Category: Audio

Bigger even than I had feared

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Some turds just won’t go down and stay down.

The headline is an inside joke among family and friends, a line of dialogue lifted from the 1978 novel “Panama,” by Thomas McGuane.

And now it’s the title of a Radio Free Dogpatch podcast, an unsubtle bit of misdirection concerning an oversized orange turd that has proven impossible for a confused and bilious nation to flush.

There was no such turd when Chet Pomeroy spoke the line in McGuane’s book. But there is in the podcast. My apologies to Mr. McGuane. I hope he thinks of me, if he thinks of me at all, as having conducted myself with some forethought “as a screaming misfit, a little on the laid-back side.”

Meanwhile, always flush at least twice. It’s a long way to Mar-a-Lago.

• Technical notes: RFD favors the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a sonic colonic. Sly and The Family Stone come to you from their YouTube channel. From Freesound we get a dog whining, a power failure, an Internet outage, a garbage truck, and an elephant trumpeting. Judge Dredd issues his opinions via YouTube. All the other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

Orange Julius Seizure

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
What, you haven’t heard they have a National Mall in DeeCee?

Wherever shalt thou see a man on horseback, there also shalt thou see a horse’s ass. And sometimes more than one of them, too.

The endless pearl-clutching in the national media over Orange Julius Caesar doing exactly what we all expected he would do has me longing to grab some button-down editor a little lower — by the family jewels — and drag him around the room, growling like a mad dog.

Which of course is what I am.

But that would be wrong. Fun, but wrong.

So I’ll just leave you with that improbable visual and this all-too-probable audio — yes, yes, yes, it’s time for a Shakespearean edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: Still loving the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a sonic colonic. If it ain’t broke, etc. The gibbons and fanfare are courtesy of Freesound. Wrestling action comes to you from an old clip on YouTube. The cartoon tune, “Out of Step,” comes from Zapsplat. All the other bad noise is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

OK, say ‘cheesy’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
A fuzzy Beaver Moon, which I suppose could be considered appropriate.

Betimes I wish I had an actual camera instead of an iPhone, especially when zooming in on something like the last full supermoon of the year.

But then I remember that I’m no great shakes as a shooter and the phone that I already own is exactly my speed. I’m not exactly Ansel Adams. More like Gomez Addams, or maybe Uncle Fester.

Hell, people who know what they’re doing shoot movies — actual films, not TikTok dances or cute-animal videos — using iPhones.

Not me, of course. Because (a) I don’t know what I’m doing, and (2) I don’t really want to learn.

When I was shooting bike reviews for Adventure Cyclist and teasers for Charles Pelkey’s Live Update Guy it was occasionally fun, kinda, sorta. But also complicated, because I was using a GoPro, or a more traditional camcorder — Sony VIXIA mini X or Panasonic HC-V770 — and there’s a whole lot of wobble when you’re recording video and audio in the wild, especially when the production crew is dumber than a bag of hammers and your leading man has a radio face.

Anyway, them newfangled consarned moving pictures do all the work for the audience. When you read or listen to a story, your imagination has to break a sweat. With video it just sorta slouches on the couch with one hand in the popcorn bowl and the other thumbing a phone, checking to see if there’s something better on.

Running on empty

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
I’d love to stick around, but I’m running behind. …

The power went out at 12:53 a.m., and the heat went with it. The wind is howling, and the snow is flying.

So this is a quick-and-dirty post via iPhone hotspot of a companion piece to yesterday’s post that I had hoped to nail up here last night, only to be derailed by the fabled technical difficulties.

Yes, yes, yes, it’s another abbreviated edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: Still using the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a sonic massage. The gunfire comes from Freesound. All the other bad noise is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

Balloons and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Trumpkin.

The Not-So-Great Pumpkin is floating into The Duck! City this fine brisk fall morning, a fat orange gasbag too late for the International Balloon Fiesta.

But just in time for Halloween. Boogity boogity boogity.

Nobody knows just why he’s visiting. ’Burque, BernCo and New Mexico in general tilt reliably blue, last I heard. Oh, we have our cultists like everybody else, flying their flags upside down, hanging banners, erecting statues and the like.

Freedom of religion, etc. Their god is not dead. He just smells like it.

Maybe the last time he drifted through he found a Mickey D’s that suited his peculiar tastes. Maybe they let him work the fries station. I have my fingers crossed that he’ll need a job soon. No, not that one. Having Max Factor one stroke away from the Resolute desk is the scariest thing I can think of this Halloween.

We’re skipping the rally, same as we did back in 2016. If we crave some bad noise we can always tune in to the dulcet tones of dime-store street racers Steve McQueening it up and down Tramway.

And if you crave some bad noise, why, you can tune in to this week’s special Halloween episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: I’m liking this setup — Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, a soupçon of Auphonic to sand off the rough edges, and a street organ and balloon burners from Freesound. The amateur racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.