Went to go see the national touring production of South Pacific last night at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. In case you're not familiar with the plot, consider this a spoiler warning.

I really hadn't paid much attention to this musical before (I think I half-watched the movie once). I mean, I knew it had won the Pulitzer prize (mostly because of the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"), and I knew it was considered a key production in the transition of the American musical from clever entertainments to musical plays.

What I really noticed seeing it live was the score. I knew Rodgers and Robert Russell Bennett (as arranger) were responsible for this music (along with the music for the TV documentary "Victory at Sea"), but the scoring really adds to the story-telling. This also happened in Oklahoma, but in South Pacific, they do a really nice job of establishing the character's emotional state with a song, then using that thematic music later on to describe what the character is feeling. Quite operatic, and less saccharine than your usual musical fare.

And, at least in this production (based on the Tony-winning revival at Lincoln Center), I really sensed how the war disrupted the insularity that was the prewar American experience. My mother talks about this a lot (it certainly helped both her and my father escape their small towns), but South Pacific dramatizes this. Nellie escapes Little Rock, finds love with an exotic man in an exotic land, an island, that is separate from the world back home. Joe Cable is lured to Bali Hai to explore his sexuality with a young girl, and can't imagine returning to his life as the man in the gray flannel suit on Philadelphia's Main Line. Unlike the typical musical, the ingenue doesn't end up with the young male lead. In fact, the young male lead doesn't even survive the play. And, much like Huckleberry Finn, Nellie has to reject her racism in the face of her upbringing to find happiness. And Joe would have, too, had he survived. This all seems possible because you're on an island in the South Pacific, a world away from the stifling conformity of home. The thrill of war, of being young and rejecting your past for a happier future. Love is exulted even by the cynical Luther Billis, who falls for Nellie even as he's hustling the other sailors.

And, finally, the prescience. The book upon which the play was based, "Tales of the South Pacific" was published in 1946, the show opened on Broadway in 1949, and closed in 1953. In 1954, Brown vs Board of Education tore Little Rock apart with its order of desegregation, ushering in the era of civil rights turmoil. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit appears in 1955, with a war hero haunted by his past, unable to conform to the materialistic American life. Debeque, the Frenchman that Nellie falls for, was almost certainly a Communist (the libretto alludes to his anti-fascist credentials) in the France of the 20s, and was of the age to have fought and survived WW I (I'll have to check the stories to be sure). The reaction to the horrors and pleasures of war led to the incredibly creative outburst of American letters and art in the 50s, along with its severe questioning of the status quo ante from before the war.

Somehow, even though the whole is as "corny as Kansas in August", as an evocation of America on the cusp of the massive cultural changes that were to come over the following 20 years, it's pretty amazing.

Documentary about old designers reveling in clarity of Helvetica compared to what came before, Baby Boomer designers denigrating it as the typeface of the man, Gen Xers deconstructing it in the 80s and 90s (remember those Wired magazine articles that you couldn't physically read?) and youngest designers who've never seen a world without it being the default font on every computer. Interesting note: Helvetica came out in 1957, the same year as FORTRAN, so in some sense, the history of Helvetica is the history of computing entering our lives as well. Funniest bit: when Greg? Carson laid out an article in his magazine on Bryan Ferry in Dingbats because the story was so banal, he didn't feel the need to make it readable. Now that's design genius, although I'm sure the writer didn't think it was such a good idea.

I always used to think of it as "airport font" since most airports in the world (exceptions include Albuquerque; what's up with that?) use it for their signage. The most revealing part of the film is the scene breaks, which consist of footage shot on the street of examples of Helvetica in the urban streetscape. Even if you want to, you can't escape it, it seems.

