Greg Lemond, cyclist

Oh, Floyd. It's probably safe to say that the Tour de France has really only had two American winners, or at least only two who will remain on the books.

And Lance. Lance seems bent on world domination centered entirely around Lance and what Lance wants. I'm not a member of the Church of Armstrong and don't wear the cult bracelet -- I KNOW it's for cancer, but funny how it's also for Lance, for how he's convinced people to brand themselves for him, and you Live Strong because it's Armstrong, and it's on your Arm, and you now belong to Mister L. Look, good that it's raising money, good that it keeps cancer an active on-going cause and concern, good. But I can't help it; the guy creeps me out, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an Armstrong Celebrity Center going up on Los Feliz Blvd some day.

And that brings us back to Lemond, Le-Mond-Ond. Greg, Lemond, the bi-cyc-list, he's a drop of golden sun. I followed both the Tour de France and the Ironman Triathalon every year when I was growing up because I couldn't believe the feats these people accomplished. It looked so HOT. And WET, and MOUNTAINY, and TWISTY and HOT, again, and just so very very TIRING. Can't we go to a cafe or a luau and forget all this? But they wouldn't, because they're crazy and dedicated and that's worth watching on tv, for some reason.

And because they look happy -- I don't know if it's the kind of happiness that comes from losing your mind, like the euphoria people on hunger strikes experience, but it's certifiable happiness nonetheless. Even the miserable ones, the racers skidding out on top of other races on tight roundabout turns, the wretched sprinters enduring the chug up a mountain stage, or the time trialists getting split reports and knowing, not only in their gut but in their earpiece, that they're falling farther behind with each stroke -- even they look happy. As a kid stationed at the tv every summer, I loved them all.

And then came the miracle of Lemond's 1989 win, the joy of it (not for poor, dashing, blonde ponytailed Laurent Fignon), still one of the most thrilling sporting events I've ever witnessed. ABC used to do such great Tour coverage back then, following the stages closely, but also skillfully setting the stage by profiling the racers and their teams, and how the racers joined the teams, and giving us a sense of the history and rivalries that informed the current race choices. Content with context. [Today's coverage is unspeakably bad, choppy and uninformed, pointless after the Armstrong era, maybe because they don't care about George Hincapie or any of the rest since they lost their star, amybe because all the good character get banned for doping sooner or later any way.]

Lemond rode with a great cast of characters who helped shape his story: the legendary Bernard Hinault, who couldn’t resist using the young upstart to sneak another win in 1985, then couldn’t resist challenging Lemond the next year when he was supposed to be repaying the favor and protecting and assisting Lemond to the yellow jersey. Lemond fought back and the torch was passed whether or not Hinault was willing to admit it was time. It was RED RIVER on the Pyrenees!

Then Lemond’s brother-in-law shot him full of shotgun pellets in a 1987 hunting accident, and Lemond barely survived the wounds. After two years of recovery, he signed on for the 1989 Tour de France hoping just to make a respectable showing.

So we knew all this dramatic backstory as the race progessed. And there was Lauren Fignon, the arrogant (who isn’t in this sport), striking blonde scowling through the race with gritted teeth, clearly pouring his entire heart into it. And there was Greg Lemond, surpassing even his own expectations, appearing buoyed up as each day passed and he felt stronger than the one before. Until the final time trial on the Champs Elysee, the first time they’d ended a Tour this way, forcing a rider in this jostling, team-based, yet solitary sport to face only his own abilities at the end of the race. Nothing to think about but how good you can be or how badly you can fail.

As overall leader at the end of the previous stage. Lemond was privileged to ride last. Long an innovator in the sport, his time trail bike featured a new, more aerodynamic handlebar and disk sheet. He had come from the future to win the race! Fignon left every bit of himself on the road and finished with a seemingly insurmountable time. It was a dramatic ending to a thrilling race, bound to end in failure for Lemond, but what an entirely noble failure.

Yet he won, by an unbelievably slim eight second margin. At home, I jumped and cheered and ran around the house, so full of adrenalin I needed to run laps. A beaming, incredulous Lemond hugged his wife and small child on the street. Fignon sat with his wonderful sweaty blonde mane slumped over the handlebars, but my god what a race he made it.

I am indebted to Lemond for showing me the possibilities of being truly dedicated to your profession, always seeking the cutting edge technically and in your training, having the nerve to challenge decades of French tradition and cycling egos and hierarchies and thrive within them, and for loving him sport so much that he has the balls to repeatedly speak out about the swift and appalling degradation it has suffered from widespread doping, and to keep urging the guilty parties to confess and clean up. No one else in this sport will tell the truth right now, but I get the sense that Lemond is such a dedicated cycling geek that he feels personally betrayed by what has become of his sport.

For being a true gentleman champion, for not giving up, for speaking up when he doesn't have to bring anyone's wrath onto him at this point, for standing up to both bullies and shotgun pellets, for so beautifully and gracefully riding that incredible last stage in 1989, Greg Lemond is one of my very very few sports heroes left.

"Funny Ha-Ha": Addendum

This movie has a plot. In noting how well it captures feelings, I forget to mention that it is also a well-told story wherein the characters make decisions and act on them, and that those decisions have clear consequences that drive the story forward.

Since the success of the Musing Trifecta (I just made that up) of films including PULP FICTION, SWINGERS, and DINER, some filmmakers got the terribly wrong impression that it's sufficient to make a movie consisting entirely of clever characters standing around (or driving around) musing about random topics. Even Andre, in his cinematic dinner with Wallace Shawn, didn't muse; he questioned, he investigated, and he illustrated. His story had shape and weight. Similarly, the talk in the Trifecta films added to the plot, it didn't substitute for it.

The plot of FUNNY HA-HA is about a love triangle, and the movie contains a perfect scene: the principal characters affecting one side of the triangle meet unexpectedly in a supermarket, and their grocery talk ripples with the undercurrents of the mess of relationships and loyalties and missed opportunities between them. There's a great subtlety to the actors' behavior; it isn't a scene of open confrontation and melodrama, as it would've been as told by a less confident filmmaker. Instead, it's a scene of inflection and tone and of essentially nice people in an awkward situation, trying not to hurt others or show their own hurt.

It takes guts to write and direct a scene like that, and it takes real skill to draw such unaffected vulnerability out of unprofessional actors. So again: well played, Bujalski!

"Funny Ha-Ha", written/directed by Andrew Bujalski (2002)

So there's this guy Bujalski. He's this young guy who decides to make a movie about his life -- post college, temp jobs, that horrible yet exciting "cusp of the rest of your life" time, searching for "the one" or, realistically, any one. And he gets a camera and a bunch of his friends from school and makes the goddamned movie.

FUNNY HA-HA is a perfect example of personal, from-the-gut filmmaking. It was made on the cheap with non-actors, including Bujalski himself as Mitchell, the moonyeyed nerd who earns your love with his earnestness and honesy and vulnerability in the face of a beautiful woman. Kate Dollenmayer as Marnie is beautiful, not in an overprocessed movie starlet way, but in a "damn, the more I see of her, the more I love her" way. She impresses you because she isn't trying to impress you at all, and too few actresses are allowed to do that in movies and television because they are supposed to represent something more intense or flavorful than the rest of us, instead of representing plain old us.

The movie starts out slow and still and kind of precious and you get the terrible sinking feeling of Indie Movie, Pretentious Shit, Your Thoughts Aren't As Interesting or Unique as You Think They Are (IMPSYTAAIUYTTA). But hold your indie horses (they dye their manes the color of quirkiness!). Let Marnie's seemingly uneventful life wander ahead of you, and follow it like a kid sister. You'll find moments of honesty and embarrassment and courage in this movie that are so true you want to sqry (squirm and cry), but also call your best friend and reminisce about when you were stupid together.

Especially if you vividly remember the confusing and awkward years of your early twenties and are thrilled that this movie so accurately recorded the feeling.

Sorry, Douglas Coupland, this movie Generation X'd you ten years later. It's less, oh, Canadian. I kid because I love.

One more note: this film is very similar in tone and feel to AMERICAN JOB and other Chris Smith films. Modest filmmakers making sneakily powerful movies about regular people that nobody else cares about.

You are the shit, Bujalski!

NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"

What a bunch of commies, huh? Is it National Public Radio or Nothing Pro-Republican? HUH?!

Thanks to this weekly news quiz comedy show, I have a release for my weekly accumulation of impotent rage over the never-ending travesties masterminded by the political leaders of my country and, oh heck, let's say the entire world, as well.

I admire host Peter Segal's light touch and deft moderating. I love the good-humored special guests. And I get a little thrill from the reveal of each week's line-up of panelists. Will my absolute favorite, comedian Paula Poundstone, bring her commonsensical, rapid-fire wit to this week's show? And will Roy Blount Jr. be there to lay down some folksy wisdom and cheap poop jokes? What about "television personality" Mo Rocca; will he be there with his competitive fire (he's always the one who really wants to win) and his eruditely lisped bon mots? And every once in a while I get a real treat: understudy panelist Amy Dickinson of "Ask Amy", smart and funny and energetically intellectually curious, just like this show.

Praise be to KCRW for making the show available as a free podcast so I never have to miss a show again!

"Tupelo Honey", by Van Morrison

I think what makes this song so perfectly sweet and dreamily, drowsily edible is that it is just this side of irritatingly coy. It grabs the feeling of idealizing your loved one until you almost hate him a little for drawing you so close, then it squeezes that feeling out in a burst of lyrical lullaby rock.

Perrault's Fairy Tales, with illustrations by Gustave Dore

I have this weird, fascinating-yet-off-putting book of fairy tales originally published in French in 1697. The translated version is have was published in 1969, so I have had it my entire life (and then some). I remember reading it as a kid and thinking "that's weird; and these drawings are creepy" and putting it aside for 30+ years.

So good for me for hanging on to creepy the book and lugging it across the country and finally getting back to it, because these are well and simply told classic tales with, as the back of the book accurately states, "extraordinary full-page engravings by Gustave Dore that show clearly why this artist became the foremost illustrator of his time." The engravings are like Durer crossed with Pieter Bruegel the Elder crossed with, I don't know, Watteau? What with the pantaloons? Those crossings maybe make no sense, but I'm talking about the clean spidery lines and the depth of activity in the picture frame and the animals in the setting and, of course, the pantaloons.

The book contains the following stories: "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Blue Beard", "The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots", "The Fairies", "Cinderells, or The Little Glass Slipper", "Ricky of the Tuft", and "Little Tom Thumb". Most of the stories have the same moral (helpfully spelled out for you in verse at the end of the story; sometimes it's even restated in a second moral, in case the first doesn't quite work for you), and this is it: pretty girls nab rich husbands. The End.

I think that's why I hated it as a kid -- the highest aspiration in life of men was to be rich and get the pretty girl; of women, to be pretty and get the rich guy. How dull. This made me not very excited to be racing toward adulthood.

But now I understand the stories and their morals as actually being cynical and funny. He points out again and again that the mere appearance of wealth and success and the genetic luck of beauty bring a person all of the admiration and respect of their fellow citizens, regardless of character or accomplishments. He also points out that society will reward you for your wealth and beauty no matter how you come by it (birth, fairies, cats dressed like the fourth Musketeer; what have you). That these stories have endured for hundreds of years not as cautionary tales but as beacons of hope for the ugly, unloved, ignored and poor (i.e. everyone) says more than we wanted to know about human nature.

As for the Dover edition book I have, the engraving of the inexplicable Puss in Boots (tell me again why he's so intent on fixing up his master with the rich chick? Is it just because, as a cat wearing boots and a large hat with a feather in it, he loves to lie and scheme? Like, of course any cat flaunting that sartorial splendor would be a hard-working toady) is priceless. That pussy cat WORKS those thigh high boots, let me tell you.

The other greatest thing about this book is the language in Cinderella. Here are the choice quotes:

When she had finished her work she used to sit amongst the cinders in the corner of the chimney, and it was from this habit that she came to be commonly known as Cinder-slut.

After her meanest step-sister asks if Cinderella would like to go to the ball, and she says she knows it would be no place for her, the sister says:

"That is very true, people would laugh to see a cinder-slut in the ballroom."

Ha ha! Ok, so the Middle English meaning of "slut" in the 1400s was "slovenly woman" or "kitchen maid or drudge", but it was being used as a derogatory term with a sexual connotation by the 1700s. So what did the Frenchman Perrault mean in 1697? Given the tenor of the stories, I imagine he pretended to the first meaning and hoped to slyly get away with the second. Which makes me love his stories all the more.

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