Redundancy: Interviewing the Interviewer and Babysitting the Babysitter

Given the relentless revelations and confessions it's difficult to be shocked by any doping-related news these days, but you have to admit that this is a real stunner:

He actually doped in the interview?  This guy's just incorrigible!  Then again, pretty much everyone dopes for their Oprah interviews, so arguably it was a level playing field:

("You're not worth the chair you're jumping on.")

Most incredibly, Armstrong's Oprah interview is already getting more media attention than all three presidential debates combined and it hasn't even aired yet--though this morning Oprah did give an interview about the interview, and everyone else even tangentially involved in cycling has been interviewing each other about it too, as have people with nothing whatsoever to do with cycling, which is to say nothing of the millions of informal interviews conducted with anyone who rides a bike (how many questions from co-workers and relatives have you had to field recently?), and it really makes you wonder if an entire society can actually interview itself to death.  Sure, we may have squeaked through the atomic age with our culture more or less intact, but the information age could very well be our undoing, thanks to the perfect storm of Armstrong, Winfrey, and social networking.

Even Fabian Cancellara is concerned, though I'm not sure exactly what he's concerned about because I don't speak Spartacus:

I do not wonna know how much money some secret source has get from the media regarding the pre recorded #Armstrong #Oprah show
— Fabian cancellara (@f_cancellara) January 15, 2013

Well, I do not wonna know how much money Cancellara paid Mario Cipollini to design his website:

(The nudity is tasteful, but you'll have to pay for it.)

Also, the more time people spend obsessing over this Oprah interview the better it is for Cancellara, because it distracts them from his Gruber Assist:



I used to think the "doped bike" thing was funny, but now I totally think he did it.

In any case, at this point there are two important conclusions to draw from all of this.  The first is that cycling is officially the lamest pro sport out there, since even football and baseball manage to muddle through without Oprah having to come in and moderate.  The second is that they should probably remove cycling from the Olympics to make way for a sport with more integrity, like dog racing or cockfighting.  Here's the reigning Olympic road race champion, in case you've forgotten:

But don't worry, because according to all the riders and managers cycling's entering into a new era of transparency starting...now.  No, wait.  Now.

Okay, now.  Hey, I wasn't ready!  Can we do it on three?  One, two, three...all right, totally clean now.

At this rate Oprah will be UCI president by 2020.

Speaking of stuff that's really dirty, we all have different thresholds at which we clean our bikes.  If you're a roadie, you clean it if you've touched it since the last time you've cleaned it.  Or, if you're a lazy slob like me, you don't even consider cleaning it until it looks like this:

At which point you just throw it in the street and attack it with rough brushes "Silkwood"-style:

(Thelma is cooked.)

Then you put the wheels back on and take it for a spin around the neighborhood to dry it out, during which you discover there's one of those coin operated self-service car wash machines right down the street and that you could have blasted all that crud off in like four seconds.

Finally, you grab a fistful of quarters, get naked, and blast yourself clean with the power washer.

Don't act like you've never done it.

Yes, an important part of being a cyclist is feeling special--special because you rode your bike, special because you washed your bike, and special because you blasted your scranus clean in broad daylight on a heavily trafficked roadway.  But you know who feels even more special?  Parents.  Parents feel special because they made their kid, they feel special because they washed their kid, and they feel special because they blasted their kid's scranus clean in broad daylight on a heavily trafficked roadway. And you know who feels even more special than regular parents?  "Artisanal" parents.  Indeed, you may recall that "artisanal fathers" are the new trend in human reproduction.  Well, Artisanal Aaron informs me that these artisanal fathers finally have their own magazine, and it's called "Kindling:"

Which, appropriately enough, is exactly what you should use it for when you roast locally-sourced carob heath S'mores on your next artisanal father-artisanal son camping trip--unless of course you're the sort of person who needs a quarterly journal design exercise to tell you that your life is inseparable from your role as a parent:

Which might be useful information to you if you're also the sort of person who needs to be reminded that chewing is inseparable from swallowing--which the typical "Kindling" reader probably does, since his food was chewed for him and then spat into his mouth from childhood all the way through those six years at Bard.

Oh, there's also wistful pop culture nostalgia that only artisanal fathers are old enough to get:

And of course plenty of people trackstanding while playing the ukulele:

Sure, there won't be any information about basic stuff like how to change a diaper, but I wouldn't be surprised if you find an article about how to knit your own diapers that's written by Stephen Malkmus.

At only $38 dollars for four issues, how could you possibly say yes?  Plus, if you act now, you'll receive this smart male breastfeeding shirt:

("Uh, where's mom?")

Steven Keaton totally would have worn a male breastfeeding shirt had the technology been available at the time.