Fry-Day

The legs, they are good. The beer gut, he is medium. The back, we don't know... *that fucker* is unreliable.

So we're going to register for some races, and get after it, and see what happens.

It's cross time, kiddies. Time to ride, run, ride some more, then drink shout and ring a cowbell.

Here are some of my favorite races that I'll be trying to hit. Nittany is this weekend, and it's UCI, but I won't be there because, gosh darnit, Penn State is way off. Charm City isn't though, and I'll ease into the race season by hitting Sunday's race. Then it's off to Ed Sander Memorial at the seemingly always lovely Lillypons - which seemingly always has a mud pit that basically destroys what should be a frickin' romp of a flat course for me.

I don't know nothin' about Winchester Apple Harvest Cross, but I've heard it's a really nice race that coincides with their crazy Apple Harvest Festival, and I may make the effort to get out there. It's a loooowwwwnnngg drive for me, so I'm not sure - but all my NoVa friends are going there and if the siren song of CX Brewery Ommegang doesn't rip me out of MABRA and toss me into Cooperstown, I'll probably do Winchester. Ommegang is a long drive too, but damn... Cooperstown, Ommegang, cross, and the leaves will be changing color... that's a tough one to skip.

Then it's Hyattsville CX on October 10th. This second year race rocketed onto the calendar last year. It's flat, it has a couple tricky turns, and it's hard as shit because it's a 45 minute grass TT effort. It also has a great neighborhood / beer / food scene, and the excellent Hyattsville brewpub Franklin's, with its great Belgian ales, will be supporting the race.

The week after that, it's two days of Grandaddy Granogue.

And frankly, I'm not planning anything past that because the calendar isn't complete, and other than promoting the Tacchino on November 7, I don't know what the hell I'll be doing at that point.

As usual, I doubt you're here on a Friday to hear about that stuff, so I'll play some music for you.

I was watching The A Team with my six year old boy tonight. I introduced him to the show a couple weeks ago, and he *loves* it. Shocker. Tonight, they had a special guest star: Rick James. It's easy to forget how good some of those guys who made the transition from soul to funk to disco to urban contemporary were. I'm not a huge fan of urban contemporary, but hey, a brother's got to make a living, right?



Rick James' bassist on his first single was a guy named Bruce Palmer. Bruce Palmer later played with Buffalo Springfield. This is their best known song, For What It's Worth.



Y'know who else played in Buffalo Springfield? Neil Young.



And Steven Stills (Crosby Stills, Nash & Young)



Along with Jim Messina (Loggins & Messina).



Like Rick James, Loggins & Messina didn't think much about music if you couldn't dance to it.

BTW, you know who Neil Young jammed with a few times, epically? Pearl Jam.



Yeah, that's a great frickin' version of Rockin' in the Free World, isn't it? When I was a GI in Germany in the 80's we loved that stupid song. I think it was actually anti-Reagan and anti-military at some level but in the shaky (and somewhat scary) last years of the teetering Cold War, we liked the chorus. We were keepin' on rockin' in the free world, even if we had no idea what the crazy Soviets were going to do next. Speaking of Pearl Jam, they rocked really hard too.



You know who was their drummer for a while? A guy named Matt Chamberlain. You know who he played and got famous(ish) with? Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians.



Yeah, you can't get farther away from Rick James than that, can you?

It's funny how in music everybody who is any good is tied together to everybody else who is any good, in one way or another. Makes it interesting.

Of course the guy that has more to do with the stuff that most of you people seem to like, is a fellow named Rick Rubin, who was the original DJ of the Beastie Boys. He's produced just about all the popular pop music that's worth a damn over the last 20 years. Including this guy:



Yeah, there's a lot of good music out there. And much of it seems to be tied together by an obese, wild haired Jewish hip-hop guy named Rick Rubin. It's not possible to list all the acts he's produced, fixed, raised to new heights, revived, and made stars out of. It's also not the first time that a funny looking Jewish guy with wild hair influenced everybody else's music over a 20 year period.