davy jones has died

but richard hammond is still around

and ready for the role of davy jones in the monkees biopic.

political song for santorum to sing

will bob kerrey and olympia snowe be obama's saviours?

an over-oversized weasel like bob kerrey must figure he's got a decent chance, which is a huge cock-punch to the republicans, and olympia snowe might be handing the obama folks a big one out of the blue.  is this the next step of the complete dissociation of the republican party?

virag's movie reviews: unknown (2011)

this was not a bad movie; it was like a mirror image of taken.  really, the script was on the trail of some top-shelf philip k. dick paranoid identity crisis and conspiracy shit even if it never quite got there.  still, it was okay.  january jones is useless.  it was nice to see aidan quinn back with liam neeson from the michael collins days at least.  and the fucking hitler guy was in it!  that's something.

another possibility

less bike, more toy.  looks okay, though.  top tube cable routing.  a cool, 2 chainring crankset with a bashguard.  useless fork.  no quick releases. 

arizona funfetti?

no.  over the last 20 years, arizona has moved away from it's sunny, slutty and fun disposition and into a wizened, boring and dumb decline--not at all fun.  as if new mexico ever had to worry about their idiot cousins next door stealing their thunder.

talk me down

i gotta buy a kid's bike.  they're horrible.  my go-to bike-shop bike brand, kona, is just awful for kids.  the decent kona with the 24" wheels is a thousand fucking dollars.  not doing that.  no fucking way this kid is gonna have a nicer hardtail than me!  and the sub-$500 kona's are nasty.  jesus.  i think the specialized is the way to go, for the love of pete.  it looks like a real bike.  but i don't wanna do it.  fuck.

boulder six fifty bee

this is an interesting not-racing bike.  much to like here, even if it's not my off-pavement bag.

top gear fluffs the saab fanboys

top gear did a bit last sunday on bbc2 to give a little kiss goodbye to saab and a cheap thrill for the saab fan boys.  regardless, this was a decent episode, and bbc america should show all the top gears at full length.

bob kerrey vs. ben nelson

how could bob kerrey possibly be any worse?  kerrey's shit, but at least he was an early adopter of the santorum ridicule.  2003.  nostra fucking damus.

beating on tweety

this feels like way too much work to say that chris matthews is douchenozzle, and that his book is dazzlingly vapid and pointless.  maybe the reviewer, like tweety, got paid by the keystroke.

steny hoyer blows dog

this is not a shock to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together.  and he's not anywhere near the biggest piece of shit in washington.  or in congress.  or in the house.  or in the democratic party.  or in a leadership position.

timeless

virag's movie reviews: 50/50 (2011)

seth rogen is a cancer in the colon of american comedy.  the other guy was okay, though.  and the girl was cute, even if the part was absurd.  i thought the destruction of the painting was horrible; even if the painter was a shallow, talentless person in the movie; to revel in the destruction of a piece of art in a scene that was a in itself was a shallow ripoff of office space's copier dance was a little too meta in a lame, soft-headed comedy.

a century after bradley manning

bradley manning, his treatment, and the his place in the shameful history of 21st century america will be hot topics in a hundred years even though they are totally invisible now.  manning is clearly a hero of the hightest order, and his treatment by the murderous empire is a crime against humanity.  long after the fall, manning will be a prime example of the distance between america's purported ideals of freedom and liberty and its reality at the start of the 21st century.

what's the definition of a non-believer?

i think that full-of-shit crossed with teabagging asshole is a pretty good one.  if by some remote chance the standard jeebus-style of heaven and hell is correct, then this asshole from the acton institute and all his no-reading-comprehension butt-buddies are gonna be right up front in first class on the express train to hell.

political song for mittens to sing in michigan

is ron paul trying to buy his idiot son a spot on the ticket?

or possibly a cabinet post as secretary of galtian idiocy?  paul the elder can't have hopes of getting himself the second spot, but is it actually possible that rand paul could be a sufficient substitute for tom coburn?

political song for koch suckers to sing

virag's movie reviews: the rum diary (2011)

the rum diary was a total surprise.  going in, i had no idea what a softhearted trifle johnny depp's labor of love would be.  i mean, it is hunter s. thompson after all, so if you had crafted your love letter in the style of your dear friend, the result should have been engaging and interesting.  casting in this wreck was very uneven.  giovanni ribisi and michael rispoli were excellent.  i'm not sure what ribisi was doing should be called acting in the purest sense of the word, but he turned in an entertaining performance that never quite became annoying.  rispoli's work held the film together; this could have been yet another time when some fool cast paul giamatti in this sort of role only to once again have giamatti destroy the film with his shameless, jackleg presence.  instead, rispoli was clearly an inspired choice, bringing real humanity to the film.  on the other hand, i had high, high hopes for amber heard in this film, absolutely none of which were fulfilled.  she's quickly proving she's as wooden and useless as january jones.  i was really expecting more, certainly different, from the rum diary as well given not only the source material but also the 50 years of the hunter s. thompson published and public experience.  perhaps depp was just too close to the author.

