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.

Democrats sighted in Bibleburg; film at 11

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

That coffee-colored fella from Washington DeeCee, Barack Hussein Obama, the fabled Kenyan Muslim socialist Antichrist who’s gonna snatch up all our guns and give ’em to the United Nations, the North American Man/Boy Love Association and The New York Times, will be addressing the Democratic hordes of Bibleburg tomorrow, and Your Humble Narrator and Herself will be among those in attendance.

Tickets were free, but had to be picked up in advance, and since much of bright-red Bibleburg still calls Abraham Lincoln a RINO for freeing the slaves I figured this would be about as tough a hustle as scoring duckets for a N.W.A. reunion concert in Branson, Missouri.

There were two pickup spots. The first was Colorado College, the site of tomorrow’s presidential address and an easy walk or bike ride from Chez Dog. The other was the Obama for America office up north in Briargate, a 20-minute drive at the best of times — and the announced pickup time of 5 p.m. is never the best of times. The rule of thumb in these parts is never head north on Interstate 25 after about 3 p.m. unless you really, really, really like your car, especially its first gear.

Herself was working in Denver and motored straight to the Briargate location for her ticket, and what with the honkified north end of town being Romney country she was in and out in a flash. I chose the Colorado College location, an easy five-minute trip by bike, and stood in line for about an hour and a half with a couple thousand of my deeply blue brethren and sistren. Another real-world proof of the Larry’s Wife Theorem®.

This afternoon I took the Vespa for a spin past CC en route to the Colorado Farm and Art Market for a passel of Doug Wiley’s Larga Vista Ranch pasture-raised pork and the security types have the place fenced off in a fashion that would make an Arizona Minuteman smile, until he remembered why.

Tomorrow we’ll ride our bikes down to CC to catch the prez in person. I don’t believe I’ve seen an occupant of the Oval Orifice in corpus since LBJ visited Randolph AFB when I was a sprout. Should be interesting. I’ll have a couple cameras and the iPhone; maybe I can post a little sumpin’-sumpin’ from the scene.

 

In the Billy of the beast

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Say what you will about Bill Maher — dude ain’t shy. He came to Bibleburg and did a show tonight, and if he was wearing a bulletproof vest, I couldn’t make it out from the cheap seats.

He got a late start but went long, so it evened out. Call it two hours of material, which is impressive. I couldn’t keep my little act running for two minutes even if I doubled up on the fucks.

Now, I won’t pretend that Bill Maher is my favorite standup. Most of my top-10 list is at Open Mic Night in the Great Beyond. And left to my own devices, I would have spent tonight lounging around the estate, irrigating my tonsils with Colorado ale and wondering idly why lawns rarely if ever mow themselves.

But Herself and a couple of pals dragged me away out of my comfort zone, made me eat ribs, potato salad, chips and salsa, and sorbet, and then sat me down in the balcony at the Pikes Peak Center to listen to someone else talking shit for a change.

And finely honed shit it was for the most part. I particularly appreciated Maher’s perplexity at the average American’s eagerness to support plutocrats who would, in a hot New York minute, grind him or her into Soylent Green to be fed to their guard dogs.

The line that stuck with me involved health care. More than a few of our dimwitted countrypersons think theirs is the best in the world (until they actually need some) and bristle at the notion of the feddle gummint getting its boogery comm’nist fingers all up in their doctorin’.

Quoth Maher: “That’s not blood you’re coughing up, Billy. That’s freedom.”

Remember me?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Van Nicholas Amazon Rohloff
The Van Nicholas Amazon Rohloff: Titanium everything, a 14-speed Rohloff hub and Gates Carbon Drive.

Me neither. I used to be that shaven-legged, devil-may-care, funny man about town. Now I’m a hairy old fat bastard striving mightily to find a way to make money without working. Imagine my disappointment.

First, the good news: I have actually ridden a bicycle every day this week. The bad news? It wasn’t my bicycle. And I rode it very, very slowly.

But enough about me. The Olympics are coming up this weekend, and word is that Saturday’s road race will be The World Vs. Mark Cavendish. Good luck with United Nations v2.0, guys. It makes my hunt for free money look like a sure thing.

I lost interest in the Games when pros became involved, and I can’t recall an Olympic road race that was half as interesting as an industrial-park crit, so I will be paying attention only when someone is paying me.

Frankly, the only Olympic sports that have ever meant a rat’s ass to me are track and field, swimming and gymnastics. Running and swimming may be the purest forms of sport, and gymnastics … that’s just plain fun to watch.

But right now I’d rather do than watch. See that bike up there? I’m going to go ride it somewhere, then come back and write about it. Beer may be involved. It’s as close to not working for money as I’m ever likely to get.