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.

Mustn’t-see TV

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla will watch a lot of things — birds at the feeder, cat toys, her litter box being emptied — but even she has her limits.

“Will we be following the live broadcast of the 2020 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships Dec. 9, available worldwide, with details of where to watch coming shortly?” asks Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

“No,” I reply. “Not even in a pandemic, with Netflix, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime on the fritz, all of my bicycles and hiking boots stolen, and me in an iron lung with someone who hates me in charge of my other entertainment options.”

“I hear you,” she says, switching her tail. “I’d rather watch the litter box. At least some real shit happens there.”

• In other news: Parkour in the Olympics? Purists say “Nah.”

Voodoo x 2

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
The Nakisi gets its closeup at Trail 366.

With the holiday in the rear view it seemed a fine time to do the Voodoo that I do … mmm, not so well sometimes.

On Monday I took the Voodoo Nakisi out for an airing on the Elena Gallegos trails and promptly stuffed it in a rocky section that a drunk monkey could ride on a unicycle.

The Wazoo takes five against a wall back at the Chuckle Hut.

No harm, no foul — there was a nice big round rock within reach of my left hand and so I never actually went down.

But still, damn.

Today it was the Voodoo Wazoo’s turn. We covered much of the same territory but without incident.

Well, almost without incident.

In the last 20 minutes of the ride I somehow managed to pick up a tiny cactus spine in the left bird finger, and it stung like a bee whenever I squeezed the brake lever. Probably a souvenir of yesterday’s miscue that hitched a ride on my glove. I didn’t have any tweezers on me, but I couldn’t see the tiny sonafabitch to grab it anyway.

At times like this a smart fella might question the viability of the rigid steel bike and the 42mm “fatties.”  But what the hell? They’ve gotten me this far. And anyway, you know what I say about the chances of me ever being smart.

Chile con cooties

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Cooties, boogity boogity boogity.

Weird dreams last night. More like this morning, actually.  Four straight days of red and green chile will do that to you.

Herself got up at 3:30 for some reason. I made the usual profane inquiries without achieving enlightenment and soon drifted back into a troubled sleep.

I found myself in our old place in Bibleburg and there were bugs crawling everywhere. Great big gnarly muthas that went sploosh if you stomped ’em. Real sandal-soakers.

Don’t suppose we need to engage a brain mechanic to explain that one.

Take me up; cast me away

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Behold Exchequer, given to me by the Lady of the Other Home Office, on the condition that I fulfill any request she might make, the first and foremost of these being that I not use this magical weapon to acquire any more expensive, useless bullshit, f’chrissakes, can you do that for me, hon’? Pretty please?

Another Black Friday passeth without my being compelled by bitter circumstance and/or simple covetousness to draw the mighty card, Exchequer, from its ripstop scabbard. The realm remains unencumbered by debt and grails.