By @mmmaiko

Comebacks and reboots. Zombies and vampires. So much of our culture these days is about things that won’t die already. On January 6, 2012–exactly a year after Leopard-Trek mindfucked us with acrobats, silk scarves and visions of Schleck Tour de France victory–teams formerly known as RadioShack and Leopard-Trek combined forces to repackage their respective team legacies of, ahem, a few one-day and week-long stage race victories as well as a bunch of [insert jerk-off gesture] team classification wins. The RadioShack-Nissan-Trek team presentation was a straight-to-DVD dud. If a team dazzled you with circus acts one year and promises a “surprise” next year, it means you will be surprised there is absolutely zero flashy, non-sequitor entertainment. I should have known: this rule of diminishing returns is typical in might-as-well-stay-together long-term relationships, no?

Recapping usually entails a faithful retelling of events, but I am your humble, unreliable narrator embellishing shit where needed so you feel you get your money’s worth. So, let’s say that the team presentation opens with the Luxembourg skyline set to the “Good Times” theme because have you paid attention to the lyrics to that song? It’s depressing and so totally the story of RadioSchleck merger fiasco. Temporary layoffs? Good times! Not making a hassle, not being hustled. Keeping your head above water, making a wave when you can. Good Times! iPads for everyone at team camp. Good times! Forced Leopard-RadioShack roommate pairings. Good Times! Filmed live in front of a studio audience in Luxembourg who only cheers at Luxembourgish stuff.

RadioShack-Nissan-Trek decided they needed two emcees for this event. One had crazy sharp facial bone structure and may have razor blades as ancestors. The other was chubby with an entirely distracting chinstrap facial hair. The only people who look acceptable in chinstrap facial embellishment, by the way, are chinstrap penguins. Both emcees modeled their comic timing after Andy’s Tour de France TT in which he lost shit tons of time to Cadel Evans. Let’s not even talk about their cringe-inducing pseudo-jokes. Let’s just start campaigning for emcee Jens Voigt to use random Fabian Cancellara tweets as banter for 2013.

First order of business: Johan Bruyneel. The sound guy forgot to cue the Imperial March as Bruyneel slithered onto stage clad in black. Did someone tell him black is slimming, even on Hogs? That person forgot to tell him a black burqa would slim down his ego-bloated head and it would prevent me from flicking at Bruyneel’s smug visage on my screen. With my hematocrit level at a measly 39.5, Bruyneel’s bullshit made me feel lightheaded and I zoned out. Something about Andy winning the Tour and team merger being “best of two worlds.” And maybe something about keeping the team distracted with free iPads and 50% off employee discounts at RadioShack stores (yes, the staff discount is for reals!). Or being wary of teammates who might become hacker snitches like Floyd or grand jury confessors like Hincapie. That’s what you’d hear if you wore those truth-revealing sunglasses from They Live. And no, Fränk Schleck is not an evil alien; he just always looks like a skeleton.

Are you still with me? Because we finally get to something we wanted to see: the team kit. With a dramatic drop of the curtain, we see the roster clad in their 2012 kits. Holy shit! Everyone on the team is a Luxembourg national champion…?! With all the iPads they gave away, the team had to skimp on the kit design budget. They just added a RadioShack red stripe to the old Leopard-Trek kit, which now looks exactly like the Luxembourg champion yersey. (Oh, did you miss the Fränk tweet where every other word was “yersey”?) This is, as kids these days say, “totes brills.” If everyone on the team looks like Frandy, there is no way PhilGil can pick out which two to taunt, nor can Contador figure out at whom to wink and discombobulate. Most importantly, it wasn’t Spartacus acing all three TTs in Tour de France 2012! It was Frandy! Didn’t you see the Lux champ kit? Yay, Frandy wins the Tour! Let’s dub this genius plan Operation Frandy Malkovich because it’s like peeking into a tiny door in a nondescript office in Luxembourg and seeing a world populated only by Frandys.

