The Rake's Progress

"Stay, Madam, it appears I importune you overmuch . . . ," I continued, gently - by a sly leg insinuating myself from the parlor into the conservatory - yet bating that withal, not without some heat.

"Whist!" she cried. "Silence, Sir, lest my brother overhear your urgency and, like a very Catamount, spring 'ponst us both."

"Didst mean to say Mountebank, my Dearest?"

"'Tis one or t'other," she murmured, "indeed, it had a '-mount' in it."

"I am of like mind, Madam," said I, "I know the very word you intend," and proceeded to close negotiations. "Fie, Sir, you are but a naughty dog," she whispered from behind a pomegranate tree. 

"Nay," quoth I, gently seizing an interposing limb, "only so far as mutual inclination may warrant and as Madam may permit." She fled to an hibiscus. "These exertions overwarm me," she said.

"Not a bit of it, Madam," I assured her. "They are most salutary, and put a fine flush to your countenance."  She fingered a leaf. "Would that I had my breviary," she sighed.

"Piety is no refuge," quoth I. "Only count love as the best of pieties."

"Love, Sir!" she expostulated. "Would I had my pug by me."

"But a dog provides surety to his Mistress," said I, "only so far as his own interests extend. And in the present case, my interests extend much farther."

She fondled a pineapple, albeit, as I noted, distraitly. "Vexing creature," she murmured. "You - or I, Madam?" I ventured. "The dog," she answered.

"Most emphatically," I said.

* * * * * 

So it chances that Miguel and the maitresse of Chateau de Montaigne are marrying on the east lawn after a scant 13 years of romance, cohabitation and shared financial shenanigans. Wonder is that she should marry me at all, having never herself had any inclination to sample the blandishments of that institution, and knowing me as she does by now. I, on the other hand, have essayed it several times (the last nearly a quarter-century ago) - the first time stunned and nonplussed, the second time reckless of the clear and inevitable disaster awaiting, the last time with a reasonable optimism which, in the event, left me at least with a good friend. Probably as much as I could ever have bargained for, given the paucity of forethought with which I generally entered the lists. 

Hume (Treatise, Bk. III, sec. xii, "Of chastity and modesty") offers an admittedly partial account of marriage as a relation between the sexes based on the "trivial and anatomical observation" that "in order to induce the men to impose on themselves this restraint [of rearing and educating children], and undergo chearfully all the fatigues and expences to which it subjects them, they must believe that the children are their own and that their natural instinct is not directed to a wrong object . . . . 

(Wasn't counting)

"Now if we examine the structure of the human body, we shall find that this security is very difficult to be attain'd on our part; and that since, in the copulation of the sexes, the principle of generation goes from the man to the woman, an error may easily take place on the side of the former, tho' it be utterly impossible with regard to the latter." 

In short, a man can always claim that the kids aren't his, but a woman, never.

 (Wandered over from the neighbors.)

Admittedly only a partial account ("Were a philosopher to examine the matter a priori, he wou'd reason after the following manner.") But a posteriori, as there are plainly no children to enter into the calculation, and we're getting married anyway, the strict economic view fails to account for the palpable joy and excitement surrounding the event - the heartfelt wishes of friends and family, the sense of rectitude and satisfaction prevailing here at the chateau, the anticipation of - well, of more of the same, I suppose.Yep, I've been saving those red Ray-Bans for this day.

So the mail arrives daily, filled with notes of benediction, good wishes, and offers for discount hearing aid batteries (for which, as I've noted before, I have no use). No matter, I never thought I'd consider the prospect again. But what with the anticipation of our friends drinking our health on the lawn, having attained an age at which we can marry free-form, without ceremony, we can remain friends joined by the blessings of friends. The only thing I need to figure out now is where to throw 75 rented champagne glasses when there's no fireplace in the place.

Caught By His Ears

If you've been reading these posts with any regularity (and who hasn't?) it has occurred to you by now that they lack a thread or unifying theme. I never know what will set me off and so am that much more susceptible to a good outrage whenever I cross paths with one. It is purely chance that throws them in my way now and then. Today's outrage arrived in the mail. 

