Radio Free Dogpatch
Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink, and even worse with a keyboard. Now he has a microphone. God help us all.
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The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful
02/28/2026
The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful
The Duck! City was smokin' the day after the State of the Union crashed and burned, reaching a high of 72 degrees — which was 18 degrees above average. It's nice to be above average in something. But still, damn. In any event, the roses are budding and so is everything else. The primates who call this desert home may view with alarm the federal knuckles being dragged into the Colorado River Compact, which remains to its signatories and will join the long list of issues about which His Excremency King Piggy the Sticky-Fingered knows nothing and cares even less. And Your Humble Narrator, who ordinarily yearns to toddle off to someplace toasty about this time of year, finds himself in the awkward position of grumbling about beautiful weather. At home. In February. All of which means — yes, yes, yes — it's time for a Coconut Telegraph edition of Radio Free Dogpatch. Apologies to the late Jimmy Buffett, from whom I • Technical notes: RFD uses the from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ; ; Rogue Amoeba's ; Apple's GarageBand, and for a quick wash and brushup. The and the come from Freesound. The background music, "Easy Stroll," is from YouTube's audio library. All other barks, bleats, and belches are the work of the thirsty, sunburnt, untraveled Irish-American behind the bar at this non-alcoholic pub.
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Idiocracy 2026: Older but no wiser
02/18/2026
Idiocracy 2026: Older but no wiser
With having a drop taken and/or a mind wandering being common along both branches of the family tree it behooves a fella from time to time to test-drive what remains of his wits, if any. It struck me recently that for perfectly sound (har de har har) reasons I hadn't done an episode of Radio Free Dogpatch since February 2025. But times pass and things change and people clearly aren't getting any smarter, especially me. So here we are so, dusting off what few of the mad skills I possessed only in theory not so very long ago and taking them for a spin around the old podcasting studio to see what falls off. For openers, the 24-inch LG display that now supplements the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro in my main office is no longer attached to the MacBook Pro in the studio, which is 10 years older and an inch smaller, displaywise, and I cannot recommend such a tiny stage for audio theater as senescence staggers forward, trying to remember where it left its spectacles (atop its head). Auphonic is no longer a strictly free app, which failed to astonish me in this, the New Gilded Age, so creator and audience must deal with what they call a "Jingle" fore and aft. Jingle my bollocks, boys ... I'll be looking for some other way to give me chin music a tuneup before I next set it out on its street corner to busk for nothing. Finally, Libsyn has gotten a makeover as well, but if you're reading this you can be sure that I managed to negotiate their tricksy little maze. An old ratoncito can still cut the cheese. Find the cheese! I meant find the cheese! Where the hell are my glasses? Oh ... never mind. Could this be the start of something big? Probably not. Mostly I wanted to see if I could still get ’er done. Also, I was bored. Giving the old brain-box a wee scrape and a splash of paint is a fine way to stay out of the wind, which is full of allergens and other evil tidings. • Technical notes: RFD uses the from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ; ; Rogue Amoeba's ; Apple's GarageBand, and for a wash and brushup. Sound byte from Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" lifted from YouTube. Booing crowd, kicked-in door, and Celtic tune from Freesound. "Out of Step," which you've heard here before, comes from Audio Hero via Zapsplat. Special guest appearance from Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who despite a screechy meow is healthy as a horse as she approaches her 19th (!) birthday.
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Burning Down the House
02/08/2025
Burning Down the House
You think we’re shipping the wrong people to Guantanamo? I’m old enough to remember a time when, if some civilian loudmouth waltzed through your front door barking orders, you could kick him in the plums, give him the old heave and also the ho, and get back to whatever it was you were doing before all the bad noise started. Yet somehow, in the Year of Our Lard 2025, we’ve allowed this porcelain pissant from South Africa to start rearranging the national furniture, to say nothing of the org chart, without so much as a “Just who the hell elected you to anything, anyway, Fisheyes?” Raise a ruckus and you get frog-marched out the door, either to the breadline or maybe a gated beachfront community that doesn't feature in Beelzebozo's plans for the tourist trade. Meanwhile, our media watchdogs just keep licking their own nuts; chasing random brain farts down countless odiferous ratholes; and “fact-checking” the arsonists who are burning down the government faster and more thoroughly than the Brits did during the War of 1812. But be of good cheer: There's plenty of bark and bite to be had in the latest edition of Radio Free Dogpatch! • Technical notes: RFD favors the from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ; ; Apple's GarageBand, and for a wash and brushup. The Captain from "Cool Hand Luke" communicates to us from The and subsequent hail from Freesound. The French taunter you may recall from " and the Holy Grail." to Gitmo, a newspaper's running, and courtesy of Freesound. honk at us from Zapsplat. And last, but far from least, that's Sam Cooke working the All the other gang violence is the fault of Your Humble Narrator.
