A half day only, David, praise be to Allah, may his beard grow ever longer.
And O’Neill, thanks for noticing. I had breast-reduction surgery over at G&C Meatpacking on 21st Street. I froze all the excised lard for making flour tortillas and pan-frying sowbelly.
Wouldn’t it be exciting if Shenkaboogaloo launched some sort of attack as Can’tignore was sipping his bubbly riding piano around Paris? That would make this “bicycle race” exciting. Otherwise it seems like I missed very little and cared even less. Let that be a lesson to the American cycling media as to the general fans interest if TCWSNBN is not riding. Yawn….when is cross season starting? Six weeks…oh crap I better start ‘training!’
A boring Tour finally ends. “Ciao Lance” was the headline in today’s La Gazzetta dello Sport where they had a bit about the comeback of Michael Schumacher to F1. Like BigTex, he’s guy who didn’t have the smarts to quit while he was ahead. Bernard Hinault was smart, going out on top.
I wonder how Tex would have done this year if he had not signed up for the Demolition Derby competition in the early Tour stages. After that last crash, he clearly seemed to have lost interest.
khal: I think TCWSNBN had a lot on his mind. He’s never had the Feds chasing him in his own country. He still believes his own press, so this must be very hard for him.
I wonder what the officers at Radio Shack think about the dollars they spent?
The depositions start later this week, I assume. No more excuses about working in France.
I thought CP was great. I don’t have Versus, so VeloNews was my race coverage of choice. Terrific, as always! I was sorry Ted King got so roughed up when he joined CP right after a stage of the Tour of Austria. I thought he was awesome, but apparently, he could see all the incoming traffic, and a lot of it was very personal and mean.
I hope the guys at Competitor Group have some genuine interest in bicycle racing. It doesn’t feel like it. I’m pretty sure they’ll lose all interest in it later this year.
I did my homework about your Big Boss, Patrick. FYI, triathlon and marathon running are getting big in both Hollywood circles and on Wall Street. Bicycle racing–not so much. McKinsey Consulting’s latest research shows that nobody who watches the Today Show or plays golf at Pebble Beach gives a shit about bike racing when Big Tex isn’t there. When Big Tex makes his switch back to triathlon later this year, Competitor Group will quickly lose interest on the shiny object that was bike racing.
Tri geeks spend waaaayyyy more money on triathlon than bike racers spend on bike racing. It’s the new golf, at least for the next 2-4 years. That’s where the Competitor Group guys are going.
Jeff, very astute observation but the original Competitor Magazine (of which your astute narrator was for a brief period the radio producer for) has always ben a tri-geek and/or marathon/running magazine. They are more corporate than when I was working for the radio show, but even then having a cyclist who was NOT “TCWSNBN” was rare. In fact, unless it was Bobke or Overend it usually was not on the air. And Deadly Nedly was only on because Babbitt allegedly roomed with Ned’s wife in college in San Diego – that is how I remember it. Oh, and Scott Tinley when he was famous for something other than clothes.
james: Yeah. I can’t figure out the minds of MBAs–usually smart, but stunningly shallow and distractible (known in MBAworld as “simultaneous strategic and tactical multi-tasking”). Add to the recipe a shitpot load of SEM (somebody else’s money), and you get a lot of sturm und drang, an alphabet soup of acronyms, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations out the ass, resume padding, rubberstamping boards, longest-term time horizons of 90 days, the stripping away of profitable assets, and the abandonment of whatever’s left (in this case, probably VeloNews). I can only guess Englehart’s interest in VN was because he had a hand in programming for the Only Lance Network.
It just doesn’t speak well for the future of American coverage of bicycle racing when it’s in the hands of Falconhead Capital. These guys are ex IMG, Deutsche Bank, UBS, McKinsey and Co., Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts (leveraged buyout geniuses), marketers, investment bankers, and analysts. Journalism just isn’t in their wheelhouses.
I can only imagine how much unnecessary pressure these guys put on the editors (“Our latest research shows the direct correlation between the word ARMSTRONG in no less than two headlines per day on the website, and my ability to pay my monthly dues at Winged Foot Country Club. Therefore, put the word ARMSTRONG in 16-point font on the website four times a day. Trust me. The synergies are a win-win.”).
I know these people. If you have something they want, you have to say to them, eyeball to eyeball, “What I’m trying to figure out is, how are you going to fuck me?” If they’re smart and good at what they do, they’ll tell you, and then they’ll do it. Then they’ll move on.
Good Luck, VN.
I keep hearing folks say they didn’t follow this year’s Tour because it was boring. Isn’t that a lot like Yogi Berra’s “no one goes there any mire … It’s too crowded”?
