• Editor’s note: From now until New Year’s Day I’ll be popping up selected “Shop Talk” strips from this year’s run of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
Bike parts will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no bike parts.*
* Apologies to Freewheelin’ Franklin of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were not Black, yet they had a working familiarity with the arbitrary traffic stop. © and all praise to Gilbert Shelton
Well, that’s one killer cop down, and … let’s see if he stays down before we all start dancing in the end zone.
I won’t presume to speak for Black people in this matter or any other. Shit, I don’t even know what or if honkies are thinking and I am one.
That said, I will propose that all of us devote at least as much attention to what’s going on at home as we do the national performance art in DeeCee. Governors, legislatures, mayors, city councils, county commissions, police and sheriffs, judiciary, school boards, etc. All of these affect the quality of your lives, regardless of race, creed, color, or religion.
You want smart, caring, hard-working people running the shop, handling the hiring, oversight, discipline, and firing as warranted. Even when you’re satisfied you’ve got the right people in place, keep one eye on ’em while you go about your own business. You get an asshole at the top of the org chart, before you know it you’ve got assholes all the way down.
And some of them have badges.
Assholes with badges don’t always tase you, shoot you, or kneel on your neck. Sometimes they just roust you for not wearing a helmet when cycling. Or pull you over for hanging an air freshener from the rear view mirror, having a broken taillight, sporting an unfashionable hue for the ’hood, or demonstrating a unique personal style (see Phineas Freek, above). These are what we call “fishing expeditions.”
“Are you a dope fiend, sir? Mind if I root around in your trunk, see if you have any hogtied White children, bales of marijuana, or rocket launchers in there? Let’s see your license, registration, and MAGA hat. But keep those hands on the wheel where I can see them.” Etc.
With the right management in place, cops like this become ex-cops. Let them fish full time, for food.
• Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I have had positive interactions with law enforcement since I quit being a hippie. It’s probably not so easy to quit being Black.
How to earn big money through social distancing in your spare time.
As ridiculous as it may seem, yes, I do have a bike to review for Adventure Cyclist, and si, I have been out riding it.
Not with authority, élan, and grace, mind you. But still. A man must earn.
I slapped some cheapo bear-trap pedals on this one, to accommodate the ankle and its brace, and somehow I managed to spaz myself into a nice nick on the shin.
I had forgotten this characteristic of the old-school pedal, and may go to Eighties-era cyclocross pedals with toeclips and straps or even have a go at clipless pedals, just for the sake of science.
Speaking of science and the fiction thereof, I guess Marcus Weebles, O.D., has been cutting his Adderall with hydroxychloroquine. He apparently digs the high, and is recommending it to everyone, probably not because “several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president,” according to The New York Times.
Add a little hydroxychloroquine, m’boy, and you’ll be as right as rain.
Adds the Times:
“Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.”
Zut alors! Say it is not so!
The search for salable snake-oil recipes made at home in your spare time reminds me of “Burned Again,” a tale from the seventh collection of “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” comics.
Fat Freddy finds a “neat container” in the street and he and Freewheelin’ Franklin try prying it open to see what’s inside. Phineas recognizes the radiation symbol on the thing and — using a Geiger counter he built from plans in “Popular Atomics” magazine — determines that it is not leaking. Yet.
Nevertheless, Fat Freddy “freaks” and draws himself a bath of Chinese mustard and Clorox, explaining, “It’s a remedy for radiation poisoning I read about in ‘Amateur Doctor’ magazine!”
Hm. Fat. Stupid. Ridiculous blond hair. Zero impulse control. Doper. Say, you don’t suppose Fat Freddy grew up to become … nahhhhh.
Y’think? Nawwwwww.
From "The Best of the Rip Off Press, Vol. II: The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers," © 1974 by Gilbert Shelton
Seems it wasn’t Chinese pork that tripped up Alberto Contador after all. In what’s sure to give a boost to the Spanish beef industry, El Pendejo — disculpame, El Pistolero — says he tripped the Dope-O-Meter® after dining on a chunk of homegrown carne the team chef ordered up during the Tour ’cause the French hotel’s meat tasted like ass.
I don’t know how they ever caught that steer for butchering, full of clenbuterol as it must have been.
His story brings to mind an old Gilbert Shelton gag, first used in a “Wonder Wart-Hog” strip and then reprised in “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.” The initial version involved a motorcycle race; the encore featured a police chase.
Here’s my riff on the joke:
Two cowboys on roundup stagger back to the ranch with their chaps shredded, their hats in tatters and generally looking like they’d been et by a coyote and shit off a cliff.
“What the hell happened to you fellas?” asks the foreman.
“Aw,” replies one, “this cow we was a-chasin’ ran away from us so fast we thought our horses had stopped so we got off to see what was the matter.”
• Late update: Meanwhile, Contador’s homeboys Ezequiel Mosquera and David Garcia Da Peña are also deep in the mierda, but for hydroxyethyl starch. The fiesta never stops.
Patrick O'Grady has been making stuff up since, well, forever. He started doing it for money in high school and didn't quit until he retired in 2022. (To be honest, if you waved enough Dead President Trading Cards at him, he might do it for money again.) Until then, this blog is his pro-bonehead work. For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
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