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[zzbottom2000.htm]As you know all legal thrillers are measured against Robert Tarver’s story of rage justified homicide in the Upper Peninsula, Anatomy of a Murder. Even engineers have no doubt been exposed to the movie. You will recall that Jimmy Stewart defended Ben Gazarra who killed Barney Quill for either raping or perhaps not Gazarra’s wife. What you may not know is that the Judge was played by Mr. Welch who turned to a second career of acting after beating the bloat out of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s evil brain, the despicable Roy Cohn during an investigation of the House Un-American Activities Committee before which an already feeble minded Ronnie Reagan had been a willing rat on his actor friends, a convenience he used to torpedo Ollie in late years.
If you ask a law professor the message of Anatomy she will tell you that exhaustive research into the law of irresistible impulse resulted in the acquittal. Ask a lawyer who has to try cases for a living and she will tell you that all the law does is give a jury a justification for doing what it wants to do anyway. Were the perhaps rape victim not the exiguous Lee Remick but instead a more oleaginous lady no jury would have found the husband soldier to have been unable to not kill. However, you would have to find a lawyer who had earned his own way to tell you that the correct answer is found on the last page where Stewart finds out that Ben and Lee have left without paying his fee, viz., when representing a criminal get the money up front or as a prosaic friend says, "when your cash hits the mahogany you will have a lawyer." A similar inquiry into message brings us to the Little 500.
Now, the Chronicles know that Diminutive 5 is even more sacrosanct than its namesake. But, with the exception of those with legacy tickets even idiot racecar fans know that Indy Light Cars are not the real thing. Also, the Chronicles are fully in favor of any weekend event that gives teenagers the opportunity to drink grain alcohol, rave and engage in gratuitous sex. It is another thing entirely to present the Little 5 as anything more than a Frat Boy fraud.
In Breaking Away, the IU Foundation opens the Little 5 to the Townies and after they win IU is fully egalitarian. A suspension of belief is a good thing for movie watchers; it is not good for Velonews reporters. Explain you ask? In the early nineties IU had some really good racers, e.g. Demetri, Lantz, Maple, Noveer, Whitlock, Sharp etc. They helped IU win several national titles. Also, with the exception of Whitlock who even then knew movies were true only for two hours, these men made the mistake of beating up on the Lands End, Gap, and Banana Republic Fraternity boys. Not content to just win they went out and lapped the field. This humiliation could not be permitted. So the mall boys and girls had their daddies call the Foundation and complain that they weren’t sending Biff and Buffy to their alma mater to be put to shame by boys without Gold Cards. The Blazer Boys at the Foundation folded like a K Mart lawn chair and decreed that Category II racers did not exemplify the appropriate amateur spirit. The result is a race that now lives up to its diminutive title. Apparently, the rewards of victory are so substantial that you now have professional Cat III Little 5 racers. Proof you demand. This year the Cutters again spanked the Frat Boys and the Foundation. Everyone has read the article about the great rider who lapped the field and it is always a good thing when the white belt crowd gets its collective size 44 Dockers stained. However, Dennis reports that this Professional Cat III morphed into a Cat II right afterwards and just in time for Collegiate Nationals. This is most certainly not a calumny as all stupid rules limiting participation should be ignored and the righteous outcome only goes to prove yet again that stacking the deck doesn’t do you any good if you can’t locate the Jokers. Nevertheless, this does not get to the seminal question of what Breaking Away teaches.
As you recall the Townie star of the movie was making big progress with Kathryn Ross while pretending to be an Italian exchange student. What with honestly being a big theme of these coming of age movies he had to come clean even before Muffy came to realize that spagettios was not Italian for pasta. So what does he get for this metamorphosis? The fatale smiles at him while she leaves for Europe where she will give it up to a real Italian and young lad is left in the stone quarry and won’t even realize until he is like forty that girls who go to socials may humor their curiosity with boys who work but in the end they always revert to form. This is all by saying that apparently in sexual matters it is better to be vague. Do you really want to know that Lee Remick planted her own ripped panties?
LINTON CRITERIUM UPDATE
The Chronicles have been informed that USA CYCLING has changed the format for the Criteriums at Master Nationals. It seems that in races where large fields are anticipated racers will now have to participate in qualifying races. You can draw your own conclusions about whether getting perhaps to do two races for the price of one is a bargain. The Chronicles do not know how many racers will be permitted in each heat or in the finals or the length of each heat.
The Chronicle question is why doesn’t USA CYCLING do the right thing and move the Criteriums to a safer and fairer venue. But that might require an admission that the men in charge made a mistake in putting their imprimatur on this debacle in waiting. Never has happened and never will.
