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.

Pays de Cocagne

Still from feature film trailer Crooklyn (Spike Lee, dir., 1994)

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom... Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from my home. Sometimes I feel just like I’m almost gone. I got a telephone in my bosom, I can call them up from my heart... when I need my mother, Mother!” - Ritchie Havens

“I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed... Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay. And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce, and all my wealth won't buy me health, so I smoke a pint of tea a day... I knew a man; his brain was so small he couldn't think of nothing at all. Not the same as you and me, he doesn't dig poetry. He’s so unhip that when you say Dylan he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas, whoever he was. The man ain't got no culture... I been mother, father, aunt and uncled... I just discovered somebody's tapped my phone.” Paul Simon, A Simple Desultory Philippic, 1966

America, land of honey, milk, and plenty, as if from medieval myth, once acted as an amusement park, liberty beacon, motherly bosom, preferred destination, residential station, and welcome wagon. For a short while that also included people of all ages, colors, creeds, orientations, and races before conservatives beat civil rights back to antebellum biases and gave citizens the royal shaft. Through personal computing, almost entire planet has become virtual; mobsters and monsters can exploit anyone from elsewhere without costs, rules, taxes or toil. Now that data is more valuable than even crude oil, writers worry that producing content, especially gratis, only gets used against them and for what they never meant it to be. Einstein's abstract insights multiplied mankind's existential plights. AI will kill anyone it views as a threat. Prophets of doom live short lives of misery. Who needs panic porn they spout? But that's what bad leadership brings about.

Publishing bitter attacks, casual observations, fervent emotions, pertinent facts, or radical notions seems foolish, possibly ruinous, when you don’t own a single item you’ve created and shared. You become a marketing target and unit of profitability, or contribute to social dilemma of immersive media. Saying the truth and speaking one's mind should be smart but are not. Fox Network has nothing but programs with dysfunctional families, incompetent coworkers, and interpersonal violence. Within a society that glorifies idiocy, anything that separates you from the herd makes you vulnerable to predators. Bicyclists know this all too well, rather gather with friends or strangers than go solo amidst dangers, though you need no motivation other than your own to take a spin, a slo-mo adventure outdoors. Got to wonder whether staying home is safer given household accident statistics and risks of not visibly standing with others against social injustice.

Data warehouse RIPON secretly stole profiles from Facebook and Twitter for Republicans to spy on potential voters and swing those undecided. Rates right below QAnon agitators who conflate every case of child abuse or sex trafficking to promote reprehensible leaders blustering about it with no intention of interdicting. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Britanny Kaiser adds that your credit purchases and local movements are used for personality modeling. Current laws totally permit this privacy invasion. Pandemic furloughs and quarantines further provoke cyber crimes, internet scams, and savings hacks. Worse, situation is being used to preach against freedoms, promote conformity, suppress rights, and wrest control. Easy to blame hapless victims for lack of compliance; impossible to hold real culprits culpable and prosecute for justice and reparations.

Psyops represents the latest iteration of illegal behavioral modification used to brainwash American public for conservative domestication. That you don’t believe in how psychology can be used to get you to act against your own interests is just part of their successful programming of you. Motorists pay plenty for convenience and promise of speed, but they get repeatedly cheated by construction, gridlock, and rudeness. Immersion in movies once seemed less nefarious and nobler than indulgence in politics, but both shamelessly use sociological tactics to twist facts and wrest trends to their own advantage.

You’d think with all these surveillance cameras on every pole they could make streets safer for bicycling by noting where motorists buzz or cut off cyclists, form uncrossable queues, refuse to follow traffic controls, stick nose into intersections ignoring boulevard stops, and turn or weave without warning, which, by the way, are all seldom enforced traffic violations. No, these days you are instead advised to isolate yourself from humanity. How does that help you? Social animals only survive through interpersonal contact, what people do for each other, services rendered. After paying dearly to drive motorists are being deprived everything of fascination that might be experienced between origin and pulling in to destination. Distancing has been gaining ground by privileged design since Reagan era. Haves only suffer have-nots to extent they create wealth and do chores. You’re only allowed to survive so they can take what’s yours.

