​Once of the unexpected joys in the murder trial of Vinny Gorgeous (a/k/a Bonanno family crime boss) is the revelation of all sorts of new mafia-based learning, like in naming conventions and linguistics and style, and even micro-economics. Today, we learn that the price of impregnating a crime associate's wife comes in two flavors: death, or 50 grand. The owner of Staten Island's Trattoria Romana chose $50,000 (with $10,000 going to a New Jersey crime family as a "broker's fee") instead of getting...yes...whacked, reports the Daily News.

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​Racial profiling, gender discrimination, undeserved hatred -- these are all bad when they're true, but they're also bad when fabricated or blown out of proportion, as in the case of mortician Dawn Mazzone-Trani.

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​In times of belt-tightening, one looks first to the most obvious things to cut corners on. For example, limo services, board meetings at resorts, free employee snacks in the cafeteria, maybe even the entire cafeteria if you're in real trouble. And there's a hierarchy to that list, from the least needed/most expensive things (you can likely do without) to most needed/least expensive (you should hold onto for dear life). Or at least, that's how it should go.

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​Actually, we're not even sure Mel Gibson is human. In this rant upon poor Oksana Grigorieva that Radar Online has obtained "exclusively," he's oddly robotic, repetitive, and pretty much completely psychotic-sounding. We pray that her silence toward the end means she put the phone down and walked away. We'll let this mostly speak for itself, because there's not much more to say than: This man terrifies us to our core, and we will not be seeing that beaver movie (not that we would have anyway). Listen to the audio here.

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The healthcare debate has been a little light on things to enjoy, so be especially grateful for Congressman Anthony Weiner reducing Wall Street Journal pundit Peggy Noonan to more-than-usual incoherence on Morning Joe yesterday. Highlights: Noonan's airy set speech on Obama's "fatally off point" missed "moment in history" and Republican bipartisanship, her inability to grasp the connection between healthcare costs and the economy, and a flurry of indignant sputtering after Weiner calls her argument "cliched" and "hackneyed."

Video after the jump. Enjoy.

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​Well, this isn't good PR: Inc. reports that some people recently went to see Shutter Island at the Falls Cinema 8 in St. Croix, Wisconsin. One of the party had to write a check for the tickets, as the theater didn't accept credit or debit cards. The showing was disrupted by ushers looking for unpaid viewers, and the woman who wrote the check sent Evergreen Entertainment, who run the theater, an admittedly miffed note in which she threatened to take her business to the competing White Bear Lake movie house.

Evergreen vice-president Steven J. Payne wrote back, "...go fuck yourself. If you dont have money for entertainment, get a better job, and don't pay for everything on your credit or check card. You can also shove your time and gas up your fucking ass."

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​We hadn't considered it from this angle, but ours is a fashion-obsessed, mrrow-hiss sort of era, so naturally there's been a lot of talk about the outfits at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Coco Perez found three ice-dancing or figure-skating or whatever they are couples who, while they may not have "received gold medals for skating... definitely deserve one for having HOrrendous performance outfits!"

Yahoo UK did a more comprehensive worst-dressed list, giving the Gold to the Norweigan curling team's motley (pictured).

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Brooklyn congressman Anthony Weiner is still kicking ass after his rant on the House floor about the Republicans being owned by the insurance industry. In his Daily Kos liveblog on the health care summit, he praised Nancy Pelosi -- "Speaker Pelosi closing with a bang. Public option! Ripping the health insurance industry! Maybe we are in the room!" -- and expressed disappointment with the President for letting things get away from him ("The President let this turn into a gripe session after lunch").

He also joked about the famously orange-skinned Minority Leader John Boehner. "I think Leader Boehner is particuarlly livid about the tanning bed tax, Surprised he hasn't mentioned it. "

Later he went on Joe Scarborough and got in a few more kicks.

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​In the Times today, David Sax shares his annoyance with waiters who ask if he wants change, restaurants that charge automatic 20 percent gratuities on large parties, and a bartender "who cracked open a $4 beer bottle, and handed me back my change entirely in a stack of one-dollar notes."

Sax seems unaware that tipping is not mandatory; in fact, he believes not tipping "is as much an option as refusing to pay your income tax because you're a member of the Tea Party." Things must have changed since we waited tables; we didn't know the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union was empowered to arrest and imprison scofflaws.

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Fresh from his remarks in Congress, withdrawn by Republican demand, that the GOP is a "wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry," and that in fact "every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry," Congressman Anthony Weiner is liveblogging at Daily Kos on today's bipartisan health care summit through 4 p.m.

Weiner says "we won't be in the room" for the summit, "but I still have a TV and a laptop," and he will follow events and give some more of his increasingly famous commentary.

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