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The market will solve everything for a given meaning of "solve"
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-- The Compulsive Splicer
Am I a TOTAL Loser for Never Hearing of Ganglandnews Before?
2000-02-05 23:36:55
So, I got this lame junk mail from Brill's Content today, trying to get me to buy a subscription. They used this stratagem of listing all these things you would know if you'd read Brill's in the last few months. The thing is that it was all BULLSHIT, for example: there's this site called IMDB where you can look up movie info. NO SHIT, BRILL'S CONTENT. So I was dumbfounded that they had a blurb about this Gangland News site that I'd never heard of. How did that slip by?
See, I'm way more plugged in to the Web and practically everything else than those mincing nancy-boys at Brill's Content. What a bunch of PUSSIES, I have to say. "Waah waah waah, we are all so very sad. Waaah waaah waaah, we bemoan the state of American journalism." WANKERS! If you're looking for some journalism, you just come on over to PDJ, and I'll shovel that shit down your scrawny throats by the BUCKETFUL. "State of American Journalism," indeed! It is to laugh!
SO, you can see why I was shocked and outraged to hear about a site like Gangland News for the first time from a cheeseball outfit like B.C. What's happening to me? Have I lost my EDGE? Am I no longer the clued-in Web warlord I once was? Whither Mr. Bad? Whither online journalism?
If it was just some lame-ass e-commerce dot-com that sold bamboo ass-scratchers or something, well, it wouldn't be so bad. The thing is, this Gangland News is the FUNKY SHIT. I can't believe how great it is! The guy who runs ganglandnews.com, Jerry Capeci, was this organized crime beat reporter for the New York Daily News for 6 years. Then he wrote all these books about John Gotti and etc. and he's now the PRIMO SOURCE for organized crime info in the WORLD. And he's got a Web site, with a long column about organized crime that he updates every week! Beaujolais to him!
The best part about Gangland News is that he doesn't just cover the well-trodden ground of Italian organized crime. Sure, of course, there's plenty of Gottis and Palermos and Bonnanos and the like. But Gangland News also covers the excellent Chinese mafias like the Ghost Shadows and the Flying Dragons! Plus the Russians! And the Vietnamese! And the Koreans, and even the Fujianese! Why limit yourself to veal marsala and zitti when there's a SMORGASBORD of racketeering fun? That's the way I see it.
The main thing I don't like is that it's mostly about New York criminals, but what can you do? The guy's from New York, that's what he knows. And, as much of a bastardo San Francisco bigot as I am, I have to admit that New York is the place to go if you're going to be organizing heroin rings or construction rackets or pinball franchises. New York knows CRIME, that's for goddamn sure.
Go read ganglandnews.com now, and every week from here on out until the end of time. It's like having a serialized version of Nick Tosches's excellent novel, Trinities, except repeated over and over, every week. Go check this out. Tell 'em Mr. Bad sent you. Don't mention the "Brill's Content" part. Fuck those Brill's guys.
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