Tour de Freakin' Doping!

Blogger's Note -- for the best live-blogging experience, scroll down to the beginning of the show and read "up"-- the entries below are posted chronologically backwards, like, um... fossils.

TUNE IN NEXT TIME, WHEN OPRAH AND LANCE OUTWIT THE DUKE BROTHERS AND CORNER THE MARKET ON FALSE MODESTY!

10:29 Oprah: "So... you wanna do this again tomorrow?" Lance checks cell phone "Hang on -- my bookie's texting me."

10:27 Lance: "I love cycling. People will think I disrespected the color Yellow." Oprah: "Yeah, I hate Yellow."

10:25 Another commercial. I don't think I have it in me to live-blog the alleged second half of this thing. Here's my prediction for tomorrow night's installment: Oprah: "What now?" Lance: "I am so screwed. It wasn't really my fault. But it was. I have A LOT of atoning to do. At LEAST four more TV specials' worth..." Oprah: "Want a job?"

10:23 Am I the only one here who finds that the word subpoena vaguely sexual?

10:22 Oh she's talking about George Hincapie. That guy broke my heart more than Lance, I think. Lance says he's the most honest voice out there. Well that's nice, I guess.

10:21 Whoa!! The vegetable stock downstairs needs to be turned off.

10:18 Lance: "It's hard to define victory." Oprah: "Yeah? I got a pretty good idea."

10:17 It's possible your blogging author is going to overdose on performance-enhancing almonds.

10:16 Oprah: "Did you not think this day was coming?" Lance: "What, January 14th?"

10:14 Lance: "He was like a spurned boyfriend! I rebuffed him after he came out." Oprah: "You didn't just blow him off?" Lance: "What exactly are we talking about here, Big O? I didn't shun him -- that's the Amish. Floyd's friggin' Mennonite!"

10:12 Oprah: "OK, what about Floyd?" Lance: "That dude was no good at avoiding the drug tests! That's why he lost his title immediately basically, and they took years to get to me."

10:09:30 Commercial break: Teaser for "Police Women of Dallas." now.... c'mon this is a no-brainer. Oprah and Lance are just down the road in Austin. Couldn't we have some kind of reality-enhanced combination? "Oprah's Next Chapter of Texas Lady Cops Kicking the Crap out of Lance Armstrong"???   Right?

10:09 Oprah: "So you called Emma a whore. What's that feel like?" Lance: "high-priced whore, Oprah.... high-priced whore."

10:08 Lance: "I talked to her for 40 minutes and I'm not telling you a fucking thing about what we said. Yeah, I talked to Frankie, too. We didn't make up. Fuck it. She's still crazy. I told her I never called her fat. I think she'd be OK with me sharing that with you."

10:06 Oprah: "OK punk, back to Betsy." Lance: "Well, I dated her once." Oprah: "No, FOOL!!! She was one of your most trusted lieutenant's wife. Remember?" Lance: "We sued so many people...." 

10:04 commercial break: 'Roided-out dancers in the 117th replacement cast of Broadway's The Lion King do their thing.

10:01:07 Lance runs from the room.

10:01 Oprah:  "OK punk, did you call Betsy Andreu?"

10:00 Hot Irish former masseuse relates how her character was completely assassinated by Lance. Lance says, "She's one of these people that I have to apologize to. She was... run over, she was bullied. To be honest Oprah, we sued so many people..... " "I have reached out to them directly to try and make amends."

9:57 Holy crap -- this thing's going until 10:30??!!

9:56 Someone's gotta tell Tyler Hamilton that he's not long-haired guy.

9:55 "Technically I only failed a re-test of the '99 sample in 2005."

9:55 After the 1999 prologue stage, Lance's pee was frozen. Awesome.

9:54 Stevie Nicks on Oprah next time? Wow.

9:50 Commercial break.  I got nothing.

9:49 "It was easy. It wasn't exactly a perfect world..... the winning was phoned-in." 

