Landscraping

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Just take a little off the top, please.

July has been a scorcher, with 12 triple-digit days and one record high (104° on the 17th).

It was 103° yesterday. Not a record, but still, damn. Today, at 3 p.m., it’s 97°.

And I’m gonna try real hard not to bitch about it because I’m not one of the landscapers trying to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is our back yard.

I didn’t even go out to sweat for fun yesterday.

But the landscapers were out there bright and early under Tōnatiuh’s broiler, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, excising scorched swaths of grass, excavating edging stones gone all wobbly like a meth-head’s dentition, and wheelbarrowing railroad ties off to … who knows? A railroad, maybe?

All the livelong day, too. As an expression of solidarity while motoring to the grocery for some grub that would not require cooking I refused to turn on the a/c in the Subaru.

Brew-haha

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Phineas and Fat Freddy
discuss labor issues while grocery shopping.
© in perpetuity by Gilbert Shelton, all praise to his name.

“What more could anyone ask for than to work for a beer company?” Fat Freddy wonders.

Well, a living wage might be nice, say the brewery workers on strike against Leinenkugel’s in Chippewa Falls, Wis. It’s the first strike against Leinie’s since 1985.

“We’ve just fallen behind every contract,” [John] McGillis said after wrapping up a strike shift next to a rushing creek, where neighbors have been dropping off doughnuts, pizza and words of encouragement. “We’re behind what everybody else in this area is paying.”

The corporate bigwigs at the Molson Coors mothership disagree, because of course they do. They’re about making money, not beer, and probably up to their third chins in a scheme to have A.I. brewing virtual lager for digital pubs on Facebook. Dispense with that irksome human element, don’t you know.

Or maybe it’s worse than we think. While the Teamsters are out in the streets some scab plumber is probably rerouting the toilets to the taps. And for minimum wage, too.

Remember your W.C. Fields: “I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.” People do those things, too, W.C. old scout. Say, does the “W.C.” stand for “Water Closet?”

• Java jive redux: In other news from the morning side of the beverage industry (for those of us who are not day drinkers, anyway) maybe I have to reconsider that occasional Starbuck’s Americano.

R.I.P., Tony Bennett

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Like Old Blue Eyes, a friend and mentor who called him “the best singer in the business,” Tony Bennett did it his way.

He died Friday in Manhattan at age 96.

But Bennett went down swinging. Despite a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, he kept performing and recording. His last public performance was in August 2021, when he sang with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall.

And he got a top-notch sendoff from The New York Times. His very fine obit in that august publication comes to us via the retired obituary writer Bruce Weber, cross-country cyclist and author of “Life is a Wheel: Love, Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America.”

Clif Blok’d

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments
Writer’s Blok(s).

Clif Bar has killed off two of my favorite Bloks flavors, Citrus and Cran-Razz.

Of course, that’s not how Clif — owned since August 2022 by Mondelez International — phrases it. Clif says these flavors are “retired.”

“Retired,” me bollocks. I’m retired. But I’m still available. Wave a fistful of greenbacks at me and see what happens.

Hel-lo, sailor. …