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2005 Chicken Inferno

So there you have it. (Thanks, Seth.) As you can tell, this year's was one fine chicken. Compared to the chickens of infernos past, it was definitely the most realistic. Check the feet, man! And the eggs!

Before

After

More After

Lame-o

That's me. For not bringing my camera along to the Seventh Annual Chicken Inferno.¹ The event itself, on the other hand, was totally boss (or whatever the opposite of lame is these days).

I'll just have to do what I did last year: wait for Mike to put a picture or two up and then steal from him.

And oh, wait 'til you see the pictures. Word of the skill and craftsmanship that went into this year's chicken has already spread at least as far as the other side of the Hill, where all well-engineered scrap-wood construction garners high praise and the combustibilty of hillside grass is accorded a healthy respect.

You Think a Little Mountain is Going to Stop Him?

Lance Armstrong is the man.

Everybody says so. And after his string of crushing counter-attacks against his opponents in the mountain stages, it's easy to see why.

His chief rival has essentially thrown in the towel, focussing his attention on third place. The man currently riding in second place calls Armstrong unbeatable. Armstrong has been so dominant that many are citing relief from boredom as a reason to be glad that this is his last race. At this point only a crash or illness will prevent him from winning his seventh yellow jersey.

To what does Armstrong attribute his Tour successes? Revenge. In a recent Playboy interview (I just read the articles, honest) he describes an almost vindictive, ruthless attitude against those who have written him off or have otherwise criticized him. In fact, he claims that if it weren't for his bout with cancer, he never would have discovered the will necessary to win a single Tour.

In Lance's case, cancer didn't kill him, it only made him stronger.

Warm Up the Zamboni

Alas, my long-suffering wife gets a bit of bad news. Yet, while the end of the NHL lockout will somehow factor into the dilemma of the previous post, I can't bring myself to get all worked up about it right now.

Is it because lately it's been too hot to sleep, let alone bother with thinking about Canadians wearing multiple layers skating around on a sheet of ice? Maybe I'm too wrapped up in the Tour de France? I'm actually more excited about Robocup 2005 than the Stanley Cup 2006.

Hey, that's it! The solution to future NHL strikes: replace the players with robots! Sure, they'll stink at first, but it's got to be just as good as watching a dozen Sony Aibos play soccer. Plus, as Kottke says, robots make anything cooler.

I wouldn't even miss the players all that much. As long as the robots get to keep the wicked cool names: Radek Bonk, Keith Tkachuk (gesundheit), Jerome Iginla, Chris Pronger, Nikolai Khabibulin, Zdeno Chara. And someone at ESPN has a sense of humor with that there url for Miroslav Satan.

A Sticky Wicket

Over the weekend, my buddy Doug bemoaned my lack of fresh content (like he should talk, he's so not a bachelor anymore), so here's a bit o' self-indulgent blather for ya:

Watching OLN's coverage of the Tour de France has gotten me to thinking more about succumbing to Time Warner's digital cable price-gouging. Still can't decide, though. Weighing the top pros/cons of digital cable doesn't help solve the problem.

#1 Reason to Subscribe to Digital Cable:

Obscure sporting events, 24/7.

#1 Reason Not to Subscribe to Digital Cable:

Obscure sporting events, 24/7.

Tour de Freedom

What better way to celebrate the independence of this great country of ours than to watch a crowd of Europeans in tight shorts ride bicycles around the French countryside?

Umm, well, yesterday, while every other red-bloded American and their uncle braved the threat of e. coli^* at picnics around the country, I spent part of the Fourth of July holiday watching the thrilling finish of Stage 3 of the 2005 Tour de France. Now, I've been in a couple of cycling races, so I have some clue, but the foremost thought in my mind as I watched the peloton burst into the city of Tours was how the heck can they avoid smacking into each other?

The answer, of course, is sometimes they can't. Other times, it's not so accidental.

The other thing that seems strange to me is that these guys are so evenly matched that over the course of hundreds of miles of cycling, the leaders are separated by mere seconds. Indeed, were it not for his inexplicable crash with one mile left to go in today's team time trial, American Dave Zabriskie would have finished within one second of Armstrong.