We are, by and large, a liberal and progressive nation, forward-thinking, fostering such national virtues as intelligence and industriousness, tolerance for others, broad-mindedness, civility, the give-and-take of vigorous public discourse - in all, a peaceable kingdom - well, republic. We have been schooled in the easy acceptance of differences and the avoidance of damaging stereotypes, as demonstrated in this video of New York police arresting an elderly Chinese man for playing the violin - clearly "elderly Chinese man playing the violin" could not possibly be a stereotype . . .

 

. . . just like "bearded Muslim guy in salwar kameez traveling on an airplane" could not possibly be a stereotype. . . which brings up another sort of stereotyping - "size-ism" or the stereotyping of really large people on airplanes. Our culture discourages us from thinking of them only as frolicsome, cuddly or adorable obstacles to the public comfort - always the first concern of airlines, but that may have to wait for another post.

The particular kvetch I'm getting around to is this: when I totter out to my mailbox, which I can still manage to do periodically, I generally have to clean it out - I refer to it as "cleaning out the mailbox" rather than "going to get the mail." It is usually adrift, after a day or two, in unwanted flotsam of an anonymous nature that piles up in it like leaves on a front porch. The senders don't know who I am, care only that I may have more money than brains, and may be duped into parting with some of my hoard by their cheesy solicitations.

Solicitations du fromage

By now I am accustomed to the hectoring pamphlets of the Medicare insurers, invariably featuring a grinning pair of dodderers who have evidently forgotten the last half-century of marriage and think they've just found one another on the golf links at an assisted living facility. But today's mail held a bonus - an invitation to be part of a groundbreaking experiment in the Digital Revolution. Why is it that now I'm getting solicitations for hearing aids if not that I've been blatantly, unfeelingly stereotyped as being amongst those elderly who clearly can't hear the crickets chirping at their graveside.

"Old F-A-R-T!"

Moreover I am offered the opportunity ("once in a lifetime," considering my advanced years, and obviously on the presumption that I'm looking about for ways to pass my remaining lonely days) to meet a balding young "nationally known hearing aid expert" half my age, whose expertise will presumably help me to lead a fuller, richer senescence by 'enabling' (one of my least favorite words) me to hear, for example, the solo parts of cell phone conversations conducted in public, parents badgering their children or vice versa, the accursed ice cream truck with the electronic chimes that parks on the corner for an hour, the neighbor's Harley coasting home at 2 a.m. You get the picture.

No thanks, thinks I to myself. At least I'm old enough to know that the power of speech and the cognate power of hearing, without which speech is useless, are at best mixed blessings. 

I think I hear your cell phone ringing. Or maybe it's just my ears.

"Answer it yourself."

Bowling for Kansas

I'm just back from Kansas, where the heat has broken, at least temporarily, and everyone is as happy as they could be for having just lost the better part of both their wheat and corn crops.  (And as the secessionist and Texas Guvuner Rick Perry might have said, if he hasn't already, thank the Umighty Lord for federal farm subsidies and crop insurance.) Yep, if it weren't for God and Gummint (in any order you choose), them farmers would have been living in some hellish Cairo slum since a long while back.

"It's not much, but at least we don't have to take farm subsidies."

And while I'm at it, here's a handy site where you can look up your neighbors to see who's cheating on their libertarian Tea Party credentials - search "Bachmann" (deceased) in Buffalo County, Wisconsin (as in "Michelle Bachmann") just to see how slick it works.

But among the many things I really do enjoy when I'm in Kansas (besides everyone I know there) is the self-imposed news blackout. In the darkened caverns of my motel rooms I can watch Turner Classic Movies (when's the last time you had to watch a Lew Ayres' "vehicle," willingly or un-?) instead of CNN or the charade of Faux News. Selective hearing, in a way, but relief nonetheless. When I speak with people, it's about genuine concerns like whether it will rain or exactly when their wells might dry up or whether there's enough water deeper down to sustain their farms. They're as chary talking about politics as I am, and being farmers, just as socialist as I am whether they know it or not. Probably they don't talk about it for the same reasons that I try not to write (much) about it (unless by innuendo), like we don't go into details about train wrecks.

So the climate in western Kansas is congenial to me in a way I never imagined it could ever be - in the summer it's bloody awful hot, it's dry and it's almost always windy (which of course is why I'm there anyway). Nonetheless (and given a modicum of air conditioning), I like it. But more than that, the people, as conservative and evangelical as their reputation and as much so as I am the contrary in every respect, seem to be possessed of a common sense that transcends the idiocy of their elected representatives and hired clergy. They are capable of conversation that does not degenerate in anger. On most topics, they are clear-minded. They can bowl together without rancour.

