Maggie's Farm

This is close enough to the new year to make the call on 2009's personal favorite new quotation, and i think i just read it!

...which is no doubt why Schaar added "...created next in activity."

Re Obamaton, History Channel showed the 1990 Scorcese mob film last night. Couldn't help but wonder whether Obama is (protag?) Henry Hill or Paulie. For this quote, one could perhaps see Tommy as the czars and the congtressional hard left. One thing is fer sher, the ''bust out'' is somewhat technical craftwork --and almost wholly unimagined by almost everyone who isn't mob or clinical. Here's an excerpt from an internet review --i'm seeing America as the Bamboo Lounge.

"...when he is embarrassed by Bamboo Lounge owner Sonny for a tab of "seven f--king Gs," Tommy breaks a glass bottle on Sonny's forehead.

In the next scene it's a few days later and a scared Sonny - with a bandage on his forehead from the injury, is at mob boss Paulie's place complaining to Paulie about how Tommy's behavior ("he's like an arch criminal" says Sonny) is dangerous, disruptive and volatile to the self-regulating criminal world, but Paulie responds helplessly, saying "You think you're the only one? I talk to these guys a million times. They don't listen...What could I do? If there was something I could do, don't you think I would do it?...Tommy's a bad kid. He's a bad seed. What am I supposed to do, shoot him?"

Henry has accompanied Sonny to see Paulie, and at this point prompts Sonny, "Sonny, tell him what we were talking about."

So Sonny starts talking, and although in the scene Paulie is playing dumb, by his and Henry's facial expressions it dawns on the movie audience that Paulie, Henry, and Tommy have set the whole thing up. now Sonny is literally begging Paulie to take a share of the Bamboo, so that Tommy would have to behave, so that Sonny could quit fearing for his life.

Although broadly proclaiming to be unaware of how to run a restaurant, Paulie allows himself to be talked into promising to offer protection by becoming a partner. Scene fades to black, with businessman Sonny now committed and beholden to gangster Paulie.

[sound track is playing "Playboy," performed by the Marvelettes, and Henry's voice-over starts back up over scenes of lines of deliverymen hauling cases of Scotch, oysters, Champagne, steaks, into back door of the Bamboo as Sonny sits in his office going through the books and shaking his head, his lip trembling as he fights against breaking down and crying]

[i]"Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with a bill, he can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy's got to come up with Paulie's money every week. No matter what. Business bad? F--k you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? F--k you, pay me. The place got hit by lightning? F--k you, pay me. Also, Paulie could do anything. Especially run up bills on the joint's credit. And why not? Nobody's gonna pay for it anyway. And as soon as the deliveries are made in the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it at a discount. You take a two hundred dollar case of booze and you sell it for a hundred. It doesn't matter. It's all profit. And then finally, when there's nothing left, when you can't borrow another buck from the bank or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match."[i]

Next scene, it's night amnd the joint is empty except for Henry and Tommy stuffing flammable wads of paper into ceiling fixtures - close up of a Bamboo Lounge matchbook flaring into flames. They go outside as the fire begins to catch and spread, and non-chalantly watch from their car on the curbside as across the street the restaurant doors and windows begin billowing fire and smoke. Then they drive off, animatedly arguing about their girlfriends and upcoming double-date with them.

OOps --"Goodfellas" --is the flic, of course. i pulled most of the comment (i edited some for clarity) here:

http://www.filmsite.org/goodf.html

PS, to me, in the allegory, or analogy, whatever, Sonny is YOU and ME, and the bottle busting on Sonny's head is the September '08 Bank Panic. Right now at this time, we're in the office about to bust into tears as we review accounts and watch the parade of deliverymen coming in and stacking goods as the gangsters laff it up and sign invoices. At some point in the future (finally to the post's topic), this scene will fade to black and the arson scene will begin playing out. Whatever the real-life parallel will be who knows, tho i hope it ain't involving the nuclear weapons treaty the admin is negotiating with the Kremlin at this very moment.

What could Sonny have done to prevent that Bamboo Lounge matchbook flaring into flames? That's our question.

just one itty bitty more PS

http://www.bing.com/search?om=0&sig=40E51126DDEF464CBD9CABEC1511119F&q=rathke+sicily&FORM=Z9FD4

Out of a million substantive 'tells', why add such a flimsy whimsy? I do not know, it just seemed right. But point --this URL is NOT the brief --it's just a piccolo scherzo for the hell of it --

thanx, BD --and a Merry backatcha too --appreciate tip that i hadn't hogged the thread with all that turgid paranoia. i sure liked it better when i had just the one noia. Now it's the pair and coming up trebles on the backstretch, fourbles in the bend --

:-(

well jappy that's tp posit there's any air between the goodfella doers and do-gooder fellas --the speaker of the house's daddy was executive suite Genovese, the senate majority leader is from Vegas, and the prez is from Giancana's old crew. Pelosi goes on a retreat in Sicily after every election, the Financial Times is running stories on the Sicilian mob going green in a big way (solar and wind equipment manufacturing and FINANCE), the White House shut down the office that watches the mob/union interface ("budget cut" of a few pissant million bux), the main Union dude had logged 22 private meets in the WH by March (was it?), Madoff and Stanford are mobbed up and had SEC protection, and that 134 billion in (real or fake, implications for Dollar are same) Treasury bonds busted on the Eye-Tie /Swiss border was headed for a 20-person insider gang of Genovese/Montreal Russian mob plants employed inside the largest bank in Venezuela juuuust before Kremlin started publicly cahooting with the new admin in blowing out confidence in the Dollar.

And that's just off the top of my head --i had to quit for a short period, that one right after 'Dollar'.

yep on that Italian blood --it was some time ago -- Aunt Gwennyth Skyrt-Hoystr and one of Hadrian's legionnaire stonemasons, Centurion Benito Miscellaneous.