Black Irish, or ‘Who’s Your Paddy?’

Guinness is good for you. So is Bushmills. They both make the sidewalk softer.

A very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and yours. Herself and I cycled downtown to catch a bit of the annual parade, and the video clip above represents our unanimous pick for Dudes Having the Most Fun.

This particular parade entry was sponsored by a pub, Tony’s Downtown Bar. And while it could easily be construed as racist, I’m gonna give ‘em a pass, because I almost always find dudes in gorilla suits funny for some unknown reason. It’s a weakness.

Now I’m back at the ranch and fueling up for a bit of holiday cookery — a simple Irish stew involving lamb, potatoes and other tasty bits. Herself is sipping a Smithwick’s and fiddling with some video of her own.

The evening’s entertainment will consist of The Pogues, The Chieftains and “The Commitments,” with a little Frank O’Connor for bedtime reading. And tomorrow, we suffer — not just from having a drop taken, but from the return of March in its traditional form, which is to say windy and chilly. Saints preserve us.

New Year’s Eve blows

The Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter, circa 2002. How little things change in a decade.

The wind is clocking a Brazilian miles per hour out there today, which means it can strip you of your pubic hair in an instant (after first blowing off your pants).

Happily, I’m safe inside, doing a bit of light pixel-pushing for VeloNews.com, thinking halfheartedly about riding the trainer, and wondering what I can whip up to fetch to an informal New Year’s Eve gathering at a neighbor’s place. Tequila surprise? Nope, there are too many surprises lurking in that Mexican cactus whiskey. I don’t know these people well enough for that. Homemade salsa and chips will suffice.

I had hoped to get in one last ride to close out 2011, but the wind disabused me of that notion. Plus given my calorie consumption this holiday season it felt something like bolting the gate to the sty after the pig had escaped.

A quick check of my training log finds that I rode just short of 3,500 miles this year, about half of what I did 20 years ago when I was still racing a ton. No records exist of my 2001 mileage. However, I had begun losing interest in competition after a brief peak as a cyclo-crosser in 1999, and living outside Weirdcliffe made training on the road difficult and getting to races problematic and expensive, so I expect I had already begun my glide path toward the lower mileage of the recreational rider.

But there’s something about working in cycling journalism that — for me, at least — makes cycling less recreational than it might be for, say, a radiologist, carpenter or accountant. I write columns, edit stories and draw cartoons about people who ride bicycles over impossible distances with authority and panache, then perform a poor imitation of them in my free time. Some days it can feel something like dressing up in other people’s clothes, like a fat kid wearing a Superman costume.

This is one reason I was glad to find I could take up running again after a few months off. I don’t earn a dime from the sport or know anything about it and thus can contentedly lumber along, nodding sympathetically at the pained expressions on the other runners I encounter. It’s more medicinal than recreational, the equivalent of a hearty dose of fish oil or flossing your teeth.

And man — you want to sample an activity that elevates cycling above other pasatiempos, take up running three days a week. It makes a brand-new Brooks saddle feel like the gentle hand of the Lord.

So let’s all do more of it in 2012, no matter how badly. It’s an election year, after all, and people will need the comic relief.

Happy New Year to you and yours.

• Late update: Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog Media IWW tuque to the folks WordPress tells me are the Most Active Commenters of 2011:

1. Khal S. (473)
2. Larry T. (296)
3. Ben S. (117)
4. James (116)
5. Libby (111)

You folks keep the joint lively and it’s a pleasure to have you — and all the rest of you — stopping by.

Season’s growlings

Capping off another terrific Christmas: from left, Bouncing Buddy Banzai the Spinning Japanese Chin; Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein, who clearly had too much eggnog last night; and Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

Preparations for the annual holiday feast have begun at Chez Dog. Herself’s gift, a Canon Vixia HF M41 camcorder, is charging on the kitchen table (she aced a video-production class this fall) as she assembles a raspberry cobbler.

Next up is a cornbread-stuffing recipe we’ve never tried before — the cornbread itself is already done, and top-notch it is, too — followed by an appetizer of toasted baguettes topped with a rich spread of prosciutto, butter, Parmigiano-Reggiano and pine nuts (also a newcomer); mashed spuds; sauteéd spinach with mushrooms; giblet gravy, cranberry relish; and last but not least, roast turkey.

I usually do something offbeat for Christmas, like a Northern New Mexican feast or a chicken cacciatore, but this year I decided we needed the comfort food. The leftovers are the best part of a traditional turkey dinner — turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas, turkey soup, and whatnot. You cook like a mad bastard for one day and reheat leftovers for three days. What’s not to like?

Meanwhile, the traditional Humiliation of the Animals has been accomplished. The furry swine failed to get me a MacBook Air or an iPhone 4, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that pass without retribution. You can order that stuff online, f’chrissakes. No messy human interaction or trips to the mall required:

“Hello, how may I help you?

“Meow.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Meow!”

“Come again?”

“Meeeowwwwwwrrrr. ... Oh, fuck it, Buddy, you try.”

“Woof?”

Ho ho ho, Baby Jesus!

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.

Thorazine is on my Xmas list

"You said a bad word," says Mia. "And another. And another. And another. ..."

What’s been going on around here, you ask?