so much for rubio

this will be the stake in the heart of all the rubio veep nonsense.  it didn't matter anyway; it was bullshit from the start.  never rubio.  never mcdonnell.  always coburn.

rubio's a mormon?  who knew?

neil cavuto on the short list for biggest douche in the universe this week

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political song for bankrupt saab to sing

the last saab car

saabsunited has exclusive pictures of the last saab cars ever, newly finished in trollhattan.  not the car i'd pick, diesel, convertible, but i do like the wheels and the color.

the ulitimate saab fanboy freakout

the saab fanboys (and fangirls) over at the saabsunited site have gotten themselves into a lather because there's apparently a rumor that the krauts are one of the purported serious bidders for the saab automobile carcass.  i for one can't figure that play for bavarian motor works, assuming that serious bidder means that bmw is talking about building saab cars with trolls in sweden as opposed to meaning that they plan on taking some of the newer equipment out of there at fire sale prices.  do they hate volkswagen and their wretched audis that much?  could peppy front drive and xwd saabs really deliver some vw and audi drivers to the bmw hegemony?  are there enough people who would and do buy a kraut car but not a bmw kraut car that might buy an near-equivalent saab?  where?  very strange, but it does have the saab faithful skipping the cialis for a coupla days.

watching monica crowley, andrea tantaros and charles payne

watching these three absolute fucking idiots drool out koch-sucking talking points about economics is one of the most astounding tee vee comedy segments in human history.  could there possibly three other humans who understand less about economics or government than these three airheads?  it is truly very sad that they do not grasp that unemployment insurance and food stamps and social pensions are the best stimulus that an economy can possibly have.  direct cash payments to people who most likely don't have a surfeit of wealth and spending money will be pushed right out into the local economy and stimulate economic activity where it matters the most.  did one of those fucking brain-dead assholes just say that it wasn't the new deal that ended the great depression; world war two did?  jesus fucking christ, what was world war two you fucking dipshit?  a massive government stimulus program!  charles payne, andrea tantaros and monica crowley are an embarrassment to shit-eating teabagging primates the world over.

bob mcdonnell gets an ultrasound probe stuck up his ass

damn, i guess that hurt.  major weasel douchebag and virginia governor bob mcdonnell is vigorously attempting to pull the that ultrasound probe out of his ass not because he suddenly became much more intelligent and much less of a fucking bastard, but instead because he wants to be mittens's vice presidential nominee.  it's not gonna help him, because romney's going to pick tom coburn.

lo scandalo

last week's archer was quite good.  i finally got around to watching it off the dvr last night.  almost unbelievably vulgar (that's a compliment), it looked like someone had a shitload of weird sex jokes they wanted to get in--rubber eggplant--so they just went for it.  the nosy mick super was a nice touch as well; totally unnecessary racist comedy about the drunken irish is always good.  overall, it was a funny, weightless, vulgar trifle.

grant petersen writes books

rivendell's grant petersen wrote a book, with a nice excerpt in the atlantic!  who knew.  good for him, and i hope it finds some new readers who might not be down with the grant and rivendell and his history.

if i wrote a book about rivendell, it would be called this is not an upgraded rb-1 and why the hell isn't it, exactly??

i'm sure the roadeo is very nice, but it is about a billion lightyears from what i would like to see in a sweet, steel production road racing style frame.  all-arounder style frames mean nothing to me, but a nice rivendell frame with the 1992 rb-1 geometry would already be living with me.

collapse with agency

considering the nuclear weapons, the abrupt change of state in palestine/israel will probably be one of the most dangerous political and diplomatic crisises anywhere in the world.  it is an unstable, unsustainable situation every day, buoyed only by the massive influx of american cash and the incredibly backward leadership in the surrounding nations, so when the collapse happens much will depend on the humanitarian wisdom of vast numbers of abused and oppressed people and the wisdom of western diplomacy that has been ineffectual for many generations.  if it gets fucked up, it could be as bad as anything that's happened in a hundred years.

brady quinn hates on jeebus

so, where's brady quinn gonna be next year?  not much could make you a brady quinn fan, but this is pretty fucking funny.

political song for rick santorum to sing

it's the final countdown

the final countdown movie, so so much more watchable than that horrific tom cruise f-14 turd.  the sad thing is, this movie is as dumb as a rock, but it's okay.  i guess it is better because it is so much less effective as propaganda.  and katherine ross.