9:49 "The important thing is that I'm beginning to understand it"(that it was COMPLETELY FRIGGIN' WRONG!!!!!)

9:47 Lance looks up "cheat" in the dictionary and didn't think at the time that he was cheating.

9:46:15 Oprah cuts Lance with a matte knife

9:46 Lance: I didn't feel bad about it. 

9:45 Oprah: "So, you won 7 Tours." Lance: "Yeah." Oprah: "How'd you do it?" Lance: "I fucking cheated." Oprah: "Dude that's messed up." Lance: "Yeah it was lame."

9:42 Commercial break. Just enough time to run downstairs and replenish my supply of testosterone-laced almonds.

9:38 Oprah does massive bong hits.

9:37 Oprah tells Lance that if you're a jerk, fame makes you a bigger jerk. Lance says he was both jerk and humanitarian. He says  he deserves what he's getting. 

9:36 back to the present: Lance isn't lying. "But I'm not comfortable talkin' about other people..." 

9:35 Oprah goes to the video tape. Guess what?! Lance is lying!

9:33 "Dr. Ferrari is a good man! And he drives really freakin' fast!"

9:32 -- Can one really bathe in a scourge? Just askin'

9:30 -- Halftime. Mr. Clean ad on the commercial break. You know that mother's still doping -- look at his head! Are there no bathroom cleaners that haven't bathed in the scourge of performance enhancement?!

9:27 Lance basically says that there were only two times he couldn't control the outcome of his life: one was cancer, and one was, apparently, having to admit to his web of doping lies. Definite god complex goin' on here, but when you're the king of the Tour... 

9:25 "I tried to control the narrative...... I called them liars." Oprah: "I know the feeling." 

OKAY! Oprah didn't actually say that, but it made you laugh, right?

9:24 Oprah: "Are we talking semantics here? Are we talking semantics here? Are we talking semantics?"    Lance: well... maybe. Having said that..... splitting hairs..... Yeah, I was a bully.

9:22 "No, I didn't threaten Christian Valdeverde!!  There was a 'level' of expectation for them to be fit...... but I'm not the most believable guy in the world right now." --- this may be the most straight-up thing he's said thusfar

9:17 Oh thank you Baby Jesus -- it's a commercial break. I need to transfuse some whiskey.... Don't tell the World Blogging Doping Agency...

9:16  Lance says he didn't dope in 2009 and 2010 that the World Doping Hoo-Ha got that wrong at least.

9:12:45 Oprah buys Viacom

9:12:30 in order to demonstrate, Lance shoots up Oprah with EPO 

9:12 Oprah asks Lance to corroborate Tyler's story of syringe-dumping inside a tent with gobs of fans outside. She's pressing him for the details of "how it all worked." Lance said it was very simple.... oxygen-boosting drugs made a big difference -- he only took a "small" amount of EPO and testosterone that he "almost" justified by his history as a cancer patient.

9:10 Tyler Hamilton talks about "Edgar Allen Poe" as the code-word for EPO

9:08 "Smart, conservative, very risk-averse...... not as big as the East German program from the 80s" --- the apology is really an afterthought....

9:06 "The last thing I'll say......." Huh?

9:04 Oh Good. He understands that he called other people liars. He's outside of himself.

9:03 FRICK. All 7 Tours he doped. He says he couldn't have done it without the dope. We're the dopes....

9:02 ---- AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! He did it all -- Yes or No!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

What a surprise

Well, by now (and Happy New Year, all you Blaiserblogudlians; next month it's the Year of the Snake, you know, so make it a SSSSSSaucy one!) everyone with running water and an ISP knows that Lance has finally, more or less, umm...... well, it seems that.... (ahem). You see, everyone ELSE.....

Sigh.





I've always been a fan of this A-hole, even when I knew he was a complete jerk-off and Not A Very Nice Man. (I mean really, who mistreats Sheryl Crow, for Garsh Sake?)

