Blog Momentané

Rhymes can be inadvertent (lame) or intentional (earnest), but, in either case, ought to be avoided with a vengeance. Prose riddled with rhymes may have required extraordinary achievement but questionable judgment. Littering with catch phrases doesn't execute literary excellence. Hip-hop and rap artists only appreciate how lyrics sound, not what they expound. Far from permanent, blogs and books intended as legacies arrive and depart far below starry firmament.

For 6 decades charged climbs, parsed pavement, pushed pedals, and sweated profusely, while thinking about the government. Doubled miles on a now antique refurbished De Rosa, from around 125,000 to 250,000, and wore out a few 10-speeds. Frequently engaged in advocacy deeds with multiple results on ground. When bones rattled over root buckle on bike paths, reverted to roadways 4 times wider, because they usually present unbroken ways through, but had to dodge a slew of dopey drivers. Have begrudged dangerous underpasses and lingered on overpasses looking down upon them with disgust and shivers. Called upon suburban borders and woods beyond, but country distances beget unsafe speeds. Since bicyclists negligibly impact environment and traffic, they’re entitled to rage against every automotive doofus whose operating rudeness causes carcinogenic stress. But worst of all is being edged aside and falling behind some couch potato on a brand new e-bike, moped, or Segway. How can you atone for gluttony and sloth that way‽ Bicycling probes vitality and proves you’re not dead already.

August to October in New England should be primetime for pedicycling, but 95°F heat and 95% humidity have been conspiring against. Although locally expect one per year, experiencing 4th heat wave; some meteorologists think they ought to be named to caution public to their dangers. Meanwhile, one hurricane after another hurries along horizon. A recent 17” record rainfall caused death and destruction, and Tennessee cries on. But everything about bicycles is water resistant: apparel, carbon fiber, finished metals, rubber, skin, even some smartphones. You don't need a weather man to know which way the winds blow. Air conditioning makes reading books and viewing films tolerable when going for a spin seems dubitable. Films, an amalgam of all art forms, may be terminal entertainment only surpassed by really doing. Why mull over reasons for saying no? Will soon be shoveling snow and wondering when next able to go.

Serious randonneur Daniel “Travelin’ Dude” Troia spent 16 years crisscrossing continent by bike on a freegan quest to connect culturally. During last 5 he documented his wanderings, resulting in a trio of thoroughly relevant films: The Road Less Traveled (2015), Two Wheels to Freedom (2017), and We Are All in This Together (2020). “I decided to set off on a cross-country bicycle journey with the hope of gaining a better understanding of the human connection during these divisive times. I didn't bring any food or money with me, because I thought that would create a unique way of interacting with the people that I came in contact with. By my hidden camera glasses show the REAL, candid interactions that I had with people that I met along the way... drone to capture landscapes... Gopro, to make the viewer feel like they were biking across the country with me.... There is much more that brings us together than what separates us!” Must have been rewarding meetings to warrant abiding deserts and mountains, dumpster diving and loneliness, rain and snow, getting there. Completely eclipses WQED’s 1-hour travelogue The Great Ride (Paul Ruggieri, dir., 2019) that covers 325 miles of C&O Canal Towpath and Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh, PA through eyes of group/individual hosts, who don’t seem to mind that much of it isn’t marked, maintained, paved, or properly lit.

Dreamland (Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, dir., 2019) portrays dirt poor dustbowl dreamer Eugene Evans (Finn Cole) looking for a way out of a rural Texas town where he shoplifts crime magazines with his buddy Joe Garza (Stephen Dinh). When they hear there’s a reward for the capture of Allison Wells (Margot Robbie), they set out on bikes as a small mounted posse to search. Turns out, she’s holed up and wounded in Evans family’s barn. She offers to double reward if Eugene helps her escape to Mexico. Using his bike in creative ways, he learns truth about her accomplice, yet steals resources they need to go on lam, which is what happens when government fails to respond to dire needs of desperate citizens.

Superfluous mockumentary J. R. "Bob" Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius (Sandy K. Boone, dir., 2020) depicts how you may ride a bicycle to attend slacker revivals, which ridicule enormously profitable evangelical betrayals. Raises a question: Why support a society that lauds whoever fits some arbitrary definition of genius and laughs away ordinary but substantial contributions from those less gifted? So-called geniuses do create and innovate, but what’s crucial to survival gets done by rote parroting and routine practicing. Ayn Rand objectivism aimed at encouraging supermen left regular workers dangling. Cults of perfection reap ruin, but you probably belong to one.

