Radio Free Dogpatch

Patrick O'Grady

Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink. He got worse with a keyboard. Now he has a microphone. God help us all.

  1. 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 Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple's GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. The Captain from "Cool Hand Luke" communicates to us from YouTube. The boot to the bollocks and subsequent heave-ho hail from Freesound. The French taunter you may recall from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Air travel to Gitmo, a newspaper's printing press running, and soldiers on the march courtesy of Freesound. "Twisted Clowns" honk at us from Zapsplat. And last, but far from least, that's Sam Cooke working the "Chain Gang." All the other gang violence is the fault of Your Humble Narrator.

    6 min
  2. 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 Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple's GarageBand, and Auphonic 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 YouTube page. The drum-heavy martial music (by Gregor Quendel) and "Out of Step" are both courtesy of Zapsplat. The Mescalero Apache tribe's take on a member's run-in with an ICE agent can be found here. The Guardian reports on a Navajo experience. The Associated Press covered immigration raids in Chicago. At The Atlantic Mark Leibovich had some fun visiting Greenland, soon to be our 52nd state. And at the New Republic Matt Ford shredded the pestilential ordure dropped on birthright citizenship.

    7 min
  3. 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 Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple's GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. The wolf howls from Freesound, as do the sad trombones and the vinyl scratching. "Morning Mood" is from "Peer Gynt" by Edvard Grieg. Arthur, King of the Britons, chatting with an anarcho-syndicalist peasant come from "Monty Python and The Holy Grail." You'll catch a snippet of the "Grapes of Wrath" theme 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 "There Stands the Glass" is courtesy of Ted Hawkins via YouTube. As usual, all the other raving can be pinned on the landlord of this dump.

    8 min
  4. 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 was gracious about the changes, 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 Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple's GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. NASA noises, starship flyby, countryside ambience and appreciative audience come from Zapsplat. "Wernher von Braun" is the work of the inimitable Tom Lehrer The Celtic tune is from Freesound. 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.

    8 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink. He got worse with a keyboard. Now he has a microphone. God help us all.