I couldn't help myself. The undulating Blue Train of Lance's Postal Service squad, delivering stage after stage in the greatest bike race of all time, stopped by Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night--when apparently the entire TDF peleton merrily shot themselves up with liquified pork eyebrows--was too beguiling, too sleek, too.... um, fast as it turns out, to resist.

So the brother had his 7 Maillots Jaunes ripped from his zero-body-fat-shoulders; so the IOC said, "Vee Are NACHT Amuzed!"; so he can't show his face around the offices of the cancer foundation he, well, founded. I think I still dig him. Contributions to American cycling, fraudulently achieved or not, and the re-invention of the cancer money-raising model give him a bit of a pass. 

Think Johnny Damon, who will never pay for a drink in Boston again, due to his role in breaking the curse of 2004... (never mind the bastards who hired him next!)

Think American Second Acts. Think Eliot Spitzer getting (and losing) a talk-show gig. Hell, think Greek Tragic Hero. (OK, maybe not too hard, though, because it usually didn't end well for them...)

And join me, in a little under an hour, as I live-blog his Defining Moment of After It Came To Light That He's A Total Stinking Stinkerstein! 

It'll be great. What could possibly go wrong.

Loss and Renewal

I recently lost someone in my life whom I cared for, and it was a reminder of how fragile human relationships can be. It's made my blogtastic raison d'etre of Zany Optimism particularly difficult to maintain through the swelter of mid-summer here in the Northeast. It's one of the sole downsides of being alive, really, how we hurt one another, through happenstance, or intent. Hell, famously observed, is other people.

But... as long as we're throwing around metaphorical reference to the everlasting, so is "Heaven." If only for parallel periods of time, we are also capable of such love and beauty and goodness and ..... oh look, there goes a flock of puppies helping a tubercular great-granny across a poppy-strewn super highway.

Sorry. It's Sadie Hawkins Day, and Pollyanna just asked me to do the rhumba.

Straight up, folks. I got no special abilities here to get from point-sunrise to point-sunset, barring ritual handshakes with my homies at KlaxoGlithSmine. But what I can tell you is this: If we didn't know where we'd been, there'd be no way to know where we are. Forget where we're going, for now, because we'll eventually get there, maybe even tomorrow, and look! If that new air conditioner suddenly breaks down, don't fret. I brought a box fan, 'cause I'm cool like dat. No power? Let me fan thee with our thick copy of vanities, an urban palm frond. When my strength's gone, I'll write poems about ice cubes, some of them good. Later, our children will show up to take us on a northerly vacation. If we have no children, we'll chill out to the rhythms of the kids next door. They are joyful, too. Go ahead and see if they're around. I'll wait.

Besides, it'll get cooler of its own accord soon enough, and my favorite season will be upon us, the autumn months. Few things are as reliable as the snap of October air. (We are blessed in the northeast with four, distinct seasons. Love them, for they are inevitable.) And then snowy winter. I have two fantastic old-school sleds that need their blades sharpened. And then wet, and then hot, and then cool, and then cold again. One could almost set one's clock to it. God knows what they do in Los Angeles...

This month the secret to life was wiped from the map. (well, Duh. That's why it's a secret, fool.) This morning, however, I woke up to try again. Why not? I was born to try. And I aim to.

We Heart The World

OR, Thank G-d for Steve Jobs and Al Gore, without whom most Americans' lives would really suffer.

Re: iPad tops 300,000 on its first day of sales

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we humans can better share this planet. (Phew! There's some light dinner conversation!) One critical step forward lies in the direction of convincing our neighbors to stop blowing themselves up, because it's really getting in the way of all that "nation building" President George W. Bush et al set out to do in Iraq, and all that "Taliban Cleansing" President Obama has bolstered in Afghanistan. Thank G-d at least the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is onboard with that one!

Now, as a Luddite, I don't know what an iPad is, nor why it should be so auspiciously named--but just as sure as shootin' I think the obvious solution to all the people-blowing-themselves-up issue in the Middle East is--Wait For It--technology. After all, it ended World War II.
Didn't it?

