Category: Holidays

That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Mia and Turkish
Mia and Turkish watch as Buddy (not pictured) gets a grooming from Herself.

The mighty river of VeloNews finally slowed to a trickle today. I fired off an invoice to Corporate and slipped out for a short ride.

Several impatient motorists seemed in dire need of a brisk hosing down with a fire extinguisher full of tryptophan on this day before Thanksgiving. I tallied exactly 349,392 moving violations intended to kill me before abandoning the count.

Plenty of static violations, too, my favorite being the bulbous land yacht parked smack dab in the middle of the bike lane, right under the “No Parking In Bike Lane” sign. This appalling lack of reading comprehension is not encouraging to those of us who earn our meager livings from wielding the English language.

Oh, well. At least I got my big ass out in the late-November sunshine (this is not strictly accurate, of course; it was wearing bib shorts). Herself and I took the critters out for an airing, too. Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein, Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Banzai Buddy the Japanese Wonder Chin all scored themselves a little free vitamin D, which can be hard to come by this time of year.

That’s a little something to be thankful for in trying times when we 99 percenters hear the distant ring of carving knives clashing rhythmically against sharpening steels and wonder if we’re what’s for dinner.

And if that doesn’t get your drumstick throbbing, raise a glass to longtime Friend of the DogS(h)ite Boz, who notes in comments that he’s back to working for The Man.

From our family to yours, happy Thanksgiving.

Boo!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
An early Eighties Halloween in Oregon
Che Chihuahua, Fido Castro, take your pick.

I’ve always enjoyed Halloween. You get to be someone else for a day. What’s not to like?

My biggest problem in designing a costume used to be dealing with the limitations of personal appearance (long hair, full beard and earring). Let’s see, there’s hippie, pirate and … and. …

Mom used to make our costumes when we were kids, and for Halloween the year I spent as a college dropout I got her to whip one up based on a cartoon character of mine, Loadedman (don’t ask; it was just about as bad as you can imagine, a half-assed fusion of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Wart-Hog and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers).

One Halloween a newspaper colleague and I dressed up as the Holy Trinity. He was God, and I was Christ, complete with cross and crown of twist-tie thorns. We couldn’t find a third, so we slapped a happy-face sticker on a white helium balloon and hey presto! The Holy Ghost.

Loadedman
They say smoking that shit makes you smart. Don't believe a word of it. My cartoon character Loadedman proved otherwise in the Seventies.

Another year I was Che Guevara (there’s that hair-and-beard thing again). It was a twofer, as I got to indulge my commie fantasies and firearms fetish at the same time.

Best Halloween of all: the one when Herself and I hooked up for the first time in Santa Fe. Don’t recall my costume for that one; probably hippie, pirate or … or. …

Now, of course, I have an entirely different personal-appearance problem come All Hallows Eve. No hair, neatly trimmed white Van Dyke, earring. Let’s see here: Hippie’s obviously out, so that leaves, uh … uhhhh … arrrrrrrrr.

Na Gaeil abú

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Up the Irish, and no, not like that, ye feckin’ pervert. After 13 hours of sleep it’s time to listen to The Pogues — who are at present enjoying a farewell tour of the United States — and contemplate a pint or two or three of the black and perhaps just a wee drop of the uísque beatha on St. Patrick’s Day.

KRCC was playing “Dirty Old Town” when I arose this morning, so here it is for you and yours. Sláinte!

• Late update: Speaking of NPR, Doug Lamborn is a feckin’ eejit. And Anthony Weiner is not.

The brown bird of happiness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Longtailed cat meets rocker
"Oh, God," says Miss Mia Sopaipilla, "please tell me that fat bastard isn't gonna cop a squat in this old rocker, because if he does, my new name is Flatty the Catty."

Mmm, leftovers. If there’s anything better than a turkey dinner, it’s a turkey breakfast, followed by a turkey lunch, followed by (wait for it) another turkey dinner.

Turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas, turkey quesadillas, turkey tacos, turkey soup — the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, my belt is not, and so today between bouts of gluttony I slipped out for a leisurely bird-burning ride with Dr. Mickey von Schenkenstein.

I was supposed to be working, if the word can be used to describe the transferring of pixels from point A (let’s call this Belgium) to point B (your computer). But hey, everyone was either traveling (or trying to), riding their own bikes, battling connectivity issues or suffering tryptophan poisoning, so I said piss on it and took 90 minutes off for a ride in the middle of the workday, just like the real cycling journalists.

We didn’t exactly tear up the trails — neither of us had been on a bike for several days, for one reason or another — but it was good to be outdoors, sweating gravy and solving the world’s problems.

I got back to the office just in time to catch some incoming from Belgium plus a smallish plate of leftovers for energy. Hey, a guy’s got to refuel. …