Was admiring warm autumn foliage before Halloween and digging hard on Hardig Road, newly smooth, not at all like washed out disaster it once was during daily commutes, when odious doubts began to badger.
What if all study into arts, literature, lyrics, music, philosophy, poetry and science constituted an inapplicable canon and waste of time? Recognize self regurgitating memes read in youth but no longer consciously recall. Brain gradually loses plasticity, thus potential for using memory effectively when most necessary. Akin to physical fitness, you can only maintain mental competence through daily practice in languages, math, and other learned systems. Writing knack gets taken aback, then all is lost once you die. Lives fly by limited by circumstances you beget through apathy, bad habits, and neglect. Happiness offers no guarantee, stems from mutual dependency, suggests a meaningful journey rather than a miserable existence, nothing more really.
All of what emerged from this
B&C experiment predates and validates Milan Kundera’s
Slowness (2022), “The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.” Labann chose to go slower and self propel, which created volumes from memory and disrupted a business blitzkrieg racing mindlessly nowhere leaving a wake of fog, regret, and ruin. A tome written to amuse self deserves no audience, while a novel meant to appeal to masses becomes a chore and seldom satisfies its author.
Whoever spends tens of thousands of hours of both bicycling streets and consuming cinema doesn’t need extra courses in critical thinking to see how they routinely intermingle. Somehow this Samhain, when darkness fills theaters and frightens cyclists, a harvest of evidence presents itself.
Disney fantasy sequel Hocus Pocus 2 (Anne Fletcher, dir., 2022) has Wicca curious teen heroines Becca (Whitney Peak), Izzy (Belissa Escobedo ), and Mayor of Salem’s daughter Cassie (Lilia Buckingham) bicycling everywhere, resurrecting witches, and summoning nonsense. Filmed at several Rhode Island locations, film sells to young audiences by starring same-aged tokens. Meanwhile, undead Sanderson Sisters hunger for children to eat and make themselves a nuisance with their paranormal spells. Disney has always promoted magic realism, but rumor has it that practitioners of dark arts must always pay a personal price.
Speaking of teens, a Thai school soccer team leaves practice on their bikes straight into trouble in true tale Thirteen Lives (Ron Howard, dir., 2022). In 2018 they run afoul while exploring caves that get flooded, evidenced by abandoned bikes at cave’s mouth. Navy Seal divers can’t figure out how to find and free them or recover corpses. So expert caver Richard Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) is called in. Despite seemingly impossible challenges, all teens survive, although one rescuer didn’t.
Paper Girls (Georgi Banks-Davies, dir., 2022) has four bicycling delivery preteens - Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet), KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza), Mac Coyle (Sofia Rosinsky), and Tiffany Quilken (Camryn Jones) - from 1988 Cleveland, Ohio time travel to 2019, where not only have newspapers become irrelevant, they have to enlist their adult selves to save the world from warring factions. Based on
Image Comics pulp series illustrated by Cliff Chiang and written by Brian K. Vaughan.
Pretty e-cycling protagonist Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz) courts physical peril by accepting virtual missions in Amazon Prime series The Peripheral (Season 1, Episode 1, Vincenzo Natali, dir., 2022), set in a near post-apocalyptic future when e-bikes have become a primary mode of transportation.
Meta Go Farther ad just dropped in which cyclists allegedly go farther in virtual reality. Will take real roads anytime. Anyone who thinks pedaling a stationary bike matches road riding must be naîve and pathetic.
On the other hand, beret wearing bicycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) in The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, dir., 2021) complains, “The Automobile: a mixed blessing, on the one hand, the honking, skidding, speeding, sputtering, and backfiring, the emission of toxic fumes and filthy exhaust pollution, the dangerous accidents, the constant traffic... Oops!” as he crashes his bike into steps down into Metro station. Competing for space with stooges slinging around tons of steel does represent risks.
Apocalypse prepper Addison (Justin Dwayne Hall) sets out on a trike with a trailer laden with bare necessities across a midwestern state to reunite with family After The End (Ron Hanks, dir., 2021). Almost everyone else has died from a pandemic. En route he befriends a pregnant rape survivor Ava (Alex Frnka), and they travel together by bicycles. Ava’s secret is that she’s on the run from a bible thumping trio who justify murder through scripture.
Highly rated documentary Accomplice (Jeremy Grant, dir., 2021) praises mankind’s best invention by profiling top free ride cyclists from around the globe.
Domestique (Adam Sedlák, dir., 2021) explores lengths to which cyclists will go just to be considered for a team, and personal sacrifices they make pursuing vicarious glory.
After her dad dies, Sarah (Arlen Aguayo Stewart) leaves Montreal to visit his mom Magda (Gloria Demassi) from a small Uruguay village in award winning Canadian film Les Routes, en Fevrier (Roads in February, Katherine Jerkovich, dir., Quebec, 2019). During dead of winter it’s far too sultry so far south, but Sarah hardly recognizes the place of her birth, and residents don’t warm to her either as she bikes around alone.
Animated irreverent TV series South Park: Bike Parade (Season 22, Episode 10, December, 2018) treats bikes as luxury vehicles that attract girl groupies, while gang takes on Amazon’s unfair labor practices as best they can and well they should.
Bicycling protagonist Max McGrath (Ben Winchell) dodges those hunting him and doesn’t understand why. Turns out he’s half alien, so can emit tachyon radiation, which powers an armored suit when he pairs with a robot and transforms into Max Steel (Stewart Hendler, dir., 2016). An adversary also wants to exploit his power. Gives a new meaning to e-bikes, which have become increasingly popular, just like when early bicycles were gradually supplanted by motorcycles, then automobiles. Best and worst thing about purely pedaled bikes is how much effort they require. Amidst automotive convenience and pandemics of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity, opportunities to exercise in fresh air and soak up Vitamin D have all but disappeared for all but the most adventurous road cyclists and avid outdoorsmen.
Down to doping scandals and no high profile champions, has cycle racing seen The Last Kilometer (L’Ultimo Chjilmetro, Paolo Casalis, dir., 2012)? Just because critics got bored doesn’t mean participants don’t revel in world class competitions.
Bicycle mechanic Joseph "Jody" Summers (Tyrese Gibson) fixes BMXs for neighborhood kids in feature film Baby Boy (John Singleton, dir., 2001).
“Woah, I can feel it move me, feel it shove me as I break the law... Well, he took it standing, broke commandments, and he tumbled like a toy, blood like this crimson highway, spreading out from the temple to the ground.” - Glenn Danzig, Samhain, Twist of Cain, Final Descent, 1990. Not about cycling, though lyrics suggest consequences of riding streets carelessly.
