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.

Less than zero

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Chilly outside, chillin' inside.
Chilly outside, chillin' inside.

Arrrgh. Six below when I arose, a balmy minus-3 at 9:30 a.m. Woo hoo, ain’t nothin’ but a party. Word is we’re in the deep freeze for a few days at minimum, and lemme tell you, Las Cruces, Tucson and Hell are all starting to look pretty nice to me right now. Bibleburg looks not unlike the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno, only with more faux Christians.

Herself has skipped the drive to Mile High in favor of working from home, and I am at liberty, with no deadlines looming. Ordinarily that would mean a bracing ride, or perhaps a run, but not everyone in Bibleburg is as conscientious as I am about shoveling walks, and my idea of a good time is not a shattered elbow, rolled ankle or cracked kneecap, an injury that befell my 83-year-old neighbor Marv, who took a digger after church yesterday and now sports an immobilizer that looks like some bit of gear out of “Iron Man.”

Turkish (a.k.a. Mighty Whitey, Big Pussy, Turkenstein, The Turkinator, et al) still wants outside, weather be damned, but he has a luxurious fur coat for warmth, claws for traction and a brain the size of a walnut. Miss Mia Sopaipilla, wiser despite her tender years, is content to stay inside.

It’s even colder in Denver, where employees of The Rocky Mountain News have launched a blog in a last-ditch attempt to save the paper from oblivion and MediaNews honcho and Denver Post publisher William Dean Singleton has asked unions at The Post and Denver Newspaper Agency to reopen their labor contracts.

Sole brother

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
Someone's stink-foot nearly put a hurt on The Decider's nose.
Someone's stink-foot nearly put a hurt on The Decider's nose.

Finally, someone in the press corps grows a pair, and size 10s, too. Too bad he wasn’t one of ours. But they’re all too busy blowing kisses at Oprah to throw shoes at The Decider.

Could the Mystery Man have been a Zappatista? It’s not known for certain; it all happened too quickly for me to see whether those unidentified flying zapatos were  brown shoes (they didn’t make it, which may be a clue) or a pair of too-tight, stink-foot python boots.

Then again, he could’ve been a Firesign Theatre fan: “Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead!” Just another returning deceased war veteran hungry for that good-paying job, more sugar, and the free mule he’d been dreaming of. Too bad everything he knew was wrong.

The Voice of Cheese

~ Patrick O'Grady

OK, we have “Joe’s Garage” parts one, two and three; “Joe’s Corsage”; “Joe’s Domage”; “Joe’s XMASage”; and “Joe’s Menage.” On this, the 10th day of Zappadan, the unlucky No. 13 in the days of December, let us thank the Central Scrutinizer (and the Zappa Family Trust) that we have not (as of yet) seen the release of “Joe’s Fromage,” the entire Zappa catalog as performed by Weird Al Yankovic. It ain’t easy bein’ cheesy.

Do you like my new car?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
The mighty Dogmobile, a 1983 Toyota 4WD longbed pickup. It gets out about as often as Charlie Manson.
The mighty Dogmobile, a 1983 Toyota 4WD longbed pickup. It gets out about as often as Charlie Manson.

It’s early days yet, but it seems Americans may finally be getting it as regards the whole unhappy-motoring thing. According to The Associated Press, Americans logged 9 billion fewer miles on the nation’s roads in October despite a stunning drop in gasoline prices (to less than $1.50 per gallon here in Bibleburg):

Federal Highway Administration data released Friday show the number of miles driven dropped 3.5 percent in October compared with the same month a year ago. Between November 2007, when the driving decline began, and October, Americans drove 100 billion fewer miles. That’s the largest continuous decline in driving the nation has experienced.

While driving declined, subways, buses, commuter rail and light-rail systems have reported record increases in ridership. Amtrak, the nation’s intercity passenger railroad, said it carried the highest number of passengers and brought in the most revenue in fiscal 2008 in its 37-year history.

”The fact that the trend persists even as gas prices are dropping confirms that America’s travel habits are fundamentally changing,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in a statement.

No word about how bicycling may have contributed to the lower auto mileage, alas. But still, fewer cars on the road means more room for us, no? That’s what I call some good news.

Speaking of fewer cars, it appears that the White House is considering other options after the Repuglitards in the Senate croaked the Big 3 bailout based largely on their hatred for the United Auto Workers. Being appallingly ignorant in matters financial, I don’t feel qualified to comment on whether the rescue plan is as crucial as the automakers and their allies suggest. But the shit is already rolling downhill, and many smaller companies that supply the Big 3 are living in the valley.

Trouble every day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Even NPR is running ’em out the door now. John McChesney and Ketzel Levine are among the 7 percent of staff to be unplugged, along with the shows “Day to Day” and “News and Notes,” as the public broadcaster tries to erase a projected budget shortfall of $23 million for this fiscal year.

“Companywide, NPR is laying off 64 people and eliminating 21 other positions that are currently vacant,” writes David Folkenflik.

The culprit, says NPR? Same sumbitch that nailed the rest of us in the wallet pocket — the Wall Street meltdown, which croaked interest payments from an endowment created from the bequest of the late Joan Kroc, which has typically paid NPR about $10 million a year.

Like the man said, a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Late update: That would be a billion here, etc., as Bruce has reminded me. Everett Dirksen. They told me that stuff would damage my brain, but did I listen? Nooooo.

Later update: Almost forgot to wish a happy birthday to one of my favorite authors, poet and novelist Jim Harrison. I was reminded by Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac” on NPR. Harrison mentions NPR now and again in his latest novel, “The English Major,” which the critics love more than I do. But then what the hell do I know? I met Harrison once, briefly, following a reading at The Colorado College, and asked him to sign a copy of “Warlock.” He complied, somewhat grouchily, I thought; later I discovered he hated that novel, which he apparently whipped out at speed for money. I loved it. It seems unlikely that I will be invited to visit Montana for a week of fly-fishing with Harrison and Thomas McGuane anytime soon.