post-weekend update

There is something inherently wrong with getting up at seven a.m. on a Saturday morning to watch a sporting event. It feels like school. And yet, it was the Tour de France and a mountain stage, so the wrongness quickly became right. There was sadness at so many people dropping away, especially Tyler Hamilton, who just lost his dog and now his shot at this year's tour (very, very sad; he's our favorite), and exhilaration at watching the Postal Boys do their voodoo and especially little Thomas Voeckler cling to the Maillot Jaune with everything he had. There were thousands of crazy Basques in orange t-shirts -- a surprising number of them naked -- getting wayyyyy too close to the riders up the final climb (good thing I abandoned and went back to bed for that and watched it later; it's just nail-bitingly frustrating watching the riders go through those danger zones of drunken revelry and yelling).

The best place to get an idea of what the race is like visually (if you can't watch OLN) is at Graham Watson's site in his daily photo galleries, updated shortly after each day's stage. Graham Watson is the premiere photographer of cycling, gifted with an amazing, quirky eye and an all access pass (it's a good combination). My favorite from yesterday is the ninth one down, of the Devil on one of his giant bicycles (which works).

Anyway, after that we had the mad dash of preparing for a little party for our writing group, which is the best writing group ever. Everyone drank too much (well, not everyone, but I sure did).

Yesterday was spent doing the all-time best hangover recovery activity, which would include moving as little as possible and watching lots of movies. I'm almost caught up on Netflixes now. There was Camp, highly enjoyable if flawed (see the Cinetrix's more astute critique here) and with some amazing musical numbers, and Japanese Story, sweet and absorbing and then all of a sudden heartbreaking (I was completely blind-sided) but Toni Collette is redeemingly restrained and honest in playing the heartbreak. After that, big and dumb was the only possible place to go so we actually ventured out to the Evil Blue Empire and rented The Rock's action movie The Rundown (mostly because Hidalgo isn't out yet), and were pleasantly surprised at how watchable it was. The Rock's aura throws off that he's smarter than the previously-on-top list of bulgy action stars and he's definitely far more willing to do silly things for comedic value (intentionally) -- one of the movie's nicest little moments is early on when the Gubernator strolls by in a briefer than brief cameo and passes the action hero torch to The Rock.

And so that was a weekend, more or less.

worm "The Rat," The Walkmen (impossible to get out of head)

namecheck Sonya "Featherweight" Taaffe