret chamber in the crime family’s kitchen.

    A Naples Mafia leader who outwitted Italian police for two decades has finally been run to ground – in a secret chamber in the crime family’s kitchen.

    Erminia Giuliano, 44, head of one of the most powerful clans of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, was arrested at her daughter’s home on Christmas Eve after a tip-off.

    Known in Naples as “Celestia” for her ice-blue eyes, Ms Giuliano asked the police to let her hairdresser come to make her look respectable before she appeared in public. The police agreed and then took her – dressed in high heels, a fake leopard-skin coat and handcuffs – to the Pozzuoli prison. Celestia’s speciality within the crime family, which she became head of after the arrest of her five brothers, was counterfeiting banknotes.

    She also had a violent streak. If bored as a young woman she would say: “I have to shoot someone”, is alleged to have stabbed a rival female gang leader in 1997, and last year drove a car into the shop window of another enemy. Carlo Gualdi, head of Naples’ police, called her “a true leader, with all the qualities usually associated with crime godfathers”.

    The Giuliano family’s other interests included drugs and illegal betting on football matches. One high-profile friend included the football star Diego Maradona when he played for Napoli. Carmine, one of Erminia’s brothers, said later that Maradona would do anything for cocaine, even if Napoli lost the Italian championship.

    “The curtain has fallen on the most theatrical and the most eccentric of crime clans,” the newspaper, La Repubblica, said yesterday. Or maybe not.

    Before she left for jail, Erminia was said to have told her daughters: “I’m counting on you now. I am relaxed. I have taught you all the true values in life.”

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    2. Thanks for the research, tim. Interesting characters, and the slashing-myself-with-broken-glass technique is a movie scene waiting to be filmed! Or has it already been done?

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  12. Having experience playing a Creepy Old Woman(in “Lumber Jill” see last year’s Trial Balloon guest blog — or Lumber Jill on Facebook –for details and photos), I think I could do it again, mobster style, even without the lumberjack plaid & wool pants.

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    2. Does this woman lumberjack mobster stir her coffee with her thumb as in the song, I’m a lumberjack and I’m Okay ?

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  13. My life of crime began at age four. Our neighbors had a glass jar in which they stored gum wrapped in waxed paper. When neighborhood kids came around, they treated us. One day the neighbors were not at home. I walked in and helped myself to the gum I knew they would have offered me. When I mentioned this later to my parents, I learned that I was a thief. I had to go next door and stand in the doorway, tears of shame streaming down my face, to beg forgiveness.

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  14. I was going to parody this into a yuppie song, but ahhhhhh . . .

    I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay
    I sleep all night and I work all day
    He’s a lumberjack and he’s okay
    He sleeps all night and he works all day

    I cut down trees, I eat my lunch
    I go to the lavat’ry
    On Wednesdays I go shopping
    And have buttered scones for tea
    He cuts down trees…
    He’s a lumberjack…

    I cut down trees, I skip and jump
    I like to press wild flow’rs
    I put on women’s clothing
    And hang around in bars
    He cuts down trees…
    He’s a lumberjack…

    I cut down trees, I wear high heels
    Suspendies and a bra
    I wish I’d been a girlie
    Just like my dear papa
    He cuts down trees…
    He’s a lumberjack…

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    1. While working on an article about Hayward, Wisconsin, I learned some fascinating things about lumberjacks and prostitutes. People used to claim that there was no God in Hayward, Hurley or Hell. Large gangs of young men worked brutal work weeks to drop, trim and transport big timber to rivers for spring drives downstream to mills. Those gangs included many rough young men famous for their boozing and fighting. But they had other strong urges.

      Early lumber towns were rough places, like gold-mining towns. At a time when the town of Ashland wasn’t very big, it had over 200 saloons. That fact is often mentioned with amusement now because some people think it was cute that lumberjacks drank so heavily. What is less often mentioned is that those saloons were also brothels.

      When I interviewed an old-timer who lived through the lumber years, he said the polite people in town had respect (or at least tolerance) for the prostitutes who serviced the lumberjacks. The common view was that the lumberjacks were a ravenous, untamed force that was a threat to all decent women. In this sense, the working girls were almost like social workers. They constituted a critically needed line of defense for proper women because they absorbed the lust that would otherwise have made life unsafe for church-going women.

      The man telling me those stories said that when a prostitute retired and took up a respectable life, people generally accepted her and her children (usually by several men). She wouldn’t necessarily be honored, but people found it easy to forgive and forget her past until it became rude to mention her former employment. People figured these women had done their best to keep Hayward safe for decent women.