Great actors, lousy premise, super cinematography, poor script. High Point: shootout at the Guggenheim. Low point: any exposition about international banking. Hitchcock would have said: "too much detail about the McGuffin, not enough about the human relationships". Naomi Watts' character makes no sense, even less than usual in a thriller. She spends the entire movie acting outside her jurisdiction and forgetting she has a family at home. Is she in love with Clive Owen, or just his work? Clive Owen fares better as a renegade Interpol investigator, but Armin Mueller-Stahl fares best because he gets the best material to work with, as a former true believer in Communism in East Germany betrayed by his post-unification switch to working for that symbol of capitalism, the international bank. Any attempt to include family relationships in story feels phoned in, and in fact, a little creepy. The bad guys all fare better than the good guys in this one, at least from a character development standpoint. Brian F. O'Byrne does a terrific job as the hit man, and I like the quotation of "The French Connection" when they follow him through midtown Manhattan.

I like the new school of thrillers set off by the example of the "Bourne Supremacy" in general, and this one falls into that category. I just wish they had done more with the script. Really, if you want to make a movie where the bad guys are dealing X, you should just have them deal X, not add portentous and pointless exposition about why it's a bank dealing X. I'll give Eric Singer some slack, since it's his first script.

Bonus was the trailer for "Duplicity" starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts in a caper romance brought to you by the same people behind "Michael Clayton". Looks like good fun.

So, even though Jamie Oliver isn't as cute now as in his "Naked Chef" days, I still like him the best of all the celebrity chefs, mostly because he's spent a lot of effort trying to get the British to eat better and also giving lower class British youth opportunities to work in food. Yeah, Jamie!

I was reading the multimedia circus that the New York Times is slowly becoming and ran across this video, with Jamie and Mark Bittman.

Now, I can live without the oh-so-cute New Yawker conceit of watching Bittman try to be funny, but I do get good cooking ideas from his videos. Today, Jamie was demoing an easy way to cook chicken breasts, by pounding them thin with a little herb (thyme and rosemary), lemon zest, grated Parmesan, a slice of Prosciutto, salt, and pepper, then doing a quick sauté. I've been buying turkey breast cutlets lately, since they're so much cheaper than chicken, so I modified the recipe to use turkey breasts (after pulling the tendon out, what a pain, and slicing the breast in half lengthwise). I used inferior Prosciutto, but it came out pretty good anyway.

I especially liked the flavor of using Meyer lemon zest (from Meyer lemons I scored for two bits apiece at Alemany Farmers' Market on Saturday) and the rosemary. I didn't have any fresh thyme, so I made do, and didn't actually use all that much Parmesan. Finished with a little white wine and about 2 tsp of cream to finish a pan sauce. Tasty! And I didn't have to pay $15 or whatever I would have had to pay to eat it in a restaurant. Plus, salad with celery leaves from the ginormous stalk of celery I got at the market as well. Much as my friend Ray has been telling me all along, I could get produce from some of the same providers as at the Noe Valley Market or the Ferry Building, but much cheaper. Plus, a better cultural experience. If you get there early enough, the parking's not bad.

More later, but this is a movie that defies simple description. Suffice it to say, if Sean Penn does not win best actor Oscar, there's a singularity. I can't imagine anyone else doing a better job this year. see it, get energized, and realize that 40 is young.

From Martha Sherrill's "The Ruins of California":
The superiority of Northern California----it was always there, like the cold summer. It was always there, a smugness and attitude. People in L.A. rarely said they hated San Francisco. It didn't work that way.

OK, I knew airport security was a farce, but really!

Today I feel like I'm channeling Ross MacDonald, and kept on expecting to run into Lew Archer. I know most of the people reading this have no idea what I'm talking about, and the San Franciscans are going "no, it's the 22-Fillmore", but in my continuing of never-traveled California highways, I took highway 23 from Thousand Oaks to the town of Fillmore, California; it was a time warp to a California of canyon highways and desperate Anglos.

I had started the day in Pasadena, kipping on the couch of my niece and her husband in one-bedroom apartment in the Catalina apartments for grad turkey housing.