But in the 21st Century, we don't incinerate civilians anymore with
B-29s and aircrews. Instead, it's a guy in fatigues at a console in Langley Nevada, playing what has to be the world's most awesomest video game. (For maximum verisimilitude, why not go with khaki fatigues to match the desert terrain?)

But I'm not here to talk about us trying to get people to stop blowing themselves up by blowing them up ourselves.... No, I'm here to talk about technology--

Steve, Al, send the next 300,000 iPads to Baghdad. Actually, send 150,000 to Baghdad, and the other 150,000 to Kandahar, where Coalition Forces are apparently locking and loading for a major June offensive. There's not a single doubt in my mind that Apple's new iPad "device"--like a nuke, except it creates instead of destroys--coupled with Internet Technology Made Available by Al Gore--is going to clear up a lot of misunderstandings Over There, and prevent a lot of needless killing, just like today's modern conveniences make multitasking easy
in all areas of the home.

To illustrate how we're really more alike than we think, I've devised a BlaiserBlog "meme" that reinforces what I've always suspected--that the Truth is but a few keystrokes away. (Think of it as another small stone in my masonry effort to build a wall in the 21st century)

To wit: I will take a randomly selected paragraph from the BlaiserBlog archives and successively convert it into several Major World Languages--via an Internet-obtained translator that is no doubt standard on an iPad, along with its airbag-equipped phallus stylus and Etch-O-Sketch erasibility--and then back to English, thereby proving that deep down, not only are we all of the same tongue, but also that an iPad will bring peace and prosperity to any region fortunate enough to have access to the best that life has to offer, like we here in the West enjoy.

Original Text, from There's Only One Smoking Gun?

Change does not usually come swiftly to the opera house, until it does. For the stagehands, one classic manifestation is that whenever a particular production is first mounted, whatever technology they used at the time is forever bonded to that production no matter how often it's revived. In other words, one night you're struggling with an electrics prop or a chandlier that up close looks like Dr. Frankenstein got medieval with some sheet metal and a spot welder--for a 1985 Zeffirelli production of Tosca--and the next, you're programming robotic lights for a very modrene re-design of 2005's Madama Butterfly. Old shows chug along until a General Manager or a Board smites it with the Divine Hand of Upper Management and commissions a completely new design.

For your convenience, please enjoy an old-school mashup in its own right, "We Are The World," a record from the mid-80s, in which we learned that even Huey Lewis cared enough to send the very best. *


To follow along at home, scroll down the paragraphs at evenly spaced times of the soloists' performances, every five singers. i.e., scroll to Hindi with James Ingram, to Yiddish with Dionne Warwick, to Icelandic with Steve Perry, and back to English with Bob Dylan. Go ahead and hit Play, and I'll get to work translating.

James Ingram (that someone, somewhere...)

आमतौर पर बदलने के ओपेरा हाउस के लिए तेजी से नहीं आती है, जब तक यह नहीं करता है. stagehands के लिए, एक क्लासिक अभिव्यक्ति है कि जब भी एक विशेष मुहिम शुरू की है पहली उत्पादन, प्रौद्योगिकी वे समय पर इस्तेमाल किया जो हमेशा के लिए बंधुआ है कि उत्पादन करने के लिए कोई बात नहीं कितनी बार इसे पुनर्जीवित किया है. दूसरे शब्दों में, एक रात आप एक electrics सहारा या एक chandlier कि करीब अप डा. फ्रेंकस्टीन की तरह दिखता है कुछ शीट धातु के साथ मध्ययुगीन गया और एक स्थान वेल्डर - एक 1985 Tosca Zeffirelli के उत्पादन के लिए है - और अगले के साथ संघर्ष कर रहे हैं, आप 2005 की Madama तितली का एक बहुत ही modrene फिर से डिजाइन के लिए रोबोट रोशनी प्रोग्रामिंग कर रहे हैं. पुराने शो एक जनरल मैनेजर या एक बोर्ड के साथ इजाफा होगा जब तक यह ऊपरी प्रबंधन और आयोगों की एक पूरी तरह से नए डिजाइन के हाथ से देवी smites.