Well, let me think here for a minute. Hmm. …

We had the big Thanksgiving Day U-turn from Bibleburg to Fort Collins and back on Thursday; a full day of VeloNewsery plus dinner with our across-the-street neighbors Larry, Jill and Wendy on Friday; lunch with (and saying adios to) our wonderful next-door neighbor Judy on Saturday, with an extra-large side of work; and work work work on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, culminating in yet another dinner with friends tonight, a northern New Mexican project to which I tended between bouts of pixel-pushing for the Boulder boyos.

Whew. Long week for an old dog. And it ain’t over yet.

As you might imagine, something’s had to give around here, and that something is exercise. My ass is approaching critical mass, and I ain’t talking about the traffic-snarling bicycle parade, either.

I did sneak out for a 20-minute “run” this afternoon before putting the beans on the stove. Folks probably thought they were seeing a particularly ugly, sluggish zombie on the prowl.

And I probably managed to sweat off a couple of grams running around the kitchen, chopping, mincing, slicing, sautéing and stirring bits of this and that until in desperation, running out of time, I finally dialed down the menu from cheese enchiladas in green sauce with one side of beans in chipotle and another of red chile roasted potatoes to a bare-bones platter — bean burritos smothered in green with a side of the aforementioned spuds.

The bad news is, I probably put those lost grams right back on by going back for seconds. Plus pie. Did I mention pie? Oh, Lord.

Meanwhile, we will return to our regularly scheduled snark come Thursday, when I have a day off — and the weatherman is calling for wind-driven snow and a high in the 20s. I foresee much grumbling and the first stationary-trainer ride of the season, not necessarily in that order.

No cash? No problem

Herself and I ordinarily start our Thanksgiving Day drive north to dine with my sis and bro-in-law by listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and finish the drive home with Sam Kinison’s “Live From Hell.” It’s not exactly your typical family tradition, but then we’re not exactly your typical family.

Alas, this trip we got rooked out of Arlo — KRCC wasn’t playing it until noon, when we were well out of range, and KUNC must have played it before we got in range. *

So we listened to Sam on the way up and Richard Pryor’s “… is it something I said?” on the way back. And thus, since the Comedy Rule of Three is clearly in effect here today, and in order to shine a bit of comedic light on the festival of consumerist idiocy called “Black Friday” that precedes The Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told, we herewith present a portion of George Carlin’s 10th HBO special, “George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy.”

* Incidentally, we did finally get our Arlo fix around 8:30 p.m. Bibleburg time thanks to the miracle of the streaming internets. There may be a god after all.

That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird

Mia and Turkish watch as Buddy (not pictured) gets a grooming from Herself.

The mighty river of VeloNews finally slowed to a trickle today. I fired off an invoice to Corporate and slipped out for a short ride.

Several impatient motorists seemed in dire need of a brisk hosing down with a fire extinguisher full of tryptophan on this day before Thanksgiving. I tallied exactly 349,392 moving violations intended to kill me before abandoning the count.

Plenty of static violations, too, my favorite being the bulbous land yacht parked smack dab in the middle of the bike lane, right under the “No Parking In Bike Lane” sign. This appalling lack of reading comprehension is not encouraging to those of us who earn our meager livings from wielding the English language.

Oh, well. At least I got my big ass out in the late-November sunshine (this is not strictly accurate, of course; it was wearing bib shorts). Herself and I took the critters out for an airing, too. Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein, Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Banzai Buddy the Japanese Wonder Chin all scored themselves a little free vitamin D, which can be hard to come by this time of year.

That’s a little something to be thankful for in trying times when we 99 percenters hear the distant ring of carving knives clashing rhythmically against sharpening steels and wonder if we’re what’s for dinner.

And if that doesn’t get your drumstick throbbing, raise a glass to longtime Friend of the DogS(h)ite Boz, who notes in comments that he’s back to working for The Man.

From our family to yours, happy Thanksgiving.

Boo!

Che Chihuahua, Fido Castro, take your pick.

I’ve always enjoyed Halloween. You get to be someone else for a day. What’s not to like?

My biggest problem in designing a costume used to be dealing with the limitations of personal appearance (long hair, full beard and earring). Let’s see, there’s hippie, pirate and … and. …

Mom used to make our costumes when we were kids, and for Halloween the year I spent as a college dropout I got her to whip one up based on a cartoon character of mine, Loadedman (don’t ask; it was just about as bad as you can imagine, a half-assed fusion of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Wart-Hog and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers).

One Halloween a newspaper colleague and I dressed up as the Holy Trinity. He was God, and I was Christ, complete with cross and crown of twist-tie thorns. We couldn’t find a third, so we slapped a happy-face sticker on a white helium balloon and hey presto! The Holy Ghost.

They say smoking that shit makes you smart. Don't believe a word of it. My cartoon character Loadedman proved otherwise in the Seventies.

Another year I was Che Guevara (there’s that hair-and-beard thing again). It was a twofer, as I got to indulge my commie fantasies and firearms fetish at the same time.

Best Halloween of all: the one when Herself and I hooked up for the first time in Santa Fe. Don’t recall my costume for that one; probably hippie, pirate or … or. …

Now, of course, I have an entirely different personal-appearance problem come All Hallows Eve. No hair, neatly trimmed white Van Dyke, earring. Let’s see here: Hippie’s obviously out, so that leaves, uh … uhhhh … arrrrrrrrr.

Our house is a very very very fine house

Our two cats in the yard, Turkish and Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on safari in the backyard jungle. Shhhh — they're hunting grasshoppers. Hahahahaha. ...