Sad news: Garrett Lai, one of the cycling journos, has gone west.
Garrett was running Bicycle Guide back when I was a minor cog in the VeloMachine, and from time to time we’d bump into each other, exchange compliments, usually at Interbike.
I can’t claim to have known him well, but I knew for sure that he was a top-shelf scribe with a finely honed personal style. And his curiosity, enthusiasm, and expertise were not limited to the bike world.
Once or twice we talked about doing some work together, but this never came to pass, more’s the pity.
Step right up, everyone’s a winner, bargains galore. …
There is no reason in the world to believe a single, solitary word that comes out of this guy’s fat yap.
And every reason in the world to believe that a “diagnosis” does him more than a few favors.
So until I see something more than “Trump said,” it’s no sale.
• Housekeeping note: WordPress has decided to impose its new block editor on those of us who had been resisting the change. So expect a few hitches in the gitalong here at the Chuckle Hut until I find the Rosetta Stone for this fucker or find some alternative method of bloggery.
Flush twice, it’s a long way to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The headline is taken from the 1978 Thomas McGuane novel “Panama.”
Chet Pomeroy, a performer on the skids whose act has included, among lesser spectacles, crawling out of the ass of a frozen elephant in his underwear to fight a duel with a baseball batting-practice machine, is stalking his ex-girlfriend Catherine Clay through the aisles of a Key West grocery.
She clocks him, he asks to use the bathroom, and … well, just read the book. It’s a lot more entertaining and informative, and at its most outrageous less grotesque, than last night’s “debate.”
Not even McGuane the essayist could’ve covered that raree-show, assuming he could resurrect his long-dead alter ego of Captain Berserko. Hunter S. Thompson might have managed, even participated, but sadly he is no longer with us.
It may have been the single worst thing I have ever invited into my home, and that is a fierce competition indeed. Miss Mia Sopaipilla blew a hairball. I dreamed of Nazis. Herself told me first thing this morning that CNN’s Dana Bash had called it “a shitshow,” which I thought generous and profoundly understated.
Still, I’m glad to see the mainstream media has finally copped on, albeit a trifle late. McGuane had it figured out back in 1971, when Bash was born, seven years before he would publish “Panama.”
Queried about his politics by comrade Jim Harrison, as part of a faux interview for the literary magazine Sumac, McGuane replied thusly:
“I suppose I am a bit left of Left. America has become a dildo that has turned berserkly on its owner.”
I decided long before Election Day 2016 that I would vote for a thrift-store toaster, a rabid bat, or the empty chair Clint Eastwood was yelling at if any of these items were running against Adolf Twitler. And that remains the case today.
Yet I feel oddly compelled to watch tonight’s “debate,” the way Arthur Denton craved the tender mercies of Orin Scrivello, DDS, in “Little Shop of Horrors.”
I don’t know why. If I were smart, I could always just toddle down to the golf course, catch a couple geezers arguing about which one of them is best equipped to drive the cart into the water hazard. Watch fat Corgis bark at each other on YouTube. Bang my forehead on the keyboard for a while, then check the mirror to see how many new words I’ve invented.
Hyyb! Yuij! Ddfcv!
Alas, as you know, I will never be smart. And after tonight, I am liable to feel even dumberer than usual.
Mad Blog Media 