billfromlaketravis

Yeah the book has some throw away pages on Vito’s rise in America. Thank God we got Godfather II to flesh that out.

Just finished the book. Sonny’s mistress had a pelvic floor issue which made her vagina huge. Perfect for Sonny to park his hog. Of course great movie, but the Sicily scenes are boring as hell. Doesn’t get interesting until Apollonia gets blown up.

Die Hard. No notes.

So the puppies make a blanket fort under my desk while I work. Finally caught one in the act.

This might be better than I remember it being. Things could get interesting in a blind with Old Fitz 8. As always, I wish I bought 2.

3 putt is going to @ me, but La Calle has pretty good breakfast tacos. Their M-F breakfast special is 2 breakfast tacos, and a cup of coffee for $4.99. Coffee is solid. Hard to beat.

This Is Zodiac Speaking is pretty good. Netflix has my complete confidence in documentaries.

Hilson is all over the place. I thought he was visiting ‘Cuse this weekend?

Let me try this again. Is Toast of London available in the US without buying BritBox? Yes, I know Berry was on The IT Crowd. Never got into the show. Yeah I remember watching it on Netflix when we were moving into the new house in October 2020.

Is Toast of London available anywhere in the US? Mo, I’m not paying BritBox.

Meh. Y’all are overreacting. They lost one they should have won. Beat the Celtics on the road or something and it’ll even out.

7 was fantastic. Chris Nolan would be proud.

I wasn’t aware there was a beef. Danson appeared in Season 2 of Frasier, so did NBC order Danson to appear on Fraiser? https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ted-danson-apologizes-kelsey-grammer-201856612.html

I was thinking the Mother’s revenge from How I Met Your Mother. That bitch Robin better watch her back.

Has OF revealed their plans for a second wave of 1924?

Basically 2 years, $70 million for Green on basically a prove it deal. There’s nothing to squint at, that’s a steal.

The new episode of Ted Danson and Woody’s podcast features Kelsey Grammer.

Jake pulling pots in reverse was pretty good. Mandy looked legitimately hot with the tats covered up.

Killing Victor would be some very dark shit. When Tony killed Chris you were so sick of his shit that felt like a relief. Victor is just a good kid in a tough situation.

Another sweetheart government deal with a murderer. Collotta admitted to 4 murders and did 2 years. The guy was a thief, and had no interest in being in the Outfit. He would probably stayed a thief if he wasn’t associated with Spilotro.

Jesus. I watched it when I was a 21 or 22 and I couldn’t sleep for 3 days. That must have been rough for you.

The Memorial and 59 locations are very solid. Shepherd is more of a bar. I worked over by the one in Memorial for years. They used to serve a bowl of steak soup for like $10 and a tall Shiner Bock for $2-3. Good times. Top 5 soup for me. They made it from scratch with steak trimmings. I wish they’d bring it back.

Longhorn Steakhouse has really good, large lamb chops during Easter, and they make a fairly good cheap lunch steak, but I’d stay away from the high ticket items.

Rebel Ridge was pretty good. I don’t understand prominent podcasters putting it on their Best of 2024 lists. It’s a solid formulaic action movie. It would have been dogshit if they completed the film with Boyega. He allegedly walked off the set and didn’t bother to come back. They had to reshoot all his scenes after replacing him with Aaron Pierre. Best of luck to Boyega, but Netflix probably won’t cast him again. That’s pretty bad if you’re an actor in 2024.

I finally revisited Casino the novel by Nicholas Pileggi. Goodfellas is next. - Interviews with Cullotta (portrayed by the great Frank Vincent) and Rosenthal (De Niro) were the author’s primary source material. Spilotro (Pesci) can’t say shit because he was dead. - Some Cullotta bullshit that the author never bothered to verify: 1) He claims his next door neighbor was killed by accident by Spilotro’s goons. He then waits 3 days before he turns himself into the feds. 2) He thinks the Rosenthal car bombing was carried out by the group of low life’s that Geri Rosenthal (Sharon Stone) was running with. Pretty sophisticated attack for drug addicts, hustlers, and pimps. I think it was either Milwaukee or Cleveland. Some recent stuff has come out that Rosenthal was a rat, and the boss of Milwaukee knew about it. 3) He’s never mentioned the name, but Cullotta liked to tell the story of a botched hit where he didn’t use enough powder in the cartridge. It was almost certainly Ken Eto. He ran Asian gambling houses in Chinatown for the Outfit. He later became a government witness. - Reading between the lines, Joey Lombardo and his guys in the Grand Avenue Crew backed or didn’t have a problem with Spilotro, but the boss Joey Aiuppa backed Rosenthal. As portrayed in the movie, Rosenthal made a lot of money handicapping for Aiuppa. Lombardo was present at the Spilotro murders. I believe Aiuppa was already in the can for the skim. - I think Spilotro had a decent chance of skating. He had a very good attorney in Oscar Goodman (later became mayor of Vegas), and they couldn’t pen a murder on him. He had 3 pending trials. 1) One was a basically a civil trial. 2) The second was for an additional skim operation at the Stardust. 3) The third case ended previously in a mistrial. He was murdered for other stuff. - Based on the novel, they never really had control of Allen Glick (portrayed by Kevin Pollak). The boss of Milwaukee scared him, coerced him, but he wasn’t their subordinate. He cooperated of course and put everybody away. Weird choice to keep him alive. I think the mob was courting him based on the Tamara Rand murder. Maybe they thought if they made the Rand problem go away, he’d be beholden to them. - I think Casino is more interesting subject matter than Goodfellas. Henry Hill embellished a lot of shit. I will acknowledge fact checking is difficult when retelling criminals’ stories, but Pileggi could have double checked Hill’s statements with police and FBI reports.