Power Love

Your definitive resource. That's all, just your definitive resource.

23 April 2007

A DAY IN THE LIFE

On the way out to ride on this road, Goldie Hawnda was attacked by a crater-sized pothole. She fought valiantly, but ultimately lost. You simply cannot fight a crater-sized pothole brought to you by the fine folks at the City of Chicago. You cannot fight Pothole City.





Goldie said, "Wearing a spare tire for a car is like wearing the wrong size shoes for a human." I didn't have the heart to tell her the tire didn't match her outfit. (It did nothing for her complexion, either, by the way.)






Her Highness of Cannondale did not get a flat on this 78-degree, sunshiney, make-the-whole-world-yellow day.

OK, I think we all know this picture is merely a gratuitous hot bike picture.




See these two? Don't they look nice? Don't they look like the kind of people who say, "Please," and "Thank you," and hold the door open for you? Well, don't be suckered, people. These two are actually founding members of a rogue band of killer whirleyballers. They have no mercy, these people. They will knock your stick-thingy-whirleyball-tool-thingy while you are trying to make a shot. They will crash into you when you least expect it. They will gloat when they see they are winning 12-2. They will laugh at you when you finally realize that no, you are not playing a friendly game with friends, but you are really fighting for your very soul in a fatal bargain with the devil himself.


Check out this one on the left. He may look like he's thoughtfully contemplating the rules of the game. But he isn't. He's actually plotting his takeover of the whirleyball world. He's actually licking his lips in anticipation of the inevitable quenching of his despotic thirst for power. He is the leader of the rogue band of killer whirleyballers. They call him, "The Basher."



In case anyone cares, I found the end of the interwebnets. I think it could use a bit of landscaping.

21 April 2007

Dear Flower,
Thank you for growing. It gives me hope. It makes me think of an inevitable tomorrow, where you will be taller and brighter. For, is a flower truly a flower if it does not grow? Well, I suppose a pressed flower does not grow. Although, perhaps that is a morbid thought to you, flower. Perhaps a bit traumatizingly morbid.

I'm not quite sure how I would react if you were talking about pressed humans. I mean, if you had your flower friends over for a flower dinner and the carnation looked up and said, "Oh! What a lovely pressed human!" and then the rose looked and said, "Yes! The colors look great with your walls." And you said, "Oh, thank you. I simply picked that human out of a bunch, pressed it between the pages of The Collected Works of Shakespeare, and hung it. Very simple."

And then maybe at this point you would quote some lines of Ophelia's because maybe you would want to show your range, your inimitable ability to capture both sadness and madness, because maybe the carnation and the rose are not only friends, but also Hollywood casting agents, and maybe you have stardust in your eyes and big dreams of famosity.

Well, I can tell you, hanging pressed humans on the wall is not cool, flower. IT IS NOT COOL AT ALL. I will take a stand against this, you sun-loving petal pusher. I will harness the power of a free-thinking society to thwart you in your plans of blood lust and fury!

And this is how I will become the next president of the United States of America.

14 April 2007

I DON'T NEED TO FIGHT TO PROVE I'M RIGHT

I have a new tv. This is significant because I'm not a big tv person and the one I had before this one was 452 years old and acted like it. When I say "not a big tv person," what I mean is, I will spend years and years in front of a tv if I get reception, so I prefer not to have a tv and if I do have a tv, I prefer not to have reception. But I bought a new one because there was a bike race on television (Yes! American television! Bike racing on American television!) and I had to watch it. Support the sport, man. Actually, fuck the sport. Support hot men in tight shorts riding even hotter bikes.

This new tv has digital channels. I thought you had to pay for digital channels or else be in some kinda club like Sam's Club, but instead of having access to a warehouse filled with toilet paper rolls that come in a package so large that it will provide toilet paper for you and the rest of the galaxy for the next millenium, you get to watch the same channels as regular tv, but with channels with names like CW-D, and NBC-D. "D," of course, standing for "Dummy, it's the same channel, but the blues are bluer."

But no! It is not a scam--digital television is FREE (!) and it is very blue (!), and it has THE TUBE!!!!! Do you know what The Tube is? The Tube, my fine feathered friends, is ALL VIDEOS and the occassional commercial for god music ("Ultimate Songs of Faith," 22 songs of love, 22 songs of passion.)(Apparently, god loves us!)(But only the ones who pay $19.95 for "Ultimate Songs of Faith," so keep that in mind, you pagan fuckers out there).

Today The Tube showed The Who's "Baba O'Reily," which is not "Teenage Wasteland," as I was recently informed by Wikipedia, that bastion of encyclopedic knowledge. I first heard "Teenage Wasteland" when I was in high school, working at my first job, Water Slide Watcher at Prairie Mountain Water Slides and I can tell you, if you want to resign yourself to a life of never fitting in at a job where you have to sit still, the way to do it is to start your working career at a water slide. You will wonder why anyone ever works indoors.

I spent my days telling people, "No, you cannot go head first down the slide." "No, you cannot take a running jump into the slide." "No, you cannot stand up at the bottom and surf into the pool." When anyone did any of these things, against my explicit and toughly delivered orders, I would blow my whistle, and my colleagues guarding the pool at the bottom would adroitly grab the perp when s/he entered the pool and promptly kick them out. I would hold up the line and when the perp walked disheartened to the clothes bins on the deck and then looked back at the slide forlornly before walking out to the refreshment area, I would turn to the rest of the skinny-kneed, snot-dripping-from-tiny-noses kids, point my whistle at them menacingly, and say, "Don't let that happen to you." And sure enough, order was restored to the water slide park and to the world at large.

