Be careful who you get next to, mayor

Call it the case of the tortured syntax.

I suspect most people had to read the sentence in Sunday's New York Times Magazine a couple of times to decipher the reference for a certain dependent clause.

The mag featured a one-page Q&A with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman that included this question:

"You’re a lawyer whose clients once included Tony (the Ant) Spilotro, and who played himself in the crime film “Casino.” Is it fair to describe you as a former mob attorney?"

Now, if you're like most folks, you headed straight to Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) to discover Joe Pesci played a character called Nicky Santoro. Writer Nick Pileggi supposedly based the character on Spilotro, who was beaten to death nine years before the movie was made.

Of course, Oscar played himself in the movie, and, if you diagram the sentence a couple of times, you'll figure out the "and who played himself" refers back to the mayor.

By the way, the mayor replied, "I never referred to myself as a mob attorney, but when people ask me that, I say, 'I hope so, because they pay pretty good.'”