The Love Boat...

...Hits the Rocks: Damn, Alberto, I *told* you Bruyneel was gonna ditch your jailbait trophy-wife !@# for old-bat first-flame Lance, and now you might as well put any doubts to rest: Johan's gone and said flat out he thinks Lance can take the Tour again (though having nothing to prove, why would he want to?). Except he does, of course, so you're !@#$ed. If he thinks Lance can take it one more time, and you of course have 8-odd seasons left in those legs to bag a bunch more Grand Boucles anyway, who do you think he's gonna hose over Levi and Klodi for--you get one guess, kid! Ah, well, it only took Lance 7 seasons to thank Hincapie's relentless efforts with a stage win--now get back to the team car and bring me a water bottle, you peasant!

Bad(en) to the Bone: meantime, amiable Aussie sprinter Baden Cooke--lately pushed to Team Good-Luck-Getting-a-Wild-Card-to-Anything-Suckers after Rock Racing's speedy implosion--has now gone completely postal and is swearing to sue arrogant if natty wank Michael Ball for breach of contract, on the previously-rumored grounds that he wouldn't return his signed contract, wouldn't promise him more'n squat for dough, and, even better, would be bagging the prestigious Grand Tour and Classics calendar that the boy was promised (and with his palmares, has earned the right to expect) in favor of the even more prestigious Tour-Around-Michael-Ball's-Block-Before-His-Mansion-Gets-Repossessed and similarly mortifying races. I'm afraid he's gonna have plenty of time for those "long walks on the beach" he professes to enjoy on his website...

I'm Depraved on Account of I'm Deprived: and, I see Tom Boonen's day of judgment is at hand, with a Belgian court set to decide in the near future what our partying pinup is going to face for his little cocaine-and-ecstasy imbroglios--a serious drug bust, outright dismissal, or the tantalizing possibility that he could be nailed on the facts but released to the terrified 'n' vulnerable general public on the grounds that it'll help him "resocialize." Y'know, not to pass judgment on a surely more enlightened legal system than our own, but damn, Your Honors, he already *knows* how to socialize--isn't that what got our strapping sprinting hedonist into this mess in the first place? Perhaps Quick Step could just lock him in a room with a Wii or something to keep the boy wholesomely entertained between races...

Paranoid Conspiracy Theory o' The Week: finally, just when you thought Bjorn Leukemans couldn't go any more wingnut in the search for a plausible excuse for his last year's doping poz, he's now turned from an excess of manliness to a doofus team doc to now a three-fer of evil conspiring team docs battling over the right to back Cadel at the Tour by spiking each other's potions with disreputable substances to clinch the spot. Or, maybe you just, y'know, are the poor-sap victim of two false samples--it could happen, right?--or, um, actually did it. Wait...it was that Starbucks barista who messed up your latte whose manager you complained to! no, that kid you budged in front of in the lunch line in second grade! no...