From time to time people write Linda and complain that the Chronicles should contain more race reports. Well this would be fine but Darling Wife says that races are boring enough and what with her having to read and contribute she is going to withhold her support if the Chronicles succumb to this conceit that narrative reports are writing. She then reminded that in the halcyon days of sports reporting the reporters were usually in a hurry to get out of the ballpark to catch the late races and to get on without their real avocations of drinking and philandering. As such they would write their ball game reports early in the day and just fill in the scores. That this lead to conflicting reports in these pre box score days was of no moment in that people who read the Times didn’t read the Herald or the Post or the Mirror or whatever. So, when Dennis called in to advise he and Rizzo were going to St. Louis to ride fifteen times around Babler Park for something other than court enforced punishment the Chronicles decided to test out this procedure. You can fill in the winner.
Death Knows No Pain
As they crest the wall for the last time there is a small group of what can best be described as eviscerated survivors. The cast was all present: Turbo, Dennis, the Medical Student, Rizzo, the Rich Kid, and Faster than Flash David Wenger. There are no heroes. Just the hollowed remains of oxygen and glucose deprived captives.
Across the false flat Rizzo derided of brain cells from his doctoral exams upshifts and the resulting UGHs are echoed by the mist. On to the final climb where there can be no attacks just resignation and no noise except for the rapid infusing machines that pass for diaphragms. All are reluctantly relegated to the solace of the approaching final flat kilometer. Then ears filled with bees are slapped by what is hazily taken for an attack and all rise to jam kneecaps into handlebars only to recognize belatedly the crack of a hamstring.
The faces that emerge from the fog are those of forty years olds inscribed by the detritus of the neutron explosions of the past three hours. Yet they manage a final flail and at the close it is ________ taken at the line by __________.
To repeat, anyone can write a race report. Anyone with four functioning brain cells can also write "in the kill zone articles" the kernel of which is always the courage of the author. Being as how only about two people who have ever won a race are capable of putting two sentences together without using a colon and two misplaced modifiers most of these reports have no more accuracy than the fantasy you have every winter while riding your trainer and winning a stage in the Alps. So, try this report.
Mt. Carmel: Looks like the Alps to Pucks
The short version: Pucks suck
Long version: Pucks suck badly.
Explanation: Pucks suck and then some.Against all judgment was again cajoled into attending yet another masochistic exercise euphemistically called a Spring Training Race, as if calling it a Summer Training Race would make it hot instead of thirty. Anyway, was more or less forced into this what with having organized a Puck boycott of the Marian College Criterium. The Marian coach was charging $25 for thirty minutes for a prize of $100 which was pretty good as the coach called Enmark to ask him to bring the team as the III race was paying $50 for twenty minutes. Now, master racers are not all that bright and will generally pay any amount and race before dawn; however, as Enmark noted, even they reach their limit when a minute of racing costs more than phone sex. As such only twelve masters showed up.
So, checked the race profile and found that the course had rollers and one four percent climb which would be like one in twenty for a kilometer. Went down to the sauna and re-read Psychology for Cylists which is at best an oxymoron. Said to self:
Four percent is big ring.
You can roll big ring climbs.
Even at walrus size you can handle four percent for a kilo.You belong in the race.
You can visualize the completion of a four- percent for one kilo climb.
You will in fact rock on a four percent for one-kilometer climb.So, with fellow weight impaired buddy it was off to Mt. Carmel. Took along Terry who had to inform that the two pounds he gained over the winter was really holding him back and that Pucks should eat nothing but dry Super Raisin Brain and that it was not necessary to stop at every Burger King.
A small field for the II race. This can’t be too bad as the Girls Car Team (formerly the Marsupials) had gone to Tennessee except for car magnet Swope and a few other guys who got tired of hanging around the softball field. This can’t be too bad. Oh yes it can.
Try to get dropped before the climb but don’t succeed. Scope Whitlock about the climb. Says it is probably best left to small ring. Oops. Not rolling, no rhythm climb, no strong controlled breathing. Mental image of Ullrich powering seated up the Toricelli replaced by image of him busting out a skinsuit while eating an entire walnut cream cake and cannot even work up an image of Grant doing the high speed whirl. It was all pure wheeze and gasp and it was not Spring-it was all lung rot inducing cold. See the top and make it to the top after passing about twenty guys in equal dismay. But the top is not the top. The four- percent for a kilo is after the climb. Result of climb. Enmark and Bott gone. Resulf of four percent. Whitlock, Terry and self dispatched.
Conclusion: there is no reason to race when there are basketball games still on television.
Finally, there have been some races in Indiana. The Girls Car Team’s Bobero won all of them except the ones he didn’t and then one of the other of the Girls did or didn’t. The only race worth watching was the Eagle Creek II Race, which had a real field. Rizzo gave himself up and brought back every attack for in the last twenty minutes of the race. At the finish Witte easily beat Faster than Flash David Wenger and Dennis was five or six. By the way Wenger bribed his way into the Chronicles by claiming that he needed coverage to stay in good with his new Shaklee teammates.
As many of you already know Terry Molewyk was horribly injured when his car was hit head on by an oncoming vehicle that was making an illegal pass. He remains in critical care but his outlook is good. He and I disagree about everything except that we are friends.
Ride fast and take chances.
Bill Stone