When among them I always feel welcome. I am admitted to the Mennonite ladies' Tuesday Sewing Circle, where in the church basement they prepare a lavish weekly Kansas farm lunch for their working husbands and sons in the off-seasons of fall and winter; have a standing fishing invitation at a marina in Oklahoma owned by a friend in the neighborhood; have standing invitations across two counties to stop by for dinner or supper (those being successive, seperate meals in Kansas); standing invitations to go pheasant hunting - a sport I've never tried nor been drawn to.

"Oh, dwat - sowwy."

I like it out there in the flat spaces with the curlews and the hawks and the coyotes and the Mexican restaurants and the oversized hamburgers and every grocery store bragging "the coldest beer in town." It's a forgotten place where the only tourists come for the tornado season. Bummer.

"Oh shit, Dorothy, we're in Kansas!"

God and Texas Hold'Em

Said the rainmaker to the people, 'Tell me what you are prepared to pay. . . '

Said the rainmaker to the people, '. . .and I'll conjure up a rainy day.'

                                                                           - Harry Nilsson, "The Rainmaker"

I just spent two solid weeks in Kansas, and the bank thermometers were hitting thermal jackpots like a drunk in a casino. It's been a hot summer so far.

(Thought he might need that overcoat.)

The air conditioner in my 16-year old pickup barely makes a dent in the sweltering prairie heat - I don't see there's much to be done except get an air-conditioned motel room and cool down between hurried sorties into the blistering countryside. But I'm only one man, a private citizen at that. I don't have much to say about the weather and so I try not to talk about it (present instance excepted, naturally, and I hope forgiven as well).

No, I'm no Guvuner Rick Perry. Perry is the current guvuner of Texas who on Saturday last, with true Texan brio, overlooked the Constitution's separation clause just long enough to convene some 30,000 fellow evangelicals from around the nation in Houston for a good old "inclusive" state-sponsored prayer rally. "The Response," as he dubbed it, was intended as a sort of rain dance in which participants get to ask God for stuff they need or think other people need (like rain, or that "wisdom" be granted to President Obama, who definitely stands in need of some but couldn't make it to Houston). Houston, for the day, was hallowed ground.

Rick among the New Apostles

It was the ultimate Glenn Beck Moment - in fact, Perry may have out-Glenned the Beck. The Houston Chronicle reported "a day of singing, praying, praising and — for some — fasting." Fasting is, like deer hunting, something evangelicals consider a divinely sanctioned blood sport, though the Chronicle reporter conceded that "Long lines besieged concession stands throughout the day." (Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, you can count on long, well-upholstered lines at the concession stands - the link between hot soup and evangelical fervor is an historic one.)

  "SevenEleven corn dogs - only way we can get 'em in here."

According to one news source, "The event was Perry's idea but was financed by the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss.-based group that opposes abortion and gay rights and believes that the First Amendment freedom of religion applies only to Christians." (Surprising they'd fork over their good money after Perry as much as said that the State of New York is within the law to grant resident gays the right to marry.)

In his harangue, Perry conceded to the Almighty that, "as a nation, we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us. And for that we cry out for your forgiveness." It was so Glenn, a jeremiad against our national waywardness. So Old Testament for all of that . . . I had an image of Peter Lorre in "Casablanca," chased by Nazi goons into Humphrey Bogart's bar, pleading piteously, "Rick, Rick - save me, Rick!"

The Golden Calf (another bad idea)

Oh, well. When you can't figure out what to do about the weather and the drought and the national economy, and you can't plausibly blame the President's political party for all of it, and you don't believe that expertise may be the first step in looking for a solution, then it can appear that the only recourse is either a willful ignorance, prayer, lethal injection or any combination. 

Personally I'm not aware of any transgressions that I need to answer for, but Perry may be a wiser man than I - after all, anyone who thinks that God is the sort of thing to which personal petitions and grocery lists can be addressed probably is also the sort of brash fellow who approaches God like he would approach some poor sod he's caught cheating at Texas hold'em - someone, in other words, who is likely to do whatever he's asked.

