Tag: The Supremes

Up the Wazoo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
It’s always happy trails on the Blue Wazoo.

DeeCee being a rather long slog via Subaru, I decided I’d settle for a short mood-altering run on the neighborhood trails yesterday.

I won’t travel by air, as you know. And if I did, the airline probably wouldn’t let me take my torch and pitchfork, even as checked baggage.

Anyway, what do I know about taxidermy? Sure, I could collect a few souvenir heads in our nation’s capital with my handy-dandy Gomboy folding saw, but then what? The TSA says you can board a plane with fresh meat, but they may decide to add a cautionary note about “the severed heads of Supreme Court justices” after running your lumpy carry-on through the scanner twice because they didn’t believe what they saw on the first pass.

And if you do manage to make it home without incident, preserving and mounting your prizes for display in the den is not a chore you want to hand off to anyone who doesn’t owe you a really big favor.

Shucks, even a six-pack of ears pinned to a cork board in the garage can make for some pointed conversations you’d rather not have, even if you explain that the fuckers never used them for listening, only to keep their trifocals from falling into their black robes or onto the bench, and anyway, with the fat stacks of attaboys they get from their rich pals they can have a new pair grafted on before you can say, “Case dismissed.”

So, yeah. Herself and I went for a nice trail run in the sunshine, and afterward I decided I was still not in the mood to update myself on the latest news, so I changed costumes and took the Voodoo Wazoo for an enjoyable 90 minutes of light gnar-shredding in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

Today I see the courtroom drama has shifted back to Manhattan. Time for another run. I can’t remember where I put that saw.

Will the defendant please … relax?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Here’s a pic of a cute lil’ kitty-cat to distract you from the other one.

Call me cynical (“You’re cynical!”), but I don’t think that other cat, the bedraggled, raggedy-ass orange tom that keeps slinking around the joint, yowling, spraying on the national furniture, and clawing the Stars & Stripes curtains into ribbons, is in danger of being put to sleep anytime soon.

Nossiree, he’s got himself a solid majority of black-robed laps in which to curl up while he awaits delivery of The Big Fish, the one that got away on Jan. 6, 2021.

Fuck me running.

Meanwhile, the playacting continues. Government shutdown: Will they or won’t they? Dueling VIP visits to The Border, that deadly, open-air, razor-wired waiting room where all the brown foreigners go to apply for the jobs nobody else wants. The Senate leadership following the House down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Gaza. Ukraine. “Dynamic pricing” at Wendy’s.

And now, this: Is a president a king?

I thought we settled that question back in 1776. But as I recall, that king required a few years of rather aggressive convincing before he conceded the point.

Mojo is everywhere

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Mojo Nixon, like Elvis, has left the building.

Come bedtime whatever is Me climbs into its skull, pulls up the ladder and bolts the trapdoor, then settles in for a long night of home movies.

Don’t expect any reviews. We’re not talking not Oscar contenders here. Art-house stuff, shot using iPhones or Super 8 with Byzantine plots and weird camera angles. Definitely not suitable for anyone under the age of 69 without a history of substance abuse, terminal confusion, and attitude poisoning. Popcorn is not served.

Then come morning whatever is Me shuts off the VCR, glances at the dashboard to see if all the idiot lights are green, and then pops the hatch, drops the ladder, and starts pulling the body back on like some tattered and patched Iron Man Halloween costume badly in need of a laundering.

“Jaysis, are we trying to put this shit on backwards? Toes, report! We still got 10 of you guys? OK, there’s No. 10, hung up on a snag somewhere around the right calf. Someone trim that nail! And what about that left knee? More snap, crackle and pop than a bowl of breakfast cereal. Hands, you still at about 70 percent? Sixty? Well, it’ll have to do. Time to open the eyes, we’re redlined on the pressure gauge down in Holding Tank One. Windshield wipers, stat! No washer fluid? Buckle up, we’re gonna have to do this on instruments. … Sound the alarm! We’re going in!”

It gets harder every morning. Well, no, not that. But everything else. Especially in February. All the lubricants are low and/or congealed, the various belts loose and skipping on their sprockets. More bad noise than a haunted house. There is a certain uncertainty in the landing gear, down where the rubber meets the road.

And then you finally get the old ambulatory junkyard to shake, rattle, and roll … only to find out that Mojo Nixon has gone off to join Elvis just as The Supremes start tuning up for the Orange Fartblossom Special. Died on a country-music cruise that he was co-hosting? What? Mojo’s gonna get together with Glenn Frey before Don Henley does!