Saw the new Broad Center there: HATED IT! Loathed it, despised it, wish it and its LEED certification would fall in an ignominious heap of silver cladding and stone in the next big one, to have Kate Hutton crow about the justice of earthquakes! No, really it's awful. I like the new Astronomy/Astrophysics building, with its burnt orange randomly oriented planes across the street from Bridge. Too early to tell about the Annenberg center for IT. Quite the building boom.

A quick breeze down the 210 to the 118 to the 23 south, cutting across the foothills, and I was in Thousand Oaks for a day of business. I had always wanted to take highway 23 into the mountains north of TO, and today I did. A twisty road across desert mountain range, a huge quarry, that drops into a old-school California valley of fruit groves interrupted by oil derricks. I had dinner at a cheesy Mexican restaurant near the corner of highways 23 and 126, as the sun was setting over the Santa Clara river valley; a river without a concrete channel, flowing out to the Pacific to the west.

I then drove up the canyon on highway 126 to Castaic junction, where I joined the 5 north. Trucks, trucks and more trucks heading both directions, and brakelights and headlights as far as the eye could see.

I finally landed in Bakersfield, in a motel with a bunch of French tourists. Surreal, indeed.

My friend Tom said that's how he described what's going on in the US right now as "free fall". It does kind of feel that way.

Boy, the Glass-Steagal act seems like it's a pretty good idea right about now, that's all I have to say.

Check out Kermit dancing a la Jack Lemmon in "The Apartment" in trenchcoat and scrunched face.

Will be at hog island oyster bar in the Ferry Building for happy hour tomorrow, Monday 9/15, starting at 5:45. Come join me, and then we'll proceed down Market Street, eventually ending up in the Castro.

A list of activities that I'll be doing this weekend, in case anyone feels like joining me:
9/13 SF Twilight Criterium: Saturday evening Union & Fillmore. Watch cyclists go around in circles looking for parking for an hour at 40 mph.
9/14 SF Sunday street closure thingie: 3rd St, Sunday late morning early afternoon.
9/15 Monday: pub crawl, maybe with food. Starts at 6pm. More details later.

From Billy Wilder, of course; Barbara Stanwyck in "Ball of Fire", when someone inquires about her throat:
"A slight rosiness? It's as red as The Daily Worker, and just as sore!"

Well, I'm almost saturated, but I just had to give a shout out to the US indoor volleyball teams, men's and women's. Both have a chance to win the gold medal, the women for the first time ever, and the men for the first time after wins in 1984 and 1988. With the wins in the beach volleyball, we could sweep in an American sport which I've always loved. I remember staying up late to watch Karch Kiraly (one of the original Calvin Klein underwear models, for those keeping track at home) in 1984 as they won.

And in water polo, the women won silver, and the men are in the gold medal match. Could we have a repeat of the miracle on ice and beat the Hungarians with their proud (and bloody) Olympic tradition?

And in track and field, at least we can still win the Decathlon! And, apparently, our men can run 400m whether impeded by hurdles or not. Hmm... Bryan Clay, a mixed race American from Hawaii wins the Decathlon! Maybe this is a preview of events in November!

This features a description of the MacArthur station in the median of the "new Grove Shafter Freewy".

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4659687253137228864

Most of the first week’s stages weren’t pure sprinting stages, being more like the one-day classics usually associated with springtime racing in Europe, like Paris-Roubaix, or more aptly the Tour of Flanders. The race started in Brittany, that peninsula in the northeast corner of France that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean and divides it from the English Channel. This year, the weather was rotten, with lots of wind and rain. Plus, a lot of the early stages were suited to “roleurs”, or big riders who have the power to ride over rolling hills. Not ideal for teams trying to control the peloton for their sprinters, and conducive to breakaways.

Stage 1. Won by Alejandro Valverde, the great Spanish hope for the GC competition, by one second (generously awarded by the commisars to give a defendable jersey, methinks). He rides for Caisse D’Epargne, as does Oscar Peirero (the answer to the trivia question: who won the 2006 Tour de France?), another Spaniard. Valverde doesn’t seem to have much luck in the TdF, having only finished once, last year, in 11th place after a bad final time trial.

