Radio Free Dogpatch

We're off on another lap around the sun, but we're flying blind — the big yellow ball is nowhere to be seen, though we seem to have plenty of ice and snow for anyone who likes that sort of thing. Our winter weather is a mouse fart compared to the shit monsoon swamping the nation's capital, though, and with the Chinese more interested in exploring the moon than the wowie-zowies of Apple's latest an...

With the 2018 cyclocross nats going on in Louisville and some very un-'crosslike weather going on in Albuquerque, Patrick O'Grady is reminded of one dusty pre-season in 2002 when it seemed that both sides of the street were sunny, and a little too much so. Recorded using a Shure SM-58 mic, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack and a 2009 iMac. Background music is "Newborn," a jingl...

"Science finds, industry applies, man conforms." That was the subtitle to the guidebook for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and 85 years later it seems to hold up.  It brings to mind change, my reflexive resistance to same, and a 2013 "Mad Dog Unleashed" column from Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. This episode was recorded with a  Shure SM58 microphone, Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack , and the old...

It's probably not what Anheuser-Busch had in mind with the tagline, "This Bud's for you." But nevertheless, craft breweries — and a few bigger outfits, too — are finding creative ways of working weed into their beverages, which could bring a whole new meaning to the term "skunky beer." These kids today. Before long nobody under 65 will know how to roll a joint. Recorded using an Audio-Technica ATR...

Marc Sani's "Through the Grapevine" column about legislation to permit mountain bikes in wilderness, and the Republicans who support it, squeezed the grapes of many a reader of the trade magazine Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.   Patrick O'Grady never could resist kicking someone who's down, especially if someone else did the hard work of actually putting them down, so he jumps in with his lat...

Remember how it feels to lose? Keep that in mind when you win. A mediation on the midterms. Recorded using an Audio-Technica AT2100-USB microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Edited in Apple's GarageBand. The National Emblem March, composed in 1902 by Edwin Eugene Bagley, was performed by the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band. "Tiny Town" from ZapSplat.com. "You lose it, buddy," lifted fro...

Patrick O'Grady chats with his old friend and colleague Hal Walter about the running career of Hal's son, Harrison. Patrick's father was a ball-sports kind of guy, and the two never connected on that level. But Harrison has grown up sharing his father's love of running, and he just completed his first season with the high-school cross-country team. This might be unremarkable if Harrison were not a...

After reading a New Yorker essay about aging, complacency and a risk-management program gone all pear-shaped, Patrick O'Grady recalls a few painful damage-control miscues of his own, and argues that an overabundance of caution can be as perilous as throwing it to the wind. Recorded with an Audio-Technica ATR2100 USB microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Edited in Apple's GarageBand. Sound effec...

Patrick O'Grady used to hate running, and some days he still does. But it helps keep his inner fat bastard too winded to scream for seconds from the dessert cart.

Mister Boo, God's gift to veterinary medicine, is trying on canine cognitive dysfunction on for size in his Golden Years. But he rediscovers his inner puppy from time to time. George Carlin clip lifted from "40 Years of Comedy." Flute from kerri at freesound.org via a Creative Commons license. All the other bad noise comes from Patrick O'Grady | Mad Dog Media.

Mister Boo goes under the knife, but it's the Mad Dog who feels stuck.

Patrick O'Grady and his old friend Hal Walter team up for an impromptu Two Dudes Mystery Theatre podcast, discussing a pair of late poets — Jim Harrison and Merle Haggard — as well as journalism, cooking and a couple of pet projects. For more information on the topics discussed, see www.maddogmedia.com.

Our Samsung top-loading washer has just enjoyed its seventh service call in slightly more than a year of light use.

Bibleburg is getting its own bush-league pro soccer franchise, and all it asks is a million-dollar public kiss on its private lips.

It's OK to sleep on the sidewalk in the Land of the Free, as long as you're planning to buy something. And in recent years, that "something" is likely to be for yourself. But is a Scrooge-like change a-coming? Depends upon whom you ask.

The U.S. Air Force Academy's neighbors complain about (wait for it) the sound of aircraft.