john glenn drinks cocktails with god in a cafe in dowtown saigon

no one ever listens to poor zathras

the real future of serotta, if it has one?  the 3000 dollar stock titanium road racing frame.  i've said it before and i'll say it again.  if you have a (reasonable?) stock carbon road frame and a killer, uber-expensive aluminium racing frame, what's left?  the stock, titanium road racing frame.  not a fucking long-low, bullshit fender bike.  not some idiotic, old-man, high-headtube frame.  a real, tweaked, tight racing frame.  stock sizing only.  no stupid, thousand dollar, douchey flame paint jobs.  make (most of) 'em to order, but have the shit on hand to build and ship them pretty quickly.  use the top-shelf straight-gauge ti tubing, and make them ride like the best racing frames, and deliver them at a great price.  with their ludicrous and fucking obscene pricing structure, serotta is swirling around the bowl on their way out.  clearly their brain trust is a loser crew; if they don't adopt a racing mindset and use their titanium fabrication skills to their best use at the right price, it's adios motherfuckers.

if they really want to prove they have giant balls and want to be players in the racing-style bike game, serotta could also offer a stock steel racing frame and fork at ridiculously low price, sized just like the titanium racing frames, every cm from 48-65, perfect for people who know better and are on the tightest of budgets and want a proper-fitting racing frame that comes in more than 3 sizes.  or maybe those people have the serotta ti racing frame already and want a second frame but don't want to spend another three grand.  something.  serotta had better come up with something, and way back in ancient history they know how to make a world-class racing bike.

if the road and mountain frames start to make money, they could add cross to mix as well.  it sure sounds better than flushing your brand with dentist's bikes that nobody wants.

update: with friends like these...you are fucked if you are serotta.  i bet richard sachs is really, really happy he didn't decide to make sachs frames, inc. a bigtime factory 35 years ago...

political song for virginia women to sing

illegal rentboy sheriff dot com

you know, sheriff, there's only two things that come from arizona, queers and queers, so which one are you?

what the fuck is going on with these sick bastards?  whether it be a closet-case cardinal dolan, or child-rapist football coaches at the pennsyltucky vatican, or diaper-shitting whoremongering senators, america is up to its eyeballs in twisted hypocrites.  now the tough-guy, family-values sheriff is some sort of manipulative closet-case himself.   who ever woulda' guessed...

political song for virginia to sing

virag's movie reviews: 30 minutes or less (2011)

this was not a movie.  it was only 78 minutes long and was missing quite a few obvious scenes in addition most of the purported comedy.  i think it was a rejected pilot for an fx network show.  maybe comedy central.  that sad thing is, there was could have been something here.  there was the germ of a good idea.  the setting was grand rapids, michigan, which is one of those weird, sad, worn-out and left-behind american locales.  the main characters were comfortably non-heroic and downtrodden.  fred ward.  the guy and his friend were fine.  the sister was stunning.  but the two tee vee actors who were playing the villains were awful.  there is a reason why some people are on the tee vee: they are invisible on the big screen.  the stripper was played by a tee vee actor, but at least she was willing to do the thing young women have to do sometimes to prove they can fill up a big screen.  so...where was the rest of the movie?  supposedly the director had made a movie before, so didn't he look at the script and realize that was not a complete film there?  why would you go forward?  because the check cleared?  a good director would have done a rewrite, fleshed this thing out, and made it a genuine, profane and cynical dark comedy.  maybe next time.

rachel maddow's uncle pat buchanan is finally out!

adios, motherfucker!  pat buchanan really was an amazing artifact of old-school american establishment racism and hatred, and your friends at general electric kept him out there on your tee vee for a fucking generation!  is this a sad day for rachel maddow?  will she miss him?  will she cry?

eric bolling got cancelled on fox business!

hahhahhahhahhah!  fucking awesome.  that racist walking cockbag eric bolling had his show cancelled on fox business channel.  i'm sure we'll all shed a tear for that dumb-as-a-post piece of shit.  i wonder how long it'll be until he gets replaced on that stupid fox news channel show by a plankton?  or plankton?

democrats pullin' it for romney

oh, yeah, baby, the democrats in congress and barack obama are doing their bestest to destroy any reason to vote for obama or congressional dems this year by acting like fucking morons and adopting all of the 1%-favored economic austerity policies with a wink and a smile.  with all the bullshit in this tax and unemployment deal, the rock-ribbed conservative democrats are again showing their true colors and pulling the lever for republicans this year.  digby is right.  cutting the unemployment insurance is a terrible idea.  terrible because it hurts the unemployed people and terrible because it hurts the economy and the population as whole by removing stimulus money!  all these assholes--republican and democrat alike--want to do is punish the poor and unemployed and continue to redistribute the wealth of the nation up to the 1%.  when the democrats are every bit the repugnant assholes that the republicans are, why would anyone vote for a loser?

political song for sarah palin to sing

will high gas prices this summer be obama's undoing?