"Paint my house."

The Chronicle reporter further remarked that "the seven-hour event resembled nothing more than a boisterous Sunday-morning worship service at evangelical churches across the nation. The prayers were long and heartfelt, the remarks earnest, and the music - gospel and Christian rock - inspired rapturous frenzies of arm-waving, swaying and singing along."

For my part, 30,000 people swaying and arm-waving to Christian rock should be penance enough to satisfy a lust for adulation in even the most monstrous of deities. Taken altogether, the day sounds so . . .  tribal.

Summer in Kansas: Riding the Pig

It's a Saturday, nearly the last day in July, and according to the kaleidoscopic electronic hotel marquee out along the highway on the eastern edge of town, it's 100 honest-to-god degrees Fahrenheit at noon in Ulysses. (Update: by 5:00 p.m. it was 104 degrees, two hours later, a degree cooler.)

 100F - read it and weep

I walked the sidewalk around the lake ("Reclaimed waste water - do not drink or swim") in the municipal park earlier this morning, where I found a smallish three-foot bull snake coiled loosely on the concrete walk in the shade of a tree, as sound asleep as a snake ever gets, a mouse-sized bulge somewhere amidships. It was still there when I returned thirty minutes later. I don't know which I'd rather have tried to eat for breakfast - that mouse or a pretty lively bluegill that a heron was shaking into submission before swallowing entire, a finny little devil that made me wish the heron good luck with that, sucker.

As both images set a certain tone for the morning, I forewent breakfast myself - not to mention that the buffet room at the hotel sported a preternaturally large double-tiered cake stuccoed in opaque white and blue (it's a boyexclamationpoint) frosting while a family group decorated for a baby shower, spangling the place in lavender and white crepe like an Italian funeral. But those are Kansas State's liturgical colors as well, and the parents were evidently hoping to implant prenatally their own loyalties, as western Kansas is rabid (if that's the word I want) Wildcat country. (To the credit of all Kansans everywhere, I have never seen a single bumper sticker that reads, "If God isn't a Wildcat/Jayhawk/Chiefs/Royals fan, then why is the sky blue/grass green/sunsets orange/mud brown/cowshit wrinkled . . . . ?")

Last evening I went over to Sublette for the Haskell County Fair's annual 4-H livestock sale. I went as a buyer, which gave me entree to the "buyer's appreciation dinner" in the fairground's main meeting hall, which was much like an ageing, linoleum-paved church basement with a few windows. I do not mean to disparage the elderly municipal and county buildings in southwestern Kansas, as many of them are now air-conditioned - true oases in the heart of an otherwise furnace-like landscape. The meal was mainly a semi-circle of homegrown steak, large enough that I had to pry a hubcap off a Packard in the parking lot to accommodate it.

 1935 Packard (with hubcaps)

The table for beverages was separate, manned (if that's the word I want) by a cadre of tiny 4-H-ers who offered everyone a cup of cold drink - "did you want water? - or tea?" - poured it out, then carried it to your place at the table for you. All through the meal they plied the crowd steadily, like flies in a feedlot, with pitchers of the same - "did you have water? - or tea?" A nice boxed wine, I thought, might have made the livestock bidding to come a bit more brisk.

Four-H livestock auctions, a feature of every county fair, are a way farm kids raise money to finance their animal-rearing ventures and learn the business of animal husbandry. Local businesses bid on the animals, their designated bidders gamely raising the stakes as parents and grandparents conspire against them. Four-H parents are the rural equivalents of suburban Little League or soccer parents, except that since everyone is a neighbor and there's actually money involved they seem much kinder and less grim about it. It's a low-stakes game in which everyone knows one another and understands the rules. I was there to buy any animal that was affordable because the company I work for does business in the county and has always been a good local citizen.

After everyone had eaten and I'd threatened a table of county commissioners and feedlot owners (acquaintances all) that I was only there to drive up the stakes, everyone ambled out to the auction shed, got settled in the metal bleachers, listened to the litany of thank yous from the county agricultural officer, and then the chicken auction commenced. Not poultry - chickens. After one round of chicken bidding I heard a deep whisper behind me (no lie) - "I tell ya, if I was a kid I wouldn't shed a tear over a $600 chicken." I thought, if chickens are bringing that much, what will the beef bring?

