Tag: 2020 presidential election

Two weeks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Flush twice, it’s a long way to Leavenworth.

Hard to believe, innit? Wasn’t it just the other day that we were all sitting in front of our TVs as the election returns began unfolding like the wings of a giant vampire bat, or maybe Rodan the Flying Monster, and we began discussing our options for the next four years?

“Ireland?”

“No, too damp. I’d start drinking again for sure.”

“Canada?”

“Too nice. We wouldn’t fit in. I wouldn’t, anyway.”

“Argentina?”

“Hey, if we wanted to while away the hours around a bunch of old Nazis we could just move back to Bibleburg.”

Now, suddenly, here we are, two weeks away from our last chance to chase Adolf Twitler and his Brown Noses out of the White House before they finish gutting the place like crackheads stripping a squat for its copper wire.

I was running a couple errands yesterday and took another glance at our neighborhood polling place as I passed. The line was even longer than on Saturday, this time stretching all the way around two sides of the strip mall and out of my sight as I barreled down Montgomery in the usual thundering herd of honking land yachts.

I chose to interpret this as a good sign. No, not the land yachts. The line. Angry people ring other people up, write letters to the editor, and vote.

I choose to hope — yes, there’s that word again — that this time the right people are angry for the right reasons.

Yeah, yeah, I know. “Hope in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up faster.”

Still, what the hell else can you do? Unless you like living in a Tom Waits song. …

‘Bigger even than I had feared’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
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.”

Old Yellers

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Double your pleasure. Or not.

Nobody would call me an undecided voter.

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.

Happy trails

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments
The Elena Gallegos Open Space was awash in goodwill on Wednesday.

Maybe it was the abrupt change in temperature from “hot as balls” to “ooh that’s nice.”

During a short ride around the Elena Gallegos Open Space yesterday morning everyone I met was in high spirits. Not a sourpuss in the lot.

Cyclists, equestrians, hikers, moms with kids, dog-walkers — everybody was smiling as though the Republic were ticking along like a fine watch instead of missing on three of eight cylinders, leaking vital fluids, and badly in need of a front-end alignment.

I haven’t been riding the trails much during the Year of the Bug because once everyone who could work from home was working from home, well … it seemed that a lot of them were not exactly working from home. Not unless their homes were on the range, where the deer and the antelope — and Your Humble Narrator — play.

With a dodgy ankle I doubted my ability to excel at “Dodge the Noob,” so mostly I abandoned the trails for the roads, though occasionally I’d hit some short, wide, low-traffic trail to cleanse the old velo-palette.

But six months later I’m more or less myself, or someone very much like him. And yesterday I didn’t have to dodge anyone. The thundering herd seemed to have thinned a bit, and those who remained didn’t give off that displaced-gym-rat vibe. Earbuds were very much not in evidence. Mostly I yielded trail, of course, even when I had the right of way. But occasionally people who had the right of way even yielded to me.

Cheery greetings were exchanged, munchkins on strider bikes applauded, horsemanship admired. Even my battered Voodoo Nakisi drew some appreciation.

“Doing some cyclocross, hey?” asked one guy after I complimented his dog, some class of burly curly black wonderpooch. I explained that my bike was a 29er with drop bars, your basic monstercrosser, just the thing for the Elena Gallegos trails, and then headed for the barn.

It was a random sample, not a scientific poll. Pundits will not cite it as evidence of a trend going into the November election. But I found it comforting. For an hour or so, anyway.