I remember it was a cabin on a lake, upstate someplace. All the big players were there: Tommy Kneecap, Lemke Lipke, Egg Cream Joey, Little Bill and Fat Bill from the Buffalo outfit, Vito “Half-Breed” Goldstein. All we knew was, somebody was making a play to be the new boss of the nationwide organization, a tough guy di tutti tough guys, and we all came up here to hear him out. God knows I never held a fishing pole in my life.

So we’re sitting around this big room, drinking gin, playing gin, busting each other’s chops. Somebody puts Bobby Darin on the hi-fi. “Mac the Knife”, what else, right? Only I look around, there ain’t no hi-fi. That’s when I thought – this new boss, it couldn’t be him, could it?

But it was. The lights got real low, the talk stops, all there is is Bobby wailing about Mac and who knows what else. Then – bam! There he is, standing next to the fireplace! The Sandisk Sansa e260 4GB Media Player! I heard he was in Leavenworth, but he ain’t now, unless somebody conked me out and took me to Leavenworth while I wasn’t looking. So while the rest of us are picking our bottom lips up off the floor, he lays it out real straight: only he’s got the 4GB storage capacity and 1.8” color LCD that can bring the families together. Only his MP3, JPG, and video playback capability can command the loyalty of all the big-time guys, and the small-time guys, too. “Here’s your new top man, boys,” he told us. “If you can all play nice together, there’ll be lots of multimedia fun for everybody.” We was convinced. Sansa had his soldiers.

Well, most of us. Anteater Antonelli, he pipes up like he always did. “Ah, your father’s mustache. You look awful refurbed to me, Sansa. Besides, you need to run videos through your media converter software to even load them into your memory. Well, supposin’ I don’t want to? Supposin’ I don’t want to play ball? What then, big shot?”

Poor Anteater. He never did know when to shut up. Let’s just say he never made it home from the lake.

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