The Cash Cow, At the Press Conference, With the Microphone

But Not if You Listen to Tom Boonen Tell It: yep, our strapping boy, still desperately seeking a way into the Tour de France after fruitless efforts to date on his behalf by Patrick "THIRTY YEARS OF DOPING, EXCEPT THIS TIME" Lefevere and a distinctly irked Quick Step, has now asserted that, apologies-for-nuthin' to the contrary, he never in fact snorted coke for fun at all, but was clearly slipped a mickey in his perfectly innocent alcoholic drink at a bar by some invisible heinous anti-Boonen provocateur. But the true evildoer, even worse than that stealthmaster Belgian-studmuffin-hating commie (or perhaps Spanish) spy? Yes, of course, it's his very own lawyer, who Tom now swears wrote and forced him to read that statement in which he basically copped to using the drug voluntarily, at least enough to mollycoddle the sponsors but not so obviously as to give the local prosecutors anything to actually grab on to, which might seem to contradict the boy's latest version of events. Right, blame the poor sap everybody's guaranteed to hate, you spineless bastard! Like you even need to Tom--don't you see now how everyone loves you *for* your sweet little booze-and-drug-induced foibles, not despite them?

It's My Party and I'll Be a Raging !@# If I Want To: and, Robbie McEwen sure knows his Miss Manners, as he manages to piss off not only the entire Tour de Suisse organization but also such amiable fellow riders as Fabian Cancellara by busily attending to hometown press accolades on his cellphone after his first stage win at the race the other day and going completely swearing ballistic at the rude asshole who dares interrupt his phone call by asking if he would mind coming up to the podium and enduring congratulatory handshakes podium babe kisses champagne and a huge pile of adoration utterly unmerited by his total wanker behavior. Today, though, Robbie wisely professed his love for all things Suisse, apparently attributing the whole hoo-ha to the inability of the linguistically impaired race minions to understand the actually complimentary meaning of the word "!@#$%&!. Allez allez we love Oscar Freire!

Watch Your !@#, Ricco'!: finally, congratulations to the mysterious "Manuel", the six year old upstart who recently took the maglia rosa over a competitive field of careening tots in the prestigious "Giro d' Minitalia." However, in an interview with gazzetta dello sport immediately after the presentation of the pink jersey, UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid stated that "a top rider at the Minitalia whose first name starts with M" has tested positive for the use of the banned performance-enhancing drug chocolate milk and that, despite the failure of an initial B sample tainted by cookie crumbs to confirm the result, backup Z samples have now been sent to a UCI-controlled lab in Siberia for analysis. Not so fast, you wily kindergarten dope-fiend!