NEWARK, NJ - Life has been moving way too slowly in the Mezzoforte crime family, according to boss Vinny Mezzoforte.

"When I first took charge of the family five years ago, things were so exciting," said the Jersey area crime kingpin and waste management executive. "Someone got whacked nearly every week--sometimes three or four guys bought it within the space of, like, fifty-two minutes on a Sunday night. I even got shot by my uncle Julius, which was really suspenseful.

"But now that things aren't so violent," Mezzoforte continued, "Well, it's dullsville. For a while there it looked like I was gonna clip the head of the Bertozzi family over in Brooklyn, but I decided against it. Stupid move on my part--all the completely unecessary bloodshed and Federal attention may have ruined my business prosepcts, but they would have made for some compelling storylines. And I think my underboss's fiancee is an FBI informant, but she hasn't even given the feds information that's led to my arrest yet. What's taking so long?

"Sure, the stunningly emotional dissolution of my thirty year marriage and my capo's heartbreaking loss of his wife in a car accident added some pathos, but who cares about boring-ass shit like the incredibly complex and deeply moving trials of the human heart? Give me some machine-gun and chainsaw action, like in Scarface. Now that was a great freaking mob movie. I mean, even though he was Cuban."

Mafia critics largely agreed with Mezzoforte's assessment of the 2002 crime season. "Plots went unresolved, insults and injustices were left unavenged, and some major players weren't seen for weeks at a time," said Herb Wainwright, mob reviewer for Enterprise Corruption Weekly. "Certainly what Petey Peanuts did deserved death, or a 'whack job,' to use goombah parlance. Every week should head toward a resolution--after all, that's exactly how things are, here in the real world. But instead, the Mezzofortes seem to have lost their way. And I should know--I've watched Donnie Brasco, and that's based on a true story.

"We wouldn't be so critical," concluded Wainwright, "if the Mezzofortes weren't the best mafia family out there. But if next year's anything like this one, as they say in 'Joisey,' forgetabowdit."