I never figured that one out. Fortunately, my friends Katy and Kevin were there as interpreters, cultural emissaries and consiglieres. Their successive generations of offspring have shown and sold 4-H livestock in two milennia and they are versed in the finer points of bidding, judging, buying, selling and raising it. After the chickens were all sold, the rules of calculation became arcane - beef was auctioned "by the hundredweight," which meant some calculation based on the current market value, which dictated the convenient figure of $1.07 per pound as the base price, and (I think) the serious bidders started from there - most of the year and a half old steers were 1400 pounds plus, so add $400-$800 to that).

Pig bidding was different yet (never figured that out either). The pigs on offer displayed some considerable personality, as they were the only animals not haltered and had generally been raised by small humans, who stood only twice as high as their backs and whom they outweighed by a factor of about five. The wee folk control (if that's the word I want) their pigs kindly, with a pointy rod like a long whippy riding crop, but the pigs spend their time either heading back for the chute they entered or trotting for the farther chute they seem to recognize as an exit. They either ignore the auctioneer's vastly amplified machine-gun staccato and loiter along the runway to investigate, or become rapid and agitated and head for the nearest visible exit, which (they generally seem to realize without prompting) may be behind them. They out-man (if that's the word I want) their young handlers with the insouciance that comes of possessing both bulk and brains (occasionally a human attribute as well in the evolutionary scheme of things).

 "Perfectly serious, kid - just tell me what you'd like me to do, heh heh."

Kevin and Katy's three-year-old is already famous for showing his pig, Howdy, at 4-H events, as he forsakes the show routine for domestic familiarities, riding Howdy literally piggy-back around the arena. He's only three, but some of the judges take show protocol more seriously than do Howdy and his young handler.

Finally came the goats. Given my meager corporate livestock stipend, Kevin figured the goats were budget paydirt. So, prompted by his whispering "Hold it up!" I held up my numbered bidder's card and bought the first goat from a young lady named Cheyenne for "Four hun-ned dol-lahz!" Which was not quite as much as I had to spend, and which I quickly learned translated as four dollars per pound of goat. As it was an 88-pound goat, I spent about $350 of the company's hard earned money ($400 X .9 = ~$350). I just surrendered the remaining $150 of my allowance at customs.

 "Heerd you was holdin' money fer me."

Summer in Kansas: The Lower Depths

How did this happen? I forsook those 100-degree days on the Colorado Front Range (elev. 6214) for 110-degree days in the lower altitudes (elev. 3237). 

In short, my retirement was curtailed by the importunings of my previous employers, who have reassigned me to a former reassignment, persuading farmers and ranchers in southwestern Kansas to do what I ask them to do and like it. When they do, it's mainly because they like me as much as they like the idea of having a wind farm in the neighborhood.

Strange to admit that I've left the mountain fastnesses, the trout streams turgid with mid-summer melt, and the fragrant ponderosa slopes for the desert and its cottonwood oases, but I can't say I ain't happy about it. Summer in Kansas is no picnic (more on picnics in a moment), but the lovely montane passes of Colorado are clogged with the usual extravagant toilet barges . . .

"Ten miles an hour - I swear they're barbequeing . . ."

. . . and hefty tourist couples plundering the outlet malls like modern-day pirates. Freedom isn't free, as current wisdom goes.

( . . . and don't forget America's retailers.)

But when I got back to the hotel in Garden City, I found Curtis and the two Jakes, the company's field crew, having dinner in the bar and - handshakes and felicitations all around - it was as though I'd never retired. I've worked with the locals here for over two years, and I've always stayed in Garden City because it's the only city between Wichita and Denver, which even in the day of interstate auto travel is a bit of a yawner (and not counting Dodge City as a real city, which no one does unless for its mediocre state-run "gambling facility" which you may remember more easily as a casino). Garden City has a single hotel with the only decent restaurant in town, and air conditioning that works unfailingly, which you really need to depend on in a Kansas summer.

"Whichever asshole booked me into Liberal is dead."

But I've moved my operating base south to Ulysses, where the desert begins or ends (hard to say), and where the bright lights go off at 9 p.m. 

