CRACKING NAMES IN CYCLING

Because the Giro d'Italia is about to start. The Italians might not have the best riders at the moment (Melvin thinks highly of Nibali though...!) but they do have the best rider names of all time:

1) Marco Velo
2) Guido Bontempi 
3) Crescenzo d'Amore

OK... there's also some garçons called Champion. Dimitri, who won the French Nationals in 2009, and Albert, the 1899 winner of Paris-Roubaix (via). Competing from Holland: two times Alpe d'Huez stage winner Peter Winnen. Yes, his name means what you think it does. He's a writer now and a pretty good one too IMHO. 

MOON GAS.. MOOG MAGIC!

Like a Thai massage but better: this record really rubs me the right way! I discovered Dick Hyman (no, I'm not getting into any irony, on this blog we're all grown ups. Right?) via a Summertime recording* he did with Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen. I have to admit that, at the time, I had never heard of Hyman. How could I? The man only made over a 100 albums, wrote scores for a gazillion Woody Allen movies and played with some dead dude named Benny Goodman. So obviously The Melvin cannot be faulted.

Initially known as a Bebop kid, Hyman has both speed and swing. But Cypress Hill sampled this song for something else: the magic that Dick jammed out of his Moog synthesizer. Because 16 years before Hansjörg 'Giorgio' Moroder made blue love to Dr. Robert Moog's machine, 11 years before Kraftwerk recorded the iconic Autobahn, and 5 years before Walter - later Wendy - Carlos introduced the moog to the greater public with Switched on Bach, Hyman recorded Moon Gas (above). That is just WILD.
As I post this, Moon Gas only has 2576 clicks on Youtube. A disgrace! Let's get this number up amigo's, spread the Moog and spread the Dick!

*Sadly deleted from Youtube, I'll try to get it up myself. Here's a version that is not too bad either.

FUCKING WEIRD

Advertising people are the devil. They know we don't want unisex gear. Sure, evolution made us progress from killing mammoths to tolerating pastel coloured cushions in our homes. We are not ashamed to order a skinny Latte. We clean. We think it is irresponsible to ignore speed limits. BUT - WE - DON'T - MATCH - SWEATERS - WITH - THE - WIFEY!


Unless, in some shrewd, subliminal way, they make it so damn sexy..

If you think the Basso bike is hot too, Lohman in Amsterdam has some NOS steel frames hanging. Smaller sizes, all red.

STAR WARS A LA FRANCAIS

I love France. They invented my Car, flew the Concorde and eat Cuisine. Don't forget Le Look le plus Cool either. The chou chou version of Star Wars on the other hand is total crêpe. But.. at least they put robots in. Melvin digs robots.

WHO LIKES A WET ASS?

The unspeakable...

Experienced readers will agree with Melvin that every ass is different. Therefore, every wet ass is different too. You've got good wet ass and you've got bad wet ass. Below, I will explore the bad wet ass. Real bad and real wet. 
Today it rained. Biblical showers, but hey, they're not REALLY the end of the world, are they? That is, until a certain someone had to come along. This spiteful whimp obviously didn't feel very much like cycling home on a soaked saddle. So, true maggot style, he transferred from my seat to his the plastic bag that he didn't care to bring himself. Which tells us that he doesn't give a shit about a) people and b) bikes. Oh, and c) love. Because you just cannot miss the fact that any pre-war ride is kept running by a loving owner. And this particular owner happens to be especially attached to his saddle, a beautiful Lepper in faded brown leather, probably as old as me and plusher than a Cadillac. It is constructed to carry asses around town until the end of time unless, of course, it is ruined by some random infidel. Yes, you are sensing testamental fury here... maybe because this trick was pulled TWICE on me this week? I am full of love for bikes and people, but I do solemny swear that I have something medieval coming for the sorry bastard who is caught in the act. He WILL know how bad a wet ass can be.
For now, let's make something out of this. Here's a shameless plug for a friend who tries to make a living designing cool stuff for bikes. He channeled his hate for the wet ass into the Fendor Bendor: a cheap and foldable rear mudguard that is shipped worldwide. More WIT works can be found here & here. 

  

BATTLE OF THE BOOGIES

Sunshine.. moonlight.. good times.. boogie..!! If you're NOT thinking Michael Jackson now, the odds are that you know your way around UFO's and have funny ears. Either way, you better think twice.
Because in September 1978, it were good times indeed for the Jackson brothers who, after five consecutive flops, reentered the higher echelons of the Billboard Hot 100 again. At the same time, a certain Michael Jackson got no further than #61 with his single Blame it on the Boogie. This second Michael, usually referred to as Mick, was the 30 year old bearded Brit who actually wrote the disco hit that was sold by his manager to Joe Jackson who was in dear need for an edgier sound to feed to the money machine that sprang from his loins. Not only did this manager 'forget' to inform Mick, he also failed to get that royalties thingy in the sales contract. The rest = history. 
Mick Jackson, now working from Germany, is still very much enjoying his good health and career, in which he worked with musical misfits as David Knopfler and Lisa Stansfield (not getting any Boogie bucks, a man has to do the occasional dirty job to make some money) but also with the gorgeous Barry Manilow. The full documentary about the Yorkshire Jacko is found here.

