selkie

Ineos has announced its TdF squad, and neither Chris Froome nor Geraint Thomas made the cut. https://www.velonews.com/events/tour-de-france/froome-thomas-out-of-ineos-tour-de-france-team-carapaz-drafted-in/ On paper, it's going to be an interesting showdown between Ineos and Jumbo-Visma, who seems to be on such good form since the season restarted.

And save for places like New Zealand, there are often loopholes to allow entry to a country under assorted 'exceptional talent' clauses. Which can be anything from admitting a scientist, engineer, or medical professional to a location where no local can do that kind of specialty work (Germany has done this for a while) to athletes for specific competitions. Track and field's Monaco Diamond League event worked with French border control to create an entry procedure for athletes from otherwise banned locations like the USA so they could compete in yesterday's meeting.

I'm watching what I think is the Eurosport feed on NBC Sports Gold. Will have to check out the alternate commentary. And yes, pro cyclists are some of the toughest athletes out there: https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/dauphine-hailstones-were-so-big-they-left-indentation-marks-on-helmets/ I do not really believe Declercq when he says that the welts mostly went away overnight.

They should have cancelled The Sopranos after Nancy Marchant died. IMO, what made the early episodes work was the whole screwed up Tony-Livia dynamic and about how Tony could be on top of the world in so many ways and then just crumble when she confronted him. And when Livia was gone, there was no one left who could really successfully offset Tony's attempts to claim more power in his life and it turned into another generic mob show.

The David E. Kelly shows tend to be hard to find on streaming for assorted reasons. It took forever for all seasons of 'The Practice' to show up and we'll probably never get 'Chicago Hope' (which I missed during its original run because I was watching ER instead) because the show owners don't want to pay music rights to stream for some Broadway songs people sung on the show.

Another bit of crazy from Khorkina: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1092449/khorkina-tokyo-2020-punishment-from-god

https://swimswam.com/cas-publishes-full-sun-yang-decision-document-criticizes-suns-lack-of-remorse/ Sounds like being a rectal egress toward the testers did indeed play a role in length of ban. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, I guess?

The Shout Factory DVD release from 2014 got the rights to more than 90% of the original music and a lot of the content that was edited for shorter syndication run time and is as close to the original as we're going to get.

OLYMPIC CHAMPION SUN YANG HANDED 8-YEAR BAN OVER VIAL-SMASHING INCIDENT https://swimswam.com/olympic-champion-sun-yang-handed-8-year-ban-over-vial-smashing-incident/ In this case, it's not about whether or not there was any evidence of doping in the sample; it's the cover up and the need for anti-doping officials to be able to perform their jobs without being threatened. If Sun's group had made an official complaint to FINA about irregularities in testing protocol instead of creating a biohazard situation, then FINA, which has long sheltered Sun from any sort of consequences for repeated bad behavior as much as they were legally able to do so, would have likely quickly ordered any results of the test be thrown out.

Can we go back to it being okay to end a race under a yellow flag? The current NASCAR system just seems to really up the danger in the name of catering to the mouth breathers who like those kinds of restrictor plate crashfests.

Who canon is that a Time Lord can regenerate into an appearance of someone they'd known before. Lalla Ward was first cast as Princess Astra in the show and then became Romana #2 when Mary Tamm (Romana #1) asked to leave the show.

On the early seasons Homicide:LOTS, you know things were getting serious when Kay Howard (Melissa Leo) pulled her long hair back into a bun when she was in the field trying to find a witness or suspect. Kay also had the highest percentage of closed murder cases of any homicide detective on the squad. And then NBC forced the producers of the show to write her out because Melissa Leo wasn't conventionally pretty enough in the eyes of the network. (H:LOTS always had marginal ratings for renewal so the shows' producers couldn't really push back on that dictate)

From what I've heard around the edges, he's probably a really bad fit for a skater who has struggled with eating disorders.

This helpful avoiding death guide showed up in my Facebook feed the other day: https://crimereads.com/your-guide-to-not-getting-murdered-in-a-quaint-english-village/

I've been following tennis long enough to know the really good reasons why to limit the schedules of 15 year olds but I really wish Coco had enough points for a seed in the tournament because she shouldn't have been playing Osaka before the quarters.

Homicide:LOTS has a great episode where Kay Howard goes back to the small Chesapeake Bay town she grew up in and finds herself drawn into a murder investigation because of her Big City expertise. The town is not a bad place to be for a lot of people even if the local seafood trade has been on a long slow slide, but it's also pretty clear why Kay left when she could and why she wouldn't go back for good during her working years. Damn, that show did nuance so well.

And we have American winners at the Dakar for the first time ever. https://gearjunkie.com/dakar-rally-2020-americans-win?fbclid=IwAR3E50UO2JWklkARisaBCYHSn0xltx4lW5j48cF_GagylILzduT5fSWT064 I try to watch every year for the scenery and Saudi Arabia really does have some amazing landscapes that were well shown by the rally.

It's also on Amazon Prime now.

Robert Jordan essentially lost control of his own cast of characters around book 7. IMO, Sanderson did a good job of pulling everything back together after Jordan's death. I'm also looking forward to the tv series in part because they'll have to consolidate the heck out of a bunch of stuff in order to keep it moving along.

And a show actually casts an autistic actor for an autistic character lead role. Finally. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/everythings-gonna-be-okay-screening I'm actually looking forward to the show- Josh Thomas has a real talent for researching and discussing very serious topics in a comedy without turning it into a Very Special Episode (see Claire's abortion episode from 'Please Like Me') and the early buzz is good.

Ashley Wagner was live twittering watching Spinning Out, I think the first episode, and her snark level was quite high.

I know a woman who got one of her kids into a Pampers commercial because he was a really cute baby. Money was put into a trust until he's of legal age (I think it has to be in most states where the commercials would be filmed) and Pampers will be pretty much paying for his entire college education. Given how tightly regulated an infant or toddler's time on a tv sound stage and how many expenses an 18-24 year old will later have, one or two commercials at union pay rates would seem to be a very efficient way to help your kid launch down the road.

They'll probably copy and paste the 'authorized neutral athlete' rules over from track and field because those have survived CAS challenge. Which works out to it being about 50/50 if a petition for ANA is approved and those who are approved generally have pretty significant stamps in their biological passport that do not involve Russian drug testing labs. The IAAF rules also do not allow for ANAs to form relay squads or compete as teams, IIRC. Which is going to have a lot more impact in ice hockey, team handball, and the like than it will in figure skating.

While 'Oz' flew under the radar of the public eye, I suspect it was one of those shows that had outsized influence within the entertainment community because it was willing to go dark places that no one else would have tried at the time. They reportedly only payed SAG minimum to all the actors on the show but in addition to being a branch of the Hey! It's That Guy! Employment Agency (I mean you have JK Simmons, Zejko Ivanek and Dean Winters as regulars...) they also got some pretty big names like Luke Perry, Rita Moreno, and Joel Grey to appear. It also predates 'The Sopranos'- Edie Falco was a regular as a prison guard before she got cast as Carmella.

it's common for an automatic rental to cost twice as much in many parts of Europe where manual is still the default. And for the rental clerk to try to upsell the heck out of a customer to try to get them to take that far more expensive option once they hear a North American English accent.