Yep, two new magazines: Paved and Peloton.

The first is a sister publication to Bike, whose editor Joe Parkin, author of “A Dog In a Hat,” has plenty of chops on road and off. He told Bicycle Retailer’s Nicole Formosa that Paved is aimed at fans of road cycling and its culture, not the weekend warrior in search of go-fast tips or bike porn.

The second is the brainchild of the newly launched Move Press. My old buddies Adam Reek and Patrick Brady of Red Kite Prayer are on board with Peloton, which BRAIN says will be available at newsstands and online, including iPad and iPhone editions. Look for race coverage, product reviews and travel stories.

Expect to hear more about both publications at Interbike, which may be spending its last year in Sin City. Word is that the trade show may be moving to an earlier date, in August, and shifting operations to either Anaheim or Salt Lake City. Whether either location constitutes trading up is strictly a matter of opinion.

Who knew Andy Schleck was an artist? Or was it Mr. 60 Percent with his Magic Pen?

I bet Stuey O’Grady wishes he wouldn’t have had that last beer.

Turkish, our local version of the IWW Sabo-Cat, takes a Labor Day break from his duties, whatever those might be.

Holiday, schmoliday. I had to work this morning. Not very hard, or for very long, but still.

The prez was working, too, calling for a $50 billion public works plan that seems to have absolutely no hope of coming to fruition before the Congresscritters scurry home, running like rats for re-election, proving yet again that they care more about whether they stay employed than whether we do.

Kevin Drum, another poor sod at the keyboard instead of the grill, is dismissive of the proposal, calling it “too small to be more than a pinprick.” Steve Benen speaks more gently of the plan, saying “it’s good to have lawmakers put on the spot before the election, taking a position on sensible, effective economic proposals like this one.” He also reminds us that Rep. John Boehner (R-Tanning Salon) is an idiot.

And Paul Krugman, drawing parallels with FDR’s situation in 1938, moans that “politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes.”

He adds: “And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.”

True dat, Paul old sock. Buckle up, folks, it’s gonna be a rough ride.

• Late update: To celebrate Labor Day Herself and I attended an Arlo Guthrie concert — yes, that Arlo Guthrie — right here in Bibleburg; in fact, only a few blocks from Chez Dog, in a park behind the Fine Arts Center. He didn’t do “Alice’s Restaurant,” but he did sing the great Steve Goodman tune, “City of New Orleans,” “The Motorcycle Song,” his fabled Woodstock number “Coming Into Los Angeles,” a couple of Leadbelly bits and (of course) his old man’s “This Land Is Your Land.” We sang along, a few thousand elderly hippies plus a few young folks who must have grown weary of their generation’s “stupid fucking tuneless horseshit,” as Thomas McGuane has accurately described it. It was great. “Take a good look around, Toots,” I told Herself as we strolled in. “This is what my nursing home is gonna look like.” Arlo must have been thinking along similar lines. At one point he quipped, “I’m what’s left of me.” Me, too, bruh. And I wasn’t even at Woodstock. At least, I don’t think I was. …

A cartoon by Paul Conrad, then of The Los Angeles Times, circa 1982, when I was the editorial cartoonist (and a number of other things as well) at the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

Editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad died today at age 86.

He was one of the greats, deflating blowhards with a stroke of his razor-sharp pen, and won three Pulitzers for his mastery of the art. His first came at The Denver Post, where if memory serves he was succeeded by the even more acerbic Pat Oliphant. Conrad also won himself a spot on Nixon’s famous enemies list.

I met Oliphant once, at the Fine Arts Center here in Bibleburg, back when I was working for the Gazette. But I never met Conrad. However, I do have a signed print of one of his cartoons, a nice rap in the tusks for the Elefinks from when he worked for The Los Angeles Times.

He will be missed.

Today Herself and I are both suffering from various ailments — allergies, injuries, you name it — and so I went for the healing pork and 14 chiles plus an overflowing teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns. Hijo, madre, puto, cabron … my head is still sweating. And I think I just grew a third testicle. It was that powerful.

But there’s not a picture, because we were both so beat down and hungry that we just dove right in, and I ate all the leftovers for seconds. Sorry ’bout that. Stir fry up a batch yourself and you’ll forgive me for my piggishness.

GOP voters decided in the primary that they’d prefer a feeb to a thief, but the party apparatchiks were appalled at their choice of the dingbat Maes — a mental midget, serial liar and astoundingly inept “businessman” who equates bicycles with blue-helmeted, black-helicoptered One World Gummint — over Scott McLobbyist, who had been the anointed front-runner until he got caught with someone else’s words under his byline and tried to brazen it out, like a shoplifter snagged with a hot Blu-Ray player stuffed up under his shirt. “Who me?” Yeah, you, pal. Out y’go.

So now they’re trying to get Maes to bail from the gubernatorial race before today’s 5 p.m. deadline for ballot certification so they can appoint a candidate with more computing power than a 1982 Osborne Executive.

Never happen, says state Sen. Dave Scheisskopf (R-The Crazy).

“You won’t see Dan backing down, I know that,” Scheisskopf told our local cage-liner. Let’s hope not. Watching John Hickenlooper kick the mortal shit out of this clown is liable to be the highlight of my fall election season.

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. …

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.

• John Nichols of The Nation.

• Kevin Drum of Mother Jones.

• The editorial board of The New York Times.

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.