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.