Category: What the Actual Fuck?

Let’s go to the tape!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Rock ’n’ roll! Or not.

As we backstroke across the bottomless sewer of the digital age, trying to keep our snouts above the stink, The New York Times throws us a 2,049-word lifeline on … the return of the cassette tape?

Holy hell. And I thought I was a retrogrouch. I don’t know whether to be tickled by this or go hang myself in the garage.

More than a few of us will recall the struggle to take our music along Back in the Day® when it was actually music, not the overproduced tuneless swill these crazy kids are drowning themselves in today.

Those tinny little transistor radios that fit in a pocket. Aftermarket FM radios to bring the local freeform set to whatever moldering shitheap you were driving after you got carpal tunnel trying to tune in KOMA — 50,000 watts at 1520 on your AM dial — while motoring through the Intermountain West on Coors, ditch weed, and fumes, coasting the downhills in neutral and praying for a gas station before the ground tilted back up again.

Eight-track-cartridge players, God help us all, bolted insecurely under the dash where evildoers could snatch them without getting all sweaty.

And then — the compact cassette.

I don’t remember whether my Japanese pickups of the Seventies and Eighties came with AM/FM/cassette packages, but if they didn’t, I certainly added that setup at my earliest possible opportunity. I was a driving fool, Maine to Spokane, Tucson to Tacoma, and a man had to have his traveling tunes.

Once a traveling companion jerked a Merle Haggard cassette out of my truck’s player and threw it out a window as we snorted that old white line across Utah. Something about turning 21 in prison doing life without parole doesn’t sound all that glamorous when you are basically a red-eyed, high-speed festival of felonies.

Who among us can’t recall spending a fun-filled hour teasing a tangle of cassette tape out of the in-dash player, then rewinding it past the wrinkled spot with a ballpoint pen?

“Goddamn it, I need this Creedence tape if I’m gonna make it across Nevada on US 50 without losing my fucking mind. …”

When the CD player came along I eventually “upgraded” to that like everybody else. Had to polish the discs more often than I ever did the truck, but the truck didn’t have to look all smooth and shiny to function.

These days when I hit the road I always carry a large box of CDs, but mostly scan the FM band for NPR affiliates, the way I once hunted for KOMA. I’m hoping to find some jazz, blues, classical, or the increasingly rare freeform set cobbled together by some kindred spirit.

But mostly what I get is pledge drives.

So I sing along with the voices in my head. That sure makes the miles fly by. And it isn’t hip or even illegal yet.

Up the Wazoo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
It’s always happy trails on the Blue Wazoo.

DeeCee being a rather long slog via Subaru, I decided I’d settle for a short mood-altering run on the neighborhood trails yesterday.

I won’t travel by air, as you know. And if I did, the airline probably wouldn’t let me take my torch and pitchfork, even as checked baggage.

Anyway, what do I know about taxidermy? Sure, I could collect a few souvenir heads in our nation’s capital with my handy-dandy Gomboy folding saw, but then what? The TSA says you can board a plane with fresh meat, but they may decide to add a cautionary note about “the severed heads of Supreme Court justices” after running your lumpy carry-on through the scanner twice because they didn’t believe what they saw on the first pass.

And if you do manage to make it home without incident, preserving and mounting your prizes for display in the den is not a chore you want to hand off to anyone who doesn’t owe you a really big favor.

Shucks, even a six-pack of ears pinned to a cork board in the garage can make for some pointed conversations you’d rather not have, even if you explain that the fuckers never used them for listening, only to keep their trifocals from falling into their black robes or onto the bench, and anyway, with the fat stacks of attaboys they get from their rich pals they can have a new pair grafted on before you can say, “Case dismissed.”

So, yeah. Herself and I went for a nice trail run in the sunshine, and afterward I decided I was still not in the mood to update myself on the latest news, so I changed costumes and took the Voodoo Wazoo for an enjoyable 90 minutes of light gnar-shredding in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

Today I see the courtroom drama has shifted back to Manhattan. Time for another run. I can’t remember where I put that saw.

Friday the 13th

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Gym Jordan wants a turn at bat.

Is today the day we get Gym Jordan (R-Locker Rumba) as Squeaker of the House of Reprehensibles?

That would be bad luck indeed, on a par with naming Koba chairman of the Flying Monkey Caucus.

Of course, one wonders whether this conclave of lesser primates could agree to hand the gavel to anyone, even a troika comprising Taylor Swift, Jesus Christ and Zombie Ronald Reagan.

Still, dumber things have happened, or are being contemplated, and here are a few of them:

• Streets on the moon (The Guardian). Scientists have devised a method to transform that pesky moon dust into solid landing pads and roads. “You might think: ‘Streets on the moon, who needs that?’” said professor Jens Günster of the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing in Berlin and co-author of a report on the technique. Right you are, prof. How about repairing a few of the roads we have down here on Terra, where the people are? We can’t even reliably land and maintain a construction crew alongside Interstate 40 west of Albuquerque, much less at Faustini Rim A.

• Throw up, pay up (The Washington Post). Restaurants whose bottomless-mimosa brunches have encouraged bargain boozers to do what drunks do — hurl, blow chunks, call Ralph on the big white phone — are starting to charge for the privilege of engaging in the Technicolor Yawn on their premises. “Welcome to the Vomitorium (a small handling charge will be added to your check).” The Romans got here first, of course, but you know how empires are; always declining, and not just to learn from history, either.

• Go ruck yourself (The New York Times). I’m not quite certain how we transitioned from upchucking to rucking up, but here we are. Wipe your lips, buff the barf off your boots, and shoulder that pack, soldier!  It’s great fun! As long as no angry foreigners are shooting at you. If marching around and about with a heavy pack catches on, I wouldn’t expect a spike in enlistments, but we might see a few new magazines in the Inside Outside Sideways Down portfolio, like Rucking, Rucksacker, and Rucksack Retailer and Industry News. Hey, vulture capitalists gotta eat, and not just at bottomless-mimosa brunches, either.

‘The Wisdom of Solomon’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

“You have the right to remain stupid. …”

The final entry in The Duck! City trilogy that began with “Breaking Bad” and continued with “Better Call Saul” stars “This Fool” co-star Frankie Quiñones as Solomon Peña, a failed GOP candidate accused of ordering — and participating in — drive-bys on Democratic officials’ houses and offices.

Hilarity ensues. Or not.

Look for the premiere, “Don’t Recount … Reload!” on Court TV.