It’s not dead yet. …

October 23, 2024October 24, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

I’ve been casually pestering my friend Hal Walter, telling him he should launch a podcast to support his magnum opus recounting his adventures with son Harrison as the two navigated the postsecondary labyrinth at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville.

Whether this was a good idea is open to debate. Because it got me to thinking about my own long-neglected sonic sideline, Radio Free Dogpatch.

I have a love-hate relationship with the goddamn thing. It’s kind of like an old bike in a garage full of them. It’s been gathering dust out there, and you can’t remember what it was that you liked about it, so you pull it down from its hook, air up the tires, and take it for a spin around the block.

And holy hell, it all comes rushing back to you. Nothing works like it should. It makes funny noises. And you can’t quite remember how to make the old dog hunt. Is the braking U.S. or Euro style? Is the indexing buggered or are these friction shifters? And what in sweet holy motherfuck is all that racket?

Finally you manage to herd the beast back into its slot in the garage, mop the fear-sweat from your forehead, and limp into the house (because of course the sonofabitch bit you somewhere).

And you think: “Well, that wasn’t so bad. Needs a little work, but it’s not like I have a bunch of other stuff that needs doing. …”

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Also short on gas stations, rest areas, and cute hitchhikers. Might as well unplug the Bluetooth and surrender to the yellow fangs of the first Radio Free Dogpatch of 2024.

• Technical notes: The reboot was recorded using gear that was already available in the Infernal Hound Sound studios: An Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; my trusty Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, a soupçon of Auphonic to sand off the rough edges, music from Zapsplat, and crickets from Freesound. All the other racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

You deserve a brick today

October 22, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

We’re all bozos on this bus. Some of us more than others.

Ronald McDonald’s criminal brother Donald doesn’t exactly inspire me to hit the drive-thru.

Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

I wonder if the folks who actually do a job of work at this location — which was closed to the public for this campaign stunt — got paid for the day.

The union that represents food service workers called this dime-store clown show “a slap in the face to the men and women who work those jobs in real life and make a poverty wage of $7.25 an hour in Pennsylvania.”

What do you suppose would’ve happened if this Mickey D’s had been closed to the public if Fatso just happened to drop by for his usual — two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish burgers, and a large chocolate milkshake? He’d have probably told his SS detail to send the grunts to Gitmo and burn the joint to the ground.

But not before he got what he came for.

Some punkins

October 19, 2024October 19, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Why, hello there, October. Nice to see you could finally make it.

Yesterday we enjoyed a chilly eastern breeze, which by evening was expected to pack a bit more of a wallop — say, 30-40 mph with gusts to 55, plus rain — and with any luck at all this seasonal weather will strip our pines of their remaining brown needles.

On Thursday I filled three 39-gallon bags with downed needles from the last blustery day after a friend complained that she needed 4WD to scale our driveway with a load of product for Herself’s eBay sideline. The bags filled our trash bin to overflowing with three days before pickup. I had to pull one back out to shoehorn a sack of kitchen garbage redolent of jambalaya fixins into the sonofabitch. The raccoons will rejoice.

Not so the deer, who have eaten all the class foliage in the back yard. They’ll have to settle for silverleaf nightshade going forward or start mowing the lawn.

But yeah, rain. I can’t remember when last it rained. Mid-September, maybe? That’s the most recent mention I can find in the training log. I described it as “a short, sharp downpour” that I just beat home at the end of a 25-mile ride.

This latest blessing from heaven started coming down around bedtime last night and it hasn’t let up yet. We might see a quarter inch before the second cup of joe, which, yay, etc.

I can almost accept that it’s 45° outside, and that the sun doesn’t show its face until breakfast is a fading memory, and that I may be forced to start wearing pants in the morning.

No, not that. Not yet, goddamnit. It’s not even Halloween, f’chrissakes.

Leaf of absence

October 16, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Fall color remains elusive at the bosque. But it’s still a fine place to ride the ol’ bikey-bike on a Tuesday morning.

The 32-mile loop I did is about two-thirds easy-breezy like a Cover Girl. But the last bit from Mountain and Broadway back to El Rancho Pendejo has about a thousand feet of vertical in it. And since most of the climbing stacks up on the back side it sorta gets a fella’s attention.

As does the ongoing devolution of TFG. When the legacy media finally start catching on, you know that shit is dire.

A “town hall” that drifted into a “Mister Music, please” segment from Romper Room? A one-on-one Bloomberg interview in which the candidate answered only those questions posed by the voices in his head?

I wonder if there are any early voters who’d like a do-over. Dude makes King Lear look like Norman Lear.

Lift with your legs

October 14, 2024October 14, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

I got to throw a rare double bird during a ride this past weekend.

Rounding a corner I saw a yard sign for TFG to my left … and then another across the street to my right.

“O! The Joy!” William Clark must have felt like this when he thought he’d finally seen the Pacific “ocian.” In honor of the Corps of Discovery I gave the placards the salute they deserved.

It’s little things like this that keep me on a slow simmer instead of a rolling boil.

As a longtime observer and occasional chronicler of our national political bed-wetting, I have felt compelled for some years now to watch and describe what appears — to me, anyway — to be a brain-damaged orangutan dry-humping the Statue of Liberty.

But damme if the lifting doesn’t get heavier every day. And I’m an old man, with a bad back.

So I lift with my legs. Which is to say that when I feel some crucial part of me starting to give way, I go for a ride, letting my legs lift my flagging spirit.

A bicycle can bear a lot of weight. You can trust me on this: I was a great fat bastard when I returned to cycling after a long absence, and that first two-wheeler had to carry a lot of baggage.

So have its descendants. But the tonnage these days is less Marlboro breath and whiskey sweat, more inchoate rage and existential dread.

That’s hard weight to shed, and not even the bicycle can get it all off you. But it definitely helps, especially if you try not to put the pounds right back on as soon as you get home.

• Pro tip: Try wearing a heart-rate monitor when you scan the news. When you find yourself surfing a hate-wave through Zone 5, remember that there is no Zone 6. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Grab a bike and get the hell out of the house.