I have despised American Express for two decades, ever since I got sideways with them after a layoff and they shit in my credit rating for seven years, falsely claiming that I never repaid the debt. This Boston Globestory does nothing to change my opinion of these loathsome loan sharks, who make the Mafia look like Santa Claus.
Today, Herself and I have excellent credit (none of it my doing), and for some time now American Express has been begging us via unsolicited junk mailings to dip a tender toe in their toothy pool. I’ve thought about sending them a cease-and-desist NastyGram®, then thought again. Let them waste their own time and money the way they did mine. Three-point-four billion these button-down vampires sucked out of the Treasury. Fuck ’em, face down, in the mud, with a big, red, rubber dick.
Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog green eyeshade to Kevin Drum, who shares my perspective: “Bastards. I really hate these guys and their entire sleazy industry.”
Your humble narrator in an earlier incarnation, racing at Chatfield. That's a titanium Voodoo Loa with V-brakes, a suspension fork and Zipp wheels. I had delusions of grandeur.
That’s how Dutch junior Lars van der Haar described the course for today’s world cyclo-cross championships. “It’s not cyclo-cross,” said Van der Haar in a post-race chat with VeloNews‘ Charles Pelkey. “Cyclo-cross takes much more than just a fast start. Barriers, mud, more than one run-up … that’s cyclo-cross.”
Got to concur, Lars. I think ‘cross has become a good deal less interesting since the UCI began restricting a promoter’s natural urge to inflict pain and suffering on his customers. Flyovers and beer tents are all very well and good, but l like insane shit like long, gooey run-ups and multiple dismounts to showcase the riders’ skills at getting on and off the bike.
Chris Grealish was the master of that sort of Colorado course design back in the day, when I still raced. I remember courses at Chatfield State Park that included creek crossings, slaloms through the aspens and muddy run-ups so steep that a guy practically had to toss his bike over the top and climb up after it. Snow was good because it covered the goat-heads.
At one race the dump was so deep that the promoter shoveled a short section for a start-finish area, ordered a LeMans-style start with bikes stuffed into a ragged line in the snow, and sent us off for a couple painful laps of mostly running. I think I got second that time, behind the long-legged Mark Lance; it was one of my few respectable results from that time.
In fact, barring 1999, my one solid season, if the course didn’t call for a ton of running, I’d never see the front of the race until the leaders lapped me. So you’ll understand why I like it dirty. No goo, no glory.
‘Cross worlds is upon us, in Boogerhead, Netherlands, or some such exotic locale full of windmills, hash smokers and folks who make money running around wearing perfectly rideable bicycles.
Jonathan Page has gotten the all-clear to race and a spot on the U.S. team, and VeloNews‘ man on the scene, Charles Pelkey, reports cold weather and a dry course. This is bad news for my homegirl Katie Compton, who lives for evil conditions and thinks racing on a clean circuit is one step removed from riding the trainer in the basement.
Bibleburg is an Air Force town, and with a little assist from a C-130 fire bomber full of water and a hotshot pilot we could make the Boogerhead course a good deal more interesting, and probably without killing anybody important.
But I understand that money is tight these days, even for federales with access to printing presses and legit pictures of dead presidents. So we’ll just have to go with “conditions on the ground,” a phrase that should earn the next media cretin to use it a vicious beating with a copy of “The Elements of Style” duct-taped to a Louisville Slugger studded with ten-penny nails.
In any case, come rain, sleet or snow, CP, Graham Watson and VeloNews.com will be all over the sonofabitch like mud on a skinsuit, so don’t touch that dial.
Check this out — you can take a virtual spin around the course. I remember seeing one of these on a bootlegged tape of worlds from a decade or so ago. Still kind of reminds me of the “Money for Nothing” video, but without the rockin’ soundtrack.
Late update: As long as we’re talking about cycling here — a comparative rarity on this site, which is the digital equivalent of a dung-stained wall in some cheapjack zoo’s primate house — USA Today‘s bike guy Sal Ruibal was kind enough to mention Mad Dog Media in a list of top-10 cycling blogs at Blogs.com. So you should pop on over to his place straight away and read him until your eyes cross. Gannett needs the hits.
I have a lot of time on the job, and have spent way too many hours of what we all know to be a finite lifespan, Jimmy Dobson aside, explaining to outraged citizens that news is what happens — it’s neither good, nor bad, it’s what happens (and oh, yeah, the bad news gets more eyeballs).
Even so, this selection from today’s Bibleburg Gazette has me thinking about relocating to Mars:
Babe dies of suspected abuse; sailor father back in custody
Officials: Army suicides at 3-decade high
Report: 3 calls before police get frozen body
Soldier accused in woman’s killing faces new charge
Colorado man accused of threatening to kill Obama
I spared you the links. There’s probably plenty of equally grim news in your neighborhood. But probably nothing as depressing as 587 pounds of weed ending up in the hands of the fuzz after some dipshit in an SUV stacked it on I-25 near Walsenburg.
I got pulled over there back in ’72, in the early morning hours, with 10 pounds of ditch weed in a brown paper bag parked on the back seat of a 1964 Chevy Biscayne, and I was back in that cop car entertaining those good gentlemen with my cocaine-enhanced wit before you could say boo. A wise guy with an eye toward the statute of limitations might say that the greatly amused audience demonstrated its brand-new radar gun, accepted a gratuity and let the miscreant go. But I’ve never been smart.
Herself and I saw “The Wrestler” this afternoon, and it’s a must-see for Mickey Rourke fans. We watched “Barfly” last night to limber up for it, but “Requiem for a Heavyweight” might have been better training, or maybe “Raging Bull,” the theme being poor choices and the consequences thereof. You certainly won’t recognize the pretty-boy Rourke of “Diner” in this one, although there are brief glimpses of his earlier face among the ruins.
The screenplay cuts a few corners, especially as regards Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s estranged daughter and the finale, but it’s Rourke’s remarkably restrained performance as an elder statesman of pro wrestling fallen on hard times that holds your interest.
Director Darren Aronofsky told Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” that he didn’t think he got everything Rourke had to give, but I’m not so certain. And I’ve dated a stripper and met a couple of pro wrestlers — to say nothing of spending way too many dope-addled hours in high school watching Mad Dog and Butcher Vachon, Verne Gagne and Andre the Giant locked in combat on “All Star Wrestling” — so naturally that makes me an expert.
If you need any further encouragement, cinematographer Maryse Alberti also shot “Gonzo” and “Crumb,” documentaries about Hunter S. Thompson and Robert Crumb, respectively. Go spend some money, get the economy back on its feet, you lazy sonsabitches. And don’t forget to buy plenty popcorn.
Late addendum: Herself says the Ram was a marvelously sympathetic unsympathetic character, and the addition of glasses and a hearing aid when not in the ring made her want to weep for him. And speaking as the spouse of a free-lancer with no health insurance, she’d like to know how the hell he paid his medical tab.
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