Howling at an orange moon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
And you thought the moon was made of green cheese. Sorry, losers and haters!

Blame the Wolf Moon. A vacationing wife. An acid flashback. Whatever.

But when I blinked myself awake in the dark on Tuesday morning I had no idea where I was.

If dementia runs in your family, as it does in mine, this can freak you right the hell out. But I found it oddly exhilarating.

“Where am I? Who knows? Who cares? This is great!”

And then I remembered.

“Aw, shit. Trumpsylvania.”

We’re just a few all-too-short days away from the sequel to a movie I never wanted to see in the first place. “Mr. Hyde Goes to Washington” should’ve been a one-off. But nooooooo. Everything has to be a franchise now. When the Joker started getting top billing we should’ve known what was coming. It’s just one evil clown after another.

But hey: It’s an excuse for another episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, in which I make it all about me. I tell ya, it’s evil clowns all the way down.

• Technical notes: RFD favors the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. The wolf howls from Freesound, as do the sad trombones and the vinyl scratching. “Morning Mood” is from “Peer Gynt” by Edvard Grieg. Arthur, King of the Britons, and an anarcho-syndicalist peasant come from “Monty Python and The Holy Grail.” You’ll catch a snippet of the “Grapes of Wrath” theme in there (almost went with “Death Valley Days.”). The ass-kissing is by Your Humble Narrator. The sound effect, not the actual, y’know, like, obesiance. And the classic “There Stands the Glass” is courtesy of Ted Hawkins via YouTube. As usual, all the other raving can be pinned on the landlord of this dump.

Little pink houses

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
For you and me.

From Los Angeles, via The New York Times:

Some evacuees, like Lila King, have ended up staying in their vehicles.

Ms. King, 75, has been bouncing between motels and sleeping in her truck with her 40-year-old son since they were displaced by the Eaton fire.

Ms. King recently had surgery after she broke several ribs in a fall, and the nights sleeping in her truck have left her aching. She said she has been living off tacos from a nearby gas station, and wondering when, if ever, she will be able to return to her mobile home in Altadena, the unincorporated community at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains that was devastated by the Eaton Fire.

“We’re trying to get some help to get a place,” she said. “I’m worried.”

Ain’t that America?

‘Dumb, inscrutable and grand’*

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
The desert is not always so hot.

January’s gonna January, amirite?

We have this little cold snap parked overhead, which certainly beats being on fire. Nevertheless, it leads to dreams of visiting deserts where the temperatures are a little more in line with what leaps to mind when one hears the word “desert.”

“Why, yes, I could eat. …”

Alas, it is Herself’s January to be elsewhere, and someone has to mind the store. Miss Mia Sopaipilla needs assistance with this and that, refusing to learn how to open the cat-food bin, refill her water fountain, or use a toilet.

At the moment Miss Mia and I are enjoying a light snowfall. Well, I am, anyway. Miss Mia just roused herself from a nap to have a bite to eat and a sip of water, after which she will be headed straight back to the sack.

And to think some people call them “dumb animals.” They may not possess the power of human speech, but they certainly manage to get their point across.

* See “Poor Matthias,” by Matthew Arnold.

Hot? Not

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Baby, it’s cold outside.

We are not on fire here. Far from it, in fact. Twenty-five degrees and windy at the moment, which is why Her Majesty Miss Mia Sopaipilla is curled up in the Winter Palace.

There was an alarming degree of peachy cloud cover to our west this morning, which in my ignorance I will attribute to secondhand smoke from the Los Angeles fires. Holy hell. The pix look like Dresden after (or maybe during) the Allied bombing.

My fellow velo-scribe Zapata Espinoza is among those whose homes went poof (h/t to the lads at my old shop, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News). A GoFundMe has been set up to help Zap and Xakota in their hour of need.

In all our years together Herself and I have never been in the shit. In the vicinity a time or two, but never to the point of grabbing go-bags and critter kennels and beating feet. We know things will never be the same, but we hope they get better.

King me, bitches

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“Are we done? I have a 10 a.m. tee time.”

I don’t know about you folks, but every time a judge wanted to sentence me for something, I had to, like, be in court, an’ shit.

Tell me again about the whole “rule of law” thing. And then show me the tab for treating Nazi Jesus like he was some senile old fool who just “forgot” that he tried to walk out of the store with the whole country in his pocket.

Fuck me. Arlo Guthrie got tossed in the clink and fined $50 for illegally dumping garbage in Stockbridge, Mass. Nazi Jesus took a dump on the entire United States of America and he’ll be cheating on the front nine before noon Florida time.

And come Jan. 20, he’ll take his act on the road, to the White House.

Just another day at Alice’s Restaurant for this guy. He can get anything he wants. Excepting Alice.