Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

November 16, 2013November 16, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

The Hobbes to my Calvin enjoys a snooze in the sunshine.

Speaking of which, were you aware that there’s a documentary about Bill Watterson and his creations? True fact — “Dear Mr. Watterson” premiered yesterday, and NPR carried an item about it this morning.

“Calvin and Hobbes” is one of my favorite strips. I have a dozen or so of Watterson’s books, and tried to get an interview with him back when I worked for The New Mexican (through a minion, he declined, as he does pretty much any invitation to chat with the press; smart fella).

I made the mistake of listening to the NPR piece, and now I’m going to have to thumb through a few of Watterson’s books, goddamnit. If you’d like to take a bumpy trip down memory lane on your toboggan, with your best friend for company, you can read “Calvin and Hobbes” online at GoComics.com.

Off of my lawn, Junior Birdmen!

November 15, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Radio Free Dogpatch first “aired” in November 2005, then promptly swirled down the Loo of History. It’s back now, God help us all.

One of the nice parts about the season winding down is that I generally find a minute or two for playtime.

Well, nice for me. Maybe not so nice for other people. You, for example.

See, I got this idea that maybe I should play around with audio a little more. Mike Creed and I were talking about podcasting the other day — he has a fine one going on — and Mike was surprised to learn that I’d been fiddling with the medium back in 2005.

• The Radio Free Dogpatch archives

I explained that I always felt slightly ridiculous talking into a microphone (though I don’t seem to have any problems holding extended conversations with the voices in my head) and just sort of wandered away from audio, thinking maybe it wasn’t for me.

But shucks. I have all this stuff lying idle around the joint — microphones, headphones, computers, software — and it seems silly to let it go to waste. Having done a few video reviews for the Adventure Cycling people, I feel a little less self-conscious about addressing an invisible audience. And sometimes it’s just fun to do something different.

For me, anyway.

So here we go — it’s a brand-new edition of Radio Free Dogpatch, back from the grave for no defensible reason.

And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Innertubez, too.

The summer grasses remain

November 12, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments

I neglected to post something yesterday about Veterans Day, thinking I didn’t have anything fresh to say, and finding the outpouring of social-media thank-yous to the military slightly irksome. I never served, but if I had, I expect I might not enjoy being pandered to any better than I would being ignored.

Like Charles P. Pierce, when I was a squirt I didn’t know anyone whose father was not a veteran. Since the old man was career Air Force, we mostly knew the kids of Blue Zoomies, but in the course of affairs we would meet others; sons and daughters of soldiers, sailors, Marines.

We’d hear the tales secondhand (none of the dads I knew bragged to kids about his service, so the kids bragged for them). This one was at Omaha Beach, that one at the Battle of the Bulge; this one got shot down in a B-29 after bombing Tokyo, that one flew unarmed Gooney Birds out of New Guinea.

It all sounded really cool, especially while consuming a steady diet of war movies at the base theater, like “The Longest Day,” “The Dirty Dozen,” or “PT 109.” And then we got a little older, and a little smarter, and we came to realize that going to war involved a strong probability of getting one’s arse shot off.

We realized that we never got to hear kids tell about their dads who didn’t make it back, because those kids died unborn with their would-be fathers, figments of an unrealized imagination. And we didn’t get to hear about the men who returned from war damaged in body, mind or spirit, or meet them; not until our own war, Vietnam, came along.

Books like “All Quiet on the Western Front” took on new meaning. And there were others, like “Dispatches,” by Michael Herr; “A Rumor of War,” by Philip Caputo; and “Everything We Had,” by Al Santoli.

In “Narrow Road to the Interior,” Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644-94), following a visit to the ruins of Yasushira — and riffing off a line from the Chinese master Tu Fu about how war had left “the whole country devastated,” a place where “only mountains and rivers remain” — wrote:

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams

In “The Poetry of Zen,” co-author Sam Hamill calls this poem “a brilliant indictment of the stupidity and cruelty of war,” one that reminds us how little we have learned over the millennia. How does one say “Thank you for your service” to the grass?

By seeing to it that subsequent generations get to spend as much time as is humanly possible enjoying the sunny side of it, I suppose.

Peace to those to served, and especially to those who never came home.

Hallelujah, I’m a bum

November 10, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

The Cinelli Bootleg Hobo comes ready to ride, with racks, fenders and pedals.

The first review bike of the new year landed at Chez Dog on Friday.

It’s a Cinelli Bootleg Hobo, and the little bugger sorta snuck up on us as Adventure Cyclist editor Mike Deme and I prowled Interbike earlier this fall.

This Colombus Cromor bike is a nifty bit of marketing. The color is dubbed “Railway” and the Hobo motif is extended throughout, including bar tape that sports some of the coded symbols the ’bos used to communicate with each other back in the day. And the spec’ is strictly hit-the-road basic — nine-speed Shimano triple with Microshift bar-ends, Tektro cantilevers, Alex rims, and 700×35 Vittoria Randonneur Trail clinchers.

There are some nifty extras, though. The Hobo comes with bosses for three bottle cages, Tubus racks and fenders, and a pair of Wellgo pedals. When was the last time you bought an $1,850 touring bike that came with all those goodies? You could ride the sonofabitch home from the shop, is what. Check that — you could ride it away from home, which is even better.

I anticipate a steep drop in unauthorized rail traffic as soon as the hobos find out what a steal this thing is.

Ass, grass or gas: Nobody rides for free

November 9, 2013November 10, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

It’s that time of year again, when I start ringing up editors to inquire whether come the new year they will keep flinging good money after bad by continuing to accept contributions from Your Humble Narrator.

This process always involves a bit of give and take — the editor explains what s/he wishes to take from me, and I tell the editor where and how I plan to give it. A good old time is had by all, often at the top of our lungs, and before long the spreadsheets, knuckle-dusters and restraining orders are set aside and we all go back to earning our meager livings.

And meager is all I ask. My needs are simple, not unlike myself, and I retain no illusions about the freelance rumormonger’s position on our long list of must-have items in the 21st century. (Hint: It’s more than a couple of folds down from the top of the page.)

Today, there is no more writing, illustration or photography — it’s all “content,” and a smart fella can get that anywhere.

Just ask Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and Innertubez gazillionaire. Now one of the guiding lights behind a newish venture, Medium, Williams has moved beyond the 140-character limit in search of “thoughtful, longer-form writing,” says Matt Richtel of The New York Times.

Well, not all that far, perhaps. To be sure, Williams wants more characters for his new enterprise, but he’s offering the same level of compensation — to wit, nothing. Writes Richtel, 745 words into this paean to long-form work: “A few writers are paid, with their work solicited by a small editing team, but most are not.”

Do tell.

Medium employs some 40 folks; I assume that they are taking home paychecks, though being an Innertubez gazillionaire, Williams — whose personal fortune recently ballooned by nearly $2.5 billion, thanks to his 10.5 percent share of Twitter — may not require anything so mundane as compensation for whatever it is that he does.

Well, I do, and thus you should not expect to see my byline over at Medium anytime soon.

I don’t object to writing for free. In fact, I’ve done and continue to do plenty of it. I kept a journal for a decade or so; covered cycling for free at The New Mexican (where I was paid for editing) just to get it in the paper; and have been blogging gratis for longer than I can prove (the archives back at the old home place date to 1992).

But it seems Williams is after something a little deeper than the product of a guy who is interested primarily in keeping the old editorial muscles loose by jotting down whatever comes to mind, just for the hell of it, without interference from editors, publishers or advertisers. Though precisely what that something is, the story never quite says.

There is chin music aplenty, however. Long form. Rationality. Nourishment. Holistic. The one thing that seems certain is that whatever it is that Williams wants to sell, he is not willing to buy.

Sounds irrational to me, even assholistic. Hey, yo, Williams! I got your long-form nourishment right here, pal.