Dinner and a show

October 1, 2023October 1, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

“Adiós, muchachos, compañeros de mi vida … (?)”

The New York Times spent most of yesterday pitching live episodes of “Let’s Make a Deal” from the nation’s capital. And today they’re telling me that nobody could give a shit; they’d all rather be watching “The Golden Bachelor.”

Well. Sounds like poor editorial judgment to me. Should’ve led with another Taylor Swift story.

Whoops, there she is.

Well, I gave a shit — no, not about “The Golden Bachelor” or Taylor Swift, who gets more eyeballs than a TikTok video of kitties in a titty bar — but rather the brinksmanship peacockery so deplorably on display in DeeCee.

It’s a weakness. But I could afford to indulge it.

Dinner was leftovers from Friday night — Melissa Clark’s paprika chicken with taters and turnips — so cooking was a rerun, or, more precisely, a reheat, at 350° for 20 minutes.

This left me at liberty to observe, and screech, and curse, and place bets with myself about what would finally emerge from all the shit-talking, gesticulating, and shoving that usually precedes a whole bunch of nothing happening on the middle-school playground of your choice.

This is pointless idiocy, of course. Right up there with cashing out the 401(k) and putting it all into bitcoin and NFTs; playing poker with a man named “Doc;” or gambling in any of the various casinos masquerading as “sports” in this world.

By closing time, the can had gotten kicked another 45 days down the road and I had lost every bet.

Still, could be worse.

Ukraine must be wondering how they wound up out on the sidewalk with an IOU in one pocket of the fatigues puddled around their ankles. And the woodlice gnawing on Charlie McCarthy’s balsa-sack apparently found out this wasn’t an all-you-can-eat deal.

This morning I decided this class in Political Science Fiction 101 reminded me of a scene from “Cannery Row,” in which John Steinbeck describes the upshot of an uprising by “a group of high-minded ladies” in Monterey demanding the closure of “dens of vice” like Dora Flood’s Bear Flag Restaurant, which was not a sandwich shop but rather a “sporting house.”

Writes Steinbeck:

This happened about once a year in the dead period between the Fourth of July and the County Fair. Dora usually closed the Bear Flag for a week when it happened. It wasn’t so bad. Everyone got a vacation and little repairs to the plumbing and the walls could be made. But this year the ladies went on a real crusade. They wanted somebody’s scalp. It had been a dull summer and they were restless. It got so bad that they had to be told who actually owned the property where vice was practiced, what the rents were and what little hardships might be the result of their closing. That was how close they were to being a serious menace.

You think maybe the high-minded ladies in DeeCee got told who really owns this whore-House? And if so, did they get the message? Who knows? Not me, cousin. But we have 45 days to find out.

Anyway, once the cartoon was over we got straight to the featured attraction, which included the aforementioned leftovers; rewatching “Reservation Dogs,” which concluded its three-season run this past Wednesday; and debating whether we should take down our hummingbird feeders, which hadn’t been getting many (if any) customers the past few days.

I argued for staying open, and boom! Just like that a hummer appeared at one of the backyard feeders, which are visible from the living-room couch. Maybe he was an elder who didn’t care to make the trek to Mexico this fall. Maybe she likes the new landscaping. Maybe they like “Reservation Dogs.” Pronouns are a bitch.

Anyway, we reloaded those two feeders and called it a night. This morning, The Last Hummingbird Standing brought a cousin over for breakfast. It wasn’t Matt Gaetz. I’ll call that a win.

Autumnal equi-knocks

September 23, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

Summer’s end’s around the bend, just flyin’? Nope. It flew right past us at 12:50 a.m. Mountain time and here we sit, sipping coffee as we slip-slide straight into fall.

Speaking of falls, we have a Noo Joisey senator being indicted (again) on federal corruption charges; MAGA cultists in the House of Reprehensibles making a meal (more of an amuse-bouche, really) of Squeaker Charlie McCarthy’s withered testicles; and at least one Supreme Court justice with all the ethical bona fides of a hyena on a gutpile.

I’d like to assign blame for all these shenanigans, but it’s a beautiful day and there are bicycles around here that need riding. So I’ll just observe that if we keep locking our mutts in the national pantry, we are liable to keep finding ourselves light on pork come suppertime.

Pogo was right.

Trenchant commentary

August 1, 2023August 1, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

If trial, conviction, and a long-overdue fatal stroke proceed apace we have a fine disposal site in the back yard for Cheeto Benito.

He would spend eternity in crucifixion pose, too, which should suit his persecution complex. Some might call it Death Yoga for Traitors.

I know, I know — it looks awfully narrow for his bulk. But it may actually be a size or three too large once Jack Smith is finished with him.

The biggest downside I can see, other than the strong likelihood that none of this will ever come to pass, is that all the poison he sucked through his pursed little piehole during a lifetime of culinary sins would probably kill all our new plants, shrubs, and trees.

Good reads

• Tom Nichols at The Atlantic. You have to love a guy who writes so clearly and forcefully, while throwing in a bonus reference to “The Verdict,” one of my favorite Paul Newman flicks.

• Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. Don’t mourn, party, sez he.