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On Thin ICE
01/29/2025
On Thin ICE
The ICE boyos have brought a chill to Chicago, Aurora, and even the desert Southwest as Jesus Hitler starts making good on his promise of mass deportations. Round up the usual suspects. A little song and war dance for the TV cameras. “Dr. Phil” even got in on the act in Chicago. Shock and awe, baby. It works, for a while. But some folks just don’t take kindly to being shoved around. Soon even the fanboys will find the price of admission to the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus ("There's One Born Every Minute!) just keeps going up, as honest immigrant workers vanish alongside the bad guys, citizens decline to take their jobs in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, food processing and service industries, and goods and services get more expensive and/or harder to find. But never fear. We'll be annexing Canada! And Greenland! And the Sudetenland (whoops, wrong fascists, never mind). The Circus will roll on a Road of Bones until the world is under One Big Red White and Blue Tent (handmade by skilled artisans in border internment camps)! While you await your own personal invitation to assist the authorities with this project (and their inquiries) you might as well listen to the latest All-American Episode of — yes, yes, yes — Radio Free Dogpatch. Could be the last one. You never know who's lending us an ear, or why. • Technical notes: RFD favors the from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ; ; Apple's GarageBand, and for a wash and brushup. The trailer theme from "Fort Apache" comes from YouTube, as do Rick's conversations with Major Strasser and Sam in "Casablanca." Bob and Doug McKenzie say "Good day" from SCTV's The drum-heavy martial music (by Gregor Quendel) and “Out of Step” are both courtesy of The Mescalero Apache tribe's take on a member's run-in with an ICE agent The Guardian reports on The Associated Press covered At The Atlantic Mark Leibovich soon to be our 52nd state. And at the New Republic the pestilential ordure dropped on birthright citizenship.
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Howling at an Orange Moon
01/17/2025
Howling at an Orange Moon
Blame the Wolf Moon. A vacationing wife. An acid flashback. Whatever. But when I blinked myself awake in the dark on Tuesday morning I had no idea where I was. If dementia runs in your family, as it does in mine, this can freak you right the hell out. But I found it oddly exhilarating. “Where am I? Who knows? Who cares? This is great!" And then I remembered. “Aw, shit. Trumpsylvania.” We're just a few all-too-short days away from the sequel to a movie I never wanted to see in the first place. "Mr. Hyde Goes to Washington" should've been a one-off. But nooooooo. Everything has to be a franchise now. When the Joker started getting top billing we should've known what was coming. It's just one evil clown after another. • Technical notes: RFD favors the from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ; ; Apple's GarageBand, and for a wash and brushup. The wolf howls from , as do the and is from "Peer Gynt" by Edvard Grieg. Arthur, King of the Britons, chatting with an anarcho-syndicalist peasant come from You'll catch a snippet of in there too (almost went with "Death Valley Days."). The ass-kissing is by Your Humble Narrator. The sound effect, not the actual, y'know, like, obesiance. And the classic is courtesy of Ted Hawkins via YouTube. As usual, all the other raving can be pinned on the landlord of this dump.
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Highway 666 Revisited
01/08/2025
Highway 666 Revisited
Another Jan. 6 has come and gone. This time we managed to skip the armed-insurrection part of the program, so yay for us. Turns out that when they win a presidential election, The System works. Who knew? Watching Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the 2024 election results this week sent me careening down Memory Lane, revisiting a night in the sneezer in 1977, a Louis C.K. dramedy from 2016, and the last three pestilential erections. Background music comes from , , , and , all thanks to YouTube. The 2016 dramedy remains available on Louis C.K.'s website. Audio of the 2024 election-results certification courtesy Dana Carvey on "SNL" was lifted from YouTube. comes (har de har har) from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The Walk of Shame is from The headline is a riff on Bob Dylan's not incidentally in honor of RFD's 61st episode. Finally, ask not for whom honks; it honks for thee (from All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.
