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.
Interesting notes: He made his bones with “Champion,” based on a Ring Lardner story of the same name. And his favorite movie apparently was “Lonely Are the Brave,” which was based on an Ed Abbey novel, “The Brave Cowboy.” I had no idea that was his fave; I certainly liked both stories, the way I like all Lardner and Abbey stories.
And I loved me some Kirk Douglas movies.
Today, we are all Spartacus. Except for, well, you know. That guy.
On Monday, the Donks intercoursed the penguin most savagely with an Iowa caucus that resembled nothing so much as the Batley Townswomens’ Guild’s re-enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor, only without the funny bits.
Come Tuesday, we got a twofer: First, the Senate “debating” whether to remove King Donald the Short-fingered from his golden throne; and the State of the Union Address, which seems certain to be even less funny than the Senate, the Iowa caucus, and the Batley Townswomens’ Guild.
And come Wednesday, His Lardship will skate on all charges, have Stephanie Grisham squeegee all those senatorial lip prints off his fat ass, and get back to wiping it with the world.
As if all this weren’t bad enough, well, I bring still more evil tidings — yes, yes, yes, it’s time for more political-science fiction from the K-9 Caucus at Radio Free Dogpatch!
Gosh. Whatever will Thursday bring? And News Dump Friday is gonna have to up its game big-time if it wants to keep being more than just another day of the week.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, then edited in Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. Post-production voodoo by Auphonic. The background music is “The Throne Room” from Sir Cubworth, via the YouTube Audio Library. The golf shot and crowd noise come from craigsmith at Freesound.org. Clock ticking and alarm ringing are straight from the iMovie sound-effects bin. And the sound of the world swirling down the loo? That comes straight from the guest bath at El Rancho Pendejo.
P’raps it comes from the zoo! The Iowa Democratic Party, not the penguin.
Well, without Larry and The Professor around to keep an eye on things, Iowa has intercoursed the penguin, caucus-wise.
It’s a bit early for Valentine’s Day, but still, what a lovely gift to the Republicans, que no?
“They can’t even run a caucus in Iowa, and they want to run the country? We’ll have more on the Fake Iowa Caucuses later in our programme. In the meantime we present the first episode of a new radio drama series, ‘The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots.’ Part One: ‘The Beginning.’ ”
• Editor’s note: For anyone unfamiliar with the voodoo that they do so badly in Iowa, here’s John Nichols on the procedure.
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