• Charles P. Pierce at Esquire. My man Chazbo, never at a loss for words, writes thusly:

In fact, it is in its precision where lies this indictment’s real power. In no place, does Smith get out over his skis. It is monumental as a historical document, but, as a legal document, it is carefully crafted, almost delicately etched. For example, there is no talk of citing the former president* for treason or for insurrection. Smith clearly has crafted an indictment precisely drawn to conform to the whopping silo of evidence he has compiled and nothing else. And it is precisely drawn to sit the former president* down under a swinging lightbulb in a dark interrogation room.

• Peter Baker at The New York Times. He’s covered five presidents, so you know he’d have some thoughts on this guy. Here’s one.

George Washington established the precedent of voluntarily stepping down after two of those terms, a restraint later incorporated into the Constitution through the 22nd Amendment. John Adams established the precedent of peacefully surrendering power after losing an election. Ever since, every defeated president accepted the verdict of the voters and stepped down. As Ronald Reagan once put it, what “we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”

Until Mr. Trump came along.

Walking on the moon

July 15, 2023July 15, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Never fear. We’re still earthworms. It’s just that The Duck! City landscape looks a bit lunar in spots, especially at the eastern end of Comanche Road NE, which tilts up and turns to dirt just short of Foothills Trail 365.

During our nine years here a few eastbound motorists have failed to notice that Comanche just sort of, oh, I don’t know, ends at its intersection with Camino de la Sierra NE. Their vehicles take flight, briefly, then return to earth, their only laurels being the remains of the wire fence marking the end of Comanche and the beginning of the Sandia Mountains. Resale value and driving privileges suffer. Lunacy of a different sort entirely.

Anyway, it’s not hot enough around here to be the moon, which enjoys highs of 260° Fahrenheit in full sunlight. It just feels that way lately.

Herself and I got a late start on our weekly bike ride this morning, and it was getting right toasty as we climbed Big Horn Ridge Drive toward a couple of whoop-de-doos that are more fun when done from the other direction.

Bunnies we had seen, but no quail, and I was thinking we were going to get skunked (har de har har) until a lone adult quail ran across the road just ahead of us, saw us, and pulled a U, scurrying back down into the gully.

We stopped to have a peek over the side, and wowser, there were at least three pairs of adults and a whole mob of juveniles puttering around down there, wishing we would quit gawking and be on our way, like the two e-bikers who zip-zapped past without a word.

It pays to keep your eyes peeled around here. You never know what you might see, even if it’s only a windshield full of wire and the Sandias coming up fast.

Delta Farce

June 27, 2023June 27, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

“If you’re traveling this summer, you better hope that you don’t need help from an airline.” — Mac Schwerin, “Somehow, Airline Customer Service Is Getting Even Worse,” in The Atlantic.

And yet people wonder why I refuse to fly the unfriendly skies.

Last evening Herself and I — from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and The Duck! City, respectively — were watching her scheduled departure time shift from 6:35 p.m. Minneapolis time to 8:13, then 10 … and finally right off the clock entirely. Mickey’s big hand gave us the finger. Canceled. Sorry ’bout that.

According to FlightAware, the Delta aircraft headed her way from Maine was delayed more than four hours before finally taking off just before 6 p.m. Duck! City time — whether it had been in Maine all that time is anybody’s guess, as is where it was actually headed once it left the Pine Tree State — and for a while there it was looking like she still had a chance of getting home by stupid-thirty Tuesday morning.

But nix. No wheels up for you, toots. Go stand in line with the other poor saps to learn nothing useful from a Delta agent. Word on the concourse was that all Delta flights for Tuesday were already full up, and there might not be a seat available until Thursday. Yikes, etc.

So I book her a room at the nearby Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport … after which she decides to rent a seat on a Southwest flight to The Duck! City via Phoenix leaving at 5:35 a.m.

This means being at the Minneapolis airport by 3:35 a.m. for check-in, so there’s no point in cabbing it to the Hilton for a $200 wash and brush-up and then heading right back to the airport for another beating.

So I go to cancel that room … only Hilton won’t let me do it online for some mysterious reason known only to the servo-bots running the Hilton website. So I have to call and speak to an actual human being. How 20th century of them.

Happily, the obsolete meat-things prove friendly, efficient and helpful — tip of the Mad Dog Rivendell cap to Alicia working the front desk in Minneapolis — and the room is canceled without penalty, leaving Herself at liberty to wander aimlessly through the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport dragging Old Pinkie, her battle-scarred, doughty rolling suitcase, which Delta did not send to Tierra del Fuego, Ukraine, or the Event Horizon in orbit around Neptune.

Now, some might say that looking to Southwest for salvation is like hailing a passing shark to take you from the Titanic to that iceberg over there. And I am one of them.

But at least those pirates finally got her and Old Pinkie off the deck and into the air. If only to Sky Harbor. Happily, they have Hiltons in Phoenix too.

• Editor’s note: Yes, I read about the weather nightmares, traffic-control problems, and the overheating cable at Ronnie Raygun Intergalactic Airport. Thousands of flights delayed or canceled. And like Mac Schwerin I appreciate the complexities of arranging air travel. (“Delta flies something like the population of Sacramento every day, on average.”) But still, you’d think Someone in Authority might empower the boots on the ground at the Delta counter to grab a hot mic and shout, “You’re all fucked!” rather than making their customers queue up to get the same message one at a time.