Category: Bad news

No joke, sport

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
We did, too. Before they could fire us.

Whew. Rough week in my old bidness.

The New York Times croaked its sports department, and McClatchy sacked three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists — Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer.

Having worked in one sports department and drawn more than a few editorial cartoons, I naturally view with alarm. Wit is without value but witlessness is rewarded?

When The Washington Post asked for comment on McClatchy’s abrupt erasure of three Pulitzer winners, the company — owned by Chatham Asset Management — supplied this gem from opinion editor Peter St. Onge:

“We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the statement said.

Ho, ho. That’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s definitely on today’s leaderboard.

What local news and information that can’t be gotten elsewhere might McClatchy be relentlessly focused on providing in Sacramento at 3:10 p.m. Thursday Duck! City time?

And who says there’s no such thing as good news!

“The stories you’re seeing on the homepage are chosen by our local editors with help from an AI algorithm. The display includes the day’s important stories and recommendations for readers like you.”

Anyway, here’s a random selection from AI’s random selections courtesy of your friendly neighborhood carbon-based life form:

• “Cirque du Soleil returns to Sacramento this summer: Here’s where, when and how to get tickets.” Sounds like a free ad to me, but maybe the AI got comped tickets.

• “More than 40% of Californians say they were affected by recent extreme weather, poll finds.” Do tell. I imagine the other 60 percent stayed home or attended an air-conditioned showing of Cirque du Soleil.

• “Prime Day is over, but there are still deals galore.” Any cut-rate Cirque du Soleil tickets?

Well, thank Boss Tweed there ain’t none a them damned pictures taking up space on the Bee homepage. There’s not much to read, either. But then the only reading that interests hedge funders and asset managers is of the bottom line, and McClatchy certainly seems to have gotten to the bottom of something here.

• Addendum: Speaking of bottoms, pour one out for Anchor Brewing, which is going down after 127 years, the final few under a disastrous foreign ownership. Anchor Steam may have been the first proper beer I ever drank, and the porter was superb.

Zapped

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Another one bites the dust.

Zapata Espinoza and two colleagues just got the old heave and also the ho from their gigs at Hi-Torque Publications.

According to my man Steve Frothingham at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Hi-Torque plans to croak Road Bike Action and Electric Bike Action. Hence the pink slips for Zap, Tony Donaldson and Alex Boyce.

“(The) head winds proved too mighty” for the titles, Espinoza told BRAIN in an email.

Oof. When even a Mountain Bike Hall of Famer like Zap can get dropped you know them headwinds is fierce. Here’s hoping the lads find new homes soon.

Snow joke

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
I guess we can leave the skinny skis in the garage.

Well, it must be true, if both The New York Times and The Washington Post simultaneously catch up to the sad story about Rio Verde Foothills, where dreams go to die in the dust.

It’s an old story, with the new wrinkle being Scottsdale finally putting a cork in water sales to Rio Verde, saying it had to consider its own residents first and foremost. From the WaPo:

“The city cannot be responsible for the water needs of a separate community especially given its unlimited and unregulated growth,” the city manager’s office wrote in December.

The stories share a squeaky wheel — Cody Reim, who has a wife and four kids, works for the family’s sheet-metal business, and is looking at a water bill that could surpass the tab for his mortgage, when he’s not chatting up the national press. Again, from the WaPo:

“I thought, this is the United States of America, we do so much in humanitarian aid to other countries that don’t have water, they’re not going to let taxpaying citizens of this county go without water,” he said.

“You don’t think this could happen,” he added. “You have this belief that there’s going to be help.”

I have sympathy for the Reim family. Like them, we chose to live in a sandbox — the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert — and our water gets humped uphill to El Rancho Pendejo via a series of pumping stations. If we paid what this liquid gold is actually worth, or had to fetch it here by bike or burro, you can bet your ass we’d use a lot less of it.

Either that or we’d move to where the water is. Yet here we are.

Deciding to build your base camp in the desert is magical thinking going toe to toe with mathematics. As John Fleck observes in his ongoing Dead Pool Diaries, decent runoff this year will not change the fact that Colorado River water is overallocated and always has been.

“It’s just arithmetic!” he says.

If God wanted us here, He would’ve stored more agua fria under the rocks and cacti. But clearly He wasn’t expecting quite so much company.

“Hey, you come to the desert to get wisdom, 40 days and nights, tops. And then you go back where you came from. You silly sods never went back.”

Heart full of soul

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Jeff Beck has left the building.

I seem to remember catching him and Foghat at the City Aud in Bibleburg when I was a Mad Pup, not yet gone full Dog. But I was usually full of those gosh-darned old drugs back then and often saw and heard things that other people swore up and down were not really there.

The Yardbirds were definitely a part of my teenage playlist. And you have to tip your sombrero to a fella who’s down to punch it with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Keith Moon, and Nicky Hopkins (“Beck’s Bolero”) or slow it down with Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg (“Over the Rainbow”).

But that train was comin’. And Jeff had to get on board.

Update on the Live Update Guy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Remember this guy? Well, it’s Tip Jar time again.

Our old buddy Charles Pelkey, the Live Update Guy famed in song and story, is in a tight spot.

The big LUG could use some
spare change, man.

Regulars here know the story. Charles fought breast cancer to a draw, then got back to living his life as a lawyer, legislator, and family man.

But he’s since had a few setbacks, the kind that dollar up on the hoof awful fast, and another friend has set up a GoFundMe site to help Chazbo stay one long step ahead of the bill collectors.

That’s right, folks — it’s Tip Jar time again! Doesn’t matter if it’s dimes or dollars, every little bit helps.

And if you can spread the word on your various social-media accounts, that would be swell, too. Thanks in advance.