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Doing It Old School, or 'Yeah! Science (Fiction)!'
12/19/2024
Doing It Old School, or 'Yeah! Science (Fiction)!'
I always liked science fiction. Science, not so much. Science always seemed rigid and impersonal. But science fiction, or speculative fiction, if you prefer — especially of the apocalyptic variety — spoke to the gloomy bog-trotter in my DNA. So I studied the fiction instead of the science, with predictable results. When it came time for me to go to college, there was only one in the state that would accept me with my miserable GPA. However, I was excused from freshman comp because I was a fool for words, as long as there were no equations to solve. SF seems best to me when the future isn't pretty, but people manage to muddle through somehow. "A Clockwork Orange." "Alas, Babylon." Or "Station Eleven." We watched the "Station Eleven" TV series on Max, recently watched it again, and afterward I finally got around to reading the book, which as usual is considerably different. Author Emily St. John Mandel , though, saying she thought the series "deepened the story in a lot of really interesting ways." I doubt that I'm adding any significant depth with this latest episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, but the notions contained therein have been taking up space in my head for a while now and the Voices would like them to leave. They're your problem now. • Technical notes: RFD favors the from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ; ; Apple's GarageBand, and for a wash and brushup. NASA noises, starship flyby, countryside ambience and appreciative audience come from is the work of the inimitable Tom Lehrer The is from And the outro clip is from The Firesign Theatre's "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus," which remains all too relevant. All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.
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The Nanofesto: Writing a Wrong
12/12/2024
The Nanofesto: Writing a Wrong
When the John Laws collared their suspect in the CEO assassination he was said to have had in his possession a ghost gun, some fake I.D., and a 262-word "manifesto." By the ghosts of Marx and Engels! That's what I call phoning it in. Except our man didn't use a phone to compose it. Or a laptop. It was handwritten. Whether on papyrus, stone tablets, or a shithouse wall was not made clear. What is abundantly clear, however, is that 262 words do not a manifesto make. And let me tell you why. and both come from YouTube. comes from The police siren, screeching tires, ballpoint scribbling, and game-show buzzer come from All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.
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The Winter of Our Dissed Content
12/04/2024
The Winter of Our Dissed Content
At The Atlantic magazine, Noah "Fargo" Hawley says too many reporters these days. Meanwhile, in a email from Mother Jones magazine, David Corn warns that the legacy media's value-neutral, highly inaccurate reviews of the various hams auditioning for parts in the Pestilence-Erect's latest play constitutes a form of “sanewashing." Hey, our little purse pooch of a podcast may not lift the biggest leg on the journalistical block, but it dearly loves a good pissing contest. While the big dogs go high we'll squeak in a little squirt down low. The music, "Black Fedora" and "On the Job," and the droning sounds of networking and chanting all come from All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.
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Bigger Even Than I Had Feared
11/27/2024
Bigger Even Than I Had Feared
The headline is an inside joke among family and friends, a line of dialogue lifted from the 1978 novel by Thomas McGuane. And now it's the title of a Radio Free Dogpatch podcast, a unsubtle bit of misdirection concerning an oversized orange turd that has proven impossible for a confused and bilious nation to flush. My apologies to Mr. McGuane. Sly and The Family Stone contributed a few seconds of from their YouTube channel. Freesound kicked in , a , an , a , and an And Judge Dredd from YouTube. All the other racket comes courtesy of The Proprietor.
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Orange Julius Seizure
11/20/2024
Orange Julius Seizure
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. and from Freesound. "Out of Step" from Folding chair to the skull from Everything else is the fault of the proprietor.
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Infected, Neglected and Elected
11/14/2024
Infected, Neglected and Elected
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 , SNL's and that sniffling eejit behind the mic at Infernal Hound Sound. The background music, "Abandoned," comes from
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Running on Empty
11/07/2024
Running on Empty
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. The rest of the racket was homemade.
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Balloons and Gasbags
10/31/2024
Balloons and Gasbags
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 and sounds come from Freesound. Everything else is my fault.
