Category: Things that suck

Confession is good for the … what, exactly?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

A casual check of the Innertubes this morning confirms that I chose correctly in deciding to skip Ol’ Whatsisface’s latest made-for-TV reinvention.

Eddy Merckx is “extremely disappointed.” Tour de France honcho Christian Prudhomme called it a “calculated public-relations exercise,” while WADA chief John Fahey dismissed the performance as delivering “nothing new.”

Greg LeMond said he didn’t see “the need for redemption, the remorse of someone who is truly sorry.” ESPN’s Bonnie Ford called his resort to “big-picture pop culture”  a “delusional move, not to mention an utterly backward one, describing Ol’ Whatsisface as “a toppled despot, a statue pulled off his pedestal, [whose] legs are still moving reflexively in the rubble.”

And Betsy Andreu was pissed, saying Ol’ Whatsisface owes more to her and “to the sport that he destroyed.”

There’s more of that sort of thing to be had, if you’re game. I’m not. The whole thing is, as John Steinbeck wrote of other parties thrown by professional hostesses, “as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as its end product.”

For The Cyclist Who Shall Not Be Named it’s just another step along a well-worn path. First Soaprah, then Betty Ford, then “Dancing With the Stars.” Or maybe a reality show like the one Pete Rose has ginned up for himself.

Whatever. Stage two is tonight, of course, but Ol’ Whatsisface is already way off the back. He’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it’s not about the bike. It’s not about the sport. It’s all about him.

The parting glass

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 35 Comments
The parting glass
A fine wine turned to vinegar.

Longtime fans of the DogS(h)ite know that we don’t do cable TV here.

We partook, briefly, in 2006, when I reasoned that I needed TV with all the fixin’s to help me help VeloNews.com cover the 2006 Tour de France. When Floyd tripped the Dope-O-Meter® I jerked the cable out of the wall and that was that.

Now we have rabbit ears, a Blu-Ray disc player, and a Mac Mini for streaming video over the Innertubes. And watching TV has become arduous, as it should be. We can’t just punch a button on a remote and let the high-def bullshit wash over us like the incoming tide. It takes some thought, and that thought is usually, “I think I’d rather do something else.”

Which brings me to the impending multimedia extravaganza in which The One Ball To Rule Them All will bounce into Soaprah’s expansive lap to wallow in his own stink for a couple-three hours. It will be “broadcast” on Soaprah’s TV network, such as it is, and streamed simultaneously on her website, and I have decided that rather than bring the snark, live and in poison, I will shun both of those venues as though they were infested with vermin, which, come to think of it, they will be.

Fact of the matter is, I think I’d rather do something else.

I can see why The One Ball Etc. and George W. Custer got along so famously. There is not a gram of shame in either of the sons of bitches, and when not on the clock I will be pleased to listen to whatever they have to say when they say it under oath, with the threat of hard time hanging over them like Damocles’ sword. Because in a world with its collective head screwed down tight, the only cameras these two would face would be of the closed-circuit variety, and their only audience a sleepy guard.

Here’s a thought. Instead of giving The One Ball Etc. and Soaprah what they so desperately crave — attention, which in this world translates to money — why not give some money, or some time, to a worthwhile cause? Spend a couple hours walking dogs at your local Humane Society, wash dishes at a soup kitchen, fix a creaky bike for a kid.

Let ’em do their playacting before an empty house, and drink a toast to the eventual ringing down of the curtain in this theater of the absurd.

A different shade of yellow?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

OK, let’s see if I have this right: The One Ball To Rule Them All has a come-to-Jesus moment, enters negotiations to return some of his pirate loot and indicates a willingness to start ratting folks out right around the same time that Justice Department officials were moving toward a recommendation that the government join Floyd Landis’ whistleblower lawsuit, which accuses our newly regretful soul of defrauding the feds.

Yup, sounds like genuine contrition to me. I’d be sorry too — mostly that I didn’t have a few people dropped into the Gulf of Mexico, wearing jukeboxes full of Robert Earl Keen tunes, back when I could still get away with it — but hey, sorry is sorry, right? Right?

Friday Funnies

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Ah, Black Friday: The gift that keeps on giving. As some Walmart employees are agitating for a living wage, Sears customers in San Antonio are throwing hands and drawing firearms. Some people clearly did not enjoy enough mood-altering tryptophan on Thanksgiving.

At the higher-end shops, meanwhile, those mannequins you’re inspecting are inspecting you right back, with cameras and facial-recognition software not unlike that used by les flics. Hey, there’s one … whoops, nope, it’s just Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, here’s something to leave on the shelf, no matter where we are in the shopping season. And fuck Weepy John Boehner and the horses’ asses he rode in on.

We are all Armstrong’s domestiques

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Editor’s note: Today’s edition of “Friday Funnies” was written Oct. 12 for the November 2012 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

EPO all in my veins
Lately things just don’t seem the same
Acton’ funny, but I don’t know why
‘Scuse me while I pass this guy.
— from the affidavit of Dave Zabriskie, recounting how he serenaded Johan Bruyneel on the U.S. Postal Service bus in 2002

The parting glass
A fine wine turned to vinegar.

I’VE OFTEN JOKED that in helping to cover professional bicycle racing I was aiding and abetting a felony.

Well, whaddaya know? Turns out I wasn’t joking after all.

The revelations from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation of Lance Armstrong will be ancient history by the time you read this. Indeed, they were mostly off the front pages in less than two days, swept aside by Smokin’ Joe Biden flooring Paul “Lyin’” Ryan in their vice-presidential punch-up, the European Union winning the Nobel Peace Prize and rumors of a sexy new iPad mini on the horizon.

Ho-hum. Just another rich white guy getting away with something. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along; move along.

In the cycling media, however, it was all Lance, all the time. Nothing new there, either. Whether he was winning a Tour de France, berating an Austin doorman or boinking an Olsen twin, Armstrong was always good for the bottom line. Chamois-sniffers and haters alike dove headlong into every story and then went to war in the comments. Making money off Lance Armstrong was easier than stealing from the collection plate at a church for the blind. Continue reading “We are all Armstrong’s domestiques” →