Tag: The Godfather

Taking care of business

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
“What, you think I’m some sort of putz like that Trump character?”

Well. Seems the Israelis went and stole some of the pomp and circumstance from Der Trumpenführer’s little parade.

Saturday’s expensive, theatrical pud-pulling in DeeCee will soon be forgotten, even by fanboys, late-show wiseguys, and meme-makers. But people will be talking about what Israel just did to Iran for the better part of quite some time.

Discussing the differences between preemptive strikes and preventative war in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols likened the Israeli decapitation of the Iranian military’s chain of command to Michael Corleone’s settling of the family business near the end of “The Godfather.”

But Trump is straight out of Jimmy Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” A guy who, like Kid Sally Palumbo, couldn’t even promote a bicycle race worth a damn.

Remember the Tour de Trump? Yeah, neither does anyone else. That little Tour de France thing he promised to topple is still ticking along nicely, though.

He kept his big bazoo shut for hours after the Israeli strikes on Iran — yeah, I know, Fatso keeping it buttoned sounds like fake news to me, too — and when he finally got medicated enough to fart out a few syllables they were all about “deals,” as if the existential Israeli-Iranian saber dance on the razor’s edge of Armageddon were just another real-estate pitch.

You want a bomb shelter with that casino? There will be a small additional charge.

R.I.P., VeloNews

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

The first edition of VeloNews in which a cartoon
by You Know Who appeared.

VeloNews was found dead on Jan. 1. It was just 50 years old.

Was it murder? Suicide? Natural causes? (i.e., a slow-moving form of frontotemporal dementia?)

Nah. Darwinism. Nature red in tooth and claw, baby. Or, if you prefer your poetry in the original Sicilian, “It’s strictly business.”

• Editor’s note: A tip of the VeloNews cycling cap to Steve O. for the sharp eye on the velo-news.

Attack of the Killer Bicycle

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

OK, yeah, right, not a lot of O’Grady®-label content around here lately, apologies, sorry sorry sorry. A tip of the Mad Dog propeller beanie to everyone keeping the sound cranked up to 11 in the comments so none of the other WordPress blogs can get any sleep.

Herself is on the road, helping her kinfolk marry off a youngun (no first cousins were harmed in the making of this marriage, or so I’m told). Thus, for a few days now I’ve been on my own, which is never pretty, as I revert to bachelorhood at warp speed.

Lacking adult supervision, I know that there is still a place for everything, but that place has become the floor. No one in authority suggests the use of the inside voice during attempts at debt collection. Meals tend to be infrequent, unheated and taken over the sink, and the only laundry that gets done involves colorfully sublimated Lycra.

An extra added attraction this time around is that my road bike tried to assassinate me, a titanium Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo to my all-too-vulnerable Don Vito Corleone, knowing that in Herself’s absence nobody had my back.

The treacherous titanium two-wheeler put me into a Death Wobble on a descent on Wednesday and I only survived the assault thanks to the intervention of the Blessed Virgin of Hell Is Full and Satan Is Busy But Your Call Is Important To Us And Will Be Answered In the Order In Which It Was Received.

Either that or the cats implored their dark lord to spare the hairy-legged roadie, if only until The Chosen One returns from West Texas. They have yet to master the filling of the dish and the emptying of the litter box.