Month: October 2024

Balloons and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Trumpkin.

The Not-So-Great Pumpkin is floating into The Duck! City this fine brisk fall morning, a fat orange gasbag too late for the International Balloon Fiesta.

But just in time for Halloween. Boogity boogity boogity.

Nobody knows just why he’s visiting. ’Burque, BernCo and New Mexico in general tilt reliably blue, last I heard. Oh, we have our cultists like everybody else, flying their flags upside down, hanging banners, erecting statues and the like.

Freedom of religion, etc. Their god is not dead. He just smells like it.

Maybe the last time he drifted through he found a Mickey D’s that suited his peculiar tastes. Maybe they let him work the fries station. I have my fingers crossed that he’ll need a job soon. No, not that one. Having Max Factor one stroke away from the Resolute desk is the scariest thing I can think of this Halloween.

We’re skipping the rally, same as we did back in 2016. If we crave some bad noise we can always tune in to the dulcet tones of dime-store street racers Steve McQueening it up and down Tramway.

And if you crave some bad noise, why, you can tune in to this week’s special Halloween episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: I’m liking this setup — Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, a soupçon of Auphonic to sand off the rough edges, and a street organ and balloon burners from Freesound. The amateur racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

Dress-code violation

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Today’s text comes from the Book of Levi’s.

I broke one of the Commandments today: “Thou shalt not wear pants before Halloween, or the first snow, whichever comes first.”

Just where this Commandment falls on the list I can’t recall. I know it didn’t make the top 10.

Socks are a no-no too, at least indoors. Outdoors it’s: “Thou shalt not show thy gnarly, pale-ass, old-white-guy feet in public unless there is a beach or a pool nearby.”

In my defense, I will say only that this morning’s temperature was just above freezing and it was either pants and socks or fire up the furnace for the first time this fall.

I chose to save the planet. You’re welcome.

Democracy dies, yadda yadda yadda

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Slogans, like talk, are cheap.

Ho, ho. I beat the rush to the exit after The Washington Post‘s management stepped on its editorial dick by declining to endorse a candidate in the pestilential erection. I had already canceled my account based on the plummeting value of their homepage, not the cowardice of the ownership.

Not long ago the WaPo was beating The New York Times like a dusty rug when it came to good, old-fashioned, nut-cutting hard news. Now they pretty much both stink, but at least Mother Times offers some good recipes to take the vile smell out of your nostrils. Plus she still employs a friend of mine.

So I’ll try to forget that the topside of today’s homepage is spattered with shit like “25 Jump Scares That Still Make Us Jump,” “What’s It Like to Tail the Vice President?,” and “Nobody Told Me This Would Happen to My Body in My 40s.”

I’d serve up a critique of the content, if I had clicked on any of it. Alas, I moved on with great haste.

At least the NYT doesn’t start bullshitting you right up there in the flag, like the WaPo. “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” me bollocks. What management does in the darkness you can see in the balcony at any adult theater. Tidy up afterward and check the phone to see if anyone Bezos has business with has invited you to a cocktail party. No? Might as well go lay off a few columnists, if they haven’t all quit already. Only one opinion counts at the newspaper in the nation’s capital, even if it’s mostly being expressed from mansions in Miami, SoCal, or low earth orbit.

Of course, if Jesus Hitler prevails on Nov. 5, it won’t mean much to the WaPo’s owner. Bezos is a podium billionaire, runner-up on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And when JH (No. 432) croaks any and all contracts with Blue Origin because Elon (No. 1) was the last guy in the Oval Office to kiss his ass when the deal went down, well … maybe the internment camps can double as Amazon fulfillment centers.

Hey, a dollar isn’t red or blue. It’s green, baby.

Riding the great Divide

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Shades of autumn in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

O, the weather outside is far from frightful. And the fires are mostly prescriptive. And since we’ve no place to go … even so, let’s just hold off on the snow for a while, if you don’t mind.

Fall rides are my favorite rides. While I occasionally miss aspects of Interbike — the paydays, the feasting and roistering on various publishers’ credit cards, the simply Getting Out of Dodge — I do not long to waste another week of prime cycling weather motoring to and from Sin City in a clattering Nipponese four-banger, with long miles of trudging from casino to expo and back again through the low-hanging clouds of Marlboro exhaust and Bud Light sweat.

On Friday I was muscling the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff around the Elena Gallegos Open Space when I came up on a couple mountain bikers standing about where I saw a good-sized rattler in the grass on Tuesday. So I stopped to see what was what.

They’d seen a tarantula hairy-legging it across the trail and stopped for a peek, so I had one too. Didn’t take a pic, because I always feel like some sort of half-assed journalist — or worse, a tourist — when I’m doing that sort of thing where people can catch me at it. But it’s always educational to see one of the critters who actually belong here in the Upper Chihuahuan Desert.

Speaking of things that go bump in the desert, thanks to everyone who lent an ear (sorry, no returns) to the revival of my long-dormant Radio Free Dogpatch podcast. I have no idea what’s next — I mean, shit, do any of us 10 days away from the pestilential erection? — but as soon as I do, you’ll hear all about it. Oyez, oyez, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

It’s not dead yet. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Just another bonehead with a podcast.

I’ve been casually pestering my friend Hal Walter, telling him he should launch a podcast to support his magnum opus recounting his adventures with son Harrison as the two navigated the postsecondary labyrinth at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville.

Whether this was a good idea is open to debate. Because it got me to thinking about my own long-neglected sonic sideline, Radio Free Dogpatch.

I have a love-hate relationship with the goddamn thing. It’s kind of like an old bike in a garage full of them. It’s been gathering dust out there, and you can’t remember what it was that you liked about it, so you pull it down from its hook, air up the tires, and take it for a spin around the block.

And holy hell, it all comes rushing back to you. Nothing works like it should. It makes funny noises. And you can’t quite remember how to make the old dog hunt. Is the braking U.S. or Euro style? Is the indexing buggered or are these friction shifters? And what in sweet holy motherfuck is all that racket?

Finally you manage to herd the beast back into its slot in the garage, mop the fear-sweat from your forehead, and limp into the house (because of course the sonofabitch bit you somewhere).

And you think: “Well, that wasn’t so bad. Needs a little work, but it’s not like I have a bunch of other stuff that needs doing. …”

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Also short on gas stations, rest areas, and cute hitchhikers. Might as well unplug the Bluetooth and surrender to the yellow fangs of the first Radio Free Dogpatch of 2024.

• Technical notes: The reboot was recorded using gear that was already available in the Infernal Hound Sound studios: An Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; my trusty Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, a soupçon of Auphonic to sand off the rough edges, music from Zapsplat, and crickets from Freesound. All the other racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.