Fuel-ish Fusain

Wild cycling image from Purity Ring, Stardew, Official Video (2020) - “A storm is coming. I feel it in my scars. And in the morning we'll wonder where we are... The world turns over and I'll be lost in you. Hide in the static, go push me through and through. And I will fall from your sweet height to prove that all I am is meant to bleed and bloom. How you move. How you knew. Hold me down. Hold me true.”

Fusain is a fossilized chunk from a spindle tree with which you can magically draw a fine charcoal sketch of Punxsutawney Phil prognosticating 6 more weary weeks of winter, exactly what’s left. Never face April without flurries or worse anyway. NOAA climate specialists proved Phil has been wrong 5 out of last 10 years, which included hottest on record. Gives slight hope to Northeast cyclists stuck indoors on trainers trying to restore their “hypomanic state”, what TV psychiatrist F. Murray Abraham cited as a bicycling outcome on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (“Three-in-One”, Season 9, Episode 16, July, 2010). Snowy side streets sent Saturday’s derivé along a deserted service highway pass derrières of commercial and industrial sites. Too drab and icy to bother seeking hilly and spicy scenery. Then Sunday’s storm raged here during sultry Tampa's Superbowl for happy home team, yet deterred another day of riding and potential mood boost. Lack of aerobic reps while daylong video streaming makes for health worries.

Riders who appear in a pharma ad get honored on Ozempic mural. Cheer to hear companies responding to latest viral crisis, but only because Uncle Sam made grants too big to ignore. Medicines that actually cure serious ailments are prone to ruinous lawsuits, unlike placebos that tease remedies to minor complaints. Two-thirds of Americans take on average 4 prescriptions daily, particularly those over 50 years old, who might die if supplies suddenly ceased. FDA regulations stipulate that pharma houses agree never to discontinue an approved product without first arranging for an effective substitute. Yet bottom line profiteers want to do away with such regulations, putting patients at needless risk. Neocons never care whether people die, thus their staunch support of auto, coal and oil industries, who kill as many people as pandemics.

While millennials rethink merits of purchases, automakers scramble to increase perception of convenience and safety. Bicyclists are especially wary of computer assisted, driverless, and silent electric SUVs, which don't take anything but parked vehicles into account but do take up too much space in narrow lanes. Incompetent motorists who need all such safety gadgets should have their privilege to operate revoked. With pavement in shambles, only halftracks, hovercraft, hum-vees, or hybrid MTBs should be considered.

Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton, dir., 1920) was set in 1830 to portray Willie McKay (stuntman Buster Keaton himself) at play riding an obsolete draisienne, widely outlawed by 1820, to modest estate he inherited. Having recently arrived in area, Willie accepts a dinner invitation, but didn’t know Canfield boys are bitter enemies to McKays and want to murder him. Patriarch won’t allow as long as he’s protected by rules of hospitality. So, this dated example is a veritable two wheeler from a century ago, set a century earlier. Functional dandy horse built as a prop for film was later donated to Smithsonian Institution.

Resisting group therapy, private detective Monk (Tony Shalhoub, Season 8, Episode 8, 2009) tries to coax a insurance denied solo session from his psychologist Dr. Neven Bell (Héctor Elizondo) by having his assistant Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard) captain a Schwinn tandem with him on back, catch up, and ride alongside. When Bell refuses and speeds up an incline, they fall behind and topple over.

Grace Papy compiled clips from 2-1/2 dozen films (many already reviewed) and several videos (not listed) into Vélo Bicyclette Remix, 2017. Will review remainder over subsequent posts. Too bad its dance songs - both album title tracks, Galantis, No Money, 2016, and Syn Cole, It’s You, 2015 - don’t directly refer to bicycling, though Cole’s does slightly suggest: “Law of attraction feels like chemistry. Yeah, it's a jungle out in the street. You gotta fight for the things you need.”

In family musical Lemonade Mouth (Patricia Riggen, dir., 2011) Disney kids bike to compete in an Albuquerque High School rock competition. Wouldn’t mention except for its inclusion in Vélo Bicyclette video.

Two films, Nerve and Paranormal Activity 4 (Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, dirs. on both, 2016 and 2012, respectively), merely flash bicycling unrelated to plot.

Total Black Out, aka Walk of Shame (Steven Brill, dir., 2014) in which aspiring news anchor Elizabeth Banks, after bombing interview then partying hard to forget fiasco, gets offered job as long as she can be at studio before 5:00 PM. Enormous LA isn’t so easy to cross at rush hour; just ask Izzy. At one point, she’s bargaining with a school boy for his bike, which she instead steals and straddles in a tight skirt.

Psychological thriller The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, dir., 1980), previously listed, has telepathic youngster Danny Lloyd chanting REDRUM and pedaling his tricycle around snowbound Overlook Hotel. Horror revisit Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, dir., 2020) covers same motif.