Don't Be Hatin'.

Still, this is pretty damned funny:

Don't retire, Lance; keep aggravating the French until their snails turn sour

John Kelso, The Statesman, 7/22/05

Sure, it's getting a little monotonous hearing about Lance Armstrong day after day, kicking the rest of the world's bicycle tires in the Tour de France.

I mean, how many times do we have to see the man on TV, standing on that podium with those two chicks?

Still, Lance is making a big mistake by retiring.

It's fun to annoy the French by beating them at their own game. Besides, any country that invented the poodle deserves an annual humiliation.

The plan is for Lance to hang it up after he takes his seventh straight Tour on Sunday when he rides into Paris. The only way he can lose is if he runs into a cow. He wins so often in this race that I'll bet you can't even name the top French rider.

Perhaps only Christophe Moreau's closest relatives would know that on Thursday morning, he was the Tour's leading Frenchman, in 10th place, 12 minutes and 7 seconds behind Lance. Twelve minutes behind — a kid on a tricycle could do better than that. Hey, buddy, what's the holdup?

You know those T-shirts that say, "My favorite team is the Red Sox and whoever's beating the Yankees?" The French should wear T-shirts that say, "My favorite rider is Christophe Moreau and whoever's beating Lance Armstrong."

The trouble for the French is that nobody is beating Lance Armstrong. They should hire a hit man to pound tacks in his tires. The Tour de France is their Super Bowl, and their best guy is so far behind that he has to use binoculars to find Lance Armstrong's butt.

The French have just about given up on this bicycle deal. Not that they're new at surrendering.

The reason the leader in the Tour de France gets a yellow jersey? It's the French national color. Throwing your hands in the air is the official French aerobics exercise.

So when Armstrong quits, this will be the best thing to happen to France since the Germans left Paris.

Come to think of it, Lance has ridden into Paris more often than the Germans, though they did more damage to the pavement. So when Lance packs it in, it will be a cause for a French national holiday.

Let's not hand them that luxury quite so soon. Lance should just keep stomping the truffles out of them.

Here they are, getting

whupped regularly like a dumb guy on Jeopardy by a Texan. How annoying must that be for the French to be scalded annually by someone from the Lone Star State?

So stay on the bike, Lance. Anybody who eats snails deserves a breath mint — and all the abuse you can give them.

I envision Lance Armstrong at 84 riding a wheelchair equipped with pedals up the Alps with the French riders in hot pursuit, getting their usual extended look at Lance Armstrong's keister.

I envision the French police busting into 84-year-old Lance Armstrong's nursing home looking for performance-enhancing drugs and finding a six-pack of Ensure.

I just love it that the Tour winner every year is somebody who knows a chicken-fried steak doesn't have any chicken in it. So let's keep it that way.

Amen! Preach it brother!