Check out this interview with Bobby Julich, one of the 8 Americans who will be competing in the TdF.  He’s teammate’s with Ivan Basso who was sent away from the Tour for suspicion of drugs.  It’s an insider’s look at how the scandal is affecting the team.

Well, they booted Ullrich and Basso from the Tour.  This is making me a cynical bastard.  Looks like half the tour is going to be kicked out.

Who’s going to be left to root for?

Anyone know if any of the bike shops or other places are going to be hosting a viewing of the Tour?  It’d be nice to watch some of the stages on a big screen.

Le Tour kicks off on Saturday and I must say, my enthusiasm is at an all time low.  The current Operation Puerto doping scandal has taken the wind out of my sails.  Who do I root for?

David Millar.  He is a former World Time Trial champion who was banned from the sport for 2 years for doping.  He admitted it (after he got caught) and then was stripped of his title, kicked off his team, and became homeless and penniless.  Since then he has had a bit of a Zen like revelation and has returned to racing with Saunier Duval.  I’m hoping that he wins the prologue.

Check out this post from the DayJobs

I’ve always regretted not seeing Neutral Milk Hotel during their heyday. I remember walking by the Atomic and thinking “what a dumb name for a band, screw it”. Not my finest moment. I did see the Gerbils there in 97 though, which was cool.

Anyway, if it’s true that there will be a new touring group featuring the songs of Mangum and company, I will go see them wherever they play. It will be awesome.

Craig’s List has an Athens site now.

Check it out.

Jittery Joe’s is opening up a store in Watkinsville! Actually, they already opened it this past weekend. I’m gonna drive by and see where it is. Hopefully it’s near the Sunshine Cycles. This is even more of a reason to include the Watkinsville area in my bicycling plans.

Also heard a rumor that they are thinking of allowing alcohol sales in restaurants downtown. I hope they do. They’ll get a better selection of places to eat up in there.

UPDATE:  I drove by the Jittery Joe’s and it’s still under construction.  I don’t have an ETA since the JJ website has it opening two days ago.  I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Here it comes.

This is going to get uglier as the Tour de France gets closer.  We’ve got a week to go.  Personally I’m sick of reading about doping in cycling.  I’m also sick of reading about Lance Armstrong as a doper.  I’m also sick of reading about the feud between Greg Lemond and Armstrong.

I hope we get a good story out of the Tour this year, so I don’t have to think about all this negative shit during the race.

Take this, WUOG!

I took great pleasure in this blog post.  I really get bothered by the attitude of college radio DJs, not just WUOG guys and gals.  I’m not a big fan of DJs in general, but if I could give the college ones some advice:  Fucking enunciate.  That mumbly shit blows ass.  And stop saying “Um…”

It’s been confirmed, by Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio, that Futurama is coming back. It will air on Comedy Central in 2008 with 13 new episodes, and apparently they’ll begin running the old ones too. They bought the option from Adult Swim.

Futurama Returns!

Levi Leipheimer became just the 4th American to win the Dauphine Libere today.  Lance, Greg Lemond, and Tyler Hamilton have all previously won the race.  The way that Levi won puts him pretty high up there in my list of Tour favorites.  I’ll have more thoughts on the Tour as it gets closer.

We went out lastnight to Little Kings to meet Brent, Steve, Geoff, Matt, Ambrosia, and Molly for some beers.  Turns out that Little Kings has a fucking Cornhole court!  This is as it should be, Cornhole and beer!  Fun was had by all.

I’m watching Mexico take on Iran right now.  We decided to switch from the boring announcers on ABC to watching it on Telemundo.  It’s just like that Simpson’s episode.  These guys are super pumped up.  Even if I could understand Spanish, I’d have a hard time following these guys.  When Mexico scored the first goal of the match, they didn’t disappoint.

Gooooollll!!Goooolllll!!!

I started watching the World Cup today.  I know nothing about soccer so I’m just starting to learn about the teams.  Team USA plays on monday, but I caught two games today.  England and Paraguay, and Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago.

I saw the end of the England/Paraguay game.  Paraguay apparently earlier knocked the ball into their own goal off of a David Beckham corner kick.  So Englad won the match.  I got to watch the full Trinidad game and their goalie, who played for Howard University, put on an amazing display of blocking.  They managed to get a draw against the heavily favored Swedish team.

I’m watching the Ivory Coast/Argentina game on ESPN 2 right now.  I’m having a tough time with the announcers.  They keep trying to make parallels between World Cup soccer and American sports.  They just don’t match up and they should stop doing that.  It’s annoying!

I still don’t know exactly how the World Cup is scored.  Apparently a win gives you 3 points, a tie gives you 1 and they keep track of the goal differential to break ties in the scoring.  That’s what I gathered from listening to the matches.  I’ll have to keep reading on it.

I got an early birthday present today. A pair of super comfortable Birkenstock sandals. I’ve wanted a pair of these for over 10 years and could never justify the ridiculous cost to myself. So, my wife just bought them for me. I’m breaking them in, and they are awesome!

I took some time to upgrade to the newest version of Wordpress, which is 2.03.  I also upgraded my spam protection.  So I’m fully geeked up.

I’m also gonna mess around with the themes on the site, so if you notice it looking funny, that’s why.

I bought The Venture Brothers Season 1 this past weekend at Target. I fucking love that show. Meghan thinks I’m a fucking dumbass for loving cartoons as much as I do, and she’s probably right. But so what!

I love this show. Turns out the creator of the show, Ben Edlund, also created the Tick, which is another genius cartoon. Check out the weblog of Jackson Publick, another creative force, for some insight into the awesomeness that is Venture.

I’ve added a link to Southern Shelter over there on the right. This is a great site put up by Sloan Simpson, who is omnipresent at every good Athens show. He’s got a site now where he shares his goodies and right now he’s got the Star Room Boys Trio show from last November, one of the best shows I’ve seen in Athens. Go check it out, and keep checking it out for more great music.