Radio Free Dogpatch

Wherever shalt thou see a man on horseback, there also shalt thou see a horse's ass. And sometimes more than one of them, too. That's Scripture, son!

There would be less pearl-clutching in the national media over Orange Julius Caesar doing exactly what we all expected he would do had some button-down editors worn their family jewels to the Big Dance.

Alas, they did not, and now they are shocked — shocked! — that a circus needs clowns.

Fanfare and gibbons from Freesound. "Out of Step" from Zapsplat. Folding chair to the skull from YouTube. Everything else is the fault of the proprietor.

There's nothing like getting the old one-two, a bacterial sock to the snotlocker followed by an electoral blow to the breadbasket.

For treatment we visit the witch doctors of The Firesign Theatre, SNL's "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber," and that sniffling eejit behind the mic at Infernal Hound Sound.

The background music, "Abandoned," comes from Zapsplat. 

I'm not running away to Canada. I'm just running away from the news.

There's lots of bad noise out there on the day after Election Day 2024. So naturally I felt compelled to add to the cacophony. You're welcome.

Gunfire by Freesound. The rest of the racket was homemade.

The Not-So-Great Pumpkin is floating into Albuquerque this morning, a bit late for the International Balloon Fiesta, but just in time for Halloween.

Nobody knows just why he's visiting a blue town in a blue county in a blue state in the final days of his campaign for The Big Gig. Maybe it's just a pit stop to pick up a bunch of burgers to carry him through until Election Day.

For sure he's not popping round to pay us the $200K he owes us for his last visit. If this crook is stiffing Rudy the Mook for legal fees you know we'll never see a nickel.

The balloon burner and street-organ sounds come from Freesound. Everything else is my fault.

"He is risen" is not a phrase we associate with Halloween. More of an Easter thing, actually.

Unless we're discussing this podcast, which was last seen (heard) alive in Easter 2023. And now, with Halloween cackling on the horizon, the bloody thing has clawed its way out of its grave and is headed for your place with designs on your ears.

Music is courtesy of Zapsplat. Crickets come to you from Freesound. All the rotten racket is the work of the moldering old stiff who ramrods this graveyard.

Spring isn't a date on the calendar. It's more of a feeling. A warm one, if you're lucky.

For me, the vernal equinox is rarely the starter's pistol. I don't hear that big bang until Herself asks whether her Soma Double Cross is ready to ride after a long winter's nap on its hook in the garage.

By that reckoning, spring arrived in The Duck! City on April 9, Easter Sunday.

It was a few degrees short of ideal — I like to think of spring as that time when I can unsheath the arms and knees, charge those solar batteries, collect a little free vitamin D.

But if we had to roll out in arm and knee warmers, so what? As you know, you go to ride with the spring you have, not the spring you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Music and sound effects are courtesy of Zapsplat (shoutout to David-Gwyn Jones for "Looking Back Over the Hill"); the Free Music Archive (a snappy salute to the U.S. Army Blues for "Walk That Dog"), from "Live at Blues Alley"); Freesound; and Your Humble Narrator.

Birthdays. Some of us get overserved, others get 86'd with the cork barely out of the bottle.

Whoever's in charge of this party seems a bit random. Can't tell the top shelf from the well, the class from the dross. Proper ladies and gents given the shove while the most appalling tossers have the run o' the place.

Herself is back east with family and friends to raise a belated parting glass to a lifelong friend felled by COVID last fall.

I'm right here, having charge of the cat. But recently I spoke with my old comrade Charles "Live Update Guy" Pelkey, who has taken a few sucker punches since a cancer diagnosis a dozen years ago but is still on his feet in Laramie, all bouncers be damned.

It may be my birthday that's on tap come Monday, but I'd buy Charles a round to celebrate his most recent lap around the sun, may it not be his last. 

And I wish I could give Herself's pal Sue a few more birthdays. I've had more of them than I expected, certainly more than I deserve, and her candle was blown out far too soon.

The bitter economic headwinds prove too much for some in the peloton of cycling journalism.

It's a rough old road, especially when you ride it on the rivet in the bloody gutter of vulture capitalism.

The sport is pricey to do, and to cover. Advertising is a hard sell. Memberships and subscriptions can only take you so far. Old pros lose the wheel; newcomers hope to find some form.

Above the course floats the vulture capitalist, riding the ill wind, never missing a musette. It's all feed zone for that scavenger, from the grand depart to the finish line. 

Give a thought to your favorite former cycling scribe the next time you can't find any of that information that wants to be free. There's ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Unless you're a buzzard.

The Voices and I have been having a meeting of the minds as to exactly why we want to belly-flop back into this sonic kiddie pool, a shallow backwater that drains feebly and sporadically into the Great Audio River.

But apparently we're at least one mind short.

However, we do not lack for Voices. And they all have their own microphones because somebody around here got a little acquisitive a couple years back. If we don't pipe them into your heads, they'll keep hanging around in ours. Sorry about that.

The zombie podcast Radio Free Dogpatch awakens after a two-year dirt nap, scuttles out from beneath its filthy blanket of mulch, litter, and snow, and shambles about looking for something (or someone) to eat. Or at least listen.