Category: Your Daily Don

Your Daily Don (or not)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Are we there yet? No.

The whole “Your Daily Don” thing never really took off, did it?

Honestly, the less I think about Darth Cheeto and his new droid, Clockwork Orange, the happier I seem to be.

Speak of the devil and he appears, as the saying goes. So let’s not and hope he doesn’t.

There are other ways to pass the time. Jogging. Hiking. Cycling down to the bosque to gauge the color of the cottonwoods (not quite spectacular yet).

And reading about the newish editor and vice president of the Albuquerque Journal, who apparently is doing 10 days in the clink on a shoplifting rap.

Whatever is the world coming to? I’m old enough to remember when only reporters, photographers, and copy editors were so poorly paid that they had to steal to make ends meet.

The Journal may be so hard up it can’t even afford a poorly paid copy editor. My tribe goes unmentioned in the “Contact Us” section of the Journal‘s ghastly website, though I found a “design desk” with four people on it, or under it, depending on whether they’re still sharp enough to steal booze. And two assistant city editors but no actual city editor. Maybe s/he’s in jail too.

That the Journal apparently has no copy desk wasn’t news to me. Not after I saw the story refer to Patrick Ethridge as “editor in chief”, “executive editor,” and “Executive Editor” (in the “Contact Us” lineup, Ethridge is called, simply, “editor”) and report that he was serving “10 days” or “ten days” in the calaboose.

These are peccadillos that even the most poorly paid, knee-walking-drunk, one-eyed copy editor could catch on the first pass through the story from underneath the design desk between attempts to grope one or more of the designers. When one sees these tiny turds floating in the bowl one wonders what monstrosities lurk beneath.

Your Daily Don: Tongue got your cat?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
“They’re eating what?” exclaims Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.

You know how you can tell this is bullshit? Because if it were actually happening, TFG would have a piece of the action, through a shell company incorporated in Delaware with headquarters in Saudi Arabia and a board of directors drawn from Interpol’s Red Notices.

Remember Trump Steaks? Ran out of the money at Aqueduct and straight into your refrigerator.

How much capital would it take to start snapping up struggling animal shelters and add drive-through windows? Poach the Chihuahua that used to shill for Taco Bell? (That’s a cookin’ joke, son!) Better yet, make J.D. Vance wear a Chihuahua suit, see if the hillbilly sonofabitch can generate a little positive cash flow. The dog’s cuter, but Vance is already on the payroll. Put Stephen Miller on the job; he’d deep-fry his own mother if he had one.

Before you could sing a bar of “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” TFG would have franchises out the wazoo. Most of them along the border, of course. Your customers are your workforce and vice versa. It’s practically a perpetual-motion money machine.

And he’d tell you all about it on TV, too.

Just not as though it were a bad thing.

Your Daily Don (first in a series)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Presidential candidate or Marvel supervillain?

If the TV hucksters are going to pitch these affairs as though they were sporting events I think the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency should drug-test the competitors.

I’ve been in rooms with people who behaved like Felonious Punk did last night, thanks to various and sundry powders and potions, and we never once thought about running them for president. We thought about running away from them before the cops came, is what.

One dark night in the Seventies I didn’t run fast enough and wound up in the Denver sneezer with a couple of pals. At some point around stupid-thirty our jailers emptied the drunk tank, stuffing all of us minor offenders into cells, so a PCP fiend could have the run of the joint without mayhem.

Dude is bouncing off the walls with his eyes out on stalks, screeching like a banshee about this, that, and the other, when finally a screw marches in and purrs, “If you don’t settle down I’m going to have to consider you an asshole.”

As he turns to leave our duster suddenly had a moment of clarity.

“What’s an asshole to you?” he asks.

At which point one of our cellmates shouts, “You an asshole, motherfucker! Now shut the fuck up! We tryin’ to get some sleep!”

It’s a shame these two dudes weren’t moderating last night’s “debate.”