NASCAR is currently in the midst of running the Brickyard 400. That's the event they've been allowed to hold at the hallowed Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the last fifeen years. I say they're in the midst of running the race, as they are about 40 laps (about one hour) into the race and have had four cautions already. I believe there's been about 10 minutes of green flag racing - no joke here. It will likely take four to five hours to run this 400 mile race.

Why? Because they simply didn't respect the track. They didn't allow proper testing.   And now tires are burning up after just ten laps.

Ooops.

Just one more self-inflected gunshot wound to NASCAR's foot. How many feet does NASCAR have?

- currently watching from Seattle, where the summer days are long and beautifully sunny, ... maybe they'll have to stop the race due to darkness? (!)

THE (BUZZED) SET-UP:

O.K. - some of you know I'm moving from Indy to Seattle.  I'm in temporary housing in downtown Seattle now, waiting for our housing deal to finalize.  In the mean time, Mrs. in Indy is back in Indianapolis doing her consulting thing.

So I'm stuck apart from her this weekend in Seattle - a great city with absolutely SPECTACULAR weather now.  Woke up this morning and felt The Mountain beckoning.  Threw on my hiking duds and drove to the Sunrise Visitor Center on the flanks of Mt. Rainier & put in about 6 hours of simply terrific hiking in one of America's great National Parks.

Despite hydrating pretty well throughout, I was pretty parched after 12 miles of pretty vertical hiking.  Upon arriving back in the temp condo in Seattle, I decided to get a nice meal & headed out to 94 Stewart - one of Seattle's many independent and outstanding restaurants.  In addition to the very fine food, I had only a beer and two Manhattans.  Normally, not enough to get much of a buzz.  However, I must not have hydrated as well as I thought, as the buzz became rather pronounced - I was doing well to walk the four blocks back to the condo, at least in my mind I was doing well ....

So, I'm back in my condo now and what should be on T.V. but the NASCAR race in Chicago.  GREAT!    I figure I'm in the appropriate frame of mind to appreciate an extended viewing of a Sprint Cup event.  Seattle doesn't believe in air conditioning - so I'm in totally authentic NASCAR viewing garb (stripped to my u-trou and a polo shirt, ... o.k. the polo shirt doesn't really pass muster, but I don't have a wife beater; likely TMI, eh? - sorry for those of you with sensitive stomachs).

NEXT MORNING NOTE:  The following has been left untouched, despite it's poor coherence and construction.  At the time, it seemed very well constructed and quite coherent, and it would be inappropriate to edit it (despite the embarrassing quality) as such editing would destroy the "buzzed blogging" perspective.

THE BUZZED STREAM-OF-QUASI-CONSCIOUSNESS BODY OF THIS POST:

Kyle Busch has been running away with the race to this point.  Larry McReynolds and the other dudes on the TNT Broadcast Team are saying things about stuff that really doesn't register with me, although their enthusiasm does.  O.K. - right there - despite the obvious enthusiasm, they missed Carl Edwards passing Kyle Busch until about 30 seconds afterwards. I guess it didn't fit in with whatever the hell they'd been talking about as Carl approached and passed Kyle for the lead.  No problem, ...  still an enjoyable video experience.  During a commercial break, Carl apparently came in for a green flag pitstop & his car then went all to hell.  But we don't really learn why (note:  much later, Larry McReynolds actually showed us why the spoiler damage was a problem - VERY helpful, even a u-trou wearing, buzzed dude sitting on a couch in Seattle had already figured THAT out).  The enthusiastic patter from the TNT booth focuses on the front spoiler of Mr. Edward's car; they continue to focus on Carl even after the next commercial break - despite the fact he's 1+ laps down.  Buzz or no buzz, even I know it's kinda weird that they're focused on Carl still ...  I'm starting to wonder, ... how many beers does it take before the broadcast makes sense and the race seems interesting enough to prevent channel surfing?  Well, I'm commited to my buzzed blogging/viewing experiment and will stick with it.

Fortunately, there have been some pretty funny commercials.  The Geico commercial with the racing kid always makes me laugh.  And the kids with remote control of the Sprint cars was also pretty funny (not sure who the advertisement was for in that one) - seeing Tony bail from his possessed car, telling others to "run for your lives" was decently amusing.

And of course, it's always amusing to imagine Hyrty or Hwerty or whatever the guy who goes apoplectic every time Busch does well - even moreso in a mildly altered state.  Busch still leads, as we get closer and closer to another Kyle Busch victory my level of anticipation of the weekly Hwrty meltdown makes it somewhat worthwhile to continue watching.  Maybe Kyle won't win - - somebody keeps throwing debris onto the track - - can't have a driver run away with a NASCAR event, afterall.

Unfortunately, we're now not only back into the routine TNT patter describing bizarre aspects of the race and more routine commercials that we've all seen for a couple dozen times, but the race has become terribly routine (Kyle drives to a 2 second lead - more debris, another caution, a bunch of commercials, Larry McReynolds talks about something, Kyle Busch drives to a 2 second lead - more debris, etc. ...). 

TNT has now officially declared a debris caution to be the "moment of the race".  Sheez ...

Naaah.  Even buzzed, I don't get how anyone can watch a