The Firesigns weren’t for everyone, but they sure worked for me. I was a devout acolyte of their intelligent, absurd comedy years before I ever heard of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
“Waiting for the Electrician Or Someone Like Him,” “How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All,” “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus,” “The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra,” “Everything You Know Is Wrong” — I have all of them and more, in vinyl and/or CD.
Some of my oldest friends originally coalesced around an impromptu recital of “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye” in a Greeley living room one night in the early 1970s. A bunch of us saw the Firesigns perform in Denver some years later, and as quickly as they delivered a line the audience fired it back at them. I don’t know whether that would be gratifying or exasperating.
The Firesigns — Bergman, Philip Proctor, Philip Austin and David Ossman — had their roots in Bergman’s Radio Free Oz, a nightly radio show on Pacifica’s KPFK. It seems safe to say that without Bergman, there would have been no Firesign Theatre — no Bozos, no Nick Danger, no Porgie Tirebiter, and a damn’ sight less laughter in the world, a commodity that is always in short supply.
Longtime Friend of the DogS(h)ite Khal S. notes that the tax-loathing, big-gummint-fearing denizens of Bibleburg are profiled on this week’s episode of “This American Life,” carried on fine public-radio stations nationwide. Give it a listen and share my pain.
Maybe it’s that I’ve spent too many years working alone from a home office, but I find myself less tolerant of racket in my advanced geezerhood. And that’s what I find most homegrown cycling commentary to be.
No disrespect intended to Dave Towle, Richard Fries or Brad Sohner, who had a more restrained delivery than his two comrades. It takes ’nads to put yourself out there, mic’d up and on camera, and then crank up the old P.T. Barnum for a few hours (“Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry!”). I’d just like to see them dial down the theatricality a click or two or three. That sort of bombast is hard on an iMac’s speakers.
There’s plenty of drama inherent in the racing. No need to slather on more. It’s like watching someone take a can of Krylon to a Moots.
Meanwhile, my fellow geezers are mixing it up at the 2012 masters cyclo-cross worlds in Louisville, and all the usual suspects are serving up the whup-ass from a muddy 55-gallon drum. It would be fun to be there.
But it would be even more fun to be there in 2013, when Eva Bandman Park hosts the UCI Cyclo-cross Elite World Championships. Hell, if I can get there I might be doing some hollering my own bad self. “One to go! Onetogo onetogo onetogo!”
Finally, enough snow to shovel. And shovel, and shovel, and. ...
We finally got a snowfall worthy of the name — about eight inches’ worth over a couple of days, just in time for solstice.
Lacking a gym membership and possessing the feeble upper body of the geriatric cyclist I suffered through multiple repetitions of precipitation redistribution between other chores — running VeloNews.com, cooking, serving as staff to cats, fetching the holiday vittles from Whole Paycheck, some last-minute gift-shopping and a welcome visit to the backcracker (though she probably found it less so, as I make her earn those BMW payments).
Nearly eight inches ... and just about the biggest dumper we've seen in our eight years here.
The VeloNews.com thing has been particularly irksome. I haven’t worked five days a week for 20 years — not at the same mind-numbing task, anyway — and frankly I don’t know how you poor bastards stand it. We’re still minus a web editor, and I’m minus a 2012 contract until said executive gets hired, so with eight days remaining on my 2011 deal with these people I’ve been spending more than a few of our very short daylight hours revisiting many of the late George Carlin’s fabled Seven Words.
A couple things caused me to dial down the volume a bit, though. While motoring around in the snow the other day I noticed some poor sod in a hard hat, up to his tits in a right-lane ditch, digging away as the heavy holiday traffic slalomed around him. As working for a living goes this makes pixel-pushing look like sharing a hot tub with Elle MacPherson, Scarlett Johansson and a couple flagons of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque.
Then my friend and colleague Hal Walter reported in from Weirdcliffe, recounting a tile-and-carpet project that turned into your basic 17-day nightmare, forcing him and his family from their home as appliances and furniture were torn from their proper places and stacked in the living room while various artisans were hired and fired. At least I get to be pissed off in my own house.
And finally another friend and colleague, Charles Pelkey, who has been enduring weeks of chemotherapy for cancer, had another health scare. While taking his latest infusion he developed a dysrhythmia that sent him to the ER for a battery of heart tests; seems potentially fatal dysrhythmias are a rare side effect of the drug Taxol and his oncologist wasn’t taking any chances.
Happily, the problem disappeared when Charles got on a treadmill and elevated his heart rate. And better still, the doc decided that enough was enough already and gave Charles a get-out-of-chemo card — he had been slated to continue treatments through the holidays and most of January 2012.
Me, I take an aspirin now and then when I get a brain cramp.
So it looks like I don’t have anything to bitch about, goddamnit. But wait … I can always bitch about not having anything to bitch about! It’s the best present ever!
Here’s hoping y’all have nothing to bitch about, too. Happy holidays to you and yours.
Mad Blog Media 