Dionne Warwick ( So, send 'em your hearts.....)

 

אָפּערע הויז צו ענדערן יוזשאַוואַלי טוט ניט קומען פעסט, ווי לאַנג ווי עס קען ניט סטיידזשכאַנדז, אַ קלאַסיש אויסדרוק אַז ווען מאָונטעד דער ערשטער פּראָדוקציע פון אַ באַזונדער טעכנאָלאָגיע געניצט אין די צייַט וואָס איז אויף אייביק באַנדיד צו פּראָדוצירן קיין ענין ווי פילע מאָל עס איז לעצטנס. אין אנדערע ווערטער, אַ נאַכט אָדער אַ ריזאָרט טשאַנדליער ילעקטריקס איר נאָענט אַרויף וואָס קוקט ווי ד"ר פראַנקענסטעין זענען מידיוואַל מיט עטלעכע בויגן מעטאַל וועלדער און אַ פּלאַץ - אַ 1985 טאָסקאַ זעפפירעללי ס פּראָדוקציע - און סטראַגאַלינג מיט די קומענדיק ביסט דו אַ זייער מאָדרענע 2005 מאַדאַמאַ באַטערפליי שייַעך-פּלאַן פון די לייץ זענען פּראָגראַממינג די ראָבאָט. אַלטע ווייזט וועט זייַן ענכאַנסט מיט אַ גענעראַל פאַרוואַלטער אָדער אַ ברעט ביז עס ס אויבערשטער פאַרוואַלטונג און אַ גאָר נייַע פּלאַן קאַמישאַנז פון די דיווינע האנט סמיטעס.

Steve Perry  (There's a choice we're makin'...)

Opera hús til að breyta yfirleitt ekki koma hratt, svo framarlega sem það gerir það ekki. Stagehands, klassísk tjáningu að þegar reimt fyrstu framleiðslu tiltekins tækni og notuð er í tíma sem er að eilífu tengt til að framleiða sama hversu oft hún hefur að undanförnu. Með öðrum orðum, eina nótt eða Úrræði Chandley Electrics þú lokar allt sem lítur eins og Dr Frankenstein eru Medieval með nokkrum málmur lak skóginum og mikið - framleiðslu 1985 Tosca Zeffirelli's - og barátta við framtíðina ertu mjög nútímalegum 2005 Maddamma Butterfly aftur - hönnun ljósin fóru Forritun vélmenni. eldri athugasemdum verður endurbætt með almennur framkvæmdastjóri eða stjórnarmaður til þess 'efri stjórnun og a fullkomlega nýr Umboð hönnun guðlega smites hönd.


Robert Zimmerman -- bring it on home! (there's a choice we're makin'....)

Opera house to change usually does not come quickly, as long as it does not. Stage Hands, a classic expression of the Haunted when the first production of a particular technology used in the time that is forever linked to produce no matter how often it has recently. In other words, one night or Resort Chandley Electric closing up that looks like Dr. Frankenstein is Medieval some metal sheet wood and hard - production 1985 Tosca Zeffirelli's - and struggling with the future are very modern in 2005 Maddamma Butterfly again - design lights went Programming robot. old notes will be amended by general manager or board member to it's upper management and a completely new designs divine mandate smites hand.

See? Now why can't we all get along?

Thanks for reading, and always try to remember: 1. That it's nearly impossible to think of starving Ethiopians without thinking of John Oates, and also that 2. Thanks to U.S. war planning, everyone involved in this "scheduled" major offensive in Kandahar can book their Labor Day weekend places in impunity, for hostilities will surely be wrapped up by September 1--even earlier if we get those friggin' iPads over there. Who's with me?

* Truthfully, Huey Lewis appears to be a really cool. He crossed the street in New York opposite to my son once, and apparently stopped and talked to him and was just a super guy. I just used him as a joke because he only got one line in the song. And you know what? He really did sell it.