Category: Journalism

The Mad Dog in Winter

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Your Humble Narrator at The Arizona Daily Star circa 1980, when his thoughts were not of retirement, but rather escape. Photo: Alan Berner

We may not have ourselves a white Christmas, but it certainly won’t be one suitable for test-riding that shiny new bike I’m not gonna be getting from Sandia Claus.

A chilly rain started falling at midafternoon on Tuesday, shortly after Your Humble Narrator got a short trail run under his tights. All in all, it feels like a marvelous evening for tamales smothered in green chile with a side of Mexican rice.

And for dessert? How about a heaping helping of deep-dish thought about who’s gonna be making it rain around here next year, when a certain somebody taps into that there Socialist Insecurity instead of working for a living?

“Working for a living.” Ho, ho. As if delivering the old hee, and also the haw, requires a strong back and a hand truck.

But deliver we do. Yes, yes, yes, it’s another thrilling episode of Radio Free Dogpatch! We’ve taken a dump right on your porch, and just in time for Christmas, too. Remember, lift with your legs, not your back.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Rode PodMic and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited the audio using Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “On the Job,” from Zapsplat.com. Freesound.org contributed the typewriter (theshaggyfreak); ticking clock (straget); wind (eliasheuninck); footfalls in snow (duck37fm); traffic (edo333); and the elevator going down (LG). Eddard Stark comes to you from the late King Joffrey Baratheon’s gruesome collection of Halloween ornaments. And Darth O’Grady comes to you from the Death Star trash can via Sony ICD-UX533 recorder.

Of artists and safety nets

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a story in the Colorado Springs Sun, mentioning President Nixon, written by Your Humble Narrator in the Year of Our Lord 1974.

Thank Cthulhu I’m not an artist like Russell Chatham. We hacks have a safety net.

Here’s mine: This past weekend, Herself signed me up to start collecting Socialist Insecurity payments beginning in March 2020. If I live that long, and assuming that Agent Orange doesn’t redirect all SS monies to his Wall or his wallet, I will receive a princely sum indeed, each and every month.

After accounting for inflation, it’s roughly equal to what I was paid as a copy boy back in 1974, when I first got into the writing racket.

I figure I can score a used Chevy Express 1500 for about 12 large. The monthly payments should take about 18 percent of my income, which sounds about right. The camping gear I’ve already got.

And parking down by the river? It’s free! Winning!

R.I.P., Deadspin

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Deadspin’s writers conducted their own exit interviews.

Well, shit. Now I wish I’d been a Deadspin reader. The writers who, after being ordered to “stick to sports,” told their Great Hell overlords to eat a bag of dicks seem like my kind of people.

Nitwits who disliked the often-political tone of my columns, “Mad Dog Unleashed” and “Friday’s Foaming Rant,” often suggested that I likewise “stick to sports.” I did no such thing, because everything is political, and happily my editors and publishers never added their voices to the shut-the-fuck-up chorus, though like Deadspin we often found ourselves owned and/or licensed by eejits.

It’s a dire state of affairs and regrettably far from uncommon. Over at The Nation, Dave Zirin tugged on Deadspin‘s founding editor’s coat, and Will Leitch spake thusly:

“I will say that craven dopes like these people buy media companies all the time, and they slowly suck the life and vigor out of them until they are shades of their former selves. Usually, people who work there have no choice but to stomach it and make tiny but real compromises because they have families or mortgages or medical bills or real-life stresses. It is to the ultimate credit of everyone at Deadspin that they did not roll over to ridiculous and incompetent non-plans and brainless edicts out of self-preservation.”

And at The New Republic, Alex Shephard grabbed Deadspin‘s media-bro mismanagement by the plums and squeezed, with a nod to Gawker’s “How Things Work,” observing:

“It is tempting to see the demise of Deadspin as another depressing instance of how things work: a private equity firm full of almost comically idiotic media bros blunders into a successful media property and destroys it because the only thing it knows how to do is juice ad impressions. But the collapse of Deadspin is so spectacularly stupid, so clearly self-inflicted, that it has an epochal quality. If there were any justice in the world, the site’s absurd decline, which could not better contrast the integrity and talent of Deadspin’s staffers on one side and the craven shit-eating of their corporate masters on the other, would serve as a wake-up call to the powers that be. Since there isn’t, it’s almost certainly a harbinger of much worse to come.”

Much worse to come, indeed. I’ve never been a sports fan, but I’ve been a fan of good sports writing, especially when it didn’t have much to do with sports.

And I wish I’d caught Deadspin‘s act before it turned into a vulture capitalist’s turd.

Tour de Fence

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
The Sandias as seen from the bottom of Elena, near the casino.

My invitation to Le Tour having gone missing in the mail, I’ve been compelled to ride my own damn bikes around and about in the Duke City.

The high side of the circuit, before dropping down to casino country and then climbing back up.

Between outings I’ve checked in with my old Live Update Guy comrade Charles Pelkey, who is sending his daughter Annika off to Iowa today. She’ll be working for Mayor Pete. No word yet on which horse Chazbo is backing.

In other news, my man Casey B. Gibson did a little surprise gallery for that Boulder-based journal of competitive whatever whose name eludes me. Seems they needed pix from road nats in Tennessee, Casey had them, and that, as they say, was that. Money even changed hands, which is always nice when one is on the job.

Another member of the tribe, Andrew Hood, is the only one of us actually on the scene in France. It being a slow day (team time trial) I joggled his elbow for old times’ sake to see what’s what. No reply yet, because The Hoodlum is a total pro — on the clock, doing the beez-a-neez, and probably not even into the rosé yet.

Meanwhile, The Guardian is doing a live update this year, and it’s not half bad. They’re kicking the shit out of Cyclingnews. I may have to pass them a few of the millions I’ve banked from my stints at Live Update Guy.