Category: Arts & letters

Dia de los Viejos Gringos

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Nothing says Halloween like a plug-in plastic punkin.

Here we are again, All Hallows’ Eve, boogity boogity boogity.

I don’t have any idea what to expect, trick-or-treatwise. Last year we kept our lights out and restricted candy distribution to the neighbor kids and their keepers. The supplicants included two cats, one cow, a fairy, a princess, and Wonder Woman. The booty was sealed in individual Ziploc bags. We didn’t quite toss it at them from the roof.

“G’wan, gedoudaheeh, y’little Petri dishes! I’m warnin’ ya, I got a bucket a hot bleach up heeah!”

In other news, Ken Layne is back from the road just in time to crank out a Halloween episode for Desert Oracle Radio. Author Tod Goldberg joined him to tell a spooky story, and I liked it so much I dashed right over to Page 1 Books and bought one of his books, “The Low Desert,” a collection of short stories. The first was worth the price of admission. There is a scary clown. I shall say no more.

Me, I don’t have a scary story for you today, or even an original costume idea. I’m dressing as Old White Guy, just like always, because in these dark days I can’t think of anything more frightening. Boo, etc.

Dune buggy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Your Humble Narrator cultivates desert power.

I’m not casting a very long shadow around here lately.

Frankly, there’s not been much to report. That little tease La Niña is in town again and I’ve been chasing her around on the ol’ bikey bikes.

While all you Left Coast/PNW types deploy your parasols and Gore-Tex your loins against the Million-Pound Aquahammer, we here in the desert Southwest are enjoying a balmy period which makes us forget that before long we will be drinking our own sweat and tears, like Paul Atreides and his mom in “Dune.”

Yep, we watched Part I on HBO Max, and it was a’ight, pretty damn fine actually, not bad atall atall. Made the 1984 David Lynch flick look even worse than it actually was, which was pretty fucking bad.

Denis Villeneuve’s take on the Frank Herbert novel might’ve worked better as an HBO series; then he could’ve used a scalpel instead of a cleaver to move things along over the course of a season or two. But only a geek like myself, a science-fiction dweeb who’s read the book 1,207,275 times, is liable to grouse about the subtleties steamrollered to make the narrative march.

Too, if a series proved successful, there would be the temptation to milk the rest of the “Dune” tales. (We may have to deal with this in any case.) Me, I lost interest after trudging through “Dune Messiah” and “Children of Dune,” which is a very short trek indeed through the vast Duniverse.

Anyway, Rebecca Ferguson is the best of the bunch as Lady Jessica, and Timothée Chalamet is a whole lot better than I expected as Paul. He brings a whiff of Nic Cage and maybe a soupçon of Christian Bale to the role. Meanwhile, Javier Bardem as Stilgar is definitely channeling Anthony Quinn’s Auda abu Tayi from “Lawrence of Arabia.”

And the Hans Zimmer score is a character all its own, though digging it through our obsolete surround-sound system was like listening to the London Philharmonic performing Metallica over a walkie-talkie.

Still, it beat squeezing into the old stillsuit, flagging down a passing sandworm, and crossing the Duke City desert to the Harkonnen IMAX. We got beverages around here ain’t even been drunk once yet.

R.I.P., Paddy Moloney

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

Paddy Moloney, frontman and piper for the Chieftains, has gone west. He was 83.

Reports Mother Times, quoting Himself in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Our music is centuries old, but it is very much a living thing. We don’t use any flashing lights or smoke bombs or acrobats falling off the stage. We try to communicate a party feeling, and that’s something that everybody understands.”

I’m grieved to learn that Paddy has left the party to which he brought so much feeling. In his honor let us banish misfortune.

Book ’em

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Due in December from Copper Canyon Press.

Good news for the readers in the audience.

First, the fall issue of Alta Journal includes a special section featuring seven of the last poems by Jim Harrison. A complete collection of his poetry is slated for release in December by Copper Canyon Press.

Second, Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore will be opening a new location in downtown Bibleburg. The story doesn’t mention that it will be about a block from where the fabled Chinook Bookshop once sat. It was B-burg’s Tattered Cover Back in the Day®.

Zeezo’s they remember, but not Chinook. So much for institutional memory.

Lost and found

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Blue skies have returned, but it’s still autumnal out there.

If any of yis should find the “deep thought” dispensed here as shallow as a hoofprint on concrete and infrequent as a desert blizzard, well, take heart, Grasshopper. There are alternatives.

For starters, Jon Stewart is returning to television with a new talk show, “The Problem With Jon Stewart.”

And James Fallows, who has been hard to find lately at The Atlantic, is posting regularly to “Breaking the News” over at Substack.

Fallows is the main reason I subscribed to The Atlantic, a decision I am now reconsidering, since he seems to have been downsized from staffer to contributing writer. But I might keep the sub’, since science writer Katherine J. Wu is doing good work there, too.

The other fella you may recall from his 16-year run as host of “The Daily Show.” I’ve missed both Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s previous incarnation at “The Colbert Report.”

Speaking of TV, here’s another recommendation: “Reservation Dogs,” on FX/Hulu. Shot in the Muscogee Nation and run entirely by people of Indigenous descent, it’s a real gem; sweet without getting sappy, sad without descending into cliché, and funny without telegraphing every comic punch.

I think Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) may be my favorite character, but Dallas Goldtooth crushes it as a bumbling spirit (William Knife-Man) who occasionally visits Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-a-tai) to provide some rambling, less-than-useful advice.