Teens bike and walk to convene at a diner, where they hope to hook up and pair off in weirdly dystopian Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina, dir., 2020). Exemplifies bicycle spice sprinkled on filmic fabric leaving a cultural stain. Can you make sense of a vicious world if you commit to a relationship and devote energies into maintaining it? Escapes duty to rest of humanity, simplifies routines, solves nothing, and taunts destiny.

Micro-budget flick The Adventures of the Adventures (J. Matthew Welker, dir., 2020) follows a family who In 2020 moved from metropolitan Los Angeles to rural Franklin, Tennessee, expecting safer streets and slower pace, though record heat and rainfall would later ensue. Adventure family’s 6-year-old prodigy Irie (Irie Welker) and 7-year-old sibling Camden (Camden Welker) discover in their own backyard a map to lost Civil War treasure, then race around on bikes to retrieve clues before villainous archaeologist Rockwell Shaw (Joshua Welker) gets his hands on it, or them. 

Vampires vs. The Bronx (Oz Rodriguez, dir., 2020) has teen bicyclist Miguel Martinez (Jaden Michael) and his minor posse fighting to save their neighborhood from gentrification when they discover an invading coven of vampires feeding on locals. Features in a cameo role Clifford “Method Man” Smith of Wu Tang Clan, who Rolling Stone called the greatest rap group of all time.

DC’s Stargirl, Season 2, Episode 3 (Lea Thompson, dir., 2021), profiles Courtney Whitmore’s (Brec Bassinger) stepbrother Mike Dugan (Trae Romano), a bullied bicycling paperboy who revives mercurial original JSA superhero Thunder Bolt. Both are comically inept, making them a dangerous pair, reminiscent of trivial villain Johnny Gasparini (Demian Slade) in Better Off Dead (Savage Steve Holland, dir., 1985).

Self-absorbed socialite widow Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) retrieves borderline personality disorder son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) from private school, mostly because she can no longer ignore him after 10 years or pay his bed and board. Facing eviction and nearly broke a decade later, she converts her frozen assets for final stacks of 100 euro notes, then jets to Paris to occupy a friend’s vacant apartment. Devoted son follows. Little wonder Malcolm’s fiancé Susan (Imogen Poots) breaks up with him. Among first things Frances does in Paris is buy Malcolm a fancy utility bike, since it’s Christmas Eve and she’s never given him a holiday present. He seems to enjoy tooling around swanky 5th Arrondissement of The City of Lights. However, as soon as euros are gone, she plans to leave without warning, thus make a proverbial French Exit (Azazel Jacobs, dir., 2021).

Sounds like a strategy for discontinuing a blog: No explanation, fanfare, regrets or tears. B&C, though personal and precious, was but a blip in Labann’s lifetime output. Always so much bicycling culture to cover, certain items only merited a mere mention or single sentence. Slackers expect someone else to delve into deep reportage, fill in blanks, while a bicycle makes an appropriate conveyance for sub-genius scholars to brave elements and bring forth what’s emerging for “a sub-literate America” led by unstable supporters of genocide. “Facebook is what replaced reading,” Bill Maher went on to say, but shouldn’t that include propaganda networks, public rallies, QAnon insurrections, rancorous tweets, seditious websites, and unscrupulous infomercials?

Busy people elect officials then expect them to manage weight of state with sense and tolerance. Enjoying arts, media, music, sports and such supports financial sectors that diversify economy. Unfortunately, politics is a major draw for amoral, narcissistic, sociopathic villains, because candidates aren't vetted for insanity or intelligence. The more anti-press and reading averse, the more popular they become among mindless louts who constitute a third of electorate. Give thanks that majority isn’t so lame brained, and one in ten does read and reflect, which applies duct tape that holds civilization together.

“I surrender to the heat by falling into its dry slow beat. I could lose myself forever aching for some peace of mind, aching for a little justice, whatever that is. Rehearsing to cut the last string. From here on it's all racing downhill in loss and anger on an ancient bicycle... like a burned out little saintbug.” The Bear Quartet, Rehearsing to Cut the Last String, Everybody Else, A West Side Fabrication, 1995

“Hey, hey, come look and see my footsteps through eternity. Riding hard and strong and free, the messenger will hold the key. I saw him. I knew him.” Jimmy Page & Robert Plant, When The World Was Young, Walking Into Clarksdale, Mercury, 1998