Stage 2. Ended in a bunch sprint won by Thor Hushovd, a Norwegian sprinter. Big, beefy, blonde: everything you might want in a Nordic boyfriend, I’m just saying.

Stage 3. Now this was supposed to be a sprinter’s stage, less hilly than either stage 1 or 2, but four riders broke away and stayed away. The stage was won by Dominique DuMoulin riding for Cofidis, with Will Frischkorn second (only just), and Romain Feillu third. Due to time gaps on the first two days, Feillu earned the yellow jersey for France. This being Frischkorn’s first TdF, he was amazed that he could stay away, but frustrated he failed in the finale to position himself for the win. If he had won, it would have been ridiculously wonderful. As it was, he won the “most aggressive rider” award, which means the French press likes him. Being an educated sort, he speaks French, so he could communicate with his breakaway companions, and he’s just an all-around good guy. Feillu recovered form cat scratch fever (no, really, he had toxoplasmosis) in the spring and managed to get back in good enough form to race the TdF. He’s just a nut (check out any YouTube videos featuring him, and if you speak French, let me know what the hell’s going on).

Stage 4. Time Trial: this was a relatively short time trial, and the world champion Fabian Cancellara was the prohibitive favorite. This being the 2008 TdF, of course he didn’t win. But remember Schumacher? The German rider who was caught using speed? He comes out of nowhere to win by 18 seconds over David Millar and Kim Kirchen, and takes the yellow jersey. The usual GC suspects did well, particularly Cadel Evans, the Australian riding for Silence-Lotto, who came in 4th, only 23 seconds behind.

Stage 5. The longest (232 km) stage, with a breakaway featuring Nicolas Vogondy, the defending French national champion. Poor man, caught with 50 meters to the line by the peloton. Had he won, the French would have gone nuts. Let’s put it this way: the same way American kids imagine hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win a baseball game, French kids imagine winning a stage of the TdF while wearing their national champions’ jersey. The stage was won by a bike length (a huge distance in a bunch sprint) by Mark Cavendish. He’s so cute, what with the curly brown hair and the accent. We love Mark Cavendish, because he’s clean, and he’s FAST. Super fast, like accelerating to 40 mph for a couple hundred meters after riding 200 km fast.

Stage 6. A mountain stage, but with no huge climbs. Since the race started in Brittany, the riders had to go through the Massif Central (the high mountainous plateau in the central/southwestern part of France) to get to the Pyrenees around Pau. This was the first of two such stages. A breakaway formed but was caught before the end of the stage by the lead climbers’ group (the sprinters usually congregate in the so-called “autobus” which rides at a slow steady tempo behind, with everyone trying to conserve energy while not being outside the time cut for the day), and the stage was won by Riccardo Riccò, an Italian rider for the Saunier Duval team. Now Riccò is an interesting case: clearly, a very talented rider, young, brash, and confident, kinda like Cavendish, part of the new guard. But is he? Lingering questions and suspicions surround him, particularly since he seems to be able to ride straight uphill like a billy goat without having to pay. Kim Kirchen takes the yellow jersey because he accidentally causes Schumacher to crash into a barrier in the final sprint to the line.

Stage 7. Another mountain stage. This was a hard day for everyone, with severe crosswinds. The peloton split into a group of about 20 with serious GC ambitions, and everyone else. A Spanish rider, Luis León Sánchez riding for Caisse d’Epargne won the stage. Kirchen stays with the front group, and holds the yellow jersey. There was also excitement at the end of the stage on this day: Magnus Backstedt didn’t make the time cut (we’ll miss him), and Manuel Beltrán tested positive for dope. Beltrán rides for an Italian team, Liquigas, which promptly fired him. Apparently he went along with the police investigation and admitted his guilt. Unlike last year, when the teams with riders who tested positive pulled out, Liquigas is still in the race. Oddly, Christophe Moreau, who was the great French hope for many years in the GC, pulled out on the big climb of the day.

