35th Anniversary "Heaven is a Playground" Photo Exhibit in NYC...

I am happy to announce there will be a photo exhibit celebrating the 35th Anniversary edition (published by Rhino Books) of sportswriter Rick Telander's book "Heaven is a Playground".

When: December 8th, 2009-January 31st 2010.
Thursdays through Saturdays 12 noon 'til 4 P.M.

Where: Converse Energy Space.
132 Orchard St. between Delancey St. And Rivington St.
Lower Manhattan, NYC.

Close from Christmas Eve until New Year's Day.


If you are a fan of this book, here is an opportunity to see the places and faces that Telander meticulously described when he spent the summer in Foster Park in Brooklyn chronicling the streetball scene. The characters and the playground itself will be on display, and I am personally looking forward to attending.

I wrote about this book in a previous blog entry, so if you'd like more information on it feel free to go back in the archives and check it out.

*Here are some photos from the opening night, which was RSVP only-

Author Rick Telander with James "Fly" Williams-


Telander with Albert King-


Telander with some of the original protagonists of the book-

Tiger Woods...

Ah, Tiger-so he's human after all. It's not enough that he is the best golfer the world will ever see, that is until genetic engineering allows scientists to manufacture elite athletes in a lab.

It's not enough that he married one of the finest white women in the world, and went to Scandinavia to get her. Turns out his Nordic Homecoming Queen can swing a golf club as well, but she bogeyed on par nine the morning of November 27th, sending his SUV reeling into a fire hydrant. That's some ghetto shit right there, going after your man with a golf club and smashing the rear window as he attempts in vain to escape.

Hell hath no fury like a hoochie scorned-

A woman goes straight to "US" magazine with alleged proof of an affair with Woods, along with salacious text messages supposedly received from him. Here is Jaimee Grubbs in her own words-

"He always said to me, 'I don't have time for other women,'" the 24-year-old L.A. cocktail waitress, who appeared on VH1's Tool Academy, told Us of her romance with Woods. "But I knew, in the back of my mind, there could never be just us. There would always be the wife, or somebody else."

(Which begs the question-if she knew this, why did she mess with him knowing the relationship would go nowhere? Why was she expecting more than an occasional booty call and some gifts?)


Poor, delusional little whore. My heart goes out to this loser, who worked as a cocktail waitress (emphasis on the word "COCK") when she met Tiger and was also employed dishing out legalized medical marijuana in California. Now, if you were to put those jobs on a resumé, then you would realize why this clown would jump at the chance to be at the side of a rich, powerful man. She dared to entertain thoughts that Woods would parlay an affair with her into something permanent.

And here to lend her infinite wisdom on the subject is Ashley Dupre*, the robo-twat from the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal (and I quote)-

*(Disclaimer-I usually don't go to a ho for my philosophical musings on infidelity, but I felt her insight is essential in this case.)

"Here you have all these girls accepting gifts, money, trips from Tiger in exchange for sex-all the while knowing he is married.

And now they all can't wait to tell their stories in exchange for even more money from the tabloids?

"And I was the hooker? At least I kept my mouth shut."

It's not the first time Dupre-the high-priced call girl whose $4,300 tryst with "Client No. 9" led to the political downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer-has gone on such a rant.

In September, she also railed against all the women who passed judgment on her, despite their own mercenary relationships with monied men.

"I'm often referred to as the 'woman who brought down the governor'-excuse me, people, I didn't call the tabloids," Dupre said then.

"I didn't blow the whistle, and I didn't save 'the dress,' " she wrote, a reference to Monica Lewinsky. "I did nothing to shine a light on my indiscretions or to 'out' anyone else."

So Dupre asks, "Who is the "REAL HO?
Someone who fucks you,takes your money, and shuts the fuck up..... or someone who FUCKS you and then makes money TALKING about it?"

As for who the real ho is in the above scenario, they both are.

Dupre needs to come to the realization that there are no distinctions or gradations of severity in the ho game. If you take cash to fuck someone, you're a ho. Anything else that happens within the confines of such employment doesn't make it any more or less what it is. I really can't stand how women like Dupre sit in front of Dianne Sawyer getting interviewed like she's some head of state when all she's famous for is sucking cock and taking it up the ass for money.

And for those who think she was an angel before the Spitzer scandal, guess again. Here she is posing like the hoochie she is as a 17-year-old party girl in Florida during Spring Break 2002. These pictures come courtesy of the illustrious, hard-working staff at "Girls Gone Wild"-(click on the photo to engorge-I mean, enlarge).


Tiger Woods hasn't finished handing in his scorecard, but so far the tally is ten mistresses in total. Woods allegedly did not use condoms with two of them. And last weekend Elin Nordegren Woods was busy renegotiating her pre-nup from 20 million for ten years to 75 million for eight. Lebron James is looking at this and saying to himself, "I gotta hire this girl's agent".

What is the moral of this story? This tale HAS no morals. Everyone involved is full of shit. From Woods, whose monumental sense of entitlement lead him to think he was immune from such public scandals to the pathetic women he was out gallivanting around with. But especially his wife, who as soon as news of his infidelities broke began renegotiating her pre-nup agreement like she was a first round draft pick for the Oakland Raiders. Now she's going to get paid even more than if the marriage had gone "busto" on it's own accord.