HOW TO FIRE UP YOUR OLD BRAKE..

.. and stop some mosquito's! Let's ALL raid our girlfriends' bathroom cabinet and BUILD THIS for our home convenience! Also as a tribute to the great artist Johannes Vogl of course.    

BLACK SNOW

Today, Melvin is recovering from seeing 'black snow'. For my non Dutch / Flemish readers: continue reading to up your cycling vocabulary. 

Having felt rather feeble the last week, I decided to start yesterday's Veenendaal-Veenendaal Tour anyway. After all, it was a 135 kms recreational ride, my friends were going and if I didn't do anything too macho I'd be OK I reckoned. All rolled out according to plan and after 115 kms I was still very much enjoying the saddle time. So when the speed suddenly increased to 37 km/h against a strong headwind, I eagerly went with the jump. It wasn't long, however, before I started feeling a little weird, which I tried to cure by focusing on the guy pulling our peloton: a thin legged architect in his dad's cycling gear on a beat up Colnago. Denying the clear 'red flag' quality of this vehicle, I decided that it would bring eternal shame upon me if I wouldn't even be able to wheel-suck the frail bastard. I soldiered on for another kilometer and then witnessed the gruppo pedaling away with my heart rate monitor at 182 beats per minute. This figure being substantially higher than my score on the Ventoux, the 1,1 km climb that followed was all it took to finish me off. At it's 'top', I encountered a terrible, terrible blizzard. Snow cut short both breath and vision, hampered my every move and got me wondering for the right direction. In Holland, there's only one kind of snow able to hit you that hard: black snow.
'Having seen black snow' (zwarte sneeuw) is an old Flemish expression, indicating that someone has seen extreme poverty. It is believed that the unlikely imagery of black snow relates to the unthinkable hardness experienced. Nowadays, the phrase is almost exclusively used to describe an athlete who has blown all his resources but gives it his all regardlessly, making an unimaginable effort. The expression also neatly resembles the physical sensation of seeing black spots (explained here). Melvin really likes it when language has a poetical and practical quality at the same time, and thinks the metaphore deserves to go global. It's up to you now! 
As for the guy in the picture, it's Erik Breuking. The Dutch Tour prospect of the nineties was famous for winning time trials by riding through black snow harder than anyone else. He wasn't too bad in real snow either, check his heroic Giro win in the 1988 stage over the Gavia.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE

Sometimes, an image talks more eloquently than Melvin ever could. This Giordana advert, my friends, is such a case. I'd ALMOST prefer watching an R.E.M. video over looking at this set. Almost.

VACANCES J'OUBLIE TOUT

Did I already state somewhere that I love the Eighties? This 1980 clip by French synthesizer band Elegance features quite a few things that were cool once. Such as: dorks with moustaches, dorks working BIG computers, women in lust for dorks in white suits, dorks flying a glider, see-through bikini's closing in on the dorks' face, dorks singing and laughing with other dorks at the bar. And, of course, a dork fiddling with a bike  (at 0.35). All this magic (OK, maybe they should have had that lame hotrod crashed by Samantha Fox in a DeLorean, but still: magic) was brought to us by Patrick Gilbert, Daniel Bourges and Pierre Antonio Zito, who I think deserve more fame than being virtually intracable, even with the help of Brother Google.

WHY I LIKE BIKES (GIRLS)

Just a few minutes ago, Melvin was asked what exactly he liked so much about bicycles. Answering that, I can just as well explain why I like girls. The perfect bike has lots of character, gives great sense of freedom and likes to be treated on expensive new stuff all the time. Oh, and bikes are beautiful. Mrs. Melvin knows that there is hardly any item on her frame that I don't worship (none, actually) and (the Mrs. doesn't like this as much) the same goes for my bike. Let's pick the chain, for instance. Firstly, I find magic in its' functionality, how the 1 mm. thick pieces of metal work together to transform our efforts into SPEED. I know, women have veen smaller parts that transform our efforts into babies, but hey. Secondly, I see abstract beauty in its' repeating shapes, also the subject of famous artists Donald Judd and Jan Schoonhoven. A link, of course, is a bit more curvy than their million dollar geometrics, but you'll get the idea. Speaking about million dollar curvy, Mrs. M has called it a night and so will I. You'll get the idea.