Stage 8. A flat stage into Toulouse, once again with lousy weather. Team Columbia pulls back the breakaway to lead Mark Cavendish to another spectacular sprint win.

Stage 9. Pyrenees, day 1. This the first serious mountain stage, with two category 1 climbs. A lot of cat-and-mouse among the favorites, all of whom stay together. Riccò attacks spectacularly on the Col d’Aspin, flying by everyone. Since he’s quite a ways down (4 minutes or so) on the yellow jersey, he’s let go. He wins by a minute and a quarter over the favorites. Kirchen retains the jersey for another day. Cadel Evans takes a bad fall, scraping his left side quite badly. Schumacher drops behind the main group, moving Christian Vande Velde into third in the GC. Not bad for a Chicago boy, and finally being discussed as a serious GC contender for the podium in Paris.

Stage 10. Pyrenees, day 2. Now it gets serious. Two beyond category climbs, the Col de Tourmalet and the climb to the ski station at Hautacam. This gets crazy. On the Tourmalet, CSC sends ahead the indefatigable (there’s really no other word for him) Jens Voight, one of the classiest, hardest working guys in the peloton. Known for his insane solo breakaways, this year, he’s disciplined working for the Schleck brothers and Carlos Sastre, CSC’s nominal GC leader. Cancellara puts in some hurt, too. Their attacks destroy the leading group of GC contenders, leaving behind Valverde and Damiano Cunego for good. Kim Kirchen loses his yellow jersey by losing contact with Evans, but Cadel (remember, riding with aches and pains from his crash the day before) is determined to grab the yellow jersey. For the first time in his TdF career, Evans attacks! But it’s almost not enough, since Franck Schleck has bounded ahead and gets 3rd on the stage. Two of Riccò’s teammates, the Italian Piepolo and the Colombian Cobo have broken away, with Piepoli winning, in a gift to the Italian rider who crashed out of the Giro d’Italia several weeks before. At the end of the day, Evans has the yellow jersey over Franck Schleck by 1 second, and Vande Velde is finally getting some GC respect at 38 seconds behind Evans. In fact, had Vande Velde not attacked the last 800 meters of the race, Evans would not be in yellow. Also, note that Evans would have failed if time bonuses were awarded, per usual, since those are awarded down to 3rd place. Both Evans and Vande Velde are at a disadvantage, because they don’t have strong climbers on their teams to support them. Vande Velde mostly because no one (including him, I suspect) expected to even be in this position in this TdF, and Evans because the team concentrates on trying for stage wins with the aging Robbie McEwen, who isn’t having any luck this year. One of the most affecting sites of the Tour so far has been Evans tearing up on the podium as he receives his first yellow jersey. Now can he hold on? Denis Menchov (of Rabobank) and Bernhard Kohl (of Gerolsteiner) join the party in the top 5 on GC today. Menchov has the chops, but I'm not counting out Vande Velde, who's astonishing everyone with his class and seeming ease on the climbs.

Now breakaways are fun for the spectator and for the teams that manage to make it into them, but for the sprinters’ teams they’re a nightmare, because they have to be caught to give the sprinters a chance to do their thing. In recent years, what with radio communication between the team directors and the riders, who all have bike computers on their bikes telling them how fast they’re going, it’s a simple matter of knowing how fast the breakaway is going, how much time separates it from the peloton, and how many kilometers remain in the race to figure out how fast the peloton needs to go to catch up. Since the breakaways are usually only a few riders, each individual rider is working harder in the wind, whereas the peloton can spread the responsibility over many riders, the break usually gets caught. This of course assumes that one of the teams steps up and starts the chase.

