Once again the Pulitzer Prizes have been announced and my name is not on the list. If I weren’t such an easygoing sort I might take this as a personal affront. It also helps that there isn’t an award for Vicious and Often Pointless Bicycle Comedy.
Another Colorado wiseass did bring home the bacon, however: Mike Keefe of The Denver Post, who is a very funny fellow, won the Pulitzer for editorial cartooning. Chapeau, Mr. Keefe.
Lacking plaudits for my contributions to arts and letters, I rode the bike for 90 minutes, failing to excel there as well but enjoying myself hugely nonetheless.
Mad Blog Media 
No Pulitzer? Those philistines!
You’ll just have to take satisfaction in your adoring fans — your public — the OGWGFIW, sweatin’ to the oldies playing in their heads as they haul their wide loads up the local hill, one grunting pedal stroke after another.
O’G isn’t mainstream enough. I suspect Patrick would have to expand his usually excellent satirical cartoons to cover national election issues.
Its warm enough in the afternoon that I’ve taken to wearing That Other Yellow Jersey (i.e., the real one) on my commute home from Le Bombe Factorie. Usually slipped over a light base layer, mind you.
I’m REALLY starting to consider the prison routine of X’ing off the days from the calendar as today we have wet, sloppy snow. I guess I forgot how grim it really is here in the spring since we skipped it last year. I’m hoping we can skip it every year if the wife’s study-abroad program takes off. We can do that from January to May, then start right up with the bike tours and only have to live in Iowa, USA from August-December each year, with a most-of-December escape to toney Santa Barbara for the holidays! Any of you guys got soon-to-be college aged kids? Send ’em off to safe Sioux City IA and Morningside College!
To the mainstream Patrick’s work is just pearls before swine.
A shame, but good for us his followers, as greater public acceptance would only dilute his wit like a watered wiskey.
It is snowing, raining, sleeting,and thundering here in Wisconsin. At the same time. Oh, and lightning!
But we added 2 more Repugs to the recall list. That makes four. It is a good day.
Ah, my small, deeply disturbed following. A thousand thank-yous for continuing to pop round to see what inanities I have unleashed upon an unsuspecting Internet.
My sympathies are with those of you who wish you were elsewhere. We seem to be drifting into a wet and windy period just as I’m finally starting to find my legs and shed a few pounds. Can’t bitch, though — we need the precip’ like Lyin’ Ryan needs a brain scan and a math refresher.
And Swell, good on ya. Throw the bums out! And please, let’s not put any more in.
Go Wisconsin, but ya could have kept the weather. It snowed yesterday and rained all day today. I can’t clean the bikes again the paint will come off.
Repugs deserve more recall notices than Toyota, mind you.
As I was perusing the esteemed list of finalists for the Pulitzer this caught my eye:
General Nonfiction
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain by Nicholas Carr (W.W. Norton & Company)
A thought provoking exploration of the Internet’s physical and cultural consequences, rendering highly technical material intelligible to the general reader.
Is it only fitting that the highest prize in American ‘journalism’ is even thinking of bestowing itself upon the very thing which has made itself nearly meaningless to the common person in 2011? In other words: when was the last time that Joe. Q. Sixpack picked up – and read – a newspaper?
Not to mention that a book titled “The Shallows…” is going to “render[ing] highly technical material intelligible to the general reader.” Really? Howzit gonna do that? With pictures? Really?!?!?
Sunny and 86 today in Billy Graham’s version of God’s country today. I even won the World Championship of Statesville by dropping the peloton (2 other people) on the first of 3 five mile laps and staying away until the end (we won’t bother discussing the lack of a chase of any kind).
Looked mighty nice weather-wise at Fleche today! Gilbert looked pretty good too. Despite the constant marking by competitors he seems to be able to win, unlike that whiner on the Schleck team. What’s up when the spring classics weather in Europe is better than IOWA’s? Another session on the trainer — I’m X’ing the days off the calendar now!
Hey, nobody made note that the LA Times won a Pulitzer for the actual, real, old fashioned, gum shoe detective work journalism they did while exposing the those corrupt bastards in Bell, California! They did a great job considering that the Tribune Company has completely gutted the LA Times in pursuit of ever increasing profits to the point that they now a a revolving door that says “Editor in Chief”. It’s classic capitalism: it’s not that the LA Times doesn’t make money, it does consistently make money; the problem is that it doesn’t make ever increasing amounts of cash. Hence the gutting. That two reporters a) managed to still have jobs, and b) managed to actually have enough time and motivation to actually do investigative reporting is worthy of a Pulitzer on its own.
The Los Angeles Times used to be — and apparently still can be — a writer’s newspaper. I applied for a copy-editing gig there many years ago and got a tryout, but didn’t get the job despite (to my surprise) passing the drug test and other hurdles.
It was just as well. Rim rats got zero respect there, from what I could tell, and every sap with a pad and pen thought he was a double Woodward & Bernstein.
But these dudes who rang the Bell were the real deal, and I expect that they may find other opportunities arising as a consequence.
Thing is, where do you go? The Big Three pretty much remains The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, in that order, and a pretty steep slide starts more or less immediately thereafter.
John, I made a similar rant while watching (sort of) PBS interview the Pulitzer winners last night….do you think they’ll get anything more than an “attaboy!” from the newspaper’s management? The LA Times was one of the few things SoCal can be proud of….notice I didn’t say boastful so forget the weather, Malibu, etc.
Larry, I think the Pulitzer will look very good on their resumes, and, since they work in print media and for the Tribune Co., they’ll probably need good looking resumes sometime soon.
Applause, bravo, kudos, many thanks!