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.
You may never have read “Dispatches” by Michael Herr, but chances are you’ve shared some of his experiences at the cinema, in “Platoon,” “Apocalpyse Now” or “Full Metal Jacket.”
Michael Herr deserves his own post, if only for “Dispatches,” a work I’ve mentioned here before.
He went to Vietnam for Esquire, not for Uncle Sam, and he had to have a breakdown before he finished the book for which he would be best known.
If you saw “Apocalypse Now,” you’ve heard his work (he wrote the narration). You got some more of it in “Full Metal Jacket” (he wrote the screenplay with Gustav Hasford, author of “The Short-Timers,” for his friend Stanley Kubrick).
But “Dispatches” was the real deal. Seventies reportage from the scene, slightly fictionalized, deeply admired, by the king of Gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, and by me, too.
Rest in peace, Mr. Herr.
Extra-credit reading
• “Hell Sucks,” which became part of “Dispatches,” reprinted in its entirety at Esquire.
Second, Floyd Landis will be fronting a whacky-tobacky enterprise, dubbed “Floyd’s of Leadville.” Cheech and Chong must be shittin’ themselves. I guess someone else already cornered the whiskey, beer and synthetic-testosterone market. (Pro tip: Never get high on your own supply, Floyd old scout.)
The Paseo del Bosque makes a nice change from riding Tramway.
Summer has announced itself with some authority here in the Duke City.
The temperature was in the 70s at El Rancho Pendejo before I finished my morning java, and hit the 80s before I left for the daily ride at 9-ish.
This little fella was trying to make the irrigation ditch before some earbudded triathlete did him in.
Too late, you say? Yep. ‘Cause I was enjoying 90-something in hour three of today’s little outing, which took me down to the Paseo del Bosque Trail, through downtown, and then home via the North Diversion Channel and Bear Canyon Arroyo trails.
It was an eventful day. I saw bison grazing on Sandia land along Tramway; a small tortoise trying to cross the bosque trail (I gave him a hand); ducks paddling underneath the Interstate 40 bridge over the Rio; and a dude on a skateboard pushing a canoe on wheels.
I am not making that last part up.
“Interesting way to get around,” sez I.
“Hey, it works,” sez he. And so it did.
I should’ve snapped a picture, because I’m not entirely sure I actually saw it. It was hot out there.
• Addendum: I’m not sure I saw this either. I can’t wait to hear the good constitutionalists out there screeching about activist judges (cue the crickets).
Hal Walter and Spike in 2000, after winning what I believe was their second world pack-burro championship in Fairplay, Colo.
My man Hal “Mr. Awesome” Walter, who races burros and raises an autistic son, is the subject of a profile over to Narrative.ly, just in time for Father’s Day.
You might think that managing what Hal prefers to call a “neurodiverse” child would be heavy lifting. But like burro racing, it has more to do with endurance, which just happens to be the title of a newish short book the man is hawking between his other chores.
Like father, like son: Young Harrison has his very own burro circa 2005.
Hal and I first met back in the Eighties on the copy desk of The Pueblo Chieftain, where we also dealt with varying degrees of neurodiversity and as a consequence enhanced our capacities to endure just about anything.
I went on to become an extraordinarily prosaic amateur cyclist while professionally lampooning leg-shavers, dope fiends, and leg-shaving dope fiends, while Hal became a world-champion pack-burro racer and author.
But we’ve remained friends despite our class differences, and thus I recommend that you read the profile and buy the book.
It was a wee bit hazy with a scent of smoke in the air as Mister Boo enjoyed his promenade this morning.
Smokin’ hot in the Duke City this morning, and for the immediate future as well.
We have a nice little fire cooking away down southeast of here, and a couple others elsewhere. The smell of a forest burning revives a memory of our storied Bibleburg days and provides a preview of my anticipated afterlife.
Taking a few hot laps around the Elena Gallegos Open Space on the Jones 29er.
The heat is tough on the turf, which is slightly scorched due to someone not noticing that a sprinkler head had gone sideways. (Thanks, Obama!)
And it’s no party for the pets, all three of whom have whiled away the day sleeping. Mister Boo is barely interested in his meals, which ordinarily would be a sign of the Apocalypse but in this case indicates that it’s just too bloody hot to eat.
Or cook, for that matter. Last night Herself and I dined on a hunk of smoked salmon, sharp cheddar, crackers and a big-ass salad (note the crucial hyphen there; a big ass salad would be something else entirely).
Tonight I think it’s gonna be some hot Italian sausage, onions and peppers, a tomatoey, garlicky thing, perhaps over orecchiette, a pasta I’m really starting to appreciate.
Elsewhere The Stupid is swelling like a boil on the buttocks of the body politic. Sen. John McInsane (R-Off My Lawn) is spastically trying to walk back a brain-dead crack he made about Obama’s responsibility for the massacre in Orlando (time for your meds, some soup and a nice nap, Johnny me boyo). And Rumor Control hints that Cheeto Jesus may be less interested in the presidency than in his own cable network.
Seriously? We’ve all watched the GOP sawing feebly away at its skinny wrists with a butter knife for eight long years. Suddenly Ronald McDonald McTrump accelerates the process with a “Game of Thrones” flourish that leaves 16 heads rolling in the aisles, and all he wants for his trouble is a fucking job in TV?
Well, son, that’s one hell of an opening act. But what d’ye do for an encore?
