Pull it, sir

Oh, Lord, is this ever looking like a long week. A deadline with one outfit, technical difficulties with another, and Herself dashing from one end of the state to another like a turpentined ferret, leaving me in charge of the menagerie. Plus I am not on my way to Sea Otter. Party time this is not.

That said, the forecast calls for more or less spectacular weather for a few days, so I’ll try to pedal a few pounds off the Large Irish Ass between chores. What the hell? It’s not like I’m gonna be doing any post-Pulitzer interviews on MSNBC. When the hell is that outfit going to devise a category for Gratuitous Use of Filthy Language In a Blog Devoted To No Particular Purpose?

Doggy Pop and the Stooges

The Soma Double Cross in touring mode.

After the deluge earlier this week, I reconfigured the Soma Double Cross as a fendered kinda-sorta touring bike instead of an unfendered kinda-sorta cyclo-cross bike. Naturally, conditions have been dry and windy ever since, so much so that today I became a pedestrian rather than gnaw on the gentle double-digit zephyrs.

The weather wizards say all this will change over the weekend, but I’ll believe it when I see it. In the meantime, the fenders stay on as a Stooge-like double-finger to the eyes for the gods.

Speaking of the Stooges (nyuk nyuk), the Farrelly brothers’ tribute to Nyukledom opens this weekend. I’ve seen two reviews, one from a man, the other from a woman, both basically going “Awwwww. …” Cute? The Three Stooges? Nawwwww. I think I can wait for the free library DVD on this one.

Right now we’re up to our bowl cuts in “Boardwalk Empire,” which gets off to an awfully slow start for the uninitiated, and “The Wire,” which was just so goddamn motherfuckin’ good that we watchin’ them shits again, yo, a’ight? Maybe this time we won’t need the subtitles.

Post-birthday nose meets same old grindstone

A thousand thank-yous to all who proffered happy-birthday wishes instead of death threats.

The festivities began with a pleasant two-hour bike ride — headwind out, tailwind back — and concluded with a high-speed burst of cookery after Herself invited the neighbors over.

We’ve been to their house for eats a couple of times, but had yet to reciprocate, so never having cooked for them I stuck with my basic skill set — a simple pico de gallo with blue corn chips followed by a pot of pintos in chipotle, which I turned into burritos smothered in hot Pueblo green chile with a side of roasted potatoes in red Chimayo chile.

Herself contributed a salad and a delicious raspberry cobbler. Beer and wine were consumed, along with a dollop of uisce beatha. Laughter ensued, and a fine time was had by all, except for the Turk’, who despises company, especially if it includes an aggro’ Chihuahua named Cujo.

Now it’s deadline time at the DogHaus, and somebody around here needs to get real funny real fast. We didn’t spend much on my birthday, but the White Tornado has a new fuel pump and the upstairs toilet has new guts, and Toyota mechanics and plumbers don’t work for free.

R.I.P., Peter Bergman

"Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" — in the original vinyl.

Sad news: Peter Bergman of The Firesign Theatre died today of leukemia.

The Firesigns weren’t for everyone, but they sure worked for me. I was a devout acolyte of their intelligent, absurd comedy years before I ever heard of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

“Waiting for the Electrician Or Someone Like Him,” “How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All,” “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus,” “The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra,” “Everything You Know Is Wrong” — I have all of them and more, in vinyl and/or CD.

Some of my oldest friends originally coalesced around an impromptu recital of “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye” in a Greeley living room one night in the early 1970s. A bunch of us saw the Firesigns perform in Denver some years later, and as quickly as they delivered a line the audience fired it back at them. I don’t know whether that would be gratifying or exasperating.

The Firesigns — Bergman, Philip Proctor, Philip Austin and David Ossman — had their roots in Bergman’s Radio Free Oz, a nightly radio show on Pacifica’s KPFK. It seems safe to say that without Bergman, there would have been no Firesign Theatre — no Bozos, no Nick Danger, no Porgie Tirebiter, and a damn’ sight less laughter in the world, a commodity that is always in short supply.

• Late update: an extended obituary from The Los Angeles Times and another from The New York Times.

This Bibleburgian Life

Longtime Friend of the DogS(h)ite Khal S. notes that the tax-loathing, big-gummint-fearing denizens of Bibleburg are profiled on this week’s episode of “This American Life,” carried on fine public-radio stations nationwide. Give it a listen and share my pain.

There is only one ‘Return’, OK?

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones and Randal Graves of “Clerks II” agree: “Return of the Jedi” rules. Discuss.

Rouleurs and Stooges and ’cross, oh my!

Never give a mad dog an open mic'.

Friend of the site Larry T., commenting over at VeloNoise, directed me to a witty review of cyclo-cross commentary American style by his pals at Rouleur magazine.

Naturally, I was inspired to bang out my own take on things.

Maybe it’s that I’ve spent too many years working alone from a home office, but I find myself less tolerant of racket in my advanced geezerhood. And that’s what I find most homegrown cycling commentary to be.

