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.
With last night’s light snow and this morning’s kerfuffle over the Nobel Peace Prize, Turkish decided it would be a perfect day to debut his one-cat show, an impression of Darth Cheney in exile that he calls “Why Am I Sitting On My Ass Out Here In the Cold When I Should Be Killing Something?”
The score is a work in progress — shotgun blasts and a friend screaming, lightly armored Humvees encountering IEDs, the shredding of the Constitution by a flabby pair of bloody hands — so you’ll have to make do with the visual for now. An imperfect performance, to be sure, but so are they all these days. As the villainous theatre cat Tom told the cockroach Archy in “The Old Trouper” by Don Marquis:
the stage is not what it
used to be tom says
he puts his front paw
on his breast and says
they don t have it any more
they don t have it here
• Late addendum: Kevin Jones of Mother Jones.com, who does a weekly cat-blogging feature as part of his daily blog, recently asked readers for pix of special guest cats to plug into his newsletter, Drum Beat (you can subscribe to it here). Turkish is the second guest cat, with a special guest appearance by Miss Mia Sopaipilla. Shots of table cream all around!
That monumental clap of thunder you heard this morning was the sound of millions of Repuglican assholes slamming shut at the news that Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Mao Zedong Pol Pot Josef “Uncle Joe” Stalin Barack Saddam Hussein Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now, I can sympathize with those who may consider this award a tad premature. It’s not unlike stopping the Tour on stage 5 and saying, “Aw, fuck it, give the jersey to Michael Barry. Nice guy, hard worker, real good sport. Chapeau. OK, guys, let’s ride on to Paris, whaddaya say?” There are a few other guys in the contest, and lots of summit finishes and hairpin descents and road furniture between here and there.
Still, it works just fine as a review of the eight-year-long rendition of “The Horst Wessel Song” as performed by the evil organ grinder Darth Cheney and his monkey. Perhaps the award should be renamed this year as the Holy Shit Are We Ever Glad the American Executive Branch Is No Longer Insane Prize.
WIth the Festival of Zappadan rushing down upon us like a runaway Orange County Lumber Truck, we present a 22-year-old Frank Zappa playing a pair of bicycles with Steve Allen on “The Steve Allen Show,” backed by the house band and a pre-recorded audio tape. Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog Willie the Pimp hat to Charles “The Central Scrutinizer” Pelkey.
Lance Armstrong says he's excited about his three-year association with Michelob Ultra, because it complements his active lifestyle by injecting it with a shitload of money.
Just think — if Bristol Brewing made worse beer and more money, they could have Lance Armstrong as their celebrity spokesperson.
Instead, the former Shiner Bock drinker will be pimping Michelob Ultra, one of the jillions of brands belonging to industry titan InBev, and a concoction described as “a great-tasting beer with lower carbohydrates and fewer calories.”
Uh huh. I haven’t sampled an Anheuser-Busch product in many a moon, since I discovered what actual beer tastes like. But I suppose that given the proper incentive — a Brinks truck full of greenbacks and free Michelob Ultra backing up to the house every Friday — I could learn to lower my standards, too.
As a much younger dog I would drink pretty much anything as long as it was cheap — Falstaff, Buckhorn, longneck Buds. But as it is written in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.” Including watery beer.
In my dotage, I favor IPA from Bristol, Lagunitas or Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe, when I happen to be in town. Anchor Steam or Anchor Porter. Guinness, of course. And the Deschutes beers are all excellent, whether you’re talking ale, porter or stout. I’d recommend any of them for free.
In fact, I just did. No wonder I remain so distressingly unwealthy. I will never be smart.
• Extra-credit snark: This is not Anheuser-Busch’s first marketing coup, of course. More Americans can recognize the Budweiser Clydesdales than can find Afghanistan on a map. I recall enjoying a semantic analysis of the original Budweiser jingle in college. Don’t recall if it was in journalism class or semantics, but the gist of it was that the jingle said absolutely nothing about the beer — it was a series of empty statements punctuated with references to Anheuser-Busch trademarks.
Think about it for a second:
“When you say ‘Bud,” you’ve said a lot of things nobody else can say.” (That’s because ‘Bud” is a trademark.)
“When you say ‘Bud,’ you say you care enough to only drink the King of Beers.” (“King of Beers,” another trademark.)
“There is no other one.” (One what?)
“There’s only something less.” (Than what?)
“Because the King of Beers . . .” (That trademark again.)
“. . . is leading all the rest.” (Of what?)
“When you say Budweiser — you’ve said it all.” (The complete name, which is also a trademark.)
This is where the rubber meets the road (or, more precisely, the goatheads).
It’s autumn, all right. Blustery outside and beggary inside, with the local NPR affiliate entering the seventh day of its fall pledge drive with about fifty large yet to raise.
KRCC-FM used to be able wrap up these biannual annoyances in a day and a half, but no longer — money is as tight here as it is everywhere else, despite our vigorous embrace of ham-and-egger tourism, the military-industrial complex and corporate Christianity. Just ask anyone living in a cardboard condo alongside Fountain Creek.
My last few bike rides have required knee and arm warmers, and once an actual long-sleeved jersey, which was something of a shock to the system. They have also featured one flat each, as the goatheads are out and about. And big mothers they are, too. Once you hear that tick-tick-ticking and spot the thorn affixed to the tire, you’re just a few seconds from becoming a pedestrian.
On Sunday I hear the ticking, spot the thorn and start looking for a comfy place to sit while replacing the tube. But the first tube I pull out of the saddlebag won’t hold air, and neither will the second. Ay, Chihuahua, I think. Brain damage. You’ve been stuffing the flats back in the bag instead of a jersey pocket, you idiot.
Happily, the third tube was the charm — I pumped it up and headed for home, because I could feel the rear softening up, too. I foresee a morning rich in adhesives and patches if I wish to ride that bike again. Happily, it has many cousins in the garage. Never do today what you can put off ’til tomorrow.
