“Big Light in Sky Slated to Appear in East” and other rumors behind the news (h/t Firesign Theatre).
Leaves are falling off the backyard maple like winos off the drunk wagon. The morning temperature requires pants. And the sun doesn’t peek over the Sandias until shortly after 8:30, which is far too late for enlightenment, because I’ve already scanned the news by then.
The magnum dopus.
Case in point: In the dark, over coffee, I learned that once again I had been denied the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yeats, Beckett, and Dylan, si, but the Mad Dog, no? The mind, it boggles.
And after I’d already designed the cover for my collected works, too. Without some Nobel greasing the skids that doorstop will have all the selling power of a Hegseth-Patel ticket in 2028.
Aw, it’s probably just as well. I’d probably have to take up smoking a pipe and drinking port or some shit like that. Wearing tweed.
Fuck that noise. It’s brisk around here in the mornings, but not that brisk.
Schmitt couldn’t even pull off a “Gotcha!” against Jack Smith without stepping in it up to his flag pin.
But Coach may edge him by a nose — a big red one that honks when you squeeze it — with his charge that the friendly skies are full of furries.
Talk about game. It’s one helluva race when it looks like Ted “I’m Not Just Stupid, I’m Evil Too” Cruz might not even make the podium. It’d have Holmes reaching for the old iron butterfly and his 7-percent solution, craving mental exaltation.
That was the forecast for the first day of fall: rain, and plenty of it, starting around noon.
Perfect, I thought. I usually run on Tuesdays anyway, so I’d have plenty of time to do the morning chores, then bang out an unimpressive 5K on the trails, and be safely indoors before Thor started taking batting practice.
But as the morning unfolded the skies actually seemed to be clearing. So I thought, hmmm: First day of fall, cyclocross season with actual cyclocross weather … maybe push the run to Wednesday, when the forecast is even less velo-friendly, and take a quick spin on a Steelman today.
Bingo.
About 45 minutes in, which in cool weather is when most of the bits of me have finally reported for duty, I slalomed off a trail in the Elena Gallegos Open Space and into a parking lot to see a friend wrapping up a walk with his dogs, and we took five for a chat about Irish literature and Japanese automobiles.
Then … drip … drop. ...
“Feels like it’s starting to sprinkle,” I said.
He had a squint at the windshield of his Honda Element, which like my Subaru Forester — and, if we’re speaking frankly here, like the two of us, and many a character in Irish literature — has more than a few hard miles on it.
“So it is,” he confirmed.
Well. A fine soft day on tap and here I am, miles from home and dressed for another class of party altogether. Caught with my knickers not only down, but in a drawer, with the rest of my foul-weather kit. I said my goodbyes and took off, hoping to get home before droplets turned to deluge. Skip the lovely trails, they’re already awash in eejits with earbuds and the rain will bring out the snakes. St. Patrick I am not. Ask anyone.
But as I barreled down Simms Road toward Tramway once again the weather shifted gears on me. I caught a few fat drops in the gob on the descent and then nada. Niente. Bupkis.
Well, then. I’d been hoping for a quick hour, but if the gods were leaning on their shovels with hoses coiled I’d stay out for a while longer. The 20-mile, mixed-terrain ride is the foundation of my “training program,” such as it is, and I was halfway there as I passed Comanche headed south. Onward.
I generally log more mileage north of Comanche, but the south has its attractions as well. I stuck to the Tramway bike path for a while, Tramway itself seeming to have more traffic than normal, probably hoarders hellbent on cornering the chips, bean dip, and buttwipe markets before the Apocalypse struck. I needed to do some of that myself. But not until I got my 20 in.
Every time I got a dampish puck in the gob I swung north and east, toward home. If it was more of a love tap than a lashing, I turned south and west, one eye on the cyclometer. Bike paths, low-traffic foothills streets, a bit of dirt as it presented itself, and hey presto! I got my 20. 20.3 miles, to be precise, and 1,481 feet of vertical gain. Not bad for a rain day.
