Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino was sitting in a prison cell in Beaumont, Texas, when he got word recently that a federal appeals court ruled he could be tried again for the 1996 murder of Newark mobster Joseph Sodano.

Last year the jury in Merlino's federal racketeering case in Philadelphia found the same murder charge "not proven." Merlino's lawyer, Chris Warren, told City Paper that double jeopardy prohibited prosecutors from trying his client a second time on the same charges. Warren said he will appeal this decision all the way to the Supreme Court.

Friends of the Merlino family claim Joey is doing just fine down in Beaumont, a city 40 miles from the Gulf Coast. "It's hot down here," Merlino has reportedly told his friends. "They got flies as big as my fist."

Those who've seen recent photos of Merlino say he looks tanned and in fit physical condition. Despite rumors of marital problems between Merlino and his wife, Underworld sources say Deborah Merlino and her two daughters have been down to visit Merlino recently and had a family photograph taken in the penitentiary visiting room.

But all is not perfect for Joey Merlino deep in the heart of Texas, according to some Underworld sources. Despite being a mob boss, Merlino allegedly paid $10,000 in protection money to the head of a powerful Mexican gang to watch his back.

"There are a lot of stabbings there every week. There are rival Mexican gangs inside the Beaumont prison. There are half a dozen drug gangs and immigrant-smuggler organizations from Texas and Northern Mexico, and they don't always get along. They like Merlino but the Mafia means nothing to them down there. They got their own mafias."

Sources familiar with Merlino's situation claim he always wears several T-shirts whenever he leaves his cell, the better to protect himself in case someone tries to stab him. Reportedly, Merlino doesn't ever leave his cell unless he knows exactly where all of the other heavy-duty bad guys are.

"He's careful," one Merlino associate told City Paper. "He's in a whole different world there and being a mob boss doesn't earn him a pass. I think he's gonna have to learn to speak Mexican."

When Merlino was a powerful crime boss on the streets of Philadelphia, one of his favorite shows was the HBO mob drama The Sopranos. Merlino often told friends and associates he loved the program but would try to switch it off whenever his wife came into the room because "they were always showing Tony Soprano with his girlfriend and Deborah would look at that and then she'd look at me. I didn't need that grief."

In a bizarre mob-fiction-meets-mob-fact twist, federal prosecutors in New York last month filed documents claiming that an actor on The Sopranos was also a mob killer.

The feds claim that Michael Squicciarini, who appeared on two episodes of The Sopranos before he died last year, was involved in a hit inside a Brooklyn clubhouse in 1992 that was allegedly committed by associates of the DeCavalcante crime family. (The DeCalvalcantes, a North Jersey mob family, are said to be the inspiration for the fictional Sopranos, also based in North Jersey.)

The document alleges that Michael "Big Mike" Squicciarini was involved in the Brooklyn murder and was later identified by witnesses who saw him on TV in The Sopranos.

It wasn't the first time Squicciarini played a fictional mobster. He also appeared in the Hugh Grant movie Mickey Blue Eyes.

And in yet another real life/reel life mob drama, North Jersey movie producer and director Danny Provenzano plead guilty to racketeering charges in state court last week.

Provenzano, who lives in Upper Saddle River, N.J., and eight others were indicted in 1999 on charges of using beatings, kidnapping and murder threats to extort $1.5 million from a dozen victims.

Recently, Provenzano co-wrote, directed and starred in This Thing of Ours, an independent movie about a mob family.

Danny Provenzano's great-uncle was Genovese crime family capo Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano. Tony Pro was considered a suspect in the 1975 disappearance of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

And yes, there was a movie about that too; it was called Hoffa and starred Danny DeVito.

Philadelphia's outlaw biker war continues to simmer. Two and a half weeks ago a fight outside Fluke's Irish Pub in Northeast Philadelphia between a member of the Hells Angels and several Pagans left a Hells Angel in critical condition with three stab wounds to his chest.

And in a pre-trial hearing two weeks ago in a Montgomery County courtroom, a friend of Pagan biker Thomas "Tom Thumb" Campbell testified that Campbell had threatened to kill a cop rather than go back to jail. Campbell's threat was allegedly uttered more than two months before the Jan. 30 murder of Upper Darby police officer Dennis McNamara. Campbell has been charged in that murder and his trial is expected to begin early next year.