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.

Update: Ruta del Rancho Pendejo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Into The Great Wide Open.

The May 1 deadline has come and gone to declare for the inaugural Ruta del Rancho Pendejo, slated June 2-3. Bienvenidos to those who will be there, and hasta luego to those who will be square.

This is a veritable freeway of a descent, until it isn’t. The trails tend to be a tad on the narrow, twisty and sandy side.

Looks like the Marriott Courtyard Albuquerque will be the base of operations for out-of-towners. It’s close to the Paseo del Norte bike trail, which leads straight down to the Paseo del Bosque, and looks pretty much on-and-off, freeway-wise, despite a construction project to the south. High Desert Bicycles is the closest bike shop, and Weck’s is the best bet for a serious pre-ride breakfast.

The weather to date has been warm and dry, so much so that much of the state is suffering drought conditions, but you never know when those “monsoons” might show up, so consider packing a light rain shell … which, of course, will ensure that it doesn’t rain that weekend. Sunscreen will probably prove more useful.

Prone to seasonal allergies? Consider fetching along your performance-enhancing substance of choice, which will spare you a trip to the apothecary.

And don’t sweat the buzzworms. They’re tired of green chile and are biting the burger-gobblers back in Bibleburg.

The roads, trails and paths are all in tiptop shape, but you needn’t be, as Coach says the pace on all rides will be relaxed and of a conversational nature. I’m assuming we’re all hip deep in Manly Points from previous triumphs and thus can rest comfortably on our laurels.

Questions? Holler in comments. I have all the answers, even if I have to make ’em up.

Sinko de Turko

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
¿Tengo sed? Claro que si! Haz que llueva, pendejo.

Come the dawn, after a long night’s duty, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) likes to refresh himself with a drink from the sink, holiday or no holiday.

And speaking of no holiday, at least one learned sort thinks Cinco de Mayo may be one of them there — created largely to sell beverages, and plenty of them too.

“It’d be like if the Fourth of July were reduced to beer and hot dogs,” said UCLA prof David Hayes-Bautista.

Dude. How long you been on this side of The Wall, ese? I bet you can’t find three gabachos off campus who think the Fourth is about anything else.

 

Bang a gong, get it on

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
The stars of The Pueblo Chieftain copy desk circa 1984. Two of us are still walking the earth. Guess which ones.

The news biz is a tough racket. Yeah, I know, “stop the presses.”

Up in Colorado, The Denver Post is in a bad way, thanks to the vulture capitalists who have been treating it like an ATM at a Vegas casino. They may be wiping their overfed asses with your local daily, too.

And now The Pueblo Chieftain is said to be in the midst of a sale to … well, someone. Some thing.

I worked at The Chieftain for a spell back in the early Eighties. It’s where I met my man Hal Walter, who helped me get off the cigarettes and back onto the bike — at that point, a $320 fire-engine-red Centurion Le Mans 12.

As I wrote in my journal in 1983 — you remember journals, a sort of analog blog with a readership of one — “I can’t wait to get it and start riding all over fucking town. I may take it with me during my vacation so’s I can get some exercise between drinks.”

Yeah, I still had a ways to go. But still, baby steps, amirite?

Anyway, Hal has penned a recollection of the glory days — and some observations about The Chieftain‘s future — for Colorado Central magazine. He makes mention of Your Humble Narrator, and yes, my lawyers have been informed, so you’ll want to read the piece before HBO makes a documentary of the entire sordid mess and we’re strolling along the red carpet at Cannes giving the finger to Tarantino, the Coen brothers and del Toro.

I see T.J. Miller playing me, or perhaps Rory McCann, and probably Justin Timberlake as Hal, whom we used to call “Teen Angel,” for reasons that should be obvious. I mean, just look at that fucking picture, f’chrissakes.

Red menace

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
The intersection of Trails 341 and 342. I like to hang a left here
(because of course I do) and do a clockwise loop that tops out at the wilderness boundary.

There’s Revolution and there’s revolution.

With the masses otherwise occupied for May Day 2018, and all my rousing calls to action going to voicemail, I settled for a bit of the lower-case variety, pulling on the red-and-black Mad Dog Media kit, stuffing red water bottles into their cages, and rolling out for a short spin on the people’s trails.

Comrade Red Cap keeps the people’s air where it belongs.

There’s more than one way to lose a chain, and I know most of them. I lost one on Sunday after a rear puncture and got good and greasy (the Voodoo Nakisi has horizontal dropouts that open to the rear, and it’s easy to get filthy removing and replacing the rear wheel).

On Monday I punctured again, this time the front. It was a slow leak, like the proletariat losing political power, and I was able to make it home without overthrowing the bourgeois wheel.

But today, International Workers Day, went off without a hitch. Maybe it was the red valve caps.

 

No joke

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Hey, correspond with this, yo.

Margaret Sullivan at The Washington Post gets this absolutely right: The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is less about speaking truth to power and more about “schmoozing in the swamp.” It should be bused promptly to the dishwasher of history.

Do cops and robbers break bread together while a chorus line of hookers can-cans on stage?

Recall your Frank H. Simonds: “‘There is but one way for a newspaperman to look at a politician, and that is down.'”

And these particular scribblers should be grabbing lunch at their desks while they stick to their looking down. Because H.L. Mencken was right:

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”