The only thing I want to hear this guy say is, “Adios.”
Month: January 2009
Another one bites the dust
Judas Priest, a guy can’t log onto Al Gore’s Intertubes any more without seeing a newspaper sinking into the tar pits. This time it’s the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which parent company The Hearst Corp. says is headed for a sale, web-only operation or closure in 60 days. To add insult to injury, the P-I was beaten on the story by a TV station.
The newspaper business can be a very small world. P-I managing editor David McCumber and I briefly worked together at The Arizona Daily Star, where he oversaw a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the University of Arizona football program and I was a copy editor (and not a very good one). He later worked with Hunter S. Thompson while at the San Francisco Examiner, if memory serves, editing “Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream.” And P-I editorial cartoonist David Horsey used to flog me in the annual SPJ awards when I worked for the Corvallis Gazette-Times as a slightly improved copy editor and occasional editorial cartoonist.
The G-T published my first cycling cartoon, way back in 1982. Interestingly, it was not a cyclist-friendly cartoon. I spent a lot of time strolling the Marys and Willamette river trails in various states of consciousness and considered the omnipresent speeding bike weenies to be a pain in the butt.
Twenty-seven years and three newspaper jobs later, they are the source of my beer and skittles. Here’s hoping McCumber, Horsey and the rest of the P-I staff prove equally fortunate and land on their feet in some other, better place where they can continue to practice their craft.
A lion in winter
Everybody got out for a bit of sunshine yesterday, and a good thing, too, because the weather is taking a turn for the worse again today. Snow and big wind are in the forecast for this afternoon, and something wintry is already sliding down Pikes Peak and taking aim at Bibleburg.
Turkish, who lives for the great outdoors, often proves difficult to retrieve. He can dematerialize at will and reappear at a time and place of his own choosing, like Radar on “MASH.” Step out on the porch, you will see nothing. Call the cat, ditto. Turn around to go back inside and poof, there he is. But just try to catch him.
Recent careful observation has led me to two of his hidey-holes. The first is underneath the front porch, where a previous owner overlaid the original concrete stoop with boards for a decklike feel. There’s a Turk’-sized space underneath, camouflaged by shrubbery.
That’s his low sentry post. I found the high one yesterday after watching him stalk a squirrel for practice, in case he needed to bring down something more challenging, like a mule deer or perhaps a moose. Turk’ hopped onto the back fence and then stepped onto the garage, briefly vanishing from sight before reappearing on a perch near the neighbor’s tree, scanning the horizon for the Enemy.
Meanwhile, my friend Hal has weighed in regarding his layoff. We spoke briefly last night, and he’s choosing to look at this as an opportunity rather than a setback. I was laid off in the mid-1980s and was briefly furious before realizing that I should’ve left the paper on my own six months earlier. I spent the next six months hunting work, cashing unemployment checks and riding my bike before something finally popped up on the copy desk at The New Mexican in Santa Fe, two weeks before the public sugar tit was due to run dry.
That would be my last newspaper job. And I think The Chieftain was Hal’s.
20 and counting
It struck me today that most of my recent photos have been of cats, various foodstuffs and other items found ’round the house, and as a consequence you may think I never leave the place. Not true.
For example, instead of hewing strictly to my deadlines, today I broke out a mud-encrusted Steelman Eurocross and went for a short ride in the sunshine, up to around Mesa and 31st, where the bike path gives some spectacular views of the Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak.
Then I rolled back to the ranch and whipped out the cartoon marking my 20th anniversary of drawing same for VeloNews. And no, you can’t see it. Not unless you’re a subscriber, a buyer of newsstand copies, or patient.
Back in 1989, I was running out of rope at The New Mexican in Santa Fe and less interested in cartooning than in the VeloNews managing editor’s job. I applied for it, got an interview, and was turned down for my lack of magazine experience (12 years of newspapering as a reporter and editor was worth exactly jack shit).
But the Trio — the troika of owners, which then included Felix Magowan, John Wilcockson and David Walls — said they would have no objection to my banging out some editorial cartoons for the mag. That worked out pretty well for all of us, “us” not counting the advertisers, various functionaries at cycling’s governing bodies and anyone else with an impacted sense of humor. The Trio hired Tim Johnson as ME, and a fine job he did, too, before they airbrushed him out of the company portrait. And I got to poke fun at people for 20 years.
I wouldn’t have lasted 20 months in that ME’s job. Too much like work, don’t you know. And I’ve always been much better than Tim at pissing people off.
Late update: Speaking of work, as I reached one milestone an old friend and colleague reached another — fellow writer and copy editor Hal Walter learned today that two weeks hence his services will no longer be required at The Pueblo Chieftain. The job was beneath him, true — The Chieftain should be printed on soft, perforated rolls of tissue and hung in toilet stalls so that it may be put to the use for which it is best suited — but nevertheless it paid in American money, so Hal will be examining his options, as he has a wife, son and several dogs, cats and burros to support. You can keep up with his doings via his blog, Hardscrabble Times. Indeed they are.
Winter of our discontent (ongoing)
Turkish and I are both irritable. The weather has been both damp and cold, and neither of us is much interested in experiencing it first-hand. At least I can dump my outer garments in the washer; a filthy Turk’ requires bathing, a process not unlike juggling caltrops. So we crouch indoors, brooding.
Our government once again appears to be living up to our increasingly lower expectations, playing keepaway with the Illinois Senate seat formerly held by the president-elect as the Gaza eye-for-an-eye insanity rolls into its 12th day and the prospect of years of deficit spending threatens to set your children and grandchildren to surfing a tsunami of red ink.
Closer to home, I just got word that VeloNews is shifting its production schedule for the March issue and suddenly I have to pull a cartoon out of my ass by close of business tomorrow. And Apple once again fails to announce either an iPhone Nano, iPod Touch with camera and Skype, a MacNetbook or an updated Mac Mini during a Steve Jobs-less keynote at the annual Macworld Expo.
The horror. The horror. Exterminate all the brutes!
Mad Blog Media 