Which it was not, still.
The fuck? I thought. Must have the A.I. on the job down to the National Weather Service. More of a focus on mass murder than meteorology? If it fights as well as it forecasts we’ll all of us live to a ripe old age so. “Terminator” me bollocks.
So I ate the last of a pot of Pierre Franey’s turkey chili, jumped into the Subie, and rattled off to the grocery to collect a few delicacies. Herself is in Tennessee with her sisters, at a celebration of life for our late brother-in-law, William F. White Jr., so I was seizing the opportunity to minimize cooking and cleaning up afterward.
From non-soon to monsoon.
And so it was that I was sprawled comfortably on the couch, nibbling on shrimp, fresh bread with butter, and a green salad, watching a bit of standup on Netflix (Joe DeRosa, “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” not bad), when it finally started raining. At around 6 p.m.
But man — did it ever make up for lost time. It still hasn’t stopped and I just finished breakfast on Wednesday morning. A quarter inch since 4 this morning and 0.64 inch total.
Maybe I better take back some of that shit I said about A.I. Like me, it may be slow, but it gets there eventually.
Left? Right? Straight? Sheeyit, he’ll never go straight. …
There’s enough bullshit in the media for Texas to open a branch office. And you’d still have enough left over to start two law firms and a Christian bookstore. — George Carlin, “40 Years of Comedy.”
George Carlin’s advice I have been taking for much, much longer.
I caught Carlin’s act early on, when he gigged on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar and later Johnny Carson. But he really got my attention with the 1972 album “FM & AM.” His treatise on bullshit didn’t arrive until 1997, during his live HBO special “40 Years of Comedy,” but as usual he was (a) right on target, and (2) prescient as hell.
What would he have to say today? Plenty, I expect. Carlin was a master alchemist who could transform bullshit into gold.
Me? Strictly an amateur. JV. In it for the yuks, which have proven elusive lately. Can’t quite spot the diamonds in the dung.
“I’ll get you for this,” says Miss Mia Sopaipilla following her visit to the groomer.
So instead of blogging I’ve been riding and running, feeding the birds, watching some standup (Kyle Kinane, Rory Scovel, Leanne Morgan), taking Miss Mia Sopaipilla to the spa for a wash and brush-up, contemplating various household projects long deferred, and reading fiction — no, not the news, actual for-reals fiction.
And I’m definitely not trying to round up enough pennies for the rumored foldable iPhone Duo. $2K and up for something you can leave on top of your car at the gas station or drop in a toilet?
First we got word that the fine actor Sam Neill had gone west. And following in short order was editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant.
I never met Neill, born in Northern Ireland but raised in New Zealand, though I saw a ton of his films. The Aussie Oliphant I did meet, through the miracle of serendipity.
A brief chat with the pope.
Regulars here know the tale. It was 1978, and Your Humble Narrator was a reporter at what then was called the Gazette Telegraph in Bibleburg when Oliphant came to town for an exhibition of his cartoons and paintings at the Fine Arts Center.
I got to interview him over the phone for the paper, and then met him in person at the exhibition, where he was gent enough to hold still for an extremely unprofessional and extended Grilling by Ignoramus about how he did what he did so well. He was generous enough to provide a few tips of the trade without adding a kick up the hole by way of punctuation.
Oliphant was, simply, the best in the business. Imagine being a freshly minted priest from some dusty whistlestop having a chat with the pope. All these years later it reminds me of the time I saw Ned Overend at the Cactus Cup, chatting amiably with a father and son before finally excusing himself, saying he had to finish warming up for his race.
As Ned rolled away dad says to kid: “You know what just happened? We talked to God! And God talked to us!”
Pat Oliphant died on Monday in Santa Fe, according to his son, Grant Oliphant. He was 90. Peace to him, his family, friends, and many, many fans. And thanks, God, for talking to that dumbass kid. You know the one I mean.
One of my all-time favorite Oliphant cartoons, from his stint at The Denver Post. You can see more of his work here.
