La Vie Velominatus is set to become the subject of intense scholarly analysis next week, as Frank Strack will receive an honorary PhV from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (chapeau to @ten B for the PhV). It’s been a heady week for the cycling types around these parts; Strack will close out festivities that included the Bike Snob and Mario Cipollini. Too fat and slow to overlap with and give Super Mario the reach around, Strack will settle for regaling an audience on the Rules, Lexicon, and the finer details of la Vie Velominatus as the second speaker in the McMaster Rolling Seminar: La Vie Vélo.
On Thursday, October 4, he will sit down with Herr Professor Doktor Steampunk for a conversational interview in front of an enthralled public audience in the lofty and musty confines of McMaster University’s University Club (bow ties & elbow patches are a part of the dress code and polysyllabic pedantry is the language of choice””word is Strack will be sporting an orange ascot). This is a big moment for the Velominati community; as you all know, recognition from within the ivory tower (in all its cloistered wisdom) is the quintessential symbol of success in some cultures. Of course, now that the Velominati are under the intellectual microscope, they will be scrutinized, deconstructed, and proven to be nothing more than some post-modern, fictitious expression of postcolonial angst that doesn’t really exist. Tant pis.
In addition, Strack will also spend an evening at Café Domestique to imbibe fine beers and share his wisdom with the locals in what should be a rip-roaring good time. Come one; come all. This is, in effect, an intellectual Cogal of the mind. Sort of. Not really. But it should be great.
The details:
Seminar Session (open to the public)
When: Thursday, October 4 @ 2:30pm
Where: University Club’s West Room, McMaster University
Soirée @ Café Domestique (Millers Lane, Dundas)
When: Thursday, October 4 @ 8pm
Both events are free and open to the public, and everyone is encouraged to attend. The series is sponsored by the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award. Further inquiries can be sent to egan(at)mcmaster(dot)ca.
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View Comments
@Rob
Ha! +1 Rob! Just saw your post after posting mine!
Chapeau! Awesome poster.
I want more info on Cipo preceding young Strack. What was he talking about? How much pussy a professional cyclists can get if he puts his mind to it? Bike Snob is a very lowly third place in this line up.
FYI
Frank doesn't need a microphone
He cannot censor his speech, especially when discussing cycling...you have been warned
@Rob
Oh shit: what rabbit hole??
On second thought, instead of a PhV it would probably be more accurate to employ the term Velominatiae Doctor. In keeping with his Dutch heritage, giving Frank a VD seems stangely appropriate...
strangely even
@Steampunk
You're twisting the knife there, pal.
@Steampunk
Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall....
@Rob
Um, to what degree has this already happened?
Having spent the first half of a working life in humanist academia, I am dying to know how this goes. Nearly empty conference room, with one tenured faculty member and Frank conversing in front of half a dozen confused and defensive grad students? Well-attended informal gathering with faculty and their entourages of wide-eyed acolytes in tow, metric shit-tons of Freudo-Marxist and Derridean terminology launched like volleys of spitballs in a middle-school classroom?
Whatever happens, I suspect that these men will leave it all in that room. I wish I could be there.
@Steampunk
Excuse my ignorance, but with a name like McMaster and the big H on that building (nice Cold War Era Eastern bloc architecture by the way), you sure this isn't Hamburger University?
@Marcus
If you think that architecture is Eastern Bloc, check out the skyline: