Category: Media

Lift with your legs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
And a-one, and a-two, and. …

I got to throw a rare double bird during a ride this past weekend.

Rounding a corner I saw a yard sign for TFG to my left … and then another across the street to my right.

“O! The Joy!” William Clark must have felt like this when he thought he’d finally seen the Pacific “ocian.” In honor of the Corps of Discovery I gave the placards the salute they deserved.

It’s little things like this that keep me on a slow simmer instead of a rolling boil.

As a longtime observer and occasional chronicler of our national political bed-wetting, I have felt compelled for some years now to watch and describe what appears — to me, anyway — to be a brain-damaged orangutan dry-humping the Statue of Liberty.

But damme if the lifting doesn’t get heavier every day. And I’m an old man, with a bad back.

So I lift with my legs. Which is to say that when I feel some crucial part of me starting to give way, I go for a ride, letting my legs lift my flagging spirit.

A bicycle can bear a lot of weight. You can trust me on this: I was a great fat bastard when I returned to cycling after a long absence, and that first two-wheeler had to carry a lot of baggage.

So have its descendants. But the tonnage these days is less Marlboro breath and whiskey sweat, more inchoate rage and existential dread.

That’s hard weight to shed, and not even the bicycle can get it all off you. But it definitely helps, especially if you try not to put the pounds right back on as soon as you get home.

• Pro tip: Try wearing a heart-rate monitor when you scan the news. When you find yourself surfing a hate-wave through Zone 5, remember that there is no Zone 6. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Grab a bike and get the hell out of the house.

Open mic

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Our lines are open.

We didn’t watch the “debate” last night, so I don’t have any personal observations to add to this morning’s raving, keening, caterwauling, hair-pulling, wailing, finger-pointing, and general post-shitting-the-bed cacophony.

So consider this an “open thread.” Got any thoughts? Lay ’em on us in comments. Our operators are standing by.

A sinus of The Times?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
I’ve long had a nose for news, but a nose from news?

Seasonal allergies may be associated with mood disorders like anxiety or depression, according to The New York Times.

Huh. And here I’d thought my mood had become disordered due to the pain in my ass, an ailment I contracted from reading The New York Times.

I shouldn’t pick on The Ould Gray Hoor here. Anxiety, depression, and ass pain can be acquired just about anywhere, from the lowliest blog (thanks for reading) to the self-anointed Newspaper of Record.

Lately we are presented with a sitting president going all Oprah on his studio audience — Look under your seats! Debt forgiveness for you! No arms for them! — and his predecessor snoozing through court dates, occasionally waking to flash the stink-eye around the room or curse a porn-star paramour. A third candidate for the job has a brain worm, a slow, underhand pitch not even I can take a swing at.

Two rappers are said to be “beefing,” which seems to mean “talking shit about each other from a safe distance.” You’d think these two gents might bump into each other at some social event, like the Met Gala — which is still getting coverage three days later — and then what? An X-slap followed by a virtual duel? Mics at 10 paces?

Speaking of talking shit, slaps, and mics, the House of Reprehensibles gave the back of the hand it wasn’t using to write the Liberty in Laundry Act, the Refrigerator Freedom Act, and the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act (HOOHAA) to the Creature from the White Lagoon for trying to topple Squeaker Mikey Mouse (hey, if you can’t legislate, defenestrate). MTG couldn’t even get the window cracked, much less toss Mikey out of it. Nevertheless she drew reporters like a dead dog draws … well, reporters. (Hi, Kristi Noem!)

Shoot, we can’t even get a new iPad without drama. Not that I want one.

When not blowing my nose or shifting uncomfortably in my chair I wonder whether in the race to become all things to all people at all times the media have become “a dildo that has turned berserkly upon its owner,” to misuse a Thomas McGuane quote.

McGuane was talking about America. And in some small sense, I suppose, so am I. Back to you, Chet.