At this point, a Subaru SUV bursts through the screen behind the stage. Stuart O’Grady yells out from the window, “Come with me if you want to live!” Fabian Cancellara looks ruefully at the brothers Schleck and climbs into the passenger seat with his parting words, “Today is today. Tomor is one other day. Thanks for EVRICING!” They ride off into the sunset, laughing at in-jokes about plankets. (Duh! Of course, Stuey laid out a planket for Fabs because car rides can get cold!) Then, a Mercedes from Mercedes Benz of Luxembourg plows through the audience. The jilted marketing guy tells Jakob Fuglsang, “You and your eyebrows are too fucking pretty to model for Nissan Leaf. Ugh, that’s soooo catalog! You were born to shill for luxury brands like Mercedes Benz!” And that’s how Fuglsang becomes Benelux’s Next Top Auto Show Model. Sorry, I made this part up. But the presentation needed some action and romance, right?

The real presentation plodded along guided by cyclist taxonomy: sprinters, climbers, TT specialists, classics riders, “indispensables” and the captains. My heart wished for Fabian Cancellara to shoehorn himself into every category because he fits into every one save climbers, which the chubby emcee pronounced as “CLYM-bers” with a non-silent B. I love RadioSchleck’s new polite term for domestiques–the indispensables–that doesn’t sound like they should be in French maid outfits. Now, they sound like the morning after pill at a pharmacy that believes life begins at conception. Because RadioShack, Nissan and Trek are American companies, almost all the rider interviews were conducted not in English and American riders weren’t highlighted until Chris Horner. Instead, Luxembourger Laurent Didier got huge cheers because where else would he get applauded? Luxembourg, whatta country! Keep your eye on young Didier, though. He went to see Coldplay with the Schlecks, fueling speculation that Jakob Fuglsang is on the outs as Andy’s (non-Schleck) BFF. ZOMG, it totes makes sense Andy has a “no fatties” besties policy, yeah?

Before the captains were introduced, the emcees did a “Okay! We’re done! The End! Go home!” bit which made the crowd recede faster than Tom Boonen’s hairline. Fact for the 2013 world almanac: Luxembourg has run out of funny and micro polka dot silk scarves, help! The captains category generously included Andreas Klöden and Chris Horner, reminding us it’s RadioShack-Nissan-Trek and not RadioSchleck-Schleckond at Tour de France p/b Frandy’s Friends. When asked about how Tour of California is much like Tour de France, Chris Horner’s mouth opened and made an “A” sound. My brain anticipated him going, “AAAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Really? No. Really?” But! He said, with confidence and verbal capslock, “ABSOLUTELY!” So maybe, like, give him another MRI because that concussion he suffered at Tour de France is clearly affecting his understanding of cycling. I’ll add that Fränk Schleck did an interview in English, but I’m a bit skeeved out to recap it. He talked so much about how he and Andy hug a lot. No, seriously, I fanfic’d a whole paragraph of stuff that didn’t happen, but I’m no slash writer. But if you do write slash fanfic, Fränk and Andy fight a lot but they like to hug even more. Have at it!!

That’s basically the meat of this Schleckfest. (It’s now not such a contradiction to refer to Schleck meat because Andy is looking comparatively husky to Fränk’s skeletal.) Whoever programed this presentation thought it wise to show sponsor videos after riders, kits and bikes were revealed with fanfare. The DVD of the sponsor videos was sentient enough to understand this was a bad idea. It also somehow knew that the UCI made RadioShack-Nissan-Trek drop Trek from the official team name. It sabotaged the Trek portion of the sponsor video, thereby abruptly and awkwardly ending the presentation.

But wait! Just one more thing. The “surprise” that was promised? Karl Bartos, who quit Kraftwerk in 1990, performed “Tour de France.” They couldn’t afford real Kraftwerk so they called up the guy who hasn’t been in the band for 20 years! That, my dears, is as off-brand as RadioShack’s store brand. And no one cared! The audience got up and left. Even the live stream went to test pattern then faded to black before Bartos was done. Honestly, at that moment, it was heartening to see that someone in the RadioSchleck universe knew when to pull the plug and quit.

 Photos courtesy the Radio Shack Nisan Trek Face Book page.