the talk around the virtual water cooler these days is that the average price of gas will be north of five bucks a gallon this summer.  if that means that the overall average united states price per gallon of regular will be > $5, then what will it be in new york city?  san francisco?  chicago?  los angeles?  and then what will a gallon of premium be?  regardless of whether high gas prices are better for the environment or promote the sales of smaller, more efficient and less polluting cars, these super-high prices are going to be a major pain in the ass for many, many americans every week when they buy gas.  what is that going to do obama's popularity?  it's not his fault; he's not the king of gas prices, but still, how do you overcome that?

certainly the obama administration will be putting whatever political pressure they can to encourage lower prices at the pump, but that sort of broad-based constant discontent over an unavoidable and ongoing expense can be a fucking nightmare in a volatile election year, especially if you have a contingent of bugfuck crazy racist teabagger assholes chewing on your ass anyway.  i think that $5 number is going to be a real problem for the obama campaign if it comes true; that sort of psychological hurdle represented by $5/gallon gas will start to do very weird things to people out there in the hinterland.  obama and his people had better be working on a gas price miracle for the summer and fall of 2012.

cognitive dissonance or kos bullshit?

if you read this daily kos marcos post--which i rarely do; except as a list of links and a welfare program for entry-level democratic establishment apparatchiks, daily kos lost all relevance sometime in early 2003--you see a prime example of what may be actual cognitive dissonance but is more probably bullshit when it comes to his purported support for 'fighting liberals' that suddenly morph into 'fighting democrats'.  that's the tell.  the daily kos crowd, the establishment 'left' blogs have nothing to do with liberal causes or left-wing philosophy.  instead the are all about promoting democrats and electing democrats, not liberals, not socialists, not progressives, not populists or anyone who is not completely loyal to the democratic party establishment.  the (relatively) big left wing blogs are not left wing at all because the democratic party is not at all left wing; as obama has proven over and over again, the democrats are rock-ribbed establishment, wall-street conservatives with as much of the proper fealty to the oligarchy as the reality-based republicans.  so when all these folks talk about electing democrats--how'd that big push for stephanie herseth work out, marcos?--they are gathering up as many of the left-leaning interweb-americans to the conservative democratic party cause as they can.  not a bad deal for the oligarchs.  money well spent.

virag's movie reviews: x-men: first class (2011)

why?  what was the point of this fucking dreck?  yeah, yeah, i know: money, but jesus this was just garbage.  pointless garbage.  all of the x-men movies sucked, even with captain picard in them; the only actor who seemed to be engaged is the australian wolverine guy.  (bryan singer shoulda drowned himself after his first movie--remember, that turd had a baldwin brother in it, and not the good one.  i can't wait to see what he'll do if he really gets a chance to buttfuck battlestar galactica.)  the fantastic four movies sucked; most comic book movies blow dog.  almost all of the these comic book concepts are just too stupid to justify a big-budget, live-action film.  however, after all the years of publication, there should be no excuse for not recognizing the worst of the plots and characters.  these movie studios are bereft of any scrap of imagination and originality.

della santa goodness

breitbart on cenk's show

very disappointing.  it seemed that cenk was not all that prepared.  unless the fix was in, i would have expected him to sodomize breitbart without the benefit of a reach-around.  it didn't happen.  i wonder why?

whitney houston is not news

it's a tragedy for her family and a loss for her friends, but jesus christ, it is not news in america in 2012.  we got a lot of shit going on, and this is just an establishment media distraction that benefits their paymasters.  disgusting.

wicked cool rock lobster time machine

sweet.  i would be wicked psyched to have this sled.

lost girl

meh.  the premise is beyond silly, but the lead actress in it is really attractive, and a little bit different than the typical american tee vee type, with a sort of low-budget molly parker vibe going on.

update: the werewolf guy is pretty decent, too.  somehow he pulls it off despite the material.  maybe it's a canadian thing that i just don't understand.

updater: exactly what is the point of the canadian remake of being human?

political song for eddy egan to sing

papists pulling the lever for obama

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greece fire

more on the greek clusterfuck from mike whitney on counterpunch.  especially tasty is the ban on health and safety laws that might protect greek citizens from private sector malfeasance.  whether it's rancid babyfood or destruction of worker's rights, the greek people are going to get brutalized in this agreement.  any government that allows this to happen deserves no support from the greek people.  with luck it will be a guillotine party in athens soon.  a tumbril convoy in athens might make the greek government reconsider its fealty to the germans and the imf.

scraping the bottom of the barrel: gretchen hamel on fox

because of the particular over-compensating pathology of rupert murdoch and roger ailes, fox news channel does some amazing scraping of the bottom of the most rancid barrels in america to find a particular sort of on-air 'talent'.  amilya antonetti is one especially sad example; former jc watts associate gretchen hamel is another.  sometimes when you watch fox you suddenly get the feeling that shepard smith was hired on orders from the top becauase of his looks as well.