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    2. I thought that lumberjack song included the phase, “I stir my coffee with my thumb”, but I guess that comes from a different song

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      1. The Frozen Logger

        As I set down one evening in a timber town cafe
        A six foot-seven waitress, to me these words did say
        “I see you are a logger and not a common bum
        For no one but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb

        “My lover was a logger, there’s none like him today
        If you’d sprinkle whisky on it, he’d eat a bale of hay
        He never shaved the whiskers from off his horny hide
        But he’d pound ’em in with a hammer, then bite ’em off inside

        “My lover came to see me one freezing winter day
        He held me in a fond embrace that broke three vertebrae
        He kissed me when we parted so hard it broke my jaw
        And I could not speak to tell him he’d forgot his mackinaw

        “I watched my logger lover going through the snow
        A-sauntering gaily homeward at forty eight below
        The weather tried to freeze him, it tried its level best
        At a hundred degrees below zero, he buttoned up his vest

        “It froze clean down to China, it froze to the stars above
        At one thousand degrees below zero it froze my logger love
        They tried in vain to thaw him and if you’ll believe me, sir
        They made him into axe blades to chop the Douglas fir

        “That’s how I lost my lover and to this caffay I come
        And here I wait till someone stirs his coffee with his thumb
        And then I tell my story of my love they could not thaw
        Who kissed me when we parted so hard he broke my jaw”

        James Stevens

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      2. all I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, oh they’re no use to me, if I can’t have a proper cup of coffee from proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea.

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  16. It looks like we already have criminal role models here on the trail
    Baboons are known as the most vicious of the apes. This, as with the leopard and the cape buffalo, is not because of some innate lust to wreck mayhem on all sides. Rather; it is because the baboon defends itself so well, and the baboon has the most powerful jaws of all apes, with perhaps the exception of the gorilla.

    Baboon troops are highly organized. Chimps will abandon their young and flee from enemies, and this I say is dumb, NOT intelligent. It is also why chimps are going extinct. Of course, the average Western animal hugger has abandoned his young in order to pursue his scholarly interests, so the chimp is his hero.

    The average baboon troop is structured very tightly at three levels.

    Level One: Two to three huge bucks who lead the troop without any sign of competition.

    Level Two: Younger bucks who submit to the three troop leaders and help protect the young.

    Level Three: Females and babies.

    When danger is sensed, such as an approaching leopard, the three big bucks will raise the alarm. At once, the whole troop submits 100%, and the females grab the babies and young and run to the center of the troop. The younger bucks gather around the females and their young and display attack gestures outward. The two or three big buck leaders move around the perimeter of the troop, back and forth, watching for the leopard. The troop will not panic or run away. Now, a smart leopard, though he may consider baboon a delicacy, will not proceed to attack. But, if the leopard advances, the three big bucks, with several younger bucks following, will charge the leopard, and they will tear the leopard to shreds– literally. Baboons are much smaller than leopards, but the effect of baboon rage is stupefying to the leopard. Game hunters have reported finding the scene afterward, and all that was left was mouthful sized pieces of leopard in all directions. The baboons tore the leopard to bits using their powerful mouths. Virtually NO other member of the ape family conducts business in this manner

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    2. Good for us for having such a fearsome namesake. Too bad “baboon” is so much like “buffoon” in the English language. Maybe as mafiosi we should be called the Baboono family.

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    3. soooooo……Baboons have powerful jaws-that works nicely with Clyde’s observation, ” talk rather pretentiously about intellectual topics-WE GOT THAT NAILED.”

      Seems like we also do all right with babbling on about the inane-so nice to be versatile.

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  17. Morning all… whoever here wished me “sleeping late” for the new year, thank you. Forgot to set the alarm last night and the teenager actually woke me at 7:10 saying “Aren’t you getting up?” Even though we had to scramble and I was a smidge late to work, it felt WONDERFUL! Maybe I can make a habit of it.

    As to mobsters… I’m really more of a Robin Hood type. I find that my favorite stories/movies/tv shows are the guys/gals just outside the law trying to make things better for the average joe. But I really don’t want to be Maid Marion, so I guess I’ll have to be Robin She. Or Little She.

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  18. or to honor our musical roots and jim eds observations that all great italian composers end in i we could be the babooni family

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  19. Good morning! have any of you read “Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy”? Its a pretty funny novel with the premise that 4 women could rob an Italian bank and the authorities would go around looking for 4 men.

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  20. What an enlightening morning!

    OK, I’ll be the Cook. Barbarinia. No matter what what we’re like or what we do, we need a cook. Does it have to be Italian? I could do thatm, but would prefer to “branch out.”

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    1. I wonder what a cookbook of crime family recipes would consist of? I suppose it would have to be food that could be prepared quickly, or else could sit without a lot of fuss and bother while it cooked and then easily reheated. Large roasts and soups, perhaps? Salads? Maybe church basement ladies salad luncheons are just covers for their family crime businesses. “Oh, I always have a salad handy. Of course I can bring one to the circle meeting.”