 Ulysses, ca.1929 and still about the same

Towns in Kansas all have the green highway signs at the city limits, listing elevation (which never changes). The population remains unstable, the steadily perishing old white folks being replaced at an uneven rate by Mexican-Americans (and a few of their relatives who are often just Mexicans simpliciter, but are more than willing to do the nasty work that's available out here). In any case, signs listing elevation rather than population are a more responsible use of municipal funds.

Still, Kansas has its charms, believe it or not. I see and hear things out here I rarely see and hear anywhere else, like the meadowlarks in the mornings, or the mockingbirds and the brown thrashers speaking long conversational arias in the treetops, or scissor-tailed flycatchers on barbed-wire fences hawking bugs in the midday heat . . . 

. . . sandpipers, yellow-legs, killdeers and long-billed curlews stalking tilled fields for grubs and hoppers, eastern and western kingbirds together on fence lines, kestrels diving for meadowlarks that outbulk them, the red-eyed Mississippi kites as thick as crows on utility lines along the roads, a hovering Swainson's hawk at last outdone by fewer than a half-dozen territorial blackbirds, a vulture picking at a dead rattlesnake in someone's driveway, old pickups smoking along dusty county roads carrying a spikey payload of long-horned Watusi cattle skulls, or just parked along the highway, a derelict cell phone ringing on the passenger's seat while the driver has a cold beer at Good Times . . .

So I have a different routine now that I'm in the countryside. There just isn't an eating place left in Ulysses that I'd want to frequent on a regular basis. The best restaurant in town burned down from a grease fire not long after I arrived and the owners decided to leave it, burned and down. It's a metaphor for southwestern Kansas in a way, and I don't like it but I can't fault them for giving up a losing battle.

So I buy a sandwich and park my old Toyota pickup in the local park, where I can watch the herons sail over the lake and the kingbirds harass each other in the cottonwoods. The young Mexicans from town come and play volleyball on the sand - they pull their pickup trucks to the water's edge and tune their radios to the same station. 

 Only in my Mexican dreams

While I sit in the picnic pavilion with my Subway sandwich I can hear them rallying one another, and the music on their truck radios - the lilting, harmonious music of Mexico, pleasant enough on the evening air until, like popular music everwhere, it inevitably turns monotonous. But it sounds like I'm at home in a changing American landscape, where the irrigation wells are drying up, wheat is no longer easy to grow, where everyone will eventually figure out how to get along and find something else to do.

Do It 'til It Hurts (Pt. III): The Tour de France

I'm guessing that the Tour was decided earlier today on l'Alpe d'Huez, when Andy Schleck, coming off yesterday's "epic" stage victory, translated a 15-second deficit into a 53-second adavantage over his brother, Frank, in second place. Thomas Voeckler finished three minutes down at 20th in the stage, and is now more than two minutes off the lead. In a reprise of his 2004 Tour, Voeckler kept the yellow jersey for 10 race days.

 Schleck in the lead, Col du Galibier (Stage 19)

The only thing that might change the outcome now is the third man, Cadel Evans, who at just under a minute off Schleck's pace, could pull off an amazing time trial and unseat the evident winner. Frank Schleck and Evans are both within striking distance of the yellow jersey, but Frank will not be the man to take it. His official role is as Andy's domestique, the lesser of the Schleck duo - even though his showing in this race had been stronger than his brother's until stage 19, which as I said was epic enough to get Eddy Merckx onto the podium with Andy in a rare appearance.

I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet on the family dynamics here (were I a betting man I'd have bet on Thomas Voeckler, but mainly out of sentiment rather than good sense, which is why I never gamble for money). The results to date are amazing - Andy made history with his attack on stage 19, 60 km remaining in the stage and two climbs beyond categorization left to go. Equally epic has been his determination on the descents, where he left his trepidation behind, reversed a pattern of timid descending to gain four minutes on the field at one point in the stage. It was mainly Evans, in a nearly solo effort to pursue, who saved the small pursuit group the embarrassment of having been so badly outpaced.

Still, we like races to go to the final stage (meaning tomorrow's time trial, not the ceremonial ride into Paris). We don't necessarily want to know in advance that the guy in second place won't suddenly jump and go for first. Drama happens only when blood is at stake, as when Saturn devours his own children . . .

"Don't watch."

 . . . or when we think Cain is at least willing to clobber Abel (even if he doesn't). If the Schlecks were Italians and Verdi were a modern-day journaliste du sport, there might be an opera in this Tour (maybe "Cain e Abel").