Misery loves company so much those who suffer will infect, injure, maneuver, or otherwise drag down whomever they can, particularly a gullible samaritan. Lately cross to other side of street to avoid contact and maintain distance. Saw man with an intimidating dog, who seemed ready to cross. Rolling closer, realized it was a service dog unwilling to chase a tennis ball and thereby lead blind master into traffic. So deviated to middle and kicked ball to happy pooch. Situations are often not what they appear to be without in-depth study. Tennis ball put all proximate at risk, but what can you do?

To enjoy being in the vicinity of great people you’d have to have fought a good fight yourself, lived in peril, wandered through same battlegrounds. Personally met decorated soldiers, famous authors, a goddess, a Nobel laureate, rock legends, a saint, and several presidents and statesmen. Labann behind handlebars, prisoner to pedals, slave to saddle so far has served over a half century of a life sentence, though somewhat rewarded for good behavior, while Satan took Sin for a spin causing crisis planet's in. Many people would prefer quieter lives, but there’s no perks without risks. Have been beaten, betrayed, crashed into, shot, stabbed, and stressed but survived. Must assume everyone has character flaws, yet insulate oneself against harm they will cause. Brothers in blood can be worst of frauds.

Made mistake of taking a bike path shortcut on a midday weekend. Knots of families with dogs and kids blocked way, so just stopped on left, where cyclists supposed to pass, and waited. Fast trailing cyclist yelled, "On you left," repeatedly. Didn't respond. Once crowd dispersed, spun up quick to 25 mph, caught, and blew by impatient passer, who, despite trying to chase, faded quickly behind to invisible. Peeled off to seal deal. Sometimes you have to send a message that dispels delusions of self superiority. You are not king of all you survey and, at only 16 mph, lord over any bikeway. Real bicyclists don't rely on dedicated paths as race tracks for contests against unsuspecting opponents. Ego isn't served by edging out someone who may be at end of a long tour, just getting back into pedaling, or new to cycling as recreation or sport. Among bicyclists and pedestrians an automotive mentality doesn’t belong. Peloton racing is an exclusive club involving young idiots exploited in a spectacle for advertising. Excluding these few thousand individuals, a billion riders are commuting and recreating, not racing.

Handshakes, once a business mainstay, are taboo. Socially responsible greeting gestures now include a bow, a hand over heart, hello in international sign language (a right handed salute), namaste prayer, a nod, a peace sign, a shrug, or a wave. Bicyclists respect each other with a passing nod or thumb’s up. World Health Organization doesn’t include no touch chest thump, elbow bump, fist pump, or slap rump because all infringe upon personal distance. WHO does give advice on wearing masks over both mouth and nose, not stuck below chin, in hand, off ear, turned inside out for a second wearing, or wherever it does no good. Exterior of mask is contaminated and unfit to be fiddled with on face or touched without immersion wash.

In other words, you are only free to do what is responsible; otherwise you could die from negligence, not much of a choice. Every hour spent bicycling affords another whole day alive if you don't inadvertently die in traffic. Although you might get away with wayward ways, benefits don’t outweigh delays, yet majority don’t appear to care. Stooges united on a bicycle built for three parties rolling downhill into certain chaos, massive stupidity seems to predict an election win for incumbent boob who runs things for billionaire bosses, so they don’t have to reveal their influence. “Fear no disease,” he dares to declare after only he receives cutting edge treatment after denying millions affordable care and two million pandemic deaths. Consider source and take every precaution.