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Not Dead Yet
10/23/2024
Not Dead Yet
"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 Crickets come to you from All the rotten racket is the work of the moldering old stiff who ramrods this graveyard.
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Easter Service: Making a Joyful Noise
04/16/2023
Easter Service: Making a Joyful Noise
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 (shoutout to David-Gwyn Jones for ); the (a snappy salute to the U.S. Army Blues for ), from "Live at Blues Alley"); ; and Your Humble Narrator.
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Marching Forward, Looking Backward: Happy Birthday to Who?
03/26/2023
Marching Forward, Looking Backward: Happy Birthday to Who?
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.
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Welcome to the Feed Zone: TANSTAAFL, Tifosi
03/11/2023
Welcome to the Feed Zone: TANSTAAFL, Tifosi
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.
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Sounding it Out: The Air's Not Dead, It's Just Not At All Well
02/26/2023
Sounding it Out: The Air's Not Dead, It's Just Not At All Well
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.
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Truly Awful Ain't So bad
02/16/2023
Truly Awful Ain't So bad
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.
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Spring Broken
03/01/2021
Spring Broken
Patrick O'Grady used to wheelsuck the bike magazines to spring break in Arizona or California. Then the biz wised up and he had to stick his own snoot into the breeze. Until last year, when like many of us, he enjoyed all the travel of a rigid aluminum fork. And now, in Year Two of the Plague, he's stuck — because he hasn't been stuck.
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Warmed Twice
02/22/2021
Warmed Twice
When Texas sank back into the Ice Age, Patrick O'Grady was reminded of the good old days on a wind-scoured rockpile outside Weirdcliffe, Colorado, where the power shut off whenever it was most inconvenient, the candle lanterns and Coleman two-burner were close at hand, and a Lopi fireplace insert and a tall woodpile kept the toilets from exploding like a bottle of beer left overlong in the freezer.
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Road Hard
02/15/2021
Road Hard
Or, My Home Really Is On the Range
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Have Mercy, Been Waitin' on the E-Bus All Day
02/08/2021
Have Mercy, Been Waitin' on the E-Bus All Day
There's something about February that's guaranteed to set a Mad Dog to howling. This time it's Impeachy the Clown as the opening act for our local bozos and their buses. Did everyone forget to lock their wigs before their moment of simulated exhilaration, or what?
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Up in the Air or Down in the Dumps?
02/01/2021
Up in the Air or Down in the Dumps?
Lockup got you down? Fortress of Solitude starting to smell like feet, fast food, and farts? Well, Clark, turn off that Zoom cam, take off the glasses, and see if you can still clear your top tube in a single bound.
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Bleach Blankety-Blanket Bingo
04/27/2020
Bleach Blankety-Blanket Bingo
Being on lockdown is like watching a bad movie. Sure, it sucks, but if you bail early, you might miss something. Or catch something. Why not just lean back, put your feet up, and enjoy (hating) the show? The credits will roll soon enough. And we know who's not getting a best-director Oscar for this hot mess. Say, is it just me, or does this soda taste like bleach?
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The New Abnormal
04/18/2020
The New Abnormal
Patience, like yeast, beans, and toilet paper, is just one more thing that people are running short of as the lockdown drags on. Patrick O'Grady tapped his supply to get through eight weeks with a broken ankle, but thinks he has a little bit left over to deal with The Bug.
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Hello In There
04/11/2020
Hello In There
It's tough to take baby steps with 66-year-old feet. Especially when one of ’em doesn't work all that well. But jolly old Doc O'Grady feels it's prudent to hobble out to check society's temperature now and then, especially when cabin fever is starting to feel as deadly as any other bug.
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Doing Time
04/01/2020
Doing Time
Staying at home, social distancing — these practices aren't jailin', but they're not exactly living' large, either. Sure, your cell is a little bigger, the guards a little less present, the food better. It's just that you'd rather be on the streets. But listen to an old con — let that time do itself.
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Beans, Buttwipe and Bullets
03/24/2020
Beans, Buttwipe and Bullets
Anyone who says "three's a crowd" didn't see the antisocially undistant hordes infesting some Duke City's trailheads on Sunday, a day before New Mexico's governor went on TV to holler, "Don't make me stop this state and come back there!" As a consequence we must endure Potrick calling various kettles black.
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