Category: Arts & letters

When a picture isn’t worth even 300 words

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
False start
One of the many half-assed attempts to create a picture when 300 words were required.

Many years ago a managing editor asked me why I didn’t work harder at writing than cartooning, hinting that he thought me a better writer than scribbler, and now and then I’m forced to agree with him.

Case in point: Today’s Foaming Rant over at VeloNews.com began life yesterday as a cartoon. A couple hours and a half-dozen half-starts later I crumpled up the various rough drafts, shit-canned them and made a sharp left turn from the drawing board to the iMac.

This morning, what had originally been a one-panel sight gag is a 300-word setup for a five-word punch line, with a Photoshopped pic of Paddy McQuaid plus links to McQuaid’s open letter to pro riders and a YouTube video of Elvis Costello and the Attractions performing “Radio, Radio.”

Whether all that’s an improvement over a cartoon is open to debate. But it’s certainly an improvement over the one I was trying to draw yesterday.

Nighthawks at the diner

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Tom Waits shambles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and your ears twitch at the sandpapered quote he lays on the Old Gray Lady as he accepts the honor:

“They say that I have no hits and I’m difficult to work with, and they say that like it’s a bad thing. Songs are really just interesting things to be doing with the air.”

I wish I had something to give him other than praise and respect, but maybe that’s enough.

From Rich to poor

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Frank Rich moves on and there is one less reason to visit The New York Times website.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see what he does with the new gig. And I understand where he’s coming from when he says that after 17 years he didn’t like “what the relentless production of a newspaper column was doing to my writing.”

“That routine can push you to have stronger opinions than you actually have, or contrived opinions about subjects you may not care deeply about, or to run roughshod over nuance to reach an unambiguous conclusion. Believe it or not, an opinion writer can sometimes get sick of his own voice.”

Preach it, brother, preach it. There are days — many, many of them — when I long to shut the fuck up but a deadline insists otherwise.