Just takin' out da trash

Crime is normally no part of the Cuckoo's beat, but I can't help posting on something I saw on the news last night. Since the recent re-eruption of Melbourne's gangland slayings, camera crews have been permanently posted outside the house of one of the last surviving members of the 'Carlton Crew', Dominic Gatto. So far, all this has told us is that Mr. Gatto prefers 'shortie' dressing gowns, and his weapon of choice against pesky cameramen is a fresh egg. They should count themselves lucky: he could have grabbed their cameras and returned them in pieces, but surely it would take a truly warped criminal mind to do something like that.

Anyway, what really caught my eye was the sight of Mr. Gatto taking his own wheelie-bins in, including the recycle bin. Somehow I can't see Tony Soprano getting Joey Two-fingers to separate the class 4 plastics from the glass and neatly flattening the empty cereal boxes. The other thing about this vignette was its uncanny resemblance to the final scene of Scorsese's Goodfellas. Failed mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), hiding out under witness protection, has become the very thing he most despised: a 'civilian', lost in suburbia, paying taxes, taking in his own rubbish bin, but still, at least, wearing his shortie dressing gown.