Mad Blog Media 
No, no… One more day pal, THEN you’re off duty…
When did you slim down?
A half day only, David, praise be to Allah, may his beard grow ever longer.
And O’Neill, thanks for noticing. I had breast-reduction surgery over at G&C Meatpacking on 21st Street. I froze all the excised lard for making flour tortillas and pan-frying sowbelly.
Wouldn’t it be exciting if Shenkaboogaloo launched some sort of attack as Can’tignore was sipping his bubbly riding piano around Paris? That would make this “bicycle race” exciting. Otherwise it seems like I missed very little and cared even less. Let that be a lesson to the American cycling media as to the general fans interest if TCWSNBN is not riding. Yawn….when is cross season starting? Six weeks…oh crap I better start ‘training!’
A boring Tour finally ends. “Ciao Lance” was the headline in today’s La Gazzetta dello Sport where they had a bit about the comeback of Michael Schumacher to F1. Like BigTex, he’s guy who didn’t have the smarts to quit while he was ahead. Bernard Hinault was smart, going out on top.
I wonder how Tex would have done this year if he had not signed up for the Demolition Derby competition in the early Tour stages. After that last crash, he clearly seemed to have lost interest.
khal: I think TCWSNBN had a lot on his mind. He’s never had the Feds chasing him in his own country. He still believes his own press, so this must be very hard for him.
I wonder what the officers at Radio Shack think about the dollars they spent?
The depositions start later this week, I assume. No more excuses about working in France.
I thought CP was great. I don’t have Versus, so VeloNews was my race coverage of choice. Terrific, as always! I was sorry Ted King got so roughed up when he joined CP right after a stage of the Tour of Austria. I thought he was awesome, but apparently, he could see all the incoming traffic, and a lot of it was very personal and mean.
I hope the guys at Competitor Group have some genuine interest in bicycle racing. It doesn’t feel like it. I’m pretty sure they’ll lose all interest in it later this year.
I did my homework about your Big Boss, Patrick. FYI, triathlon and marathon running are getting big in both Hollywood circles and on Wall Street. Bicycle racing–not so much. McKinsey Consulting’s latest research shows that nobody who watches the Today Show or plays golf at Pebble Beach gives a shit about bike racing when Big Tex isn’t there. When Big Tex makes his switch back to triathlon later this year, Competitor Group will quickly lose interest on the shiny object that was bike racing.
Tri geeks spend waaaayyyy more money on triathlon than bike racers spend on bike racing. It’s the new golf, at least for the next 2-4 years. That’s where the Competitor Group guys are going.
Jeff, very astute observation but the original Competitor Magazine (of which your astute narrator was for a brief period the radio producer for) has always ben a tri-geek and/or marathon/running magazine. They are more corporate than when I was working for the radio show, but even then having a cyclist who was NOT “TCWSNBN” was rare. In fact, unless it was Bobke or Overend it usually was not on the air. And Deadly Nedly was only on because Babbitt allegedly roomed with Ned’s wife in college in San Diego – that is how I remember it. Oh, and Scott Tinley when he was famous for something other than clothes.
james: Yeah. I can’t figure out the minds of MBAs–usually smart, but stunningly shallow and distractible (known in MBAworld as “simultaneous strategic and tactical multi-tasking”). Add to the recipe a shitpot load of SEM (somebody else’s money), and you get a lot of sturm und drang, an alphabet soup of acronyms, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations out the ass, resume padding, rubberstamping boards, longest-term time horizons of 90 days, the stripping away of profitable assets, and the abandonment of whatever’s left (in this case, probably VeloNews). I can only guess Englehart’s interest in VN was because he had a hand in programming for the Only Lance Network.
It just doesn’t speak well for the future of American coverage of bicycle racing when it’s in the hands of Falconhead Capital. These guys are ex IMG, Deutsche Bank, UBS, McKinsey and Co., Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts (leveraged buyout geniuses), marketers, investment bankers, and analysts. Journalism just isn’t in their wheelhouses.
I can only imagine how much unnecessary pressure these guys put on the editors (“Our latest research shows the direct correlation between the word ARMSTRONG in no less than two headlines per day on the website, and my ability to pay my monthly dues at Winged Foot Country Club. Therefore, put the word ARMSTRONG in 16-point font on the website four times a day. Trust me. The synergies are a win-win.”).
I know these people. If you have something they want, you have to say to them, eyeball to eyeball, “What I’m trying to figure out is, how are you going to fuck me?” If they’re smart and good at what they do, they’ll tell you, and then they’ll do it. Then they’ll move on.
Good Luck, VN.
I keep hearing folks say they didn’t follow this year’s Tour because it was boring. Isn’t that a lot like Yogi Berra’s “no one goes there any mire … It’s too crowded”?