Category: Holidays

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. …

Black Friday reds

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Cowgirl up
No, Herself did not just win the Kentucky Derby astride a midget horse. We paid for the wreath and got the photo op' for nothin'.

OK, so we finally surrendered to the Dark Side, taking a huge gulp of the Konsumerist Kool-Aid intoxicating millions of our fellow citizens as chronicled by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Californian Derrick Love was clearly under the influence of something. He and lifelong pal David Martinez spent nearly two days camped outside an Oakland Best Buy so he could get a $600 Toshiba laptop for $349.

“We’re on a huge adventure,” Mr. Love told The Times. “One day I’m going to tell my grandkids about this, how we were the first.”

Ai, Chihuahua. If only John Steinbeck were still alive to chronicle this epic tale. Call it, “Toshiba Flat.”

Alas, we proved no more resistant to the siren song of shopping. At the crack of noon Herself and I ventured out to a local nursery, where we ordered up a Canadian red cherry tree to replace the defunct apple trees in our now-treeless back yard. In an orgy of extravagance we added a holiday wreath to the tab. Then Herself posed for a photo with a horse that someone had apparently washed and then popped into an overly hot dryer for an alarming period of time.

We overextended ourselves further by purchasing a couple sandwiches from a downtown eatery and taking them home for a gourmet lunch, after which Herself toddled off to the Humane Society to help a few fuzzy little faces find new homes for the holidays.

As for me, I Vespa’d down to the grog shop for a couple jugs of brain eraser and then spent the afternoon plinking away at the keyboard, composing a hymn to capitalism, American style. Dirty work, but someone has to do it.