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  21. Morning–

    I think t his has to be one of the most educational blogs we’ve had to date. Learned about female mob bosses, weather in NM, baboons, lumberjacks and prostitutes! I’m set for the day I think…

    I played a ‘G-man’ in a play once… had the trench coat and everything… my biggest problem, according to the director, was keeping the ‘sh*t-eating grin’ off my face. And that’s my burden in life; stop smiling so much… but that’s the show I met Kelly in so it worked for me… (was called ‘You Can’t Take it With You’ but I like to say “I did”)

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      1. Ah- my favorite story, Thanks for asking!
        Kelly worked backstage… I got called in late to fill in for someone that had to drop out. The two other G-men and I would sit backstage and watch Kelly and nudge each other and say ‘You ask her out. No, You ask her out.’
        I have a distinct memory of meeting her one night onstage after the show and asking her if she was going to a cast party. And then a week later, convinced her to run a follow spot for an upcoming show that I was working on… because, you see, that way I knew where she’d be every night for a couple weeks…

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    2. Love “You Can’t Take it With You” – best memory from one production: being handed a clean, white apron and being told by the costumer to mess it up and make it look like I had been playing with explosives. I was the set designer, so I had bunches of paint to work with…put on the apron and played finger paints with the front of the apron…then *carefully* took it off and laid it out to dry. Fun stuff. (Costumer was a little surprised I put it on to distress it – seemed to me the best way to make sure I was getting all the smudges and places a person might wipe their fingers in the right places…)

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  22. I think I’m with Clyde on this one. If I’m in a mobster movie, or ever have Anything to do with the mafia, I’d like to be the guy who gets pushed out of the way. Years ago, back when I was single and I spent Thanksgiving weekends by myself, I would make it a tradition to watch all 3 Godfathers movies. Because ever since the first time I saw Godfather part 2, I’ve always been most thankful that I was born into a family of SW Minnesota German Lutheran dirt farmers! (Ya… a guy could do worse)

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    3. Since we are speaking of crime, sometime around the First World War, my grandfather and TJ’s grandfather (they were brothers) drove my grandfather’s car to Luverne from Trosky (a little town near Edgerton) to whoop it up at the Rock County Fair or some such venue, and the car was stolen. They had to take the train back home. I guess that was one of the first auto thefts in Rock County. I never thought to ask if they got the car back.

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      1. One of the women who did the cooking at Bible Camp was a retired school lunch lady-one of her first jobs as a girl was waitressing in a cafe-Bonnie and Clyde were her customers, as the story goes. Guthrie Center is near Bayard, Iowa, and she would have been the right age, so it may well be true.

        Regardless, she was a great cook, the kind that does not measure.

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      3. Even a Bible Camp cook needs a great story to enthrall the customers. That’s a good one. Did she say how they were as customers? Big tippers, I hope.

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  23. I’m with Dale. I’ll stay spineless, sniveling and wimpy. I would like to wear one of those big trench coats though. Stay warm, all!

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  24. If I must turn to a life of crime to remain in the Baboono (or Babooni or Baboonio..or whatever we name ourselves) family, I will offer to drive the getaway car. I’ve always wanted and excuse to drive fast and recklessly, but mostly can’t bring myself to do it in every day life. But I will only join if I don’t have to rip anyone or anything to shreds with my teeth other than perhaps a good bar of dark chocolate.

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  25. I am out of the Taos mob; so is Sandy. Altitude got to both of us, me quite badly. We are down in Santa Fe, which is not all that far down but we are both better.

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  26. Greetings! If I were a character in a mob movie, I would probably be the family member who doesn’t quite have the nerve to be a ruthless criminal, but still wants to be in the family business and have a piece of the action. You know, the thug with a soft heart … who likes to rough up and thrash a non-paying customer, but can’t do the real dirty work of “icing” or killing a competitor or other low-life. But I would have to wear the sharp suit and fedora, Italian shoes and pack a big, cool pistol — just for looks, ya know. Got a reputation to uphold.

    Otherwise, the role of mob wife is pretty well taken by Michelle Pfeiffer. “Married to the Mob” and “Scarface” I believe she was the wife or girlfriend of major crime bosses in those movies — maybe some others, too.

    Or maybe I could be the mob accountant — counting the take, record-keeping, laundering, doling out everyone’s piece and paying off authorities — now that’s a position of understated power. Of course, I would need the requisite wardrobe — I think Tim gave a wonderful color scheme a few days ago — gray cashmere with bone piping. The right wardrobe is crucial playing a mob role.

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  27. FYI: this motel which I booked for the wireless service only works if I sit in one place with a piece of tinfoil on my head and my left leg cocked at 87.65 degree angle. So I will not be on much if it all until Sunday evening so do not panic. Some day I will explain our day today.

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