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.

Tick, tock. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Mooned again.

Here we are once more, not watching the clock tick down to midnight, knowing it will get there without us.

Mia sitting zazen.

It’s been a good long while since Herself and I stayed awake to greet the new year, and I see no good reason to break that streak this time around.

Impatient celebrants began setting off fireworks 7-ish, which set off the neighborhood dogs; sort of a bonus year-end racket. Miss Mia Sopaipilla remains unruffled, having developed a degree of hearing loss, and never being much frightened of anything anyway, not even the Turk, who could be very scary indeed depending on which one of the voices in his head had the conn at the moment.

Thus we take a page from “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry,” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison:

We should
sit like a cat
and wait for the door
to open.

The door to 2026 will swing wide directly. Until then, sláinte to all you cats who spent 2025 helping me fill up the old literature box, clawing the furniture and keeping your tails well clear of the rocking chair. See you next year.

Great minds

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
The luck of the (southern) Irish.

Rooting around the Innertubes for some New Year’s recipes I was congratulating myself on picking a couple of winners, both from The New York Times Cooking section, which by itself is worth the price of a subscription.

One was a simple Hoppin’ John recipe from Bill Neal of Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., as adapted by Craig Claiborne in 1985. The other was a jalapeño cheddar cornbread from Melissa Clark, the franchise player on my pro cooking squad.

But when I crowed about this to Herself I found she’d beaten me to the punch. She’d already found her own recipe and acquired the ingredients for it, too.

Good thing I shot off my big bazoo before heading for the grocery. We’d have been eating Hoppin’ John and cornbread from New Year’s right through St. Patrick’s Day.

Meanwhile, I had to quickly re-establish my primacy as tenzo of this zendo. Facing an economy of scarcity — a lack of fresh red grapes, which I dice up for the morning oatmeal — I displayed my resourcefulness in the kitchen, or “skillful means,” as defined by the late poet-gourmand and Zen student Jim Harrison, by locating a wrinkled honeycrisp apple in the crisper and chopping that up instead. In your face! as the sage Dogen has taught us.

Jimbo hated oatmeal. But he’s dead and didn’t have to eat any of it.

Blue Monday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Pistache! Gesundheit!

Winter, being less than tempestuous around here, always catches me with my pants down. Then up. Then down. Then up. …

Take yesterday, for example. It wasn’t all that cold, but there was a stiff, bitter wind out of the northwest. I briefly considered and swiftly rejected a bike ride, then set about trying to figure out what to wear for a short trail run.

Jaysis wept, etc. The winter clothing options in my dresser look like the “Free” box at the last day of a garage sale in a bad neighborhood.

Paddygucci base layers from when they were still made in the US of A. Hind tights old enough to run for president, in any season. Prehistoric Smartwool socks that couldn’t even make the cut for that “Free” box.

And none of this gear has a pocket for the iPhone, which I have carried religiously since breaking an ankle during a tech-free run five years ago (unable to summon a chariot like a king wounded in battle I had to serf home using a downed tree limb as a crutch). One long-sleeved Columbia top, a bit of VeloNews swag, sports a zippered iPod pocket in the left sleeve, with cutouts for earbud wires. Anybody remember iPods? Wired earbuds? Or VeloNews, for that matter?

In the end I chose the Columbia top (leaving the iPod and earbuds at home); the warmest (and possibly eldest) of my Paddygucci base-layer shirts; Darn Tough wool socks; Sugoi tuque; Smartwool gloves; and the lightweight Paddygucci Terrebonne pants I shredded when I broke the ankle (three pockets plus plenty of holes if I wanted to choose the scenic route for the earbud wires from the iPod I wasn’t packing).

And thus equipped, as Herself and I were jogging up the final winding climb before the paved descent back to El Rancho Pendejo, I thought, “Goddamnit. I am totally overdressed for this shit. I should’ve gone for a ride.”

Fourth and long

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“Holy hell, hon’, better start filling the sandbags.”

Winter finally came a-calling yesterday.

More of a “ring the doorbell and run” deal, actually. Left 0.06 inch of rain on our doorstep instead of a flaming sack of dog shit.

We’ll take it. Don’t gotta stomp it out or nothin’.

Today dawned clear and cold, and the furnace and humidifier were harmonizing on what sounded like some sort of mariachi tune as I awakened just before 4 to “shake hands with the governor.”

“Are you getting up or going back to bed?” Herself asked as she set about her day.

“Back to bed,” I mumbled, and made it so. The next two hours of sleep were top shelf, curled up like an old dog under blanket and comforter. The news cycle can’t get me in there, with the phone locked and in silent mode. No wonder Miss Mia Sopaipilla loves the bed-cave I make for her every morning after coffee. And she doesn’t even read The New York Times.

The press is deep into “The Year in Review” mode now, which reminds me of the last time I went to a Broncos game at the old Mile High stadium, back in the days when the Donkeys would have had their hands full going up against a Pop Warner squad from Saguache.

Anyway, the Donks were getting their asses handed to them, by whom I can’t recall, and though there was plenty of time remaining on the clock, the stands were emptying faster than bladders overloaded by the industrial lager the fans were slamming to drown their sorrows.

In mid-exodus the PA gives out with a cheery, “And don’t forget to watch ‘Bronco Replay'” on whatever local TV channel was playing the piano in that whorehouse. After which some tosspot a few tiers downhill from us lurches to his unsteady feet, bellows, “Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?” and then tumbles down the stairs.

All these years later three hundred and sixty-five steps seems like quite a tumble, especially since I’m not wearing any protective gear — like, say, sinuses lined with cocaine, a beer-swollen liver, and a couple dozen extra elbees of adipose tissue.

So please excuse me if I skip the replay. It was bad enough the first time.

Night shift

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Mad Dog?

Another shower of oddball dreams, and after two consecutive dinners of nothing spicier than a mild beef vegetable soup with cornbread, too.

The old MacSkull Air must be defragging its hard drive. Or just fragging it.

Why else would I be dreaming about three things I haven’t been doing lately — cyclocross, burro racing, and cartooning — all in one long dark night of the soul?

Maybe my cranial janitor came back from an extended coffee break to find a new supervisor scowling at him, with arms crossed and one foot a-tapping.

“Have you seen the state of this place? Acid flashbacks piled up here, empty liquor bottles scattered over there, and just look at this fantasy closet! No, on second thought, just nail that fucker shut. Nobody needs to see that shit. One quick peek and I had to book a double session with my shrink. So, deep clean, new carpet and drywall, and fresh paint all around. Chop-chop!”

When I arose and toddled into the kitchen in search of the Ebony Elixir of Life, Herself was fiddling with a Panasonic bread machine that she and her sisters found at some estate sale last fall, and I was onboarded as a consultant before I could decide whether I was actually awake.

A quick glance around took in zero sisters, so after two cups of the black velvety goodness and one fat slice of buttered cornbread I put my two cents’ worth into the project and now we await the results. If you hear of a mushroom cloud over Albuquerque and the Authorities say it smells like bread you’ll know the backstory.