update: fox news closet queen alert: holy shit!

a lullaby for your last night on earth

too stupid even for republicans

this is maybe the nuttiest thing that those brain-dead gop fuckers could do, hitching their political fortunes in an election year to a wildly unpopular position on something as personal and universal as birth control.  except for creepy cocksuckers like rick santorum, even the majority of self-identified republicans are huge users of birth control and abortion, so following the lead of the closet-case boy-fuckers and the other religious extremists is exactly the wrong move for a party attempting to unseat a sitting president.  obama must be doing backflips tonight.

greasy d fault

at some point, if you can't figure out that stupid shit like a 22% cut in the minimum wage is not going to be helpful in solving your economic problems, then you have no business running a country.  this greek nonsense is nothing about helping greece and all about bailing out the international banks and maintaining the illusion of eurozone viability.  if a country can't control its own currency for the benefit of its own people, then it's not worth saving.

this sporting life

now that's a small custom frame

you don't see a frame like this every day.

maine funfetti

woo fucking hoo, mittens wins maine after he wins the circle jerk at the cpac.  paul blew it again.  if he's not careful, even the libertarians aren't gonna want him.

political song for tim dolan to sing

obama's pulling the lever for mittens, again

the village idiots and obama fluffers are thrilled with the president's political capitulation to the assholes and creepy boy-lovers like the inexcusable closet-case tim dolan.  they're all wet and sticky because obama appeared to both defend his health care plan as well as kiss the ring of the backward-ass catholic men like e.j. dionne and mark shields and tim kaine who pretended to be oh so offended by this nonsense.  once again, this was a political failure that obama created for himself.  instead of making the argument that women and women's health are not matters of religious opinion in a country where there is a separation of church and state and then bringing out the vast majority of catholic women and other religious women who put the health of women and the freedom of choice ahead of the bullshit spewed out by a bunch of hypocrite pedophiles to make the case and voice the administration's principled stand in order to not let the debate be defined by the boy fuckers and the patrician village idiot assholes like chris matthews, he soothed the egos of the bad guys and made sure that the old men knew who was boss.  they were.  as a matter of law, as a matter of principle and as a matter of equal rights for women, the original birth control rule was the proper one; no compromise was necessary.  he had the support of women, and the nation in general; the only ones who had a problem were the catholic leadership and a bunch of asshole republicans, none of whom were voting for obama anyway.  and anyone who believes that obama had a big plan to outwit the republican leadership and presidential candidates in order to make them look like extremist whackjobs on birth control and shit clearly just got here from neptune, because this president hasn't outwitted anyone except his most ardent supporters in three and a half years.

once again, obama struck a compromise with the evil and the stupid when none was necessary.  when obama's supporters make the argument that obama deserves reelection because the alternative is so much worse, this birth control failure is just another proof that the argument is not a strong one.  obama has not been a good president who might have been great as armando at dailykos would have you believe.  as he's shown over and over, he's a political failure who was elected in the hope he'd be a strong leader in times of enormous national distress.  his supreme court picks have been mediocre at best; the need for a strong, intelligent legal intellects on the court was not met by obama's choices.  his health insurance reform was too little, too late when the nation needed radical change; obama squandered his mandate because he had no intention of being a transformational leader.  when obama acts as the servant of the oligarchy and abandons the ideals he supposedly supported as a senator or as a candidate, he's doing nothing more than pulling the lever for mittens.  certainly his only argument for reelection is that a republican would be so much worse, but if you've been on the planet since 2008 and have had your eyes open, you can only ask how?  health care?  women's rights?  freedom?  peace?  economics?  how could mittens be so much worse?  mittens can be bush's fourth term if he wants, as obama has essentially been the third.  the pool, the pond.  the pond would be good for you.

virag's movie reviews: cowboys and aliens (2011)

cowboys and aliens might have been the best movie ever made--or at least marginally entertaining--had the film been made with the cast of deadwood and an r rating, along with music by kitchens of distinction.  however, it wasn't, and it didn't, so it sucked.  as it turns out that jon favreau is an awful filmmaker.  go figure.

political song for deborah feldman to sing

see a little light

just when the continued existence of scum like maggie gallagher has you believing a killer asteroid would be too good for us, a story like this comes along and makes it a little bit better.  deborah feldman is just the sort of wonderful, strong and wise person who will certainly aid human progress.  she's the anti-gallagher.

another useless human: maggie gallagher

as atrios's place reminded us today, maggie gallagher is another one of those worthless pieces of human garbage who are doing their best to hold back progress because their own lives have been squalid, joyless failures.  hypocrite and vacuous don't begin to define the pathetic gallagher.  she's another of the innumerable black marks against yale--as if paul giamatti wasn't enough--and whoever that sorry bastard was who actually knocked up this ridiculous slut must be cowering in fear of being outed as perhaps the most hard-up loser in the history of american higher education.

