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.
On my uppers
I piddled away a bunch of daylight early yesterday doing bits of this and that, and come 10 a.m. I was in the mood for the great outdoors but not quite sure how to approach it.
Finally I loaded a Gregory day pack, pulled on my old Vasque Clarion boots and went for a short hike in the Sandia foothills. I have some marching to do next month, at Interbike, and it never hurts to refresh the old muscle memory, especially old muscles and old memory.
Wise choice, as it turns out. On the way home my decrepit hiking boots performed what Herself, a former outdoor-equipment retailer, called “a de-lam’.” Both soles basically crumbled and peeled away at the heels.
“Sonofabitch,” I observed. “I’ve only had these boots since the elves made them for that down-on-his-luck cobbler, and what a steal they were, too. Or was it Elvis? Anyway, curses, etc.”
So home I flapped, like a nattily dressed hobo. And now I get to buy some new boots. I feel happier than Carrie Bradshaw with a Manolo Blahnik catalog.
His August Majesty
Mister Boo has had his monthly wash and brush-up and feels much better about himself, though he was less than amused to be all dressed up with nowhere to go for the first half of today (one of his varlets got hauled into court again).
Yes, once again they called my name, and once again I was marched upstairs to a courtroom. But this time we actually enjoyed a spot of voir dire as both defense and prosecution sought to pick a crew that wouldn’t give them a pain in the pinstripes.
Nearly 350 people got rounded up today, and 46 of us were in the pool for this trial, a criminal matter that actually sounded interesting until a couple potential jurors began expounding on their knowledge of the Law According to Too Much Television.
Then I began praying for mercy and lo! My prayers were answered.
“Go thou forth, yet check thee back at 4:30 every afternoon,” they said. “Thou still owest us eight days.”
Gimme a brake
I got paid for a little extracurricular work I did a while back and decided to spread some of the love around, ordering up a new set of Avid BB7s for the Bianchi Zurigo Disc.
The fine folks at Two Wheel Drive handled acquisition and installation, and now I don’t have to listen to those gawd-awful BB5s gargling whenever I squeeze the levers. Sumbitches made more bad noise than a busted chainsaw.
There are worse things than shite brakes, though. Ask anyone in Hurricane Harvey’s vicinity. The Houston Chronicle is all over the story, with one of the most horrific moments (for me, anyway) being the residents of a senior center sitting in waist-deep water, awaiting rescue.
There are other tales nearly as grim, and I expect there will be more of them as the days drag on. And weird ones, too, about a guy catching fish in his living room and dogs carrying their own emergency rations.
We often crack wise about Texas around here, because hey — it’s Texas, y’all! But spare a thought if you will for the residents of the Lone Star State, and if you haven’t spent all your disposable income on new brakes, consider sending them a little sumpin’-sumpin’.
From our Request Line
Friend of the Blog® Jon Paulos asks for a report on the feline members of the household, specifically, how they’ve adjusted to life in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert after spending their formative years in the posh Patty Jewett Yacht & Lawn Bowling Club.
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) finds his new post slightly overwhelming.
Security was incredibly lax when The Commander first arrived to take charge, and he has spent many a long day (and night) napping furiously in search of some solution that doesn’t involve him actually, like, y’know, doing anything.
Aide-de-camp Miss Mia Sopaipilla, meanwhile, inspired by Herself’s midlife career change, is contemplating a lateral move into the library field. She can be seen at right cataloging back issues of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
In between naps and feedings they practice biological warfare in the litter box, enjoy occasional outings in the back yard (on harnesses), and keep a weather eye on Mister Boo, because you never know when a 12-year-old, one-eyed Japanese Chin is liable to get Western with you.
