A couple departures worthy of notice: Comic-book author Harvey Pekar of “American Splendor,” at 70, and poet-singer Tuli Kupferberg, a co-founder of the Fugs, at 86. Requiescat in pace.
Month: July 2010
Big Tex meets his Alamo
The Big Wheel has turned, as it will, and this time it ran over The Boss.
Big Tex decked it in stage eight when he clipped a pedal and rolled his front tire, and after a couple of Euskaltels spazzed out in front of him, forcing him to skid to a stop and unclip, (who teaches these E-E dickweeds how to ride, anyway?), you could see it in his face as he stood there for a moment, hands on hips.
“Fuck this shit.”
Johan Bruyneel said his man “effectively threw in the towel” after he realized a hip injury left him incapable of cranking out the watts to get back among the big boys. Texus Maximus almost looked relieved for a while once he’d made his decision, but when he finally crossed the finish line nearly 12 minutes down he looked pissed.
“It’s sad to see, but that’s sport,” said Bruyneel. And so it is. Now Phil ’n’ Paul will have to learn a name other than Lance Armstrong, and the chamois-sniffers will have to learn to appreciate a different bouquet.
Going up
The big dogs all stayed on the porch today as Quick Step’s Sylvain Chavenal took the yellow jersey back from Fabian Cancellara in stage seven of the Tour.
Texus Maximus predicts a selection tomorrow, and all the wiseguys are picking Super Spaniard for the stage win, as stage eight has about a bazillion miles of up in it.
Regardless of who wins, this should be a fun one to watch, if you spare yourself the hours of tedium leading up to the final climb, to the ski station at Avoriaz, a Category 1 13.6km slog that averages 6 percent.
If you enjoy parking yourself in front of the TV (or the laptop) on a lovely Sunday morning, however, look for the contenders to have their goons beat on the pretenders on the Cat. 1 Col de la Ramaz (14km at an average grade of just under 7 percent). That should thin the herd to a manageable size.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Cadel Evans do well. The BMC man has done the rainbow jersey proud this year, and I’m kinda developing a soft spot for the little weirdo.
During the Tour we drink French wine at Chez Dog — actually, we almost always drink French wine here, and last night was no exception. I usually start with a glass of white, this time a 2009 Coteaux du Languedoc from Picpoul de Pinet. A rosé is indicated next; last night it was a 2009 Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence from Bieler Père et Fils, in part because it was on sale and in part because I like it.
The finale, since I was grilling a flatiron steak, was a red — a 2007 Côtes du Rhône from André Goichot, which was also on sale and thus in my price range. It has to be a really special occasion for me to drop more than $15 on a bottle of wine.
Tonight we have more Languedoc chillin’ in the ’fridge alongside a 2009 Rosé de Pressée from Tariquet. The red is Lou Bar Rou, a 2007 from Ventoux (a climb not in this year’s Tour). And just because I’m a lazy sonofabitch, I’m gonna reheat last night’s leftovers for dinner.
Red meat, red wine, red eyeballs — that’s the Tour de France, doggy style.
And now for something completely different
Ho, hum. Another break, another chase, another catch, another sprint. Cha-ching. Pay the little man with the big mouth and even bigger legs, please.
The same ol’, same ol’, will not apply beyond Sunday, however. The Tour is headed for the Alps, and while the conventional wisdom is that the race will not be won there, it certainly may be lost there.
VeloNews editor at large John Wilcockson, who has covered some eleventy-seven Tours, has tagged Big Tex as the man to watch, writing, “Everyone here is saying that the Texan is looking much stronger than last year. …”
As for Tex his own bad self, he says coyly, “I would look for more animation in my tactics.”
Well, yeah. If I were 50 seconds behind Alberto Contador going into the mountains I’d want to pump it up a notch or two or three. Maybe have Janez Brajkovic park himself on El Pistolero’s wheel and chatter away breezily in Slovenian. “Jebo te bog! Zdaj se boš pa še opravičeval!” (“God will fuck you! Now you’ll really be sorry!”)
Of course, eventually you have to catch and pass those two 20-something hill-climbing sonsabitches. But that’s another story, one yet to be written.
A VeloBarrel of fun
Today’s was a long and unproductive stint in the old VeloBarrel. VN.com remains a little twitchy — envision a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs — and this afternoon in addition to the usual hitches in its digital gitalong I started having trouble simply staying connected to the site.
This is problematical if you’re one of the people being paid to stuff bits and bytes up the digi-tubes linking France, Colorado, Wyoming and California. Thus I accomplished very little beyond rearranging the order in which I repeatedly delivered a short selection of choice obscenities.
Beats me what the problem was (and still is). My other usual haunts — The New York Times, Political Animal, DrunkCyclist and this miserable site — are chugging right along. And this site and DC are both WordPress-based models, too. So go figure.
“Is it too early to start fuckin’ drinking?” I IM’d web editor Steve Frothingham around 1:30. “It’s 9:30 p.m. in France,” he replied.
Speaking of booze, Frank Bruni has an item on the Bloody Mary over at today’s NYT.com. Writes Mr. Bruni: “The bloody mary bridges the speakeasy and the herb garden; it’s a liquid salad into which you can not only pour pretty much any kind of base alcohol you like but also sprinkle parsley, basil or cilantro, and, while you’re at it, cram in hunks of vegetables, usually pickled, of many types.”
He then goes on to describe an appalling series of effete East Coast beverages served up by sissified Noo Yawk bistros that must make a Sonoma County wine bar look like a Hell’s Angels clubhouse by comparison.
I was never big on Bloodies, myself. Back in my morning-drinker days the crowd I ran with favored the lowly red beer as a palliative for the daily brain sprain. This was simply whatever cheap lager was on tap at the nearest dive bar mixed with Snap-E-Tom tomato-and-chile juice, repeated as necessary. A wedge of lime upped the vitamin-C content while adding much-needed roughage.
Maybe I’ll have one tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll just get straight into the smack.
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