political song for maggie gallagher to sing

virag's movie reviews: moneyball (2011)

moneyball would have been better in every conceivable way had the entire cast been replaced with the cast of major league.

a chris kvale frame you don't see every day

unless you own you one, you probably don't see any chris kvale frame every day; this lovely example is certainly unique.  there are so many amazing details on this bike.  the cream and red works very well, too.  i like this a bunch. 

virag's movie reviews: thor (2011)

kenneth branagh presents tryin' too hard.  somebody should have explained to him that this wasn't some idiotic shakespeare reimagining, and that trying too hard is probably worse than phoning it in when the source material is so astoundingly silly.  it also would have been good to remind him that casting natalie portman kills your movie.  the thor dude was pretty weightless, too.  by law stellan skarsgard has to appear in every second movie released in the western world, so branagh gets a pass on that one.  the alien homeworld looked cartoony and probably cost a bundle.  over all, this would have been better as an episode of stargate sg-1.

what the fuck are they going to do with all those idiots in the avengers?  is that stupid thing going to be 6 fucking hours long?

political song for sarah corina to sing

teabaggin' santorum funfetti

oh, yes, it was glorious fun to watch that deranged fucker rick santorum preen up there last night, wallowing in the indelible aftermath of a frothy, fun-filled tuesday.  with luck, it'll get weird for a little while as mittens spends some of his money to violate santorum in public and expose his creepy and corrupt past.  done right that will provide some high-calorie hilarity before the interminable morass of the remaining meaningless primaries.  romney and his people have to be sickened that teabagger assholes are so unbelievably stupid and short sighted that they would even consider embracing the hopeless assclowns like newt and santorum, baby! when they supposedly hate the kenyan muslim usurper so much.  meanwhile, obama must be seriously considering embracing religion, cuz some invisible superhero has gotta be on his side.

sram'd

sram ran that fucker back; i would imagine there will be a special holiday card next year for the fine folks who may have been left behind by the new red launch.  that's fine, just fine. 

now, they're talking hydraulic road brakes.  standard rim-type brakes with hydraulic actuation.  that's fucked up.  what is the porpoise of that?  that seems very much like an answer to a question nobody's asking, kinda like the heinous 4-bolt chainring standard shimano started, except shimano is way too smart to introduce something as uselessly goofy as a hydraulic road brake.  shimano would do a new standard to kill off some competitors, no problem, but go with something that offers no benefit, especially to shimano?  no way.  (the funny thing is, the hydro calipers look pretty okay in the photos, considering what they are, especially compared to the nasty new red cable calipers.)  now the road disc brakes are probably inevitable.  disc brakes are everywhere in our lives, and the road disc is the continuation of the mountain bike disc, whether it's necessary or not.  will we get to a world where the silver campagnolo record and chorus differential brake sets are the most sought-after vintage components ever made?

political song for rick 'man-on-dog' santorum to sing

jolly good show

this link for the yelp reviews of the kansas abortionplex is making the rounds today.  fucking awesome, so many great reviews here.  this is the shit that almost gives you a flicker of hope.

in the words of sheila broflovski

what what whaaat?

virag's movie reviews: limitless (2011)

there's something like 15 or 20 percent of a decent philip k. dick movie here.  i suspect that once the director and producers were sure de niro would be in the film, they immediately began phoning it in, figuring de niro would be enough.  they were wrong.  limitless starts off like a classic pkd story with a loser who thinks he's a writer, an impossibly hot girlfriend, and a slip into a dangerous, paranoid reality.  it's an interesting setup, but that is as far as it goes.  the script, the director, and the lead actor bradley cooper immediately get confused by the material and lose the thread completely.  despite what the filmmakers may have believed, this film is not a thriller or an action film or a clever mystery, and making the main character an unstoppable hero lacks imagination.  de niro completely embraces the phoning-in ethic, and whatever interesting story was possible goes completely unexplored.  i can see that most likely the problems started with the screenwriter who didn't understand what story she was telling.  that was followed by a director who didn't see those flaws and was equally clueless.  finally, bradley cooper believed his own press about being a top-notch hollywood leading man, so he played it absolutely wrong.  the silliness of the pharmacology is so far down the list of shit in the movie that it does not matter at all; this film was already as dumb as possible.  it's too bad; smart, talented filmmakers could have done something with this idea.  instead we get a fatally flawed, imbecilic mess that highlights the astounding lack of talent and imagination of the principals.

