Tag: TCWSNBN

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.

Chewing the fat

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
Coming clean on Soaprah? Photo © Harpo Studios Inc. | George Burns
Coming clean on Soaprah? Photo © Harpo Studios Inc. | George Burns

If you had any nagging doubts about the purpose underlying the pending mea culpa from the One Ball To Rule Them All on Soaprah, doubt no more.

Ms. Winfrey has issued a breathless bit of PR announcing that her two-and-a-half-hour chat with Ol’ Whatsisface will be aired over not one, but two evenings, this coming Thursday and Friday.

Having chatted up more than a few people over my 35 years in the news biz I can assure you that no interview is worth running in its entirety, especially when the person asking the questions has zero understanding of the matter at hand.

Were I to sit down for an interview with Paul Krugman, for example, at least 90 minutes of our chat would be devoted to me saying, “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.” That sort of thing hardly makes for must-see TV. So I presume there will be more heavily perfumed fat in this chat than there is on Soaprah’s ass.

A colleague suggested via email that this “is the big moment we’ve talked about for a decade.” I replied, “No, actually, the moment I had been waiting for was seeing The One Ball To Rule Them All sitting in a courtroom, answering to another sort of inquisitor altogether. This is all Kabuki for Kash. It has less to do with justice than with illustrating the value of a white skin and a fat wallet. Had he been a brother shoplifting a 40 from 7-Eleven he’d have been doing pushups in the prison exercise yard a long time ago.”

Another colleague, the estimable Charles Pelkey, has proposed that he and I live-update the sucker as in the good old days. I had planned to take the high road and ignore the whole tawdry affair, but I’ll confess there is a certain appeal to the idea of throwing gobbets of rotten fruit, sacks of cat shit and bons mots as the tumbrel rumbles by.

Any interest out there in DogLand? Sound off in comments.

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?

Ten days that shook the ribs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Baby, it's cold outside.
Baby, it’s cold outside.

Ten days after the flu sank its meathooks into my respiratory system I’m finally starting to feel like a primate instead of a paramecium.

And there’s no danger of being tempted to imperil my fragile recovery by throwing myself headlong into a futile attempt to recover all those miles unridden because it’s 8 degrees and snowing.

It would be just like me to rocket out the door in search of a nasty case of bronchitis and perhaps a broken bone or two, so I think I’ll surprise the universe and stay indoors, maybe ride the trainer gently for a half hour or so.

Speaking of disease, beyond my little cocoon the speculation as regards impending revelations by the One Ball To Rule Them All has reached a fever pitch, and don’t I wish I could give a shit. Watching him summon the Reverend Mutha Gaius Helen Winfrey and her rubber gom jabbar to Pelotaville for a televised confessional in hopes of getting his personal gravy train back on the rails looks very little like a penitente journeying to the Sanctuario de Chimayó on his knees.

I can’t decide which cultural reference to deploy here. Is it an unrepentant Alex insisting that the Int Inf Min spoon-feed him in his hospital bed? Or is it Lucy at the chocolate factory, only with the chocolate being money and Lucy a great white shark and the assembly line running not too fast, but rather not fast enough?

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” I’m going to go with Alex here, because no matter what we may hear on Thursday, I suspect that a “cure” forced is no cure at all, and we will have our malevolent little droogie on our hands for quite a while yet.

After Oprah, what?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

From the creators of “Jersey Shore” comes “Redneck Riviera.” Conceived by Ron White (“They Call Me Tater Salad”), it stars Lone Star Staters Lance Armstrong, former President George W. Bush, Gov. Rick “Goodhair” Perry, Jessica Simpson, Randy Quaid, Meat Loaf, Vanilla Ice and Gary Busey as a potted palm.

In the first episode, Randy Quaid Skypes from Canada to bet Meat Loaf that Jessica Simpson can’t suck a golf ball through a garden hose from Mustang Island to Port Aransas. Meanwhile, Gov. Perry challenges President Bush to a tongue-wrestling contest, and Lance Armstrong wonders over a succession of Shiner Bocks how Oprah would look in a blonde wig and whether Club Fed-Three Rivers has a runway long enough to accommodate his private jet.