What this teaches us is this-money and celebrity does not shelter anyone from family dysfunction. And you don't need to be tripping on acid to see that the picture below is nothing but a contrivance meant to make us believe something that was never true, not for Tiger nor for his wife. I feel sorry for the poor kids and the adorable dogs. They have been subjected to unmitigated fits of goonery courtesy of their parents that will follow them wherever they go.

Cyfac Custom Frames...

This is dedicated to road cyclists who have no idea what they're doing when it comes to purchasing a road frame.

First of all, if you're racing, and I'm talking about the short road races and glorified criteriums that make up the majority of courses in the US, the last thing you want to do (unless you are sponsored and/or can get a carbon frame cheap) is get caught up in a crash on your $5,000 Pinarello frame. A carbon frame crashed in a race pileup will shatter like an empty 40 ounce bottle of beer hurled out the window of a crack house.

If you are a racer who has to pay for his own sled and you have no hookup whatsoever with a shop, your best bet is to race an all-aluminum frame. It is relatively inexpensive and can stand up to it's fair share of crashes. It's also very stiff. Basically it's everything you need in a race frame.

Those are the pros. But what about ride quality? Isn't it too harsh? Your average race doesn't last too long, and usually you are going too fast to worry about any of the alleged cons. And don't try to be cute and go for an aluminum frame with carbon rear stays. Again, if you crash, that area of the frame will get damaged eventually. Plus, you will lose rear end stiffness due to the glued stays not being as stiff as a welded aluminum rear.

My recommendation is Cyfac. Their pedigree speaks for itself. This small company located in La Fuye, France made frames for some of the biggest names in pro cycling before carbon fiber hijacked the peloton. They do all custom work in their shop and do not subcontract out to the Far East like almost every other frame manufacturer does.


The most impressive aspect of this company is the development of their own method for measuring riders called the Cyfac Postural System. They take into account everything, and nothing is left to chance. You give them the components you plan on using, including saddle and cleats and they do the rest. They also take into account level of flexibility, and require a rider to fill out a form of the measurements from the rider's current bicycle. Below are photos of the apparatus they use to determine body measurements-




The Palmer Set-Up Tool-

Cyfac also make some beautiful carbon frames, but for the sake of this particular article we are speaking of best bang for the buck frame for a rider who races and doesn't want to spend a ton of cash. Here is a short list of other options you can go with-

1) Carbon water bottle cages/seatposts/fork painted to match the frame.

2) Internal cable routing.

3) 30mm bottom bracket.

4) Seatpost in whichever diameter you need.

5) Asymmetrical diameter headtube, in case you plan to use a fork that calls for this.

6) Time trial frames in aluminum and carbon.

These cats leave nothing to chance. My personal opinion is to take a trip to visit them at their factory and put in an order. They'll do everything for you right on the premises. They will even send you to a radiologist to have your femur x-rayed as part of the fitting process. This sounds like overkill but it is the only way to get a true exact measurement of this very critical part of your leg. Someone from a cycling forum had this done when he was in France getting custom fitted and it cost him about $45-$50 US dollars.

Here is a photo of the fitting booth in a Japanese bike shop-


This cat right here had his best season as a pro riding re-badged custom Cyfac frames. You may have heard of him unless you've spent the last 10 years in an opium den smoking it up. Yes, the one and only Frank Vandenbrouke-


Cyfac do not use stickers on their frames. All the designs, including the lettering, are painted on using stencils and then the frame is baked for added durability. You think you get that kind of attention to detail with a company like Pinarello? The answer is a resounding NO.

Another thing they do that gets overlooked-they sand the welds before painting, so the transition from weld joint to tube is absolutely flawless. This is an aesthetic feature that is not practiced by any other aluminum frame builder that I know of. So if you want a totally bad-ass frame that fits you like a glove with workmanship second to none, go with Cyfac. You will not be disappointed.

Couldn't bow out gracefully, could you?

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This my friends is Roy Jones Jr. A fighter who made tons of money and could have left the game with his reputation and dignity intact. But his career as a hip-hop artist didn't quite pan out, and it's not like he would have gone to college to get a degree. Having nothing else to fill the empty void that looms when a once-dignified athletic career is over, many athletes continue on until their skills have eroded to the point where a once-proud and talented fighter winds up like the jackass pictured above.

Here he is, sprawled out on the canvas like a bum getting hurled out of a bar after having one too many. And to think he went all the way to Australia to take this pounding (which was so disgraceful he didn't even make it out of the first round) from Danny Green, a 36-year old pug with absolutely no technique. And what was on the line? The IBO cruiserweight title.

Roy Jones Jr. was a good boxer, but he had the luck of timing on his side. He came up when there really weren't any good fighters for him to take on. Antonio Tarver, the only name fighter he faced in his career that was close to him in skill and talent, beat his ass two times in a row. Felix Trinidad was a dead man walking by the time Roy got to him, so he doesn't really count. The list of guys Jones Jr. defeated in his career reads like a murderer's row of hobos. And due to this pathetic pedigree he was voted the best boxer of the 1990's. Go figure.

I would rather remember him the way he was, an arrogant, self-important asshole who loved to talk about himself in the third person and who always enchanted us with his eloquent diction, which eerily resembled an epileptic mute attempting to recite the alphabet while falling down a flight of stairs.