Since When Did Lance Armstrong Become Such A Player?

One of the weird things about Lance Armstrong, America’s Superhero™, is that while most just see him as this infalliable, brave and inspirational survivor of cancer and indomitable competitor, he’s also in incredibly competitive to the point of assholishness. I mean asshole in the best way. If you read his memoir, It’s Not About The Bike, you get a portrait of someone who not only has an incredibly strong will, but is insanely competitive. This isn’t surprising, nice guys don’t win the Tour seven consecutive times. And I don’t begrudge Lance being brusk or super competitive, it’s not his fault that he isn’t the image of moral perfection that America has demanded of him.

But we should still look at his personal life with a rather wary, and perhaps judgmental, eye. In his memoir, his wife Kristin, appears to be a saint. Not only does she marry Lance after his cancer has metasized, she also has three kids using his banked sperm. And then they divorced in 2003. Of course, he started dating Sheryl Crow in extreme close proximity to his breaking up with Kristin. They were engaged and then broke it off in 2005. And who can forget, in late 2007, Lance dating the 21 year old Ashley Olsen (he was 37). And now, according to People, there’s something with him and Kate Hudson. Oh yeah, and in early 2007, he had a fairly serious relationship end with designer Tory Burch. That’s not an unimpressive track record, even for an incredibly famous athlete. I guess the question becomes, when will the rest of America start treating Armstrong like just another celebrity, as all the gossip outlets already do?

What Is Happening To Our 90s Superstars?

First it was Mariah Carey tying the knot (no pre-nup!) with Nick Cannon, who’s hilarious. Why was Carey, with her bazillion octave range and 250 million dollar net worth marrying the star of Wild and Out? With no pre-nup? Because back when I was a wee lad, Mariah was the shit. In fact, Columbia records said she was the most successful artist of the 90s. Sure, Cannon is better than ex Tommy Mottola, but still, Nick Cannon?

And is the second most sucessful artist of the 90s, Alanis, god herself, doing much better in the romance department? Well, she is now, since she dumped Ryan Reynolds lame ass. So what was Alanis, who sold more than ten million copies of Jagged Little Pill, doing dating the Van Wilder? Well, according to Gawker, she told an audience that she doesn’t even remember his name anymore! Good for her.

I must, however, respect Ryan Reynolds gangster: he is engaged to Scarlett Johansson. Who knew that playing alongside Jessica Biel and a cultist tax evader in Blade III could return such great dividends? Good for him.

For the authoritative Mariah Cary-Nick Cannon rundown, check out Erik’s of Too Old For Maxim, Too Young For Esquire.

Obligatory Emily Gould Post

I’m a blogger, so I have to say something about Emily Gould’s ponderous New York Times Magazine essay. Although plenty have been outright critical of this LiveJournal esque, purely personal piece, I though it at least had potential.

After all, there has been a culture shift among people of Gould’s generation (of which I am a younger member) when it comes to comfort with sharing personal information with strangers. But instead of an essay that starts with Gould’s travails at Gawker and then gives us some sort of conclusion or speculation about the larger effect or root causes of oversharing, we get page-after-page describing her panic attacks, relationship with Josh Stein and mean commenters. We don’t really get any insight into the sociology (or pop sociology or anthropology) of being an oversharer. Instead, we get Gould’s redemption story (replace drink too much with overshare and you get James Frey without the lying!), with very little insight into why people share so much and why readers are so fascinated with lives of young bloggers.

On a slightly different note, isn’t it super obvious what the Times is doing? Just by having Emily Gould – blogosphere star! – write something, they’ve guaranteed themselves a ton of traffic and buzz. This isn’t the first time the Times has done this. Remember that weird, anecdotal “blogging kills” article? Sure, there wasn’t any news or even a real trend to report, but they sure got a ton of incoming links!