Category: Applause

Kyle Kinane: Shocks & Struts

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Since it’s looking like a very unfunny week in the news for the next few days, you might be sniffing around for a chuckle or two or three to take the edge off.

So here’s a dude that made us laugh out loud the other night: Kyle Kinane.

We’d seen him before, in a half-hour set in season two of the Netflix series “The Standups.” But I’d forgotten about him — we watch a lot of standup — until Jason Zinoman at The New York Times mentioned him in his regular roundup of who’s worth watching.

Kinane’s new standup can be seen on YouTube (see above), and once you pick yourself up off the floor you’re gonna want to go back to 2018 and catch his “Standups” set, and maybe listen to his 2009 interview with Marc Maron on his podcast “WTF” (Kinane comes in at about 13:30).

And if that’s not enough Kyle Kinane for you, you can pop round to his website for podcasts, videos, and more. More. More!

If that doesn’t wash all the ugly out of your week, nothing will.

1:09

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Good thing I stopped to snap this pic of the Cateye showing 69 minutes (1:09). I’da kept on keepin’ on, I’da run headlong into a herd of deer.

Huzzah!  Our long national nightmare is over.

Lousy shot, but I didn’t want to startle the deer. A couple good bounds and they’re in auto traffic on Camino de la Sierra, which is much more dangerous than a trail with one 69-year-old dude on a bicycle.

I finally managed to squeeze in that birthday ride.

You will be astounded to learn that I managed my age in … minutes.

In keeping with the house motto, “Picturae vel id numquam evenit” (“Pix or It Never Happened”), I took a snap of the Cateye for documentation.

Now, as Feats of Strength go, this is … well, a tad feeble.

In my defense, however, I will note that I was riding a rigid steel drop-bar 29er on spiky desert singletrack — didn’t even bother to check the tire pressure before heading out! — and at one point nearly shot into a couple dozen deer browsing lazily along a narrow singletrack descent bordered with sharp rocks and cacti.

And still! 69, amirite? Winning!

Dry wit

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
My bucket list includes water.

Our friendly neighborhood water wizard John Fleck got to make a big wake by the boat dock in The New York Times this morning, taking California to task for “trying to protect its outsized water supply at the expense of others in the region. …”

Those others, in case you were wondering, include Your Humble Narrator and his friends and neighbors in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona.

John writes:

If we approach the challenge with a sense of fairness and shared sacrifice it will be possible to save the West that we know and love.

From your lips to God’s ears, as my people say. What was the line about learning to share in kindergarten? Maybe California needs some remedial education. That juicy Colorado River pie has become something of a dried-out shit sandwich, and we’re all going to have to take a bite.

Check out the entire essay, and follow John over at his own little adobe hacienda on the banks of the Great Digital River.

Good news

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
CP as captured Back in the Day® by The Great Brintoni.

The GoFundMe that David Stanley set up to help our old pal Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey has been put out to pasture after raising $35,160.

A tip of the Rancho Pendejo sombrero to David and to everyone who tossed a few coppers into the old Tip Jar.

Here’s hoping the proceeds give Charles and his family a bit of breathing room as they continue rassling the Medical-Industrial Complex.

School’s never really out

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Right. Time for some good news from the school front.

Today, Harrison Jake Walter will graduate from the Custer County Schools. He’s bound for Colorado Mountain College, with a couple of scholarships in hand.

Some scoff at the proverb that “it takes a village” to raise a child, but I think it was provably true in this instance. Custer County had Harrison’s back for 18 years, and his parents, Hal and Mary, will be the first to tell you that this was not always easy.

So, gassho to Harrison, Hal, and Mary. And also to the school, its students, and their community.

College is the next journey. There will be bumps in the road. But this is the nature of roads. The Great Way for Harrison and the rest of us is one step after another.