Let’s get a little weird this week. A little bit unorthodox. TOTW is getting stale. I need to shake things up and look outside the box.
Ok….I have looked outside the box and here’s what I found:
That’s right. I’m breaking down the All American Hero Traitor, Lance Armstrong! This has to be by far the most famous person I’ve ever slapped the TOOL label on. But let’s be honest – anyone with more than 10,000 instagram followers who isn’t slinging fake bodybuilding powders is bound to be my biggest celeb yet.
But in an ironic twist, it turns out this guy was slinging drugs. Just not that snake oil pyramid scheme bodybuilding stuff. This tool was doing full blown steroids and pumping himself full of horse blood and sorts of next-level shit.
In fact, Lance did so many drugs that he gave himself cancer. Wait, what??
"I don't know the answer to that."
— ESPN (@espn) May 25, 2020
—Lance Armstrong when asked if he thought he got cancer because of doping pic.twitter.com/Fo3YnIJtow
Now THAT is impressive. Cancer via HGH in 1996.
Hey Lance, just FYI if the answer is not no, then it’s absolutely yes. Just ask your pal Jason Giambi.
Think about all of the idiot college friends you had that chose to entertain themselves with drugs, as opposed to alcohol (which is totally not a drug). First off, why would you mess around with weird drugs when alcohol is the best? Secondly, how many of those drugs would you have to do to award your body with the Big-C? I knew plenty of idiots who tried anything and everything with reckless abandon….as far as I know none of them developed deadly tumors.
So I think it’s safe to say that everybody knows the above picture was taken during Lance’s cancer treatments. If this is the part where I’m supposed to feel bad for the guy, it’s not working. It’s sort of similar to what an old friend of mine said when found out the news that Ryan Dunn smashed his car into a telephone pole while intoxicated and driving at 1000 mph: “Ah, you know, some things have a way of working themselves out.”
All right even I’ll admit that’s a little too much. RIP Ryan Dunn. Let’s lighten the mood with the Hulk Hogan tweet in response to the Jackass star’s death:
Now back to the man of the hour. Let’s take a quick look at the timeline of the legend himself, Lance Armstrong. Here is a recap in my own words which is pretty much stolen off other sites (but it’s ok because my library teacher once told me as long as it’s listed in 3 places you can legally plagiarize it).
- 1974 – Starts riding bikes
- 1993 – Wins first major race
- 1996 – Stage 3 testicular cancer diagnosis
- 1999 – Tour de France Win #1
- 2000 – Tour de France Win #2
- 2001 – Tour de France Win #3
- 2002 – Tour de France Win #4
- 2003 – Tour de France Win #5
- 2004 – Tour de France Win #6
- 2005 – Tour de France Win #7
- 2005 – Retirement #1
- 2009 – Places 3rd in Tour de France
- 2010 – Places 39th in Tour de France
- 2011 – Retirement #2
- 2012 – US Anti Doping Agency says “You’ve been cheating pretty much forever and we finally have enough evidence to prove it.” Lance says “Absolutely not.”
- Slightly later in 2012 – Lance says “OK you win. I never cheated but I’m tired of arguing with you liars. I’ll stop fighting the charges.”
- End of 2012 – USADA disqualifies every race Lance has ever won, International Cycling disqualifies his races and bans him forever, Livestrong fires Lance as its Chairman.
- 2013 – Lance admits to Oprah that he’s been lying about everything for his entire adulthood.
Now that I have laid that out – I’d like to get to the meat and potatoes of this blog. After all, cheating doesn’t make you a tool. Well, on second thought, cheating makes you a little bit of a tool, but not enough for me to get excited enough to write about you.
The reason this guy qualifies as a Tool of the Week is because he was a complete asshole about it. He didn’t just cheat. He steered out of his way (literally) to try and bury everyone who accused him of cheating by berating them and trying to run them over (figuratively).
Let’s begin with this civil discussion between Lance and his arch nemesis – journalist Paul Kimmage:
While I suppose that response seemed cool at the time in 2009 if you were a Lance Armstrong fanboy, it is present-day one of the more cringey interviews I have ever seen. A couple great quotes here…
- “Folks, the cancer has been in remission for 4 years, but our cancer has now returned.” – Paul Kimmage
- If that’s not the funniest quote I’ve ever heard it’s the second funniest. The balls you would have to carry around to say that about a guy leading a cancer foundation! This Kimmage dude must have been 105% sure that Lance was a scumbag. Thank god he was correct when he dropped this bomb in 2008 so I can continue to enjoy it in 2021.
- “You are not worth the chair you are sitting on with a statement like that.” – TOOL
- I’m trying to think of an analogy for this. It’s pretty simple. A guy caught him cheating and called him out for it. In response, the cheater told him he is worth less than the chair he’s sitting on, while he ironically is living a lie while sitting in a chair. So I suppose this would be like me committing robbery, getting caught in the act, and then whipping out my cell phone to film the cop and screaming while accusing him of violating my rights and wrongfully attacking me…..(holy shit I just realized our society is full of Lance Armstrongs).
- “As a society, are we supposed to forgive and forget…and let people get back to their job? Absolutely. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you for that statement.” – TOOL
- Classic narcissist move. Paves the road for his own forgiveness by tossing out that “society should forgive” line, but then follows it up by saying “I’ll never forgive you for catching me pumping myself full of illegal shit.”
I’m not going to lie, when I first started reading that and chucking green checkmarks in there 
I expected to find like 3 good lines. But my god, they were all pretty much spot on, with the exception of the last one (which is probably also worthy of a checkmark if I did some more research).
But that’s not even Lance’s best work!
Alas – this next video is the entire reason I chose to feature Lance Armstrong. It’s this particular Nike commercial from the 90s. I still remember watching it for the first time in college and feeling my drop jaw drop. No one has ever scratched the surface on the level of ignorance and arrogance that comes across in this clip. Roll the damn tape!!
“What am I on? I’m on my bike. Busting my ass 6 hours a day….
….
….
….
What are you on?”
OH MY GOD it was an instant-classic even before he dropped that closing line. Lance is completely and utterly INSULTED that you’d even insinuate he’s “on something.”
“I’m on my bike, busting my ass 6 hours a day.”
This is basically the story your dad tells you about walking uphill to school in both directions, which conflicts with your grandpa’s recollection of dropping him off in the front parking lot every day with the interior truck temperature set at 72 degrees.
And 6 hours a day on a bike? That in itself tells me you are straight up pounding PEDs.
But most importantly – WHAT ARE YOU ON???
How dare you imply that the guy who rides his bike for over 2,000 hours a year is “on something.” But now that you ask…what the fuck are YOU on!?
In all seriousness, this a classic tool behavior. It’s the first-cousin of narcissism – a little thing us self-appointed psychiatrists like to call “deflecting.”
For the sake of maintaining the standard format of TOTW, let’s wrap up with a quick instagram visit on Lance.
As much as I’d love to pick out a few pictures of this guy being in love with himself – I am too distracted by the fact that I guess I never really knew what he looked like until I visited his instagram page. Let’s just take a few minutes to all stare in awe at what a strange looking cat this tool actually is.
The way I would describe this tool seems to differ in every single picture but here are a few of the words that come to mind in no particular order:
- Little person
- Surfer bro
- Dad
- CEO
- Biologist
- Leprechaun
- Weathered
- Severe Discomfort
- Hipster