nagasawa from australia

another great nagasawa, this time a lovely track frame as found on the nifty fixed gear australia site.  nagasawa's are consistently fantastic.  like the best steel frames, they are elegant and classic without trying too hard.  whether it's this example, or the ones about which i've gushed previously here, the pink track frame, the purple metallic road frame, and richard sachs's dolphin grey road frame, nagasawa's are always just right.  the pic below with the drop bars is one of the later ones on the australian thread.  love that pewter metallic color.  boo-tee-full.

political song for sram to sing

james wolcott on ed burns

james wolcott takes on one of the enduring questions of our time on his blog, namely what the fuck is ed burns doing making movies?  the brothers mcmullen was a joyously entertaining film on first viewing, especially if you had a feel for the whingy, faux-macho family dynamic presented in the film.  the tell, though, about the film itself and burns in general was the fact that on subsequent viewings much of the joy evaporated, and the follow up film, she's the one, was lame and hollow.  (somebody's gotta do a monograph on the relationship between tom petty and films.  she's the one, the postman, if tom petty's all in, you know it's gonna be an epic disaster.)  wolcott is all over the decline and death of burn's directorial career.  he's now doing $10,000 camcorder movies, and i struggle to imagine what might be next.  youtube-only star vehicles for rebecca black?  burns is like a slightly more well-behaved kevin smith, and i'm sure both of them sometimes wish their first film was also their last--just like the rest of us do all the time.

it wasn't all hearts and flowers for maxine bahns.

sram's leap'd year

the rocket scientists over at sram are at it again, pissing off more small fries for no good reason.  i'm not a huge fan of the current indyfab bikes--their 1997 hardtails and 1998 cross bikes are about my speed--but why in the world would you not want a company that sells uber-spendy (that's french or something) bikes to throw your latest and greatest on their show bikes, x-pecially if that bike maker is a self-described sram fan who was planning on using your stuff x-clusively at the big show?  you want to get the orders from the giandale trekalized bike marketers; you sell to marketing managers by the uber-thousand lot and make your money.  but does anyone not buy a bike at a shop because it has something other than sram on it?  wouldn't they buy that wonderbike just as easily if it had something else on it at the same price?  i think so.  it seems like most folks buying a complete giandale trekalized sort of bike buy on price and what looks coolest, or what their buddies tell 'em, or what the shop pushes.  the gruppo is probably not all that important by that point.  maybe i'm wrong.  the last complete bike shop bike i bought had training wheels.

richard sachs and indy fab, along with other small fries that aren't giandale trekalized, create demand in ways that 10,000 pre-sold gruppos never could.  it's all about that intangible cred.  big fans of richard sachs, even if they will never be customers at this point, might consider putting sram red on their neato new custom bike because mr. sachs is a huge proponent and has put his racing team on it.  if a customer who has their heart set on a new uber-spendy indyfab carbon-ti thing wants the indyfab-approved gruppo and chooses red because of that fact, well that's absolutely a unique bike-geek bike that, assuming it's ever ridden, will be out there on the road and probably on the interwebs promoting sram components in a way that those 10,000 otherwise anonymous tour de france-approved chinese giandale trekalized plastic carbon frames never would.  gruppos that go on a richard sachs or an indyfab or whatever are a harder sell in some ways.  those dudes and dudettes that are buying the custom or bespoke or small-builder sleds probably waste way too much time considering their cycling-related purchases; they are probably those annoying douchebags who never shut up how good the stuff is on group rides or in the weight room or on the internets.

it's about being the cool company.  cool with the tour de france wins on the giandale trekalized team might be one thing.  but cool on the sachs cross team is another, more interesting possibility.  and cool on that awesome new richard sachs frame that dave who rides with on tuesdays just got to replace his bianchi or whatever is another.  cool on that fucking indyfab that people seem to be shitting themselves over on the weighpede salorum or wherever shows your stuff in a whole new light, because the indyfab crew likes and promotes your stuff.  maybe just maybe it makes your stuff cool enough to make someone want to buy a giandale trekalized because it has sram on it as opposed to shimano on it for the same price, or cool enough to make someone want to buy sram to put on their new bespoke or custom frame instead of the tried and true campagnolo jewelry. 

call it cool, or call it hip--ugh--or call it something else, but it's a multifaceted branding that can't be bought at only 10,000 piece increments.  how did sram not get this?  when they made their pitch to these people, why did they not make it clear that this was an opportunity to have their new stuff in time for the big show--or that it was definitely not the new stuff, now way, no how?  why did they not make it a corporate priority to have every one of these builders on the list for the big show get a chance to put the new sram junk on their bikes?  i'm sure the well-heeled bike dweebs would have noticed all the new 2012 red on the custom frames at the show.  i'm sure sram could have answered those questions with a big smile.  sram, the choice of the giandale trekalized racing team and richard sachs and indyfab and some custom builders you have never heard of.  sounds like bullshit to me, but it sounds like easy bullshit, and if for some reason the container from china didn't show up, then they could have sent along the 2011 stuff for the show bikes and nobody would feel like the low man on food chain. 