The Counterfactual Schleck Brothers
(Think about it, Frank)

Thomas Voeckler, Cadel Evans and the Schleck brothers have made this a memorable Tour de France. And though it's probably all over but the shouting, I for one am glad that Cadel is still in it. Any one of the three has shown enough grit to stand on the top step of this year's podium in Paris.

UPDATE July 23: Cadel Evans did indeed ride a strong 42.5 km time trial today to take the yellow jersey from Andy Schleck, allowing him but a single day to wear it. Cadel finished 7 seconds behind Tony Martin's best time and leads the field by over a minute and a half. At the end of tomorrow's (largely ceremonial) stage, Cadel will have won the Tour. CadelMageddon is upon us.

Do It 'til It Hurts (Pt. II): The Tour de France

Let me begin with apologies by plunging your heads into a cold cliche: this is turning out to be a Cinderella Tour. 

Meaning that Thomas Voeckler has worn the yellow jersey since Stage 9 (stage 17 ran earlier today). Riding safely through the crashfest in stage 8, he changed the race from a one-second duel between race leader Thor Hushovd and Cadel Evans that had lasted over several stages, since nearly the July 2 start of the Tour. Coming from 19th place, a minute and a half behind, Voeckler established himself nearly two minutes ahead of his nearest competitor and another half-minute ahead of Evans in third.

Voeckler is an Alsatian, a Frenchman with a German name pronounced (at least by the eternal race announcer Phil Liggett, a bellwether of how not to pronounce anything) 'Voh-kler.' I would have said 'Veh-kler,' but I only know three German words as it is - Schloss Vollrads, spatlese, auslese and trockenbeerenauslese. Well, four German words. Oh, and riesling. So I'm no authority either, except I can pronounce 'Liggett,' which I think is Australian for something you do after you've burglarized a beer warehouse. (The French say 'veau-clair.')

Voeckler is the Cinderella of the Tour on several counts. For starters, the Tour, which in France is something equivalent to the Super Bowl being played on the Fourth of July, has not been won by a Frenchman since 1985, when the great Bernard Hinault won his fifth Tour (the following year he stood second on the podium to Greg Le Mond, the first American ever to win).

Bernard Hinault

Voeckler, in the Zen-like tradition of Jacques Anquetil, leads the field without having won a single stage in this race. Unlike the stolid Anquetil, however, Thomas is known for his stigmata, the visible signs of his suffering, most notably a magnificently beefy tongue springing like the Holy Spirit from his visage.

'Je souffre.'

He has worn the yellow jersey before, in the 2004 Tour, when he became a minor hero of the French public. Expected to hold the lead for only a day against the all-devouring Armstrong, he held on for a remarkable 10 days before surrendering the jersey to the eventual victor.

This time around, Voeckler has dazzled a field of cautious riders, using his instincts as an animateur - the one who attacks, breaks up the rhythm of the peloton, strings out the leaders with unexpected sorties, keeps the field unsettled and watchful - to maintain his lead.  Still, he defies the American ethos of Stephen Covey's highly effective and therefore habitually happy people. "I don't believe for even one second that I can win the Tour," Voeckler told the cycling press after a few days in yellow. "I think my chances are zero." How could you hate the guy? The French aren't listening, of course, but I'm sure someone tried to warn them before the Battle of the Somme. Which could be Cadel Evans, or it could be Alberto Contador.

What makes Voeckler's current ascendency even more compelling is that it upsets the dispensation of the world according to the cycling media. No one could have predicted his sudden jump from 19th place to the front of the standings - better yet, he doesn't look or sprint like the brash Mark Cavendish (four stages in this Tour to Voeckler's zero, but two hours back in slot 124), he is neither of the Schleck brothers who get a lion's share of attention in race coverage. He doesn't think for a minute that he'll win this Tour, he never probably thought much about standing on the podium before last week. He just rides his bike.

Contador has already won three Tours and this year's Giro d'Italia. His fortunes in the early stages have been poor (crashes, mostly) but he is coming back stronger. He could win it again, which would be fine with me. And Voeckler already knows that he faces a tough time in the remaining mountain stages. He gave up over 20 seconds today over tough climbs, so his margin has slipped to about 80 seconds, with five stages remaining to ride.

