H.N.T.

Some of you know my riding hasn't progressed as I would have liked this spring. I'm still having a nagging tendonitis issue as a result of that late winter ride with a certain bike company executive.


It's getting better, I can commute to work without any problems, though I'm noticing the colder it is, the more likely I can feel some pain. But, since it's just over 30 minutes of riding, I haven't had any pain that would cause me to alter my pedaling style.


The funny thing about it is that it hurts the most when I'm spinning a light gear. If I get out of the saddle, or grind a hard gear, the pain all but goes away. If I sit and spin, after about 45 minutes it feels like someone is jabbing a hot soldering iron under my right kneecap.


I did two MTB rides of note. Two weekends ago I did my typical Winnekenni ride. I was out for two hours, and didn't feel anything until I was on the road for the ten minute ride home from the park. The last 1/4 mile was quite painful.


Last weekend I went to HPSF, and rode for two solid hours. I felt a little pain as I was cruising on one of the fire roads about an hour into the ride, but when I hit the single track in the south end of the park, again, the pain went away, since very little of that section allows you to sit and spin a light gear. It's all rocky and technical - delightfully so.


FWIW - I rode at HPSF on a modified version of Son Of Ice Bike. I put on some WTB 2.1 rubber, a Scott LF flat bar, and a Ritchey Vector saddle. It rode well and was comfortable, though I'll be putting on a shorter stem for the next trip - pictures to follow soon.....of the bike....

Mega Python vs Gatoroid: A Parable of The Modern Popular Culture

So I'm channel surfing on the couch one night last week, too lazy to get my out-of-shape ass up off the couch to go to bed, and figure I'll pick some bad movie to watch to help me realize the futility of sleeping on the the couch, when I come across this gem on the Sy-Fy channel. Now, truth be told, It wasn't the prospect of seeing poorly animated giant pythons battling poorly animated giant alligators, rather it was the cast: Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.

Yes, This Tiffany:

and this Debbie Gibson:

OK, not really. The movie came out in 2011, so it was really this Tiffany:

(from her 2002 playboy shoot)

And this Deborah Gibson.

(from her 2005 playboy shoot)

No, no, just kidding. Being a Mega-Man-Pig, that's just what I was hoping I would see. In fact, it was this Tiffany:

(from the movie release party)

and this Deborah Gibson:

(from the movie release party)

ok, wait....that still isn't right. What we were instead treated to was a crack whore and trailer trash:

(still from the movie set)

OK,that was mean - and quite unfair....well...maybe not.

(still from the movie set after the cat-fight scene) Although it doesn't come out in these photos, Tiffany has probably dozens of small tattoos that were easily visible in that black cocktail dress through the various scenes

And yes, you read that right, there was a rather long cat fight scene.

(still from the cat-fight scene)

Which was - to say the least - quite entertaining to a middle-aged too-bored-with-his-life hopelessly-married man sitting up too-late on the couch. I didn't torture myself with the whole movie though. I bounced away during the commercials to watch a competing effort on the science channel feature a rather currently-relevant show on tectonic drift and volcanism, bouncing back to the '80's teen-idol tete-a-tete when it went to commercial. Trust me, this wasn't a movie you had to put a whole helluvalot of effort into to get.

The premise was as cheesy as one could surmise from the title: There is in fact a python problem in the everglades from people releasing pets into the wild, and there have been a number of cases of pythons eating alligators, upsetting the biodiversity of the swamps. Yes, it's true. The movie portrays a story of a park-ranger scientist (Tiffany) that thinks they need to beef up the gators to keep their status at the top of the food chain by feeding them chicken laced with steroids. Meanwhile, another biological scientist (Gibson) thinks that isn't letting nature sort it self out, so she sets out genetically engineering the snakes to ginormous proportions.

The result? Why, Mega-Python Vs. Gatoroid, of course. Fans of Pop-Culture will get a big kick out of Mickey Dolenz' cameo appearance (more than a few lines, actually) just before he gets eaten in one gulp by a big fucking snake.

But is this movie really about big fucking snakes and big fucking alligators? I suspect not. I suspect it's more of an analogy of pop-icons being consumed by their own success. Face it, we have two aging teen-queens who in recent years have engaged in desperate acts for the sole purpose of trying to re-ignite that flame of popularity they once held in American Culture, only to see it ostensibly backfire. So alligators (tiffany) eat steroids (pose in playboy) and end up competing with pythons (gibson) that have been genetically modified (posed in playboy) to the point that they are killed (fade into obscurity) by a scientist from the CDC with a special technique that kills megasized creatures (the complacency of the American Public).

But hey, I'm not criticizing either of them for posing nude. I like that they posed nude. I wish more people would pose nude. To quote Ultra-Endure Guy: "I like boobies". I mean, how many of us have rewound the nude scene with Uma Thurman in Dangerous Liaisons back and forth to enhance the jiggle of her magnificent tatas? Freeze frame Annette Benning's FFN in The Grifters? Slow-Mo Dana Delaney in her various totally nude scenes in East Of Eden? Susan Sarandons masturbation scene in Pretty Baby? Please. Give me more...often. I don't think it's bad/sad that they did it, It think it's bad/sad that it's an issue.

But that's all bullshit. I'm way over thinking this whole thing. It's a fucking movie that not even Tiffany or Debbie took very seriously. I mean, in the cat-fight scene, I think they pretty much did most of the stunts.

If you're bored enough to watch that clip to the end, you'll see something very familiar:

Tiffany did it too, and it's been rumored that Debbie had a version in the works. Other bits I've scanned on-line in the preparation for this post claim more references to each others music, but since I was never more than peripherally aware of these two, I'll just chalk that up to an unsubstantiated claim. It appears they had fun making it, so regardless of whether or not anyone else likes it, it was a success unless they had some delusion that it was going to be any more than a campy made-for-cable movie.

It's a bad movie, and isn't really worth wasting your time on, unless you _really_ like '80s teen idols, or like seeing '80s teen idols in a cat-fight, or like seeing '80s teen idols dressed like trailer trash, or like seeing '80s teen idols getting eaten by giant amphibious creatures. In fact, just that you spent all this time reading about here is probably more than a waste of time on the whole idea, unless you're into that sort of thing.

urban downill

I can't really describe this any other way but awesome. A sanctioned downhill race through narrow city streets with a few added obstacles. Watch for the dog @:40 and the wall @2:00.

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.