i guess i don't understand their mindset.  sram is not shimano, the soulless automaton that never misses a shift.  sram is not campagnolo, the stylish italian company that has been with the sport of cycling since the dawn of time.  they should want to be something unique, and fucking up this situation with the small builders looks like a lost opportunity to craft that image as more than just the only people who are not going to have an electric gruppo (this year).  sram: the choice of battery-phobic tour de france racers and cranky bespoke frame sole proprietors.  i guess not.  it must be time to leap back to the drawing board.

nevada funfetti

3%.  at this point paul is 3 frigging percent behind newt for second place in nevada.  dr. paul is really screwing america with his chronic under performing.  besides under performing on the intelligence scale as a randroid fuckwad, paul is also under performing in these caucus states in 2012.  gingrich got blown out in nevada, but somehow paul was not able to wind up his ground game a little bit tighter to push gingrich into a sure  third place, which would have caused gingrich's head to explode--and the subsequent cable news hissy fit that newt would have unleashed would have been just the sort of life-affirming hilarity that we all need in these black times.  he didn't get it done in iowa either, so i don't hold out much hope for maine.

political song for yeti cycles to sing

komen's true color

komen may have done their best to staunch the bleeding over their amazing cock-up of the planned parenthood funding, but no honorable and kind-hearted american should ever forget what miserable whores those komen people are.  never again with stupid pink crap and the stupid races and shit.  donate, but give to the people who get it done for women and women's health care: planned parenthood.  besides, when this stupid motherfucker whips out his cut and paste teabagger talking points against you, you know you are truly on the side of the angels.

more sax max max zank

a coupla more pictures of that zanconato with the sax max lugs and max fork...so sweet with the chunky pipes and that fork. 

richard sram

richard sachs is many things, and one of them is honest, atmo.  he is generous with his friends and true to his roots.  if you check out his site or his postings on the internets, he is always a loyal promoter of his suppliers and team sponsors.  this is how it's sposed to be done.  make deals, honor them and dance with the one what brung ya'.  in addition, you and your sponsors might get that racing cred and feedback that just might improve the breed and whatnot.  it's all good.  relatively small players like the richard sachs team get to race and the sponsors get good publicity.  so...when richard sachs became a huge grassroots early adopter of the new sram road racing components, sram got some cred with the high-income, bespoke crowd.  well...some times you are good and sometimes you are lucky, but sram may have fucked up a tiny bit when they apparently forgot who their old friends were.  very quickly, somebody at sram is gonna make the leap back to taking care of their influential friends.

political song for the komen foundation to sing

chris king and komen

the blowback against the komen foundation has been a beautiful thing to behold.  those republican anti-choice, mysogynist assholes have destroyed their billion-dollar business in 48 hours, and i couldn't be happier.  planned parenthood will get the money from many clear-headed, good-looking americans and shitloads of good press and exposure over this and even more women will get help and health care.

now, the big question for upper-class bike dweebs is what exactly is chris king is going to do with the money from their stupid pink bike stuff?  i sure as shit hope they are already sending it directly to planned parenthood, and if they aren't i hope that everyone buys a lovely set of white industries campagnolo-compatable hubs or white industries mountain bike hubs.  made in usa and priced right, too!

is campagnolo the luckiest company in history?

given campagnolo's relative weaknesses against a manufacturing giant like shimano, campagnolo had to rely on things like grace, elegance, history and reputation, along with shimano's fuckups like unconscionably ugly components and inexcusable new standards that serve no purpose except to force new component sales, to compete for the enthusiast and racer dollars.  when sram decided to go all in with the racer market, they could have used their deep pockets and mountain-bike presence to become the alternative to shimano's best and deliver a death blow to campagnolo, but instead they came out with crap.  the big 2012 facelift to sram's top of the line red components is an abortion.  if anything, it looks even cheaper and less-refined than original version.  those brakes?  that crankset?  the rear derailleur?  fucking horrible.  it looks every bit the plasticky, disposable, no-name junk--except the name is plastered all over it in perhaps the least appealing style possible.  a well-designed, classy, and attractive mechanical gruppo at the right price could stab campagnolo in the heart, especially with a world-class racing program and original equipment saturation.  well, nobody with any sense is going to buy red assuming dura-ace, record and chorus are still produced.  campagnolo is the barack obama of bike components.  had they been given any real competition, they would probably have folded, but like obama, they got mittens.

campagnolo in 2012.

chris matthews is an idiot, again

tweety is such a douche.  mittens is not destroying newt.  newt's disgusting career destroyed newt.  and he'll be out of the race by 1 march.  no liberals are routing for newt.  at best they are routing for entertainment, but never for newt.  anyone routing for newt is as big of an asshole as newt is.