If you take time to think about content before you publish it, you often derive new insights or reconsider accuracy of what you wrote. Debatable and disreputable statements contain adverbs and hyperboles of “always”, “only”, and “we”. Yet there's an overwhelming drive to get ahead, glide with tide, go with flow, let go of control, and make a retraction only if compelled to do so. Blatant lies, bold emphasis, and fake news enrage readers who are already on edge. Behooves a writer to clarify and condense, even when it’s all been said before. Labann excels at annoying. Nothing is so unloved as honest advice on best practices explored over volumes with the exception of simple truths, which nobody can tolerate and likely does wrong if they try to apply. Before and during outings so often remind self about a dozen sensible things to do, feel a reckless urge to delineate them for you:

1. Clean bike frequently; note cracks and dings. Never ride on a cracked frame. Touch up bare paint on steel to avoid rust. Dry, then oil, chain and pedals; wipe off excess. Oil derailleurs and shifters once in a month. Sanitize saddle.

2. Disassemble bike every few years because bottom bracket, calipers and derailleurs can fail, gum up, or stick; reassemble to specified torque ratings. While zooming down hills at 60 mph, you’ll consider it as packing your own parachute and feel more confident.

3. Consult take/wear checklist, since forgetting a cell phone, helmet, house keys, or tools can progress past just annoying into life threatening.

4. Expect - bad motorists; broken, bumpy, crumbled, potholed, sandy, trash strewn pavement; linear cracks that will impede balance; road furniture; sewer caps, slotted grates, and sunken pipe covers. Much of what constitutes bicycling entails avoiding idiot motorists, constantly watching where you’re going, and wending around hazards and obstacles.

5. Flip crank around before leaning into a turn so pedal doesn’t hit curb or scrape pavement. Level pedals over speed bumps. Never lay bike down on derailleur side.

6. Give tires a pressure check before every ride; keep between max and min. Inspect hubs, nipples, rims and spokes. Tires and wheels take the most abuse. Protect spokes from damage while riding, storing, and transporting.

7. Stick to a straight line rather than weave except when avoiding items in #4.

8. Take the lane. Within their rights, bicyclists are entitled to use entire street, squeeze aside only to let faster traffic pass. Drivers must avoid crossing edge lines or gore areas, so, refuges for cyclists. Riding close to curbs, in gutters full of trash, or on sidewalks will result in flats or you might crash; plus motorists might not expect or see you there.

9. Tuck in before a bend in road, so trailing motorists, who momentarily lose sight of you, don’t edge around corner into you. Friendly roads have lanes wide enough for trucks and shoulders wide enough for biking and parking, but it’s up to you to evaluate sight lines.

10. Understanding how #8 and #9 apply, when descending a hill faster than other traffic, use best pavement across lane’s width. Drivers trying to pass can suck it; enabling scofflaws is not the same as impeding law abiders. Likewise, while climbing slowly, pick an unobtrusive line and let them overtake without fuss so they pass sooner.

11. Whenever you see a crooked crucifix or God Makes Cretins logo, anticipate bonehead maneuvers and random aggression. Bus, pickup, SUV and van drivers take up more than their share of travel lane and resent your presence even when off road edge. Despite all advice, do whatever’s necessary for your own safety.

12. Bicycling is supposed to be fun, commune with nature, reduce stress, and take time while pedaling and recuperating, repaid in longer life expectancy. Gives pause for thought about hidden truths, source for over 2,000 pages of Bike&Chain before disappearing into ignominy again.

Protease Antipain

In the few centuries since bacteria and viruses were known to cause diseases, zoonotic epidemics have become linked with animals, some used as food: Cholera from any animal feces, influenza from chicken and pigs, plague and typhus from bats, cats, opossums and rats, salmonella from all poultry, smallpox (killed 500 million people over 12,000 years) and tuberculosis from cows. Mosquito bites transfer Chikungunya, West Nile and Zika viruses, dengue fever, and malaria among humans. Pandemic incites health concerns; people gravitate to whatever they think improves immunity, including bicycling. A  plethora of ills and potential for death await those who don't proceed with care.