But right now I'm voting for the Frog.

"Cheri, 'ev you seen may glass sleepurz?"

UPDATE, July 21: Stage 18 is the hardest stage of the Tour with three climbs beyond categorization. On the final climb, Andy Schleck attacked early on the Col d-Izoard, held on over Col du Galibier to win the stage, and leaves Thomas Voeckler with a scant 15-second lead. Thomas himself rode amazingly to hold onto the yellow jersey. The standings have been shaken up considerably - Andy's brother Frank Schleck is in third, Contador is a distant seventh place, more than four minutes off the leader. No chance for Contador this year.

The Murdoch Touch

I had speculated recently, in the glibly frivolous vein that inevitably presages disaster, that I might either be or be about to be of some interest to the FBI. It was not Hoover's lackeys I should have feared, however, rather the faceless minions* of Rupert Murdoch who have almost certainly hacked my cellphone. 

A Murdoch minion

  

This may appear to be one too many cries of 'wolf' from Miguel. But, as the game is up for Murdoch and his evil empire, as all the king's men are unveiled and their vile stratagems brought to the light of day, I am certain that my cellphone was hacked by the likes of Andy Coulson, Clive Goodman, and Glenn Mulcaire. How do I know this?

Fact 1A: Goodman had illicit access to sensitive phone conversations among aides to the royal family. Snippets of intimate conversations (such as one between Princes Harry and Andrew) have appeared verbatim in the British tabloids. 

Fact 1B: I have publicly claimed descent from several of the royal houses of Europe, including the Houses of Bourbon, Yquem de Montaigne, Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, Stuart, Stewart, Stuert, Stowert (depending on which credit card I'm using), Halsingland und Gastrikland, to name a few; also claimed direct descent from their Royal Highnesses Bela II and Stephen V of Hungary, Edward II of England, Louis IX of blessed memory, Henri IV of Navarre and Clancy of Ireland, among others. 

(To a polite and discriminating readership, a man's legitimacy or b*st*rdy are neither subjects of proper conversation nor deserving of scrutiny amongst confidants. Enough that my royal pretensions and my wineseller's receipts by themselves place me unquestionably within the precincts of royalty.)

Uneasy lies the head with the little round jug

Fact 2A: Mulcaire admitted to hacking the cellphone of Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers Association. Professional Sport was decidedly on Murdoch's radar. 

Fact 2B: I have previously written of professional cycling in these pages. Among some of my circle, I am considered a cognoscento of the sport. I have made light of 'Cipo' (albeit not to his face); I know the proper pronunciation of 'Team Leopard Trek.' Admittedly, cycling is not football, and I am well aware of the differences: you see, in professional cycling young men wear very tight lycra uniforms, spend half their time looking out for traffic and the other half taking drugs, while in football very beefy men wear very tight lycra uniforms, spend half their time lying on top of one another, half their time slapping one another sur leurs derrieres, the third half taking drugs, and the final half using handguns in nightclubs. I am, in short, enough of the professional sportif to qualify for the technological attentions of Messieur Mulcaire.

"Uhhh . . . wrong ball, Ben."

Fact 3A: Mulcaire admits to hacking the phones of former members of Parliament. 

Fact 3B: While this seems to me the least fruitful line of investigative journalism anyone could imagine, still I suppose one does what one must do to keep up the appearance of doing a job properly. And while I have no pretensions to enter the august sessions of Congress in this life, the fact remains that I have influence with power. My inalienable droit de suffrage at the local polls has won me the ear of my own Representative, The Honorable Doug Lamborn, which you will have noticed is missing from its normal place alongside his head.

Doug Lamborn, R-CO 
(courtesy Rocky Mountain Taxidermy)

It seems a fair question to ask what the Murdoch organization might hope to learn from my phone conversations that would titillate a nation and sell newspapers. That's more than I know, or at least (to preserve my cachet) more than I'll say. Say only I was hapless collateral damage, a bug on the Murdoch windshield, an innocent casualty in a global hacking sweep. 

In the final analysis, of course, we are back to Square One - there is only one agency in the world with any possible interest in my secrets. The check will bounce, of course, but by then the FBI will already have whatever scant information it requires to dispatch their minions*.


* I want to thank Newt Gingrich for the return of the word 'minions.'