This might be a good point to mention that there are actually three main competitions in the Tour de France: the yellow jersey (for best overall time, aka the general classification), the green (or points, or sprinter’s) jersey (for highest placing in the individual stages and intermediate sprints), and the polka-dot (or mountain) jersey (for highest placing at the top of designated climbs). The green jersey is determined by points awarded for the stage finishes (more points are available on flat, sprinter’s stages than on intermediate, hilly stages, which have more than mountain stages) and sprint points, and the polka dot jersey by points earned on “categorized” climbs. Cycling adhering to French logic, there are 4 levels of climbs, from 4th (easiest) to 1st (hardest), and finally the insanely hard “hors categorie”, or beyond category. An example of an HC climb is the Col (pass) de Tourmalet, which is a 17.7 km climb at 7.5 % average grade, for a elevation gain of 1,300 m, or 4,355 ft. This was originally put in the race in 1910 to make a “classification” or separation of riders, possible (remember the all-in-a-bunch equal time rule). Mountain points are doubled for the last climb of the day, the idea being that if you manage to be the first in the climb after climbing all day, you’re a better climber.

It's that time of year again: scandal! spandex! Thrills, chills, spills and drugs! No, it's not "The Housewives of Orange County" it's the Tour de France.

We've just reached the end of the first eleven stages, and it's been, well, different. This isn't your usual: prologue, sprint, transition, time trial, mountain, transition, sprint, mountain, time trial, Paris TdF we've all come to get used to over the past 20 years or so.

This year, to shake things up, the winner from last year, Contador, wasn't invited. The guy who came in third, Leipheimer, wasn't invited. The whole who's invited and who's not resembles a petulant teenage girl's pool party guestlist: no team Astana (Contador and Leipheimer's team), because last year the team had two riders booted for doping, and they're from Kazakhstan (Astana is the new capital of Kazakhstan), not France, and oh, btw, the guy who helped Lance win all those years led his previous team to victory (Johann Bruyneel) took over, and we think that the Spanish kid Contador might be doping (no proof, of course, just a pair of initials on a report that no one was supposed to see, but this being cycling, got leaked thirty seconds later).

No Tom Boonen, because he tested positive for cocaine out of competition (illegal, but not against cycling's rules, also the information leaked 30 seconds after it happened). Tom has rock-star equivalent fame in Belgium, well, because there is no one else to follow in Belgium (all right Justine Henin, but she just retired to let those fabulous Williams sisters drop in on Wimbledon and take it over. Fierce!), so he deserves a snort, I say. Strictly from a gay man wanting to ogle the cyclists perspective, Contador and Leipheimer not being in, not a big loss. But no Tommeke! Sigh. But, Stefan Schumaker, who was caught drunk driving and tested positive for amphetamines by the police, is in. More about him later.

Also Rabobank, the team of Rasmussen, who was booted for not being where he was supposed to last year (also didn't actually test positive, though, come to think of it, although there were some suspicious EPO like metabolites in one of his TdF samples), still in, even though they knew he hadn't told the testing people where he was.

But, there are some new dreamy straight edge boys: Garmin-Chipotle (no, that's not a dish you'll find at a trendy SF eatery featuring exotic rodents in an adobo sauce); they wear argyle, and their leader Jonathan Vaughters who probably did drugs in the past but won't admit it, loves argyle and sideburns shaved to a point and wine and sounding intellectual; invariably referred to as JV (before this week, you might be able to make the junior varsity joke, but they've been doing quite well). JV talked the guys from Olanthe, KS who run Garmin into being a sponsor, and Chipotle is McDonald’s subsidiary using “natural” ingredients. The whole anti-doping nature of the team makes for good synergy, I’m sure.

The ultimate anti-doping apologist is David Millar, the British time trial champion who was caught doping, did his time, and now crusades against the practice. Other time trial champions on the team are Ryder Hesjedal of Canada and Julian Dean of New Zealand. This is also the team of Will Frischkorn, Danny Pate (Americans who gave up the European circuit in disgust), Christian Vande Velde (the great American hope), all WASPY and articulate. Add an old campaigner, Magnus Backstedt (Swedish) and Julian Dean, and younguns like Martijn Maskaant (a Dutch boy who did well in Paris-Roubaix, coming in 4th) and Lucas Euser (another American). All have pledged to compete cleanly, and the team spends a lot of money making sure they do (about $500,000/year).

