five families and some funerals

a "B"
a "C"
2"Gs" and an "L"

Bonanno
Colombo
Gambino
Genevese
Lucchese

     Those are the names of the "Five Families" in organized crime (the Mafia -- la cosa nostra) in New York City in the 20th Century.

     (Yesterday I felt like I needed to memorize those five names so that I would know.  B, C, 2-Gs, and an L)




If I were going to try pronouncing Genovese, the way we were taught in Italian class, it would have four syllables:

Gen - oh - VAY - say.
     But the way I heard them say it in the videos and documentaries, it has three syllables:

Gen - oh - VEES.

     Maybe the pronunciation was modified for America, or just by habit and usage.



     On You Tube there is a documentary about "the real Sopranos."

     (The narrator has a British accent that is somewhat disconcerting, given the context.  We are up to our ears in Italian-American-East-Coast-urban accents.  The way they pronounce Bada Bing on The Sopranos, "bada" rhymes with lotta.

     This English guy pronounces it so it rhymes with atta-boy... "the Batta-Bing"...)



     Members of the New Jersey mob, in 1999, were watching this new TV series on HBO going, "Izz-at supposed to be us?!"

_______________________________

     In one of the videos I watched on You Tube -- maybe "The Real Sopranos," I'm not sure -- a guy said in earlier times, 1930s to 1980s, it was really hard to get a mob member in custody to ever help authorities catch the other ones.  They would refuse to talk and just go to prison.  ("In the can" as the Sopranos characters say.)

     The oath, the omertà, the loyalty to one's fellow -- well -- thugs...had meaning, and they would take great pride in "not talking."  Not being "a rat."


     In the modern era, it is easier to get a mafia member to talk when they are apprehended.  The guy in the video said this is because -- compared with earlier times, when some of these mob people came from backgrounds where, "if they went to jail, it was actually an improvement" -- 

In more recent decades if someone gets arrested, they may have been raised in upper middle class surroundings, "driving their dad's luxury car since they were fifteen, grew up in a million dollar house" -- they very much don't want to do jail, so they are more willing to "turn state's evidence" -- give information to law enforcement.  They are like -- oath, schmoath.


     Is the syndicate becoming a victim of its success...?

____________________________

     That phone-to-in-person conversation / dialogue in the Pine Barrens episode is so classic -- it is all over the Internet....  it's people repeating stuff they heard that they don't know about, and also repeating it wrong.  (Was he listening?)  
     And one person doesn't understand the other...  They don' t know stuff and they keep pushing to get their goal anyway -- bluffing and punching their way through.


     When Paul Gaultieri and Christopher Moltisanti go looking for this Russian mobster, Paulie tries to fill the younger man in on U.S.-Soviet history:  "They put missiles in Cuba, and pointed 'em right at us!"
     Chrissy:  "That was real?...I saw the movie--"






LOL

They knock on the guy's door, the Russian lets them in.  Paulie examines his entertainment center, picking up a remote -- the Russian, who is extremely tall and somewhat drunk speaks from the chair he is slumped in, his tone weary and ominous:  "Put universal remote on docking station."


"What?"

"Put universal remote on docking station."

     This dialogue -- naturally -- leads to a broken remote and murderous hand-to-hand combat.  (Inevitable, right? -- ?!!!!?  These people cannot do anything!!  [Not to mention not knowing anything...Cuban Missile Crisis:  "That was real?"])




     Later when Christopher and Paulie have embarked on their odyssey into the frozen Pine Barrens, Tony Soprano calls on the cell phone.  His conversation with Paulie is muffled with crackle-and-hiss:  "It's a bad connection so I'm gonna talk fast!  The guy you're looking for is an ex-commando!  He killed sixteen Chechen rebels single-handed!  He was with the Interior Ministry."

Paulie tells Christopher:  "He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians.  Guy was an interior decorator."

lol
Dying. ...



-30-