"Vinny, get ova' 'ere," Bobby Bloodhead said, raising his martini to his friend as he sat at the bar beside him; he continued, "Vinny, you a good kid, you got a good 'ead on your shoulders, better than mine at least, cause it ain't all bloody and gross!"
And with this they chuckled, Vinny - admittedly - a tad scared to laugh at his boss's joke, but Bobby reassured him it was fine. It was just a little playful banter. Bobby Bloodhead finished his drink and pulled out a pistol, setting it on the bar between them.
"Vinny," he continued, "I see a real future for you, I do. But first there's somethin' that ya gotta do for me. Can you do somethin' for me, Vinny? I need you to take care of someone that's been causin' me lotsa trouble lately. His name..."
Bobby Bloodhead lit a cigar and puffed off a few rings of smoke before sucking his cheek and grinning.
"...is Robby Bloodhead, and he's my twin brotha'," Bobby said, "...I know the credence of the family says you gotta stick close to those who share your lineage, but sometimes, Vinny, sometimes those who share your lineage are really just pissing in your gene pool."
***
I'm Italian. I'm also Jewish. Don't ask how that works, because I guarantee I have no answers. I know nothing about my family lineage besides these two things. But either way, having both of those be identifying pieces of my personality means I'm the coolest hippest funniest cat around, and this blog should be nothing short of evidence of that. This mask, Bobby Bloodhead, is, at first glance, fairly straightforward and rather unimpressive, and at second glance, he remains that. And that's because he kind of is. I know I usually don't feature masks on this blog that don't appear super artistic or something, but not only did I appreciate Bobby Bloodhead for what he is, but also his goons said they'd break my legs if I didn't cover him, so there's extra incentive right there.
He's a fairly standard mask design, just a face with half his head covered in meaty sores (that's a phrase I hope to never hear again, holy moses) and bloody looking, the top of which is blessed with a tiny pompadour and looking like a mobster Peter Lorre - I swear I didn't mean to make that rhyme, that was so weird but it happens sometimes - he's not by any means bad, but he's also, understandably by this blogs narrative and chart of coolness, nothing totally unique either. He's your standard fare generic grotesque humanesque Halloween mask.
HOWEVER, don't let his gaunt appearance fool you, because he will invite you to the day of his daughters wedding only to gun you down. I can't tell you how threatening he and his mob buddies were when I insisted on not doing a post on him.
"Boy, you gotta lotta nice posts on this blog, be a shame if some of them got...deleted."
So I caved, and honestly, I personally appreciate the guy for what he is. He's got tiny little corn nibblet teeth and sunken eyes, but all that stuff only adds to his overall ookiness, if you ask me. Sure, he's not a monster (I mean, like, an actual monster like Bigfoot. He's a monster, no doubt, he'll supply your fashion obsessed sister with cement shoes if she doesn't pay up) but I also don't wanna be pigeonholed into only covering weird spooky creatures of the night. Sometimes you need something like Bobby Bloodhead to even out the score.
Plus, his blood side of his head, which appears to be covered in pustules and meaty chunks, is rather unnerving, to say the least. I can't deny that. Whoever thought to add in those big orange sores really made a good design decision, because boy howdy does that up the ickyness factor a good 100% percent. Despite looking like Joe Pesci fall into a vat of acid after having a forehead enlargement, Bobby Bloodhead really is kind of in a league all his own, because as I said, he's not a monster, but he's also not your typical gore human mask either. You know the ones I mean? Like where they just add blood and some fleshy bits to make it look gross but it really just looks like poor 80s B movie VFX?
Not to say that this is any better, it looks just as piss poor, but the fact that it only occurs on the left side of his face and looks to be like the result of some sort of scuffle between mobster groups over who owes what to whose loan shark, really makes him stand out because he still has that alive human factor to him. He's like Two Face from Batman. He can still go to work, he can still run the club and he can still cut your hands off if you cheat him at cards. He'll do it too.
Ultimately, it's a perfect mixture of the grotesque and the mundane, and I think that's why he works so well. Because it isn't over the top, and it's not downplayed. It's just there, you know? It's just another aspect of his personality, and that in and of itself is why it has its charms, because so many others that attempt this sort of thing either go over the top of not far enough. This one is just...a normal mobster with a gross gutsy face, and I for one appreciate that.
Being Italian, I grew up watching a lot of mob content, and I know for a fact that my grandmother, in her young years, made drinks for mafioso's in a speakeasy, so this is part of the culture I come from, and it's nice to see my two favorite things - mobsters and monsters - come together to finally create the ultimate terrifying creation: The Mobster Mash. It was a knee capping smash.
***
Vinny pointed the gun at Robby Bloodhead, his finger shaking right over the trigger, one eye closed. Robby lay on the floor where he'd fell, looking up at this...this kid, this kid who looked barely 20, and thinking, "my god, what have we done to the youth, is this what we've become?"
"I'm...I'm so-sorry Robby," Vinny stammered, "I don't w-wanna hu-hurt you."
"Vin, I get it, you gotsa do what you gotsa do," Robby said, "but let me leave you with one piece of advice...don't ever lets your work gets between your family and you."
Vinny lowered the gun and exhaled, before feeling a piercing through his chest multiple times, the sound of multiple pops echoing in the air. Vinny fell to his knees, clutching at his chest, a death rattle lurching from his lips, as Robby shouted.
"Vinny, no!"
Robby Bloodhead looked up to see his brother, Bobby, standing there, a smoking gun in his hand.
"What did you do!?" Robby shouted.
"Vinny boy was a rat," Bobby said, "I set him up so I could take him out. I knew he wouldn't be able to cap ya, because he needed ya alive to gather information on us. I'd never take out my own brotha, come on."
Bobby helped Robby up, and together they looked down at Vinny, who was still barely clutching to life.
"wh...whyyy," Vinny gurgled.
"Them's the brakes kid," Bobby said, "And I just cuts em."
And together the brothers walked out, letting the rat bleed out alone, in a cold empty warehouse. He knew he should never have gotten involved. He knew he should never have thought he would be capable of doing what he'd been asked. He knew he should've expected it to go down like this. He knew he should've gone to college.
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