Also, in the teams that used to dope but don’t anymore, we have CSC/Saxo-Bank (formerly the team of Ivan Basso, who was disinvited last year before the start), Columbia (formerly High Road, formerly T-Mobile, who had one rider dq’d for doping last year, and had Jan Ullrich, who as much as admitted doping). These teams also have very expensive anti-doping regimens. I, for one, am glad that T-Mobile is no longer sponsoring bicycle teams, because I could never stand the magenta uniforms. Team Columbia (named after the US outdoor clothing company) is cool, though, what with the new sprinting sensation from the Isle of Man, Mark Cavendish, and an old American favorite, George Hincapie, the only rider to serve Lance Armstrong in all his Tour victories. Also remember Kim Kirchen, the Luxembourger.

On CSC/Saxo-Bank, there are the Schleck brothers, Franck and Andy, from Luxembourg, as well as Carlos Sastre, a Spanish rider, This team is led by Bjarne Riis, who admits to having doped during the 1996 TdF, but according to the rules of cycling, can’t have his title stripped (the statute of limitations, as it were, is 10 years). The logic is that if you start going back every time an old campaigner admits to doping, you end up having to continuously rewrite the record book.

This year’s Tour de France (TdF) is also different from other years because there have been some significant changes in format and rules:

1. No prologue: for the past 40 years, the first stage has either been a prologue or an individual or team time trial. The prologue was usually a short time trial, which allows each of the 180 riders to be introduced one at a time in the television coverage, and establishes a yellow jersey winner. This is important because the tactics of the sport mean that the team of the yellow jersey holder wants to hold on to that jersey; there’s a significant financial incentive for each day the team holds the yellow jersey. This allows the peloton to have a team that “controls” the pace.

2. No time bonuses: in recent tours, there have been small time bonuses (also called bonufications from the French term) given for winners of “sprint points” along each day’s route, and the final winner. On sprint stages and major mountain stages, this was substantial (20 seconds for the winner). Since riders who are in a connected in a bunch all receive the same time, time bonuses allow winners of bunch sprints to get enough of a time gap to make defending the yellow jersey worthwhile. Otherwise, the pure sprinters don’t get much of a chance to wear the yellow jersey, since the only way to gain a time gap in the first week is either through a time trial (remember, no prologue) or by succeeding in a breakaway, which almost by definition includes no major sprinters. That’s because the sprinters need to ride in the main pack to conserve their strength for the bunch sprint at the end of the stage. So the lack of time bonuses this year is a bit of a mystery, except as a focus on the “purity” of the race by doing everything strictly according to time.

First off, this is a flawed movie, no doubt about it. However, there are certain things:
1. Wall-e, the character, is a masterpiece of animation. No doubt about it. Especially in the first act of the movie, it's flat-out amazing. Maybe it's the puppy-dog eyes, but it just kills. I think Mick LaSalle compared him to Chaplin, and the comparison is apt. I think I had the feeling that someone walking into a movie theater in 1916 or whenever he hit must have had, of falling in love with a character who without speaking lets you know everything you need to know about how he's feeling.
2. The romance is terrific, particularly the use of a classic Louis Armstrong recording. The references to "Hello, Dolly" are kind of weird, though; I'd never really paid that much attention to the romance in that musical.
3. The heavy-handed environmental message is, well, heavy-handed. Although the judicious use of live action from an actor we've grown to love from the Chris Guest movies is satiric genius. The middle third of the movie is your more typical action/comedy thing we're using to seeing from Pixar, with plenty of pop-culture references to keep you amused.
4. The ending redeems itself, much as the characters do.

Ultimately, a story about the redeeming power of love.

"Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the distant edges of metropolitan areas."

From the NY Times article on the potential death of ludicrous commutes and mini mansions in the suburbs.