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I remember those. part of rocky's attraction was his naivete. it made him all the more winsome. somewhere in one of those movies in a pre-fight context, I remember him saying (about Apollo maybe?) "he looks mad."
im also somehow reminded of a commercial from, must be way back in the 70s---"baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet..."
That’s one of the things I like about that scene — people see it differently. I took it as gallows humor. Rocky knows he’s about to take beating of his life, but he’s still chill. So he states the obvious, with a smirk, “He looks like a big flag.”
Back to the bike: from Bike Cult — Unless it’s an actual tattoo, a chain-ring tattoo on your right calf is never cool.
Of course he wrote that in the 90s before everybody was all tatted up.
gallows humor is a good possibility, but one bit of evidence for my "naivete" theory is that in rocky II he didn't want to invest in condominiums because he never uses them!
ive got an old cycling photo you might like (and maybe some more to follow). cant remember if I have shared it before.
Haha!
I remember an ad I saw in Bicycling magazine years ago. A young couple is lying in bed, the man is sporting a cycling tan, has a big smile on his face, and has his arms over his head in the pose of a guy who just won a stage. The woman by contrast looks nonplussed. The caption said — speed is not always the objective.
Or something like that.
that's clever and I love double entendre type stuff.
long before Nike came out with "just do it" their motto was "there is no finish line." I loved that.
in the last three mountainous type stages, pogacar has gained back 44 seconds on vingegaard and is now only 9 seconds back. commentators this morning though were saying how the next few mountain stages seem to favor vingegaard.
Stage 16 was a VO2MAXextravaganza. Is Jonas Vingegaard unbeatable now, or does he flame out in the mountains?
So I let my subscription to Outside magazine expire quite some time ago. They’d gotten a fetish for extreme mountaineering and I was tired of reading articles about altitude induced cerebral edema. So they start sending me reminders, polite at first, then pleading, then begging, then bribing, and then they just got mean and nasty. The last thing I got from them was a postcard with no text, just a photo of a fat guy in his bathrobe doing a midnight raid on the ‘fridge.
It was pretty funny. But I still haven’t renewed.
since im missing lots of the viewing, I don't know the terrain of the remaining stages to know whats in front of the riders. tomorrow there is a 22km time trial and im guessing since its so short, its probably very hilly and/or mountainous. I don't remember which of the two is the better time trialist and its hard to gauge which ones been the better climber so far. tomorrow may well be the decisive stage. im kinda hoping i'll wake up at 4ish this morning so I can watch on USA.
that is funny.
ive been revamping my garage, where all my books are, and came across some things that'll be fun to post here.
I saw a quick clip where a grounds crew member fell down when they were pulling a tarp over the field and he got covered up.
The Tour of France 2023 is history! And all I’ve got to say is:
USA-USA-USA, We’re Number 1, We’re Number 1, Woo-Hoo, All Y’all can suck it.
Wait, uhhh, who won? Hmm, never mind.
one wonders why so much of the rest of the world embraces cycling and we don't in the usa.
last year after vingegaard won, something like 150,000 people greeted him on his return to Denmark. my goodness the guy looks like he could being winning the tour for the next 5-6 yrs.
i watched a few minutes of baseball last night and haven't paid enough attention to not be surprised by the boston red sox' uniforms looking like they are from colorful south American/Caribbean little league team!
just to keep the thread from dying...
ive been reading sports illustrated's mantle remembered. its collection of articles written about him from early on until after he retired and close to his death. there was a very touching part I read last night worth sharing here:
(its from a 1995 article by Richard hoffer, in an attempt to understand the attraction people had to mantle)
"Even know that, acknowledging the pinstripe pedigree, the fascination still doesn't add up. if he was a pure talent, he was not, as we found out, a pure spirt. but to look upon his youthful mug today, three decades after he played, is to realize how uncluttered our memories of him are. yes, he was a confessed drunk; yes he shorted his potential--he himself said so. and still, looking at the slightly uplifted square jaw, all we see is America's romance with boldness, its celebration of muscle, a continent's comfort in power at a time when might did make right. mantle was the last great player on the last great team in the last great country, a postwar civilization that was booming and confident, not a trouble in the world."
Mickey Mantle was prolly my first sports hero. There was mention of him in Ball Four... by Jim Bouton ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Four ) so I may try to find this book :) It's not easy to see one's heroes in an unfavorable light.
Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor
mine might have been chris evert---although initially it might have been difficult to separate "hero" from "crush."
I read ball four years ago and remember enjoying it. I just took a peek in my copy, there's no index so I couldn't look up anything mickey mantle quickly. their careers only very slightly overlapped tailor. if you are interested in reading about mantle, I thought the sports illustrated book was good, but its a very short read. if you are looking for something more scholarly, hunt up the last boy: mickey mantle and the end of america's childhood by leavy. I read that bunches of years ago and enjoyed it.
There’s still a couple of weeks in MLB’s regular season, but football is back! Gotta say I don’t have much interest in the NFL, but I do like going to watch the neighborhood kids play HS football on a Friday night.
High School Football figures into my present read, Demon Copperhead. Demon’s friend, Angus, is complaining about the inordinate amount of effort the school system puts into their football program, and Demon rationalizes it:
Demon has gone out for the Junior Varsity team as a tight end. Here he is talking about his teammates:Quote:
If I wanted to discuss unfairness, let’s talk about football. Uniforms, equipment, buses to away games, state championships. The school board threw money at all that like water on a house fire. And I was like, Angus. It’s football. Take that out of high school, it’s church with no Jesus. Who would even go?
I think every football team in the history of football has had a Turp.Quote:
Cush Polk for one, our JV quarterback, decent as milk, a preacher’s kid from way the hell over by Ewing. Tall, blond, actual red cheeks, the type that still said “Yes ma’am” to teachers. He claimed he got his speed from being youngest in a family of nine, and his mom only ever cooked for eight. And Turp Trussell for another, that once drank a shot of turpentine for purposes that remain unclear. Big clown, built like a brick sh*thouse, boldness of a bull in rut. Brain of a deer tick, but that’s not something to hold against a running back.
on a more real world level Sancho, but consistent with angus' lament---I live near the city I grew up on. my old local high school, despite having 1/2 the amount of kids in it compared to years ago, and many less people (and less athletic) on the football team, is having a multimillion dollar turf field being constructed.
yes, a turp and a cush.
I thought you could probably identify, Bounty. I seem to remember you were/are an educator.
Speaking of archetypes, here’s Bob Nelson running through the college all-star roster at Dangerfield’s in 1984. It’d probably get tackled by the PC police nowadays, but it was considered high comedy in the 80s, and doesn’t at all seem mean-spirited to me today:
https://youtu.be/dMR2C09hmhA?si=Sq-Hn32ShpSNHbPm