He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.
Author: Patrick O'Grady
After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
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.
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.
Calm down, ye amadáin, I’ve not a drop taken: That’s a Guinness 0 so.
Birthdays. Some of us get overserved, others get 86’d with the cork barely out of the bottle.
Whoever’s in charge of this party seems a bit random. Can’t tell the top shelf from the well, the class from the dross. Proper ladies and gents given the shove while the most appalling tossers have the run o’ the place.
Take me, if you can bear to. Here I sit, roaring up on an age at which I had fully expected to have been stone dead for at least 39 years. Upended many an office pool I did.
“Who picked 69? 69? Well, doesn’t matter, because the bugger is still alive!”
Turn your radio on.
Meanwhile, there’s many an empty stool in this shabby shebeen. Where’d everybody go? They were all here just a minute ago. …
Herself is back east with family and friends to raise a belated parting glass to a lifelong friend carried off by COVID last fall.
I’m right here, having charge of the cat. But recently I spoke with one of my old pals, the former Live Update Guy Charles Pelkey, who has taken a few sucker punches since a cancer diagnosis a dozen years ago but is still on his feet in Laramie, all bouncers be damned.
It may be my birthday that’s on tap come Monday, but I’d buy Charles a round to celebrate his most recent lap around the sun, may it not be his last. Lucky for me and my 401(k) I don’t drink anymore; I don’t think he does, either. ’Tis unknown the amount of money our younger selves could piss away in a proper pub.
At the publisher’s expense, of course.
But that’s neither here nor there.
And anyway, it’s the thought that counts.
So belly up to the bar — unbeknownst to the landlord, who is manhandling another tray of industrial lager to the hoops-watching gobshites glued to the TV in the back of the pub, we’re uncorking an 18-year-old, double-cask, single-malt episode of — yes, yes, yes — Radio Free Dogpatch. And sláinte to yis.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: There was an inordinate amount of racket in and around El Rancho Pendejo this week, but after a series of false starts I was finally able to nail something down using my trusty Shure SM58 mic and the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects are courtesy of Zapsplat,Freesound, and Your Humble Narrator.
Leaving on a jet plane. Not Herself, but it will do for purposes of illustration.
Herself is out of town, and Miss Mia and I are out of sorts.
Ours is a fragile ecosystem, especially Miss Mia’s little corner of it. You give her output, she’ll give you input, and plenty of it, especially if she catches you napping on the job.
“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwww!”
“Hold my calls, stand by, and await further instructions.”
As Nick Nolte told Frank McRae in “48 Hrs,” “Yeah, I hear you, your voice carries.”
When we’re fully staffed, Herself takes the early shift. She gets up at stupid-thirty, feeds and waters and amuses Her Majesty, and then goes about her business while Miss Mia takes a nap.
I get the second shift, which starts a couple hours later. I feed and water and amuse Her Majesty, and then go about my business while Miss Mia takes a nap.
Then we tag team the rest of the day, which is mostly a breeze because hey, she’s a cat. Miss Mia requires about 20 hours of beauty sleep per diem.
But if one of us goes somewhere for a few days, it’s Katie bar the door. Double shifts, weird hours, and negative performance reviews. My first writeup came around 3 this morning.
“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwww!”
It’s gonna be a long shift in the barrel. “Yeah, I hear you, your voice carries.”
The transition from winter to spring seems a bit blurry this year.
On yesterday’s ride I was wearing a Sugoi watch cap under my old Giro helmet; Castelli wind vest and long-sleeve Gore jersey over a long-sleeve Paddygucci base layer; winter gloves; heavy Pearl Izumi tights over Castelli bib shorts; and Darn Tough wool socks in Gore-Tex Shimano shoes.
And I still got cold. Should’ve added a Buff to keep the windpipe insulated.
Looking into the Elena Gallegos Open Space from Spain and High Desert.
Happily, I was riding a Soma Saga touring bike, which with fenders, rear rack, tool bag, Zéfal pump, lights, bell, and bottle goes about 32 pounds. So we’re talking minimal self-inflicted wind chill on the flats and ascents.
And today? The first day of “spring?” Sheeyit.
It was snowing, lightly, when I struggled out of bed consumed by desire for hot coffee. Herself was already at her computer, earning. Miss Mia Sopaipilla was making her usual morning noises, which sound like a cross between her name (“Meeeeeeee-yah!”) and a demand for attention (“Meeeee-now!”).
Somehow she manages to find the precise point in El Rancho Pendejo from which her voice will project to every corner of the house. She should be the audio engineer for Radio Free Dogpatch, is what.
Given the conditions breakfast was medium-heavy. Two cups of strong black coffee, thick slabs of whole wheat toast slathered with butter and jam, one tall mug of strong black tea, and oatmeal with fruit and nuts.
Now it’s 40° at 10 a.m. The trash and recycling bins have been emptied and retrieved and we seem to be between drizzles, so some class of healthy outdoor exercise is indicated, if only to get away from the cascade of “news” items about Paris Hilton, boneheaded banking practices, and whether Adolf Twitler will get a long-overdue perp walk.
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