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.

2024: A Spaced Odyssey

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments
“Uhhhh … what was the question again?”

I am not a senile old fool.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply taking a cheap political shot, hoping to stop me from serving another term as Your Humble Narrator here at whatever the hell it is that we, or you, or I am doing at this whatchamacallit, the thing. The … bog? You know.

Now, it’s true that I may occasionally stare blankly at my iPhone, the way that monkey did at the glossy black rectangle in that movie — c’mon, you know the one — because the nice lady on the phone asked me for my phone number and I’m trying to look it up in Settings without hanging up on her because hey, I never call myself. Do you?

Hello? Hello?

Shit.

But I can assure you that while I’m pawing helplessly at that glossy black rectangle I no longer make the plaintive hooting sound. Like the monkey. The one in the movie. You know, where the bone turns into a spaceship and Siri or Alexa or Elon is trying to kill everyone and the young guy in the spaceship turns into an old guy in a Home who can’t remember his phone number? Is it HAL9000? No?

I do? I’m making it right now? I’m sure you’re mistaken. Whoever you are. Ook ook ook.

And sometimes I may forget who the president is, but only because I’m pretty sure it’s not the Red Skull or Pumpkinhead or Dick Tater, whatever the crazy orange fella’s called, the one who looks like a giant circus peanut with beady little eyes like a big fat rat with a mouth like an asshole and is always in the news because he keeps doing stupid shit and getting caught at it but nobody seems to be able to put him in jail and somehow they all think the other fella is the problem because he can’t remember who the King of the Moon is or the name of that movie with the monkey who can’t remember his phone number or how to find it in that big black iPhone that the Space Baby left somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, where the bones turn into Great Red Sharks driven through Bat Country by Hunter S. Thompson to Las Vegas, where an infinite number of monkeys are writing “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’24.”

Anyway, whoever’s president now seems to be a little quieter and more laid back and I don’t have to think about him all the goddamn time and I kind of like that because it’s restful and I seem to need a lot of naps lately. Like right now.

Mojo is everywhere

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Mojo Nixon, like Elvis, has left the building.

Come bedtime whatever is Me climbs into its skull, pulls up the ladder and bolts the trapdoor, then settles in for a long night of home movies.

Don’t expect any reviews. We’re not talking not Oscar contenders here. Art-house stuff, shot using iPhones or Super 8 with Byzantine plots and weird camera angles. Definitely not suitable for anyone under the age of 69 without a history of substance abuse, terminal confusion, and attitude poisoning. Popcorn is not served.

Then come morning whatever is Me shuts off the VCR, glances at the dashboard to see if all the idiot lights are green, and then pops the hatch, drops the ladder, and starts pulling the body back on like some tattered and patched Iron Man Halloween costume badly in need of a laundering.

“Jaysis, are we trying to put this shit on backwards? Toes, report! We still got 10 of you guys? OK, there’s No. 10, hung up on a snag somewhere around the right calf. Someone trim that nail! And what about that left knee? More snap, crackle and pop than a bowl of breakfast cereal. Hands, you still at about 70 percent? Sixty? Well, it’ll have to do. Time to open the eyes, we’re redlined on the pressure gauge down in Holding Tank One. Windshield wipers, stat! No washer fluid? Buckle up, we’re gonna have to do this on instruments. … Sound the alarm! We’re going in!”

It gets harder every morning. Well, no, not that. But everything else. Especially in February. All the lubricants are low and/or congealed, the various belts loose and skipping on their sprockets. More bad noise than a haunted house. There is a certain uncertainty in the landing gear, down where the rubber meets the road.

And then you finally get the old ambulatory junkyard to shake, rattle, and roll … only to find out that Mojo Nixon has gone off to join Elvis just as The Supremes start tuning up for the Orange Fartblossom Special. Died on a country-music cruise that he was co-hosting? What? Mojo’s gonna get together with Glenn Frey before Don Henley does!

Mad Dogs and Grimy Handshakes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
They say you never see the one that gets you.

“Where the weather at?” I queried myself just before turning around and catching it right in the face.

The wizards have been predicting all manner of vile conditions, from skin-peeling wind to rain, snow, wintry mix, travel “impacts,” plague of toads (i.e., congressional nub-tugging), IBS, incipient fascism, the heartbreak of psoriasis, GOPee pestilential hopefuls getting flogged by “None of the above,” etc.

This uncertainty makes it hard to select the day’s workout, so I usually step outdoors to see if there are any MAGA hats flogging their diesel brooms across the blackening sky before naming my poison. This morning brought only the wintry mix, which I took smack in the gob as I turned around after shooting the pic up top.