To fight Hepatitis C, HIV, and retroviruses, they’ve developed several antipain drugs around protease inhibitors which have extended patients’ lives up to 60%. Some of these compounds are found in common foodstuffs: Apple, banana, cabbage, legumes such as soybeans, potatoes, seeds, spinach, some herbs and spices, tomatoes, what’s generally identified as ingredients of a healthy diet, and whole wheat. A couple of almonds every day are supposed to preclude cancer. Is relying on food quackery or will dripping elderberry syrup into your tea actually prevent contagion or provide a remedy? You are what you eat, it’s said; food is fuel, and inner chemistry enables mental focus and rational stability. Too little Vitamin D you get for free from sunshine causes depression. Niacin deficiency can cause psychoses. Sugar and white flour increase incidence of diabetes. A human body completely replaces itself every 7 years or so, some parts more quickly, versus brain cells irrevocably lost along with memories and spirit, which can be a source of serious distress. To forget and forgive might relieve your stress.

When three friends - played in childhood by Christina Ricci, Gaby Hoffmann and Thora Birch - reconnect in 1991 to help Ashley Aston Moore through end of her first pregnancy, they compare Now and Then (Lesli Linka Glatter, dir., 1995), their coming-of-age summer. During big bike boom of 1970, all kids on camera have one that they ride incessantly around otherwise empty suburban streets. Gaby attempts to retrieve a bracelet from a storm drain but gets trapped as water rises. Walter Sparrow, whose reclusive character only comes out at night to ride his bike, rescues her. Adult perspectives allow them to reconcile. Critics knocked film as a girly version of Stand By Me, though it has become an admired cult classic.

Television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, Season 8, Episode 21 (1997) was a roast of movie Time Chasers (David Giancola, dir., 1994). Crow (Bill Corbett) complains, "Come on, this can't be the hero of the film. He has a geeky ten speed bicycle. He should have at least have a cool burnt orange Stingray. This can't be the star. Maybe he's going into the house to meet the real hero." In one scene cyclist/inventor/protagonist Matthew Bruch carjacks a Yugo, crashes it into a rack of bikes, flips car over, pardons himself saying to owner, "I don't drive," then steals a bike to continue his flight from corporate goons chasing him. Duly listed in B&C's appendix, took until today's cable streaming to actually watch this low budget turkey.

You must count health among gifts you have to apply to retain. Rigorous exercise boosts mood, builds stamina, and buoys libido. Everything that Lila Says (Ziad Doueiri, dir., 2004) bubbles up from an abundance of hormones, apex of imagination, and avid self propulsion. After moving in with her aunt in the Arab ghetto and throughout story sweet sixteen Lila (Vahina Giocante) in a short skirt rides her moped around contemporary Marseilles like a pro to tease young men. Story narrator Chimo (Mohammed Khouas) falls for her simulation of smoldering sophistication, and she his kind sincerity. There’s a long scene of a heavy petting balanced aboard her rolling bike. Chimo’s fickle friends sexually harass her, and jealous pack leader rapes her, proving she was a virgin after all her worldly words. Heartbroken, Lila moves to Poland, and Chimo plans to follow, but writing this story earns him a scholarship to an exclusive Paris school.

A lonely elephant escapes zoo captivity through an abandoned Santander bike-share unit, a London Underground subway ride, then a purchased unicycle to home on Serengeti Plain in Paradise, Coldplay’s 2011 hit. "When she was just a girl she expected the world, but it flew away from her reach... Life goes on, it gets so heavy. The wheel breaks the butterfly, every tear a waterfall. In the night, the stormy night, away she'd fly and dream of paradise." You can say you saw everything once you see an elephant fly.

Very Good Girls (Naomi Foner, dir., 2013) Gerri (Elizabeth Olsen) and Lily (Dakota Fanning) take trains from Flatbush enclave to Brighton Beach to meet up and skinny dip. Then they ride their bicycles along sea strand. Later they talk of divesting themselves of the vexation of virginity before going off to college at summer’s end. Gerri collides with an ice cream truck manned by David (Boyd Holbrook) and starts flirting. David is really an artist who takes photographs and turns them into posters he pastes all over New York City. When Lily sees one that shows her bicycling from behind, she returns to ice cream cart and starts an affair with David. Gerri gets jealous, and tries to seduce David after her dad dies. This threatens her friendship with Lily.

Life goes haywire for newlywed GenXers Alice and John Macy (Juno Temple and Michael Angararo) when Alice swipes The Brass Teapot (Ramaa Mosley, dir., 2013) from an antique shop owned by an aged Nazi concentration camp survivor. Since ancient times, the teapot was coveted and stolen by generals, genocidal maniacs, heads of state, and history’s most infamous villains, including Hitler. All exploited its one magical property: treasure commensurate with the degree of pain or suffering. emotional or physical, holder personally experiences or witnesses. In this social allegory on greedy effects and mental defects, the Macys are nonentities. John commutes by bike to a dead end telemarketing job. Unemployed recent grad Alice takes their beater Pinto to her consecutive unsuccessful interviews. When she accidentally burns herself, teapot belches out a couple of Benjamins, seemingly a godsend for a couple struggling to make ends meet. But there’s a curse, of course.

After successful Afghan ops together, soldier Robbie Arnell, handler for USMC Malinois dog Max (Boaz Yakin, dir., 2015), advances into a Taliban held position to protect injured dog, but gets gunned down doing so. His teenage brother Josh Wiggins, who sells illegally copied video games, winds up with surviving hero, who’s talent is sniffing out munition caches. They embark on a series of adventures together in which dog teaches boy the bad pay and bitter fruit of crime.

The Intergalactic Council of Superior Beings (voices of John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Terry Jones) intercepts Voyager II, then convenes as judge and jury to try Earth for destruction or inclusion, not that they’ve ever chosen the latter. Procedure means randomly selecting a sole individual, very nearly settling upon Sarah Palin, to have power to do Absolutely Anything (Terry Jones, dir., 2015). Nope, it’s bicycling nerd, school teacher, and small man Neil (Simon Pegg). Neil just wants to not get run over by a van, which tacos his wheel causing him to be late again, survive another day among his unruly students, and woo lovely neighbor Catherine (Kate Beckinsale), who hardly knows he exists. Discovering his powers, then doing selfish or stupid things with them, including making his dog Dennis (Robin Williams, posthumously, in final film role) talk and think like a human, are enough to convince him to transfer his powers to Dennis, which averts global catastrophe at the final moment. Anyone but a bicyclist would have done worse.

The Brothers Grimsby (Louis Leterrier, dir., 2016), orphaned and separated as children, reunite and retreat to their Lincolnshire home town, where juvenile delinquents on bikes roam litter laden, traffic free streets devoid of industry. Nobody dad of eleven kids Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen), a demented soccer hooligan who works the dole system with devoted girlfriend Rebel Wilson, and secret agent Sebastian (Mark Strong), falsely accused of going rogue, fight through adversaries on both sides to prevent terrorist Penelope Cruz from killing billions of poor people. Despite disgusting scenes and slapstick antics, these heroes save the day, and noted bike hater Donald Trump dies of AIDS along the way. Hurray!

Cultural artifacts related to bicycling are forever emerging, so it's hard to keep up chore of cataloging. One can query many search engines to find references to bicycling, but results relate not to culture primarily but to racing, as if life is nought but a Darwinian contest you cannot escape and must lose. Aggravating. Aussie filmmakers Eleanor Sharpe and Nickolas Bird document MAMIL (2018) regarding middle-aged weekend warriors clad in lyric who have “all the gear and no idea” what drives them from family and jobs into obsessed road lust. Maybe it’s just a chance to test self esteem against hand picked competitors for narcissistic dominance in land down under. Narrated by long time Tour reporter Phil Liggett, this string of sound bites purports to clarify.