No disrespect intended to Dave Towle, Richard Fries or Brad Sohner, who had a more restrained delivery than his two comrades. It takes ’nads to put yourself out there, mic’d up and on camera, and then crank up the old P.T. Barnum for a few hours (“Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry!”). I’d just like to see them dial down the theatricality a click or two or three. That sort of bombast is hard on an iMac’s speakers.

There’s plenty of drama inherent in the racing. No need to slather on more. It’s like watching someone take a can of Krylon to a Moots.

Meanwhile, my fellow geezers are mixing it up at the 2012 masters cyclo-cross worlds in Louisville, and all the usual suspects are serving up the whup-ass from a muddy 55-gallon drum. It would be fun to be there.

But it would be even more fun to be there in 2013, when Eva Bandman Park hosts the UCI Cyclo-cross Elite World Championships. Hell, if I can get there I might be doing some hollering my own bad self. “One to go! Onetogo onetogo onetogo!”

More daylight at the end of the tunnel

Finally, enough snow to shovel. And shovel, and shovel, and. ...

We finally got a snowfall worthy of the name — about eight inches’ worth over a couple of days, just in time for solstice.

Lacking a gym membership and possessing the feeble upper body of the geriatric cyclist I suffered through multiple repetitions of precipitation redistribution between other chores — running VeloNews.com, cooking, serving as staff to cats, fetching the holiday vittles from Whole Paycheck, some last-minute gift-shopping and a welcome visit to the backcracker (though she probably found it less so, as I make her earn those BMW payments).

Nearly eight inches ... and just about the biggest dumper we've seen in our eight years here.

The VeloNews.com thing has been particularly irksome. I haven’t worked five days a week for 20 years — not at the same mind-numbing task, anyway — and frankly I don’t know how you poor bastards stand it. We’re still minus a web editor, and I’m minus a 2012 contract until said executive gets hired, so with eight days remaining on my 2011 deal with these people I’ve been spending more than a few of our very short daylight hours revisiting many of the late George Carlin’s fabled Seven Words.

A couple things caused me to dial down the volume a bit, though. While motoring around in the snow the other day I noticed some poor sod in a hard hat, up to his tits in a right-lane ditch, digging away as the heavy holiday traffic slalomed around him. As working for a living goes this makes pixel-pushing look like sharing a hot tub with Elle MacPherson, Scarlett Johansson and a couple flagons of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque.

Then my friend and colleague Hal Walter reported in from Weirdcliffe, recounting a tile-and-carpet project that turned into your basic 17-day nightmare, forcing him and his family from their home as appliances and furniture were torn from their proper places and stacked in the living room while various artisans were hired and fired. At least I get to be pissed off in my own house.

And finally another friend and colleague, Charles Pelkey, who has been enduring weeks of chemotherapy for cancer, had another health scare. While taking his latest infusion he developed a dysrhythmia that sent him to the ER for a battery of heart tests; seems potentially fatal dysrhythmias are a rare side effect of the drug Taxol and his oncologist wasn’t taking any chances.

Happily, the problem disappeared when Charles got on a treadmill and elevated his heart rate. And better still, the doc decided that enough was enough already and gave Charles a get-out-of-chemo card — he had been slated to continue treatments through the holidays and most of January 2012.

Me, I take an aspirin now and then when I get a brain cramp.

So it looks like I don’t have anything to bitch about, goddamnit. But wait … I can always bitch about not having anything to bitch about! It’s the best present ever!

Here’s hoping y’all have nothing to bitch about, too. Happy holidays to you and yours.

Whipping post

My friend and colleague Charles Pelkey will be appearing on “The Outspoken Cyclist” with Diane Lees on Saturday. You should give it a listen.

But first, listen to Frank and the band performing the Allman Brothers classic “Whipping Post” live in Barcelona, circa 1988 — with a few interesting alterations to the original lyrics — and praise Jeebus that Frank never got hooked up with Cher the way Gregg Allman did.

Nanook rubs it

Great googly-moogly! The thermometer has been pegged at the low teens all day long. I ventured out exactly twice, the first time to broom away the light snow that fell overnight, and the second time to collect a few bottles of antifreeze from the local grog shop in order to toast my fellow Zappatistas on this, the frigid second day of Zappadan 2011.

The temps are supposed to drop to minus-7 tonight. This would feel like a relaxing soak in a hot tub to my man Charles Pelkey, who reports that last night’s low in Laramie approached minus-30. The thud of engine blocks exploding and water mains bursting must keep folks up at night.

The downside about being stuck indoors on a slow cycling-news day is that one is tempted to look at the real news, and lately that is enough to set the stoutest young Eskimo boy to beating himself upside the head with a lead-filled snowshoe. Or perhaps depriving himself of his sight through the application to the eyes (via a vigorous circular motion) of the Deadly Yellow Snow, from right there where the huskies go.

I mean, can you imagine a world in which Newt Gingrich is the front-runner for the GOP nomination for president of the United States?

Hey … I think I just cheered myself up.