A turd by any other name....

Wow - kind of a busy 24 hours....

First off, as announced yesterday, Floyd Landis is done with cycling.  Before announcing this to the press, however, he conferred with any man's closest and most reliable ally:


And 24 hours later, the Sports Illustrated article on Lance Armstrong drops.  You can read it here, if you haven't already done so.  I've been discussing it with a close friend who asked me, "Are you surprised?"  To which I replied, "Surprised, no.  Interested?  Very."  The man is fascinating.  If everything implied is true, think of what it takes to successfully hide, suppress or sugarcoat all of this evidence for that many years.  It's amazing really that he ever believed himself that he could get away with it.  But it was only made possible because of those of us who wanted to believe it all.

It's like someone just fed me a big turd and said, "Check it out - brownies." 
I reply, "Hang on, I think this may actually be poop." 
He responds, "I have never pooped in my life."
I ask, "Never?"
He answers "Ever - Plus, look how much good I've done for the world outside of cooking brownies! How could I be capable of doing anything so underhanded?" 
To which I reply, "I love how chocolaty they taste."
He reponds, "Want to buy a T-shirt with a picture of a brownie on it?"
I reply, "I'll take two."

Oh, yes you can...

Anyway - the unfortunate business is that the media attention surrounding LA detracts from the Tour Down Under.  It's actually been a little difficult to catch footage of the race, and not without having to endure some pain.  Case in point: Last night I was looking online at the Versus Channel for some highlights from Stage 1 of the Tour when a commerical for the Canadian Grand Prix Cycliste came on (which won't even occur until September!). I began to patiently sit through the obligatory advertisement, half tuning it out, while I waited for the Tour highlights to start. The ad features two generic cyclists, devoid of any team affiliation, one in green and one in blue.

Everything is going along swimmingly in the highly stylized commercial and I actually turned the volume of my speakers up in anticipation of needing to amplify Phil Ligget's hushed commentary of the forthcoming replayed action of Stage 1 when all of a sudden, at the 15 second mark of the video,  'generic green cyclist dude' inexplicably opens his mouth in a grimace and begins to scream at 'generic blue cyclist dude' like he has suddenly morphed into a bike riding velociraptor with a hot poker in his ass.

Getting the scream warmed up...

And the delivery....

Watch for yourself....remember to gird your loins at 15 seconds.




Seriously - what the fuck just happened?

As you can see, this allows 'generic green cyclist dude' to take 'generic blue cyclist dude' at the line, which, quite honestly, is a given.  'Generic green cyclist dude' ought to be thanking his lucky stars he didn't get splashed with the liquid feces he undoubtedly just forced from 'generic blue cyclist dude' by pulling a stunt like that.  No matter, I'm sure 'generic blue cycling dude' would be able to easily convince everyone he actually just shit a chocolate shake by winning the next race and throwing some money around....because, seriously - how cool would that be?  I'd even line up to buy one.