Bow Down Before the One You Serve/

You're (Not) Going to Get What You Deserve: fine, Team Radioshack is on for next year, and while the best stage racer in the world right now (sorry, but that's *Contador*, Lance fans, at least til he !@#$s up and comes up positive) is gonna get to go somewhere else where he won't be berated for not being someone else's miserable self-abnegating dog-obedient waterboy, Lance gets to build yet again a squad of totally subservient superdomestiques who, despite being able to win Grand Tours in their own right, will never question his absolute lordly authority, and try to win next year’s Tour that way. And fine, it's good for raising cycling awareness in the U.S., a nation better known for making enormous steroid-stuffed force-fed no-neck freaks crush each other to death in front of tens of thousands of freezing nacho-suckin' face-painting beer-swillers in pursuit of a little brown ball. But am I the only one thinking that if we have to deal with this nonstop fawning unquestioning media-sluttin' rump-kissing again next year, we're gonna end up bashing our flat-screens and computers to pieces with a bike pump just to stop the TV and internet madness before those nauseating three weeks are up?

Oh, Shut *Up* Already!: meantime, Lance, Levi, and Bruyneel are *still* piling on Contador for cruelly and intentionally attacking Andreas Kloden on the other day’s climb and jacking him out of a podium place, and while I love Klodi and generally will defend him under any circumstance, on this one, I call bull!@#$! First, coming from Lance, who's never done a favor for any teammate in his entire life and who never worried about any of his teammates' 'podium spots' because he'd have smacked them senseless in the post-race team meeting like a thug for even thinking of such traitorous heresy, that’s freakin' *rich*. Second, that’s not how I saw the stage play out. The Schlecks attacked, so all Contador had to do was stay on their wheels to keep a time gap from building up--fair enough, Johan. But Alberto thought--and that's a mistake right there--he’d try to drop ‘em with one of his super-accelerations, and also thought--again, a bad idea--Klodi had the legs to stay with him. He was wrong, and he was clearly looking back repeatedly in bewilderment when he saw he’d dropped Kloden. I mean, let's face it, tactically the kid's no Paolo Bettini (oh! I still miss him!). Come to think of it, the boy ain't even Wile E. Coyote facing off against Roadrunner, and we all know how *that* turned out every week. But malice aforethought? I didn't see that. Stupid you can maybe fix with experience, Lance--but being a wanker, that's forever!

In An MmmmBop He's Gone/In An MmmmBop He's Not There: fine, Cav took it today, and he'll probably take it again on the Champs-Elysees, and he'll probably take every single other sprint for the next 5 years until his head actually clinically explodes from ego overdrive and some new little upstart starts makin' him cry like a dope-deprived Di Luca. But who is the only sprinter to beat him this Tour, and who stands a pretty good chance of popping on the green jersey in Paris even without the stellar gift of Cavendish's earlier relegation? That's right, it's Thor Hushovd, baby--learn to climb or keep on whining!

And hey--remember, there's still time to enter my contest, and Win Free Stuff Part Trois!