Category: Live Update Guy

OK, say ‘cheesy’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
A fuzzy Beaver Moon, which I suppose could be considered appropriate.

Betimes I wish I had an actual camera instead of an iPhone, especially when zooming in on something like the last full supermoon of the year.

But then I remember that I’m no great shakes as a shooter and the phone that I already own is exactly my speed. I’m not exactly Ansel Adams. More like Gomez Addams, or maybe Uncle Fester.

Hell, people who know what they’re doing shoot movies — actual films, not TikTok dances or cute-animal videos — using iPhones.

Not me, of course. Because (a) I don’t know what I’m doing, and (2) I don’t really want to learn.

When I was shooting bike reviews for Adventure Cyclist and teasers for Charles Pelkey’s Live Update Guy it was occasionally fun, kinda, sorta. But also complicated, because I was using a GoPro, or a more traditional camcorder — Sony VIXIA mini X or Panasonic HC-V770 — and there’s a whole lot of wobble when you’re recording video and audio in the wild, especially when the production crew is dumber than a bag of hammers and your leading man has a radio face.

Anyway, them newfangled consarned moving pictures do all the work for the audience. When you read or listen to a story, your imagination has to break a sweat. With video it just sorta slouches on the couch with one hand in the popcorn bowl and the other thumbing a phone, checking to see if there’s something better on.

The Tour starts when?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Graham Watson is never around when you need him.

By the blather of St. Phil, with all the revoltin’ developments on this side of the Big Ditch I nearly forgot that Le Tour was to kick off today.

I caught a little of The Guardian‘s live update of the Grand Départ — all due respect, but I preferred the Non-Race Related Blah Blah Blah of them other fellers at Live Update Guy — and then decided to go out and ride one of my own damn’ bicycles before it got too hot.

Any of yis following Le Shew Bigge this year? As you can tell, if Charles, Fatso and I aren’t acting the fool for fun and profit, I’m just not that interested.

(Not) for the birds

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
The April showers are a little late this year.

Hm. The weather seems less than ideal for the old bikey ridey this morning. The weather widget says we’ve gotten 0.15 inch since I oozed out of bed two hours ago, it’s still bucketing down, and I am no Laura Killingbeck. I prefer my velo-adventures sunny-side up with some toasty 65°-degree-plus temps if I can get ’em. Just ’cause I have mudguards doesn’t mean I wanna use ’em.

We Duck! Citizens enjoyed a high of 81° yesterday, well short of the record — 92° in 2022 — with zero precip’. In fact, the National Weather Service reports that we have had but a trace of moisture so far in May, and just 0.33 inch in April, a mere dribble compared to the usual half-inch.

Up to 0.24 inch since I started typing this post. Woof. We could corral those missing April showers today.

Anyone who has forgotten/is unaware how important water is to us here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where the yappy purse dogs roam free, can become wise following the online musings of water wizard John Fleck. Buy him a coffee if you can spare the funds; I attended one water-board meeting in the Seventies, as a cub reporter fueled by vile percolator joe, and I can assure you John needs all the proper java he can get.

In other news, our man Charles Pelkey is working the early shift in Laramie as local host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and anyone who misses the glory days of Live Update Guy can catch his act on the Innertubes at Wyoming Public Media. That other fella he used to work with at LUG remains unemployable in print, broadcast, and online.

I do serve at least one small purpose, however. After my own cup of coffee I scattered some bird seed around under the patio cover so the tweeties could enjoy a snack out of the wet. Queuing up at the feeders today must feel like being a hobo outside a Seattle soup kitchen.

Marching forward, looking backward

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

Calm down, ye amadáin, I’ve not a drop taken: That’s a Guinness 0 so.

Birthdays. Some of us get overserved, others get 86’d with the cork barely out of the bottle.

Whoever’s in charge of this party seems a bit random. Can’t tell the top shelf from the well, the class from the dross. Proper ladies and gents given the shove while the most appalling tossers have the run o’ the place.

Take me, if you can bear to. Here I sit, roaring up on an age at which I had fully expected to have been stone dead for at least 39 years. Upended many an office pool I did.

“Who picked 69? 69? Well, doesn’t matter, because the bugger is still alive!”

Turn your radio on.

Meanwhile, there’s many an empty stool in this shabby shebeen. Where’d everybody go? They were all here just a minute ago. …

Herself is back east with family and friends to raise a belated parting glass to a lifelong friend carried off by COVID last fall.

I’m right here, having charge of the cat. But recently I spoke with one of my old pals, the former Live Update Guy Charles Pelkey, who has taken a few sucker punches since a cancer diagnosis a dozen years ago but is still on his feet in Laramie, all bouncers be damned.

It may be my birthday that’s on tap come Monday, but I’d buy Charles a round to celebrate his most recent lap around the sun, may it not be his last. Lucky for me and my 401(k) I don’t drink anymore; I don’t think he does, either. ’Tis unknown the amount of money our younger selves could piss away in a proper pub.

At the publisher’s expense, of course.

But that’s neither here nor there.

And anyway, it’s the thought that counts.

So belly up to the bar — unbeknownst to the landlord, who is manhandling another tray of industrial lager to the hoops-watching gobshites glued to the TV in the back of the pub, we’re uncorking an 18-year-old, double-cask, single-malt episode of — yes, yes, yes —  Radio Free Dogpatch. And sláinte to yis.

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

• Technical notes: There was an inordinate amount of racket in and around El Rancho Pendejo this week, but after a series of false starts I was finally able to nail something down using my trusty Shure SM58 mic and the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects are courtesy of Zapsplat, Freesound, and Your Humble Narrator.