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.

Twilight of the dogs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Riding into the sunset
Is the sun setting on the American Experiment? Just remember, things always look their darkest just before everything goes totally black.

Looks kind of rural and peaceful, doesn’t it? A fisherman stands by a mountain lake just before sundown. …

Actually, it’s a pond upstream from a water-treatment plant in north-central Bibleburg. The place is surrounded by high-traffic roads, a dog-boarding operation and a hamburger stand. And it wasn’t nearly as dark as the iPhone thought it was when I shot this pic on yesterday’s afternoon ride.

Likewise, things aren’t nearly as dark as they appear to be as the minority of Americans who actually take part in their representative democracy prepare to do so once more tomorrow.

Yes, there will be voting problems, both manmade and heaven-sent. And yes, fully half the people who intend to cast ballots are clinically insane, woefully unqualified to operate the napkin dispenser at a burger joint, much less the right to vote.

But I cling to the faint hope that there may be slightly more of us than there are of them, and urge you to drag your deeply disappointed selves down to your neighborhood polling place tomorrow, and take two or three friends and neighbors with you.

Unless you plan to vote for the RomneyBot v2.012, that is. Then please to stay home, clinging bitterly to your guns and religion.

We are all Armstrong’s domestiques

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Editor’s note: Today’s edition of “Friday Funnies” was written Oct. 12 for the November 2012 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

EPO all in my veins
Lately things just don’t seem the same
Acton’ funny, but I don’t know why
‘Scuse me while I pass this guy.
— from the affidavit of Dave Zabriskie, recounting how he serenaded Johan Bruyneel on the U.S. Postal Service bus in 2002

The parting glass
A fine wine turned to vinegar.

I’VE OFTEN JOKED that in helping to cover professional bicycle racing I was aiding and abetting a felony.

Well, whaddaya know? Turns out I wasn’t joking after all.

The revelations from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation of Lance Armstrong will be ancient history by the time you read this. Indeed, they were mostly off the front pages in less than two days, swept aside by Smokin’ Joe Biden flooring Paul “Lyin’” Ryan in their vice-presidential punch-up, the European Union winning the Nobel Peace Prize and rumors of a sexy new iPad mini on the horizon.

Ho-hum. Just another rich white guy getting away with something. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along; move along.

In the cycling media, however, it was all Lance, all the time. Nothing new there, either. Whether he was winning a Tour de France, berating an Austin doorman or boinking an Olsen twin, Armstrong was always good for the bottom line. Chamois-sniffers and haters alike dove headlong into every story and then went to war in the comments. Making money off Lance Armstrong was easier than stealing from the collection plate at a church for the blind. Continue reading “We are all Armstrong’s domestiques” →

Up the rebels!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Bog Trotters jersey
The famous Bog Trotters jersey, which sold about as well as Frankenhein’s fantasies about Big Tex once the deal went down.

It beats me how a guy with no job can have so little free time.

Today’s simple two-hour chore turned into a seven-hour slog, and tomorrow could be worse. Friday is traditionally a day under which PR types hope to bury unpleasant stories, and there are still a few of them shambling around out there post-Halloween, Lycra zombies badly in need of a hotloaded .44 Magnum round to the brain.

Today’s tidings brought a smile to my face, however. It seems that Paul Kimmage has filed a complaint against Fat Paddy and Frankenhein, the first for being a Guinness-soaked mouth attached to a prolapsed asshole with a reverse flow and no filtering apparatus in between, and the second for being a shameless striapach whose teeth fold back at the flip of a wooden nickel.

I considered it a delightful riposte to these spalpeens for having brought a similar action against the crusading Irish journo’ for merely calling them what they are. And so today, in Kimmage’s honor, I wore my Bog Trotters jersey on the daily ride, with a green headrag under the old brain bucket.

Some days previous I also kicked in a smallish sum to Kimmage’s defense fund, managed by the merry band of misfits at Cyclismas. It’s some of the best money I’ve ever spent outside a pub, especially considering that Fat Paddy and Frankenhein get to enjoy the hangover.