Yesterday I ran, which was probably the wrong call. It was decent enough for cycling, but I didn’t feel like submitting to all the rituals — finding clean kit, checking the Fleet for a vessel that didn’t need chain lube, tire-pumping, flat repair, derailleur/brake adjustments, whatevs. Running is quick. Shirt, pants and socks, lace up the shoes, off you go.

Anyway, time was short and there were other items on the to-do list. Grocery shopping, for starters. Some “feets ball” extravaganza is apparently on tap this weekend, and I didn’t want to hit the store late in the week when the slavering mobs will be stripping shelves like hyenas wiping out a Chick-fil-A. An hour and a couple hundred dollars later our larder was stocked for the apocalypse.

Also, an old scribbler pal had tugged on my coat, asking could he borrow a cup of old Fat Guy cartoon to illustrate one of his excellent observations about the hallowed wintertime practice of stockpiling a few extra kilos around the waistline to keep the frostbite off your kidneys and, not incidentally, serve as a distracting amuse-bouche one can slice off with the Leatherman and toss to the wolves if they start circling while one field-repairs a puncture, snapped shifter cable, or broken chain.

If you are not already reading Mike Ferrentino you should be, and right now, too. Don’t make me stop this blog and come back there. Dude has been there and done that and he will go there and do that, too, because he likes it. And he is extremely good at it, which is not a handicap. One of the very few people I will drop everything to read. His joint these days is “Beggars Would Ride” at NSMB.com.

Anyway, for Mike’s ’toon hunt I had to snuffle like a truffle pig through the Archives, which are scattered around and about in various hard drives, mostly inside of or attached to a 1999 G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac that has more white hair in its ears than I do. This motley collection badly needs cataloging by a professional librarian; alas, the only one conversant with my workflow was otherwise occupied, earning our living.

I found a couple possibilities from way Back in the Day®, but the Fat Guy was mostly a roadie and Mike was hoping for something dirty. So finally I surrendered to the inevitable, broke out the utensils, and drew him up a whole new ’toon.

This was not a hassle. It was a blessing, because I hadn’t drawn a line since I parted ways with the Outside Hyperactive Currency Furnace back in January 2022. It may have been my longest hiatus from drawing since I was in diapers, working with my own boogers on the walls of various rental properties in Maryland and Virginia. They’re probably on the National Register of Historic Places now.

In the end, Mike ended up running with one of the old ’toons. Turns out he was under that deadline pressure I used to love so much, and it seems I’m not as quick on the “draw” as I used to be, yuk yuk yuk. I told him he could keep the new one for relighting the funny-pages fire. Thanks to him, you may see the occasional scribble here, too.

The first cartoon I’ve drawn in more than two years. Thanks to Mike Ferrentino for the inspiration.

Tuque and roll

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
My muddy Merrells.

Today I ran.

The windblown rain pelting El Rancho Pendejo woke both of us around 3 a.m., and conditions had improved only marginally several hours later, after a couple cups of mud and a light breakfast.

So I had a little more breakfast, and then a mug of tea. Next I wasted time in various time-tested, time-wasting ways. And finally a bit of blue cut through the gray and boom! Off I went, like a white-whiskered rat out of an aqueduct, for a not-very-quick 5K on the foothills trails.

Though the sun shone the Outside Hyperactive Currency Furnace’s PR people would not have made hay with me. My running garb was trés unhip by Boulder standards, light on iconic brands, the polar opposite of au courant.

There were the well-used Merrell Moab Flight ground-pounders. Ancient, saggy, and pilled Head shorts and tights. An equally elderly Hind base layer. Smartwool liner gloves. The Sugoi tuque. Some Rudy Project shades from three prescriptions ago because I’m too lazy to change lenses to match the lighting conditions.

Anyway, I’ve seen enough. Haven’t you?

The marquee bits were a 3-year-old pair of Darn Tough wool socks and a 6-year-old, fire-engine-red, long-sleeved Gore Power Thermo cycling jersey, which is only so-so for cold-weather cycling but does quite nicely as a running top in the 40s and slightly below. Its three pockets are perfect for stashing the iPhone and any bits of kit I might decide to remove or add en route.

That it makes me look like a cyclist who has mislaid his bike is of no consequence. Nobody asked you to look at me, especially Outside, which has a business to run, even if only into the ground. I don’t even look at me. From inside my head I look exactly like a young Davis Phinney, or perhaps Michael Creed. To preserve this fiction I shave in the dark without using a mirror and in public avert my eyes when passing any reflective surface.

I prefer not to be empowered; I am unplugged, possibly unhinged. Anyone building community may leave me outside the wire.

I run because I can. Because I like it. Because shoes are easier to clean than a bike.