Until one day when I heard "Teenage Wasteland." It washed over me like a waterfall, that song. Hey, I said to myself, I do get my back into my living. And this water slide? It is out here in the fields. It was, I tell you, we seriously were out in the fields--it was Prairie Mountain, you know. Never underestimate the powers of nomenclature of bored stoner suburbanites who start water slide businesses. Anyway, I told myself, "I don't have to fight to prove I'm right."

So that night, after closing, you know what we did? We took running jumps into the slides, head first. We surfed to the bottom. We used the sides of the slides to gain more speed. Sometimes we jumped from the stairs (!) onto the slide WHILE OTHER PEOPLE WERE SLIDING, which was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. But did we care? NO! Know why? BECAUSE OUT THERE IN THE FIELDS, WE FOUGHT FOR OUR MEALS!

Actually, we dove head first into the slides every night after work. We also surfed, took running jumps, flew down backwards, and drank beer in the pool. But it was all way better with The Who screaming about traveling south cross land and not looking over shoulders. Way better.

This makes me wonder why it took me until high school to discover The Who. I blame the public education system, Reaganomics, and Aqua Net.

Other THE TUBE observations:

In the 80s there was excessive use of synthesizers and really big hair.

I can't possibly be more in love with Annie Lennox than I am after seeing the video for, "Would I Lie to You."

There are about 2,345 Billy Idol videos, all with his signature snarl, which then looked tough and scary, but now looks like the telling effects of excessive drug use, possible muscle degeneration, and a lack of green leafy vegetables in the diet. Though, it is very hot that he insists on storing his microphone in the crotch of his well-worn leather pants.

Prince, I love you. I will love you until the day I die.

12 April 2007

It's 50 below zero outside and Kurt Vonnegut died.

Shit.

11 April 2007

CHICAGO--Team Power Love happily announces its new sponsor, Blue Hula Hoop! Blue Hula Hoop will be an integral part of Team Power Love's core development and plans on assisting the team while it chases this season's goal, world domination.

"We are very pleased with this partnership," Blue Hula Hoop representative Zelda Fitzgerald said at a press conference today. "We feel Team Power Love is the perfect team to represent Blue Hula Hoop. The team has lots of blue clothes and a penchant for hula hooping in public."


"It's a win-win situation," Team Power Love representatives said in a written statement. "We get lots of blue hula hoops, we can avoid those pesky interval workouts on the bike, and we look cool as shit standing on the Western el platform hula hooping while everyone else gets pissed off at the slow train service."


Team Power Love considered changing its name to Team Blue Hula Hoop, but team president F. Scott Fitzgerald decided against it. "Not intimidating enough," Fitzgerald said between sips of a mint julep.


As alert cycling fans know, most cycling teams have very intimidating names (Jelly Belly [eek! jelly beans!], Kodak [don't smile now! pictures are very scary!], Jittery Joes [oh shit! coffee from Athens, GA, ahhhh!!!!!]).


Expect to see Team Power Love sponsored by Blue Hula Hoop at serious cycling events throughout the greater Midwest region this season.


*This message brought to you by the American Society for Serious Hula Hoopers

10 April 2007

09 April 2007


The city loves me.









The city loves me not.

05 April 2007

PIZZA AND ADJECTIVES


Alert Power Love reader Seymour T. Butz writes:
"What the fuck? I paid for an annual subscription and you haven't posted in a week. Start writing or give me my money back."


We sincerely apologize, Mr. Butz. We have been remiss. In our defense, Team Power Love has been very busy researching the relationship between pizza and emotive adjectives.

Are you aware, Mr. Butz, of the multifarious forms of pizza that exist in the world? It's a wonder the earth isn't covered in pizza, there's so much out there. We have often wondered, while researching, why there aren't pizza roads and pizza bridges, pizza cars with sausage wheels, pizza bikes with tomato wheels. We simply cannot understand how the world isn't just one big pizza. Team Power Love smells a conspiracy of the highest order. We suspect the Republicans. They're pizza haters, you know. Remember that in '08.


While this tries admirably to capture the essence of pizza by geography, Team Power Love dug deeper; our research focuses on the only two factors that really matter in a pizza/adjective discussion: square or pie shaped.


Apparently, the east coasters eat pie-shaped pizza. Frequently, these pieces are rolled in order to facilitate face shoving. East coasters also liberally pepper their conversations with "wicked." As in, "wicked fast," "wicked cold," "wicked pizza-induced indigestion."




Chicagoans, as alert Power Love readers know, eat pizza cut into squares. This horrifies many, but our research shows that when all the edges of a pizza cut into squares are eaten, one is left with the crustless middle pieces. What does one do with crustless middle pieces? Shove them in one's mouth while flummoxed east coasters say, "That is wicked crazy," of course.


Chicagoans typically don't say "wicked." Mostly, we prefer "fuckin." It is at once emotive and offensive. "Fuckin Cubs," "fuckin Daley," "fuckin Streets and San towed my car, those fuckin fuckers."


To recap, pizza and emotive adjectives are a couple as integral to each other's existence as peanut butter is to jelly, potato chips are to French onion dip, and as Nutella is to everything. We explore this topic in depth in our paper, but are not free to disclose any other details until after the Pulitzer committee awards us our prize for Exemplary Service to Humankind.