Month: March 2023

Let us spray

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
What a card.

However will The Mighty Mega NewsHose 9000® pass the time between now and Tuesday, when ’Is Lardship is to journey from Mar-a-Lago to Manhattan to face some long-overdue music?

By jawing frantically with “people familiar with the matter who, like many in Trump’s orbit, spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly share details of private discussions,” as The Washington Post puts it in a piece about how various minions, knaves, and varlets got caught with their pantaloons around their cankles when the indictment was announced.

A shorter item in The New York Times credits “people familiar with his thinking,” which must be a horrific state of consciousness to inhabit, even for traitors, seditionists, and whores.

The anonymous source is the cost of doing business in this shabby neighborhood, where everyone with even a soupçon of inside info is on the lookout for the cops, stoolies, and other potholes on the road to Advancement.

Musn’t abandon this lame candidate for the glue factory in midstream, no sir. Not until a more viable hoss comes clip-clopping along. We see many horse’s asses but very few complete horses.

Meanwhile, the invaluable Charles P. Pierce reminds us that the real game may be afoot in Georgia, where the charges are liable to carry a tad more weight than an indictment alleging someone was cooking the books in New York.

Writes Brother Pierce:

And, even if the former president* were to win in New York, so what? [Fulton County DA Fani] Willis’ charges are far more serious than [Manhattan DA Alvin] Bragg’s are. In Atlanta, the former president* may be indicted for crimes against the republic, for offenses against the idea of popular democracy. That is also Jack Smith’s brief for the DOJ, an investigation that looms like a giant Dust Bowl cloud behind these state prosecutions. Time has come today, in the immortal words of the Chambers Brothers. There are things to … realize.

R.I.P., Keith Reid

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Keith Reid, the lyricist behind Procol Harum’s legendary “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” has gone west. He was 76.

I would’ve written “has left the stage,” but Reid was apparently never on it. He was “a full-time non-performing member” of the band, according to The Guardian.

That doesn’t mean Reid wasn’t carrying his share of the load. He wrote almost all of Procol Harum’s lyrics throughout nine albums, from 1967 through ’77, and then a couple more albums’ worth for good measure in 1991 and 2003.

In an interview with Uncut magazine cited in American Songwriter, Reid addressed the song’s origin and meaning.

“I had the phrase ‘a whiter shade of pale,’ that was the start, and I knew it was a song,” he said. “It’s like a jigsaw where you’ve got one piece, then you make up all the others to fit in. I was trying to conjure a mood as much as tell a straightforward, girl-leaves-boy story. With the ceiling flying away and room humming harder, I wanted to paint an image of a scene.”

In the 1991 film “The Commitments,” Jimmy Rabbitte derides Reid’s work on “Whiter Shade” as the “poxiest bleedin’ lyrics ever written.” But I notice he knew them so well he could correct Steven Clifford when the pianist misquotes the first line.

Me, I loved those lyrics, and the organ riffs nicked from Bach, too. So I tip me cap to Reid, who joins his old bandmate, lead singer Gary Brooker — who wrote the music for “Whiter Shade” — in that ever-growing jam band in the sky.

Extra credit listening

• “A Salty Dog.”

• “Conquistador.”

1:09

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Good thing I stopped to snap this pic of the Cateye showing 69 minutes (1:09). I’da kept on keepin’ on, I’da run headlong into a herd of deer.

Huzzah!  Our long national nightmare is over.

Lousy shot, but I didn’t want to startle the deer. A couple good bounds and they’re in auto traffic on Camino de la Sierra, which is much more dangerous than a trail with one 69-year-old dude on a bicycle.

I finally managed to squeeze in that birthday ride.

You will be astounded to learn that I managed my age in … minutes.

In keeping with the house motto, “Picturae vel id numquam evenit” (“Pix or It Never Happened”), I took a snap of the Cateye for documentation.

Now, as Feats of Strength go, this is … well, a tad feeble.

In my defense, however, I will note that I was riding a rigid steel drop-bar 29er on spiky desert singletrack — didn’t even bother to check the tire pressure before heading out! — and at one point nearly shot into a couple dozen deer browsing lazily along a narrow singletrack descent bordered with sharp rocks and cacti.

And still! 69, amirite? Winning!

The cat’s meow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
It’s all uphill from here?

Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spat, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his fingers, drank from the jug, belched and sat down by the fire.

— John Steinbeck, “Cannery Row”

“Men all do about the same things when they wake up,” Steinbeck continued.

Maybe so. But my morning ritual departs from the norm in subtle ways.

There is no pool, jug, or fire by the bed; the nightstand holds a lamp and glass of water, and a sink is just a few steps away.

Once I’ve tumbled out of bed I snatch up bits of clothing at random and dress in the dark just to see what happens. This morning when I turned on the bathroom light I saw the pea-green T-shirt I’d selected complemented my fetching pallor. Thanks to an overlong winter that has spilled over into spring I looked like a scoop of pistachio ice cream with eyes.

It didn’t help that Miss Mia Sopaipilla had begun singing “Happy Birthday” to me around 2:30. I thought I was prepared, having gone to bed early, but nothing prepares you for a cat singing “Happy Birthday” at 2:30 in the morning. Especially when you know it’s not “Happy Birthday” she’s singing.

Who knows what makes a cat sing anything at 2:30 in the morning? Not me, because I refuse to get up and find out. I rolled myself up like a burrito in the blankets, put a pillow over my head, and stayed put until 5.

Shortly after I finally arose to serve Her Majesty I heard an ambulance, but I wasn’t in it.

At least I don’t think I was. But I’ve only had two cups of coffee so all bets are off.