MAF-I-A

I <3 the mafia.
before you get your panties in a twist over me being in love with organized crime, please hear me out.
i have been enthralled with the mob for at least a decade. i love watching mobster movies and, although its been a while, reading mob books. this week i started reading "Wiseguy" by Nick Pillegi. it's an interview with former wiseguy Henry Hill (you may remember him as the main character in Goodfellas...great movie). although a recount, it is mostly a true story (so far the movie and book are pretty much in-line). it is amazing to me how the mafia functioned - they had people infiltrated everywhere, they were getting pay-offs all over the place, they controlled their neighborhoods. if they wanted to highjack a freight truck at kennedy airport - they had guys working in multiple different capacities at the airport. they had someone working just about every where they went...union guys, cops, judges, politicians all in their back pockets. restaurant owners used to "buy" protection for their restaurants from the mob bosses. at the end of the week, the mob boss got paid first, before anyone else...if the restaurant owner didn't have enough money, too bad. but the mobsters were working both angles, they'd have some of their boys working at the restaurant, stealing crate-loads of food and alcohol and selling it on the black market. or the wiseguys would come in and run up rediculous tabs that they'd never pay for, because they were connected. that's what it was all about, connections. if you were a connected mobster, you could go anywhere, do anything and no one would mess with you, because if they did, they'd wind up dead. there is something very sexy and appealing about the mafia life. i really think if i were living in NY in the 50's and 60's (even into the 80's), i would have done my best to marry into the mob. what a lifestyle. living fast and hard. for the most part, they didn't have to worry about consequences, because they had the money to buy who they needed to, or to pay their way out of trouble. but most importantly, they lived by the law of Omerta - the code of silence. if anyone got pinched for working a job, the cops would pressure for who was the boss or who was running the jobs, but in the mafia, you don't talk, you don't rat on your friends, you live by omerta. i live by omerta (see, i would have made a fabulous mobster...ok, maybe not the killing and stealing part, but i can totally keep a secret). although i'm very happy our lives aren't run by the mafia now, what an amazing infrastructure the mob was. living by omerta and being connected...i love that!