Get Tom Boonen Back on the Blow; And, Where the !@#$ is Jens?

Party On, Tom!: okay, maybe I've suggested this before, but it bears saying again in no uncertain terms whatsoever: we've all faithfully supported the good-boy bull!@#$, but Tom Boonen was a better, luckier, gutsier rider when he was accepting suspect cocktails from strangers and snorting up mystery crystals at parties, and it's time he gets back to the job. Sure, it's the wisdom and maturity of age creeping up on him, his new-found fear of sprints, the natural caution that a series of crap season-screwing injuries is gonna have on you--Tom's clearly lost his joie-de-whup-ass, and that emasculating wanker Patrick Lefevere over at Quick Step better quit slagging our boy in the press, assess what's psyching him out, and !@#damn stuff him full of Ecstasy every night like a teenager if that's what's gonna make him happy. Now plug your ears from that hideous Euro-club techno-!@#$, Patrick, and get the real Tommeke back already!

Come Back, Jens!: first, aaaaaiiigggggghhhhh-it's true! Leopard-Trek is merging with RadioSkank! What the hell does it take to keep a sponsor *in* this business, anyhow, a Tour de France victory--damn, the French squads would've all croaked a generation ago! Second, why the !@#$ isn't we love Jens Voigt mentioned among the "nine riders" moving to Johan's House of Hell? I get he doesn't have a longer contract with Leopard-Trek--who gives? Is he retiring, in which event the entire peloton is gonna suck for decades to come? Is Johan stupid enough not to offer him at least a lousy year's gig, not that Jens working for anyone else--say, a pimp--wouldn't be preferable? Has some Michael Ball-esque Lance Armstrong wannabe wisely decided to hand Jens gazillions of no-strings dollars to start his own squad of fellow gods? Jens, you *can't* let this be the end--even if you should become a DS, no-one existing is worthy of your legacy!

Yer Vuelta a Espana Rest Day Round-up: all right, so a clearly back-on-form Igor Anton is gonna obliterate the field for a stage win in the last week--yeah, stuff it!--Wiggo, I think, has no-one to apologize to ever after impossibly sticking it out on the 23% gradients of the Angliru to hold on to 3rd, if the spectators keep messing with the climbers' lines some pack of citizen-vigilantes're gonna have to start whacking 'em out of the way with a stick since the cops ain't getting it done, Cobo looked so relaxed I thought he was taking a nap at 100kph, and, despite Nibali's brave declaration he's gonna fight it out for numero uno to the end, we're sure gonna have a surprise in Madrid because the only GC contender left out of the original bunch is the freakin' lanterne rouge at this point. Still, there's the Basque country left to come in the final week, along with Euskaltel's inevitable group o' victories. Yeah, I said it--venga Euskalteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!

Oil and Water Don't Mix: last but not least, to no-one's surprise that oily little weasel Riccardo Ricco' has definitively been found to have besmirched faithful last-chance trainer Aldo Sassi by having not only blood doped but having done so like a world-class moron, which means Ricco', no longer troubled by such oppressive burdens as, y'know, riding a bike for a living, is now free to pursue his fallback career as a total !@#ho--um, bartender instead. Well, Riccardo, you open your new booze-house to cheating unrepentant dirtbags-on-wheels, and you got yourself a million-dollar biz and a regular "Cheers" without the laugh-track--good luck and good riddance, snake-boy!