Chicken quesadillas and calabacitas.

Damn, this has been a fun week. First I make drunkard tartare out of my right leg in a trail tumble, and now I’ve managed to throw my back out again.

Hitting the deck on Tuesday started the ball rolling. Favoring the bum leg gave it a nudge. And the kicker was probably spending too much time crouched over the cutting board, assembling last night’s New Mexican feast, chicken quesadillas and calabacitas.

These are easy dishes, to be sure — the quesadillas are merely poached and shredded chicken, seeded and sliced jalapeños and grated Monterey jack layered between two flour tortillas and baked for 12 minutes at 350 — but some assembly is required.

Long story short, this morning I bend down to see if Turkish is lurking under Herself’s car and pop! Out goes the back, which I first injured in college while delivering heavy appliances for beer money. Every couple of years it likes to slash the tires on my chariot and hiss, “Thou art mortal!”

Still, things could be worse. A couple of friends are on Cape Cod, playing hide-and-seek with Hurricane Earl. Or I could be one of the poor chumps blown off the latest offshore oil platform to explode.

So, yeah. I’ve got that going for me. That, and the drugs, and the ice pack. …

September 2nd, 2010 | Tags: bad back, calabacitas, chicken quesadillas | Category: Cats, Cookery, Just mumbling along | Comments (5)

It's not music that soothes the savage breast, it's pasta and vino.

Maybe it wasn’t such a horrible speech after all. I was cranky (having just shredded my right leg in a boneheaded trail mishap) and hungry (Herself was working late so I didn’t have dinner on the table pre-speech). After getting a meal and a few drams of Spanish vino into my system, I felt more kindly toward the prez and his little chitty-chat with the nation.

The recipe, pasta with salsa crudo and green beans, is from Martha Rose Shulman. Run it past the cranky-pants in your family and see if it doesn’t work wonders. I made mine with homegrown Portuguese beans and tomatoes from the gardens of two generous friends.

This is not to say, mind you, that I comprehend Obama’s fetish of continually extending olive branches to the Repugs only to watch them snatch them from his hand, toss them to the floor and piss on them.

Nor am I satisfied by his fondness for glittering generalities (”Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the predawn darkness, better days lie ahead.”).

And while I’m delighted to hear he wants to at least cut back on croaking our fellow Americans abroad and get cranking on the domestic economy instead, I’m still waiting to hear any details of how he proposes “to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity.” How many of us wonder whether the next paycheck we get will be the last? Just ’cause you’re paranoid, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

And then there are the midterms. The more I watch the Obama “machine” in operation, the more I’m convinced these guys think they can take a page from the Repug playbook and blow off a sizable chunk of their supporters without consequences at the ballot box. The Repugs punk the Bible-thumpers every election year, and the Donks think they can do likewise to the lefty-loonies.

It’s a dangerous game. Sure, moving center-right to woo the independents and the handful of Repugs who aren’t yet completely unhinged may pick up a couple of loose votes. And it’s true that like the Bible-thumpers, lefty-loonies are not likely to hold their noses and switch their allegiance to the other side.

But a bunch of us, disillusioned once again, might just stay home on Election Day. And that’s really bad news, because the GOP’s whackjob base always turns out with a will, like a bunch of frat boys gleefully piling out of a van to beat up a longhair, nigra or queer.

Shit, now I’m cranky again, and I don’t feel like cooking. Happily, I still have some wine.

• Literary addendum: I almost forgot — one of the reasons I started writing this post was a recollection of Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” Red Sinclair certainly thought it could, and anyone who read the book will recognize many of its characters hamming it up on today’s stage.

September 1st, 2010 | Tags: Martha Rose Shulman, Obama | Category: Cookery, Deep political thought | Comments (12)

The prez didn’t score any points here in Dog Country with tonight’s Oval Office address. More later after we gargle a little tonsil polish to take the taste of bullshit out of our mouths.

• John Nichols of The Nation.

• Kevin Drum of Mother Jones.

• The editorial board of The New York Times.

August 31st, 2010 | Category: Deep political thought | Comments (5)

Laurent Fignon died today in Paris of cancer. He was all of 50 years old.

Most Americans remember him as the pony-tailed dude that Greg LeMond punked by eight seconds in the 1989 Tour. But Fignon had a fine career of his own, winning the Tour twice (1983-84) and the Giro once (1989), and taking the flowers in some memorable one-day races as well (Milan-San Remo in 1988-89, Fleche Wallonne in 1986 and Paris-Camembert in 1989). Seventy-six victories in all. Not bad for a French hippie.

Fignon later confessed to doping during his career, and wondered whether it might have had some role in his disease. In his book “We Were Young and Carefree” he wrote: “In those days everyone was doing it. But it is impossible to know to what extent doping harms you. Whether those who lived through 1998, when a lot of extreme things happened, will get cancer after 10 or 20 years, I really can’t say.”

Requiescat in pace, Professor.

August 31st, 2010 | Tags: Laurent Fignon | Category: Bike stuff | Comments (6)

Happy birthday to expat cartoonist Robert Crumb from me and Tom Waits.

August 30th, 2010 | Tags: Robert Crumb, Tom Waits | Category: Arts & letters | Comments (2)

"Yo, America, baby ... lookin' good, honey. Say, did I tell you? I'm taking back the civil-rights movement for right-wing honky boneheads. Yeah, it makes me horny, too. But I wish you'd wear that Lady Liberty getup I got for you at the adult bookstore. I know, I know — it was slightly used. 'Pre-owned,' the guy said. But it was cheap, and you know we can't add to the deficit."

Elmer Gantry, courtesy of Sinclair Lewis:

“Let me count this day, Lord, as the beginning of a new and more vigorous life, as the beginning of a crusade for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church throughout the land. Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!”

And Glenn Beck, courtesy of (who else?) Glenn Beck:

“We are 12 hours away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. And it has nothing to do with this city or politics. It has everything to do with God Almighty.”

The Gantry soliloquy comes at the end of the book. Let’s hope Beck’s tale is likewise coming to a close.

August 29th, 2010 | Tags: Elmer Gantry, Glenn Beck is full of shit | Category: Arts & letters, Deep political thought | Comments (19)

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.

August 27th, 2010 | Tags: Cats, Herself, The Death Wobble, The Godfather | Category: Arts & letters, Bike stuff, Just mumbling along, La famiglia | Comments (20)