Month: October 2020

Boo-zo the Clown

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
The Thing on the Doorstep.
On the way out, we may hope.

This is the scariest Halloween I can remember.

Thank Cthulhu so many people voted early. Only the Great Old Ones know what the sluggards are likely to do come Tuesday, as they crash hard from Saturday’s sugar frenzy followed by Sunday’s end to daylight saving time. Probably cast write-in votes for Mars-Wrigley, the Dread Lord of Type-2 Diabetes, or worse, Darth Cheney.

One thing seems pretty certain, though. If we don’t punt the Not-So-Great Pumpkin off the national porch next week, Halloween 2021 will be even scarier. Boogity-boogity-boogity.

He’s not just a Good Old One. He’s a Great Old One.

R.I.P., Sean Connery

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
James Bond finally retires for good.

For those of us of a certain age, there was only one James Bond.

Sean Connery has gone west after being unwell for some time, according to his family. He passed in his sleep, in the Bahamas, but no doubt Scotland was on his mind and in his heart; he had long been a staunch supporter of Scottish independence.

As a squirt in Texas I read every Ian Fleming Bond novel there was, and I always pictured Connery as 007. Everybody else was just play-acting.

Connery won his only Oscar for playing a Mick cop in the Kevin Costner-headlined remake of “The Untouchables.” But then he turned up in a lot of interesting places, as King Agamemnon and a fireman in Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits,” and as Daniel Dravot, an ex-soldier likewise bound for a crown in “The Man Who Would Be King,” a John Huston film based on a Rudyard Kipling story.

No matter who he was playing, or in what, you just knew he was having a whole lot more fun than you. Enjoy your work and the paychecks will keep coming, he seemed to say.

And it goes without saying that he was an inspiration to the rest of us handsome and charismatic bald fellas.

So fill to Sean the parting glass, and drink a health whate’er befalls. …

• Addendum: Here’s The New York Times obit, the one I always think of as official. Talk about your rags-to-riches story:

He was born Thomas Sean Connery on Aug. 25, 1930, and his crib was the bottom drawer of a dresser in a cold-water flat next door to a brewery. The two toilets in the hall were shared with three other families. His father, Joe, earned two pounds a week in a rubber factory. His mother, Effie, occasionally got work as a cleaning woman.

Draught for a drought

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Man, you just can’t beat the clouds in New Mexico, even if they occasionally snow on you.

Seven inches. I measured it, with a steel ruler.

No, not that. The snow. The landscape drank it the way a wino chugs a short dog.

You’d be surprised how quickly an Albuquerque lawn can drink seven inches of snow. Maybe not.

Winter’s drive-by with its record snowfall and low temperature meant I had to crank up the furnace two days earlier than last year. There’s something final about the sound of that Trane XR80 groaning back to hideous life; every time I switch the thermostat from “Cool” to “Heat” I feel as though I’ve just driven a stake through the heart of summer.

The streets cleared quickly — after 133 vehicle crashes and 31 injuries, nobody wanted to be on them, not even the snow.

But if you were afoot and kept your eyes open it wasn’t awful. I went out for a couple hourlong walks and by Friday it was warm enough for a ride, in long sleeves, knickers and tuque.

Anyway, we’ve got a stretch of 60-something and sunny on tap, so it looks like the landscape is back on the wagon after slamming its cold one.

One week

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments
In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine; I would shiver the whole night through.

Seven inches of snow at 7 a.m. with seven days until the election.

I call that an omen. Of what sort, I’m not certain. But it has to be better than 6, 6, and 6, don’t you think?

Sweet dreams, old pal.

As the snow piled up last night I dreamed of Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment).

He was all sprawled out, occupying a considerable portion of territory, as was his practice, and seemed very much at peace. So I woke with a smile. It was good to see my old comrade again.

I did not dream of Covid the Barbarian, because it was not yet Halloween, which this year comes with a rare full moon, the first to brighten All Hallow’s Eve in (wait for it) many moons. There won’t be another until 2039.

And it’s a blue moon. Another omen?

Here’s hoping it lights our way toward kicking the Not-So-Great Pumpkin off the White House porch a few days later.

Unhorsed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Don’t get wisterical. It’s just a little snow.

We were on something of a weather carousel here this morning, a slowly revolving lazy Susan serving up blue sky, clouds, rain, sleet, and snow. Don’t like what’s set before you? Patience. Another option will be coming around directly.

Eventually, ol’ Suze coasted to a stop … on snow.

Oh, well. It was bound to happen eventually. It’s October, f’chrissakes. Cyclocross season in an ordinary year, which this is not, with the Giro just wrapped and the Vuelta ongoing.

I got my cyclocross in yesterday before the weather went all to shitaree, rolling south on the foothills trails past Copper and back again.

No running, thanks all the same. Not even a hike-a-bike. The weather was cool, but the ground was dry, alarmingly so, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t ride on my trusty Steelman Eurocross.

Alas, as Thomas McGuane has written, “sometimes a man needs to be afoot to keep from going broke, get down and go to his tasks, instead of posing on the horse. …”

So today, no horsing around. I pulled on some long pants, grabbed the push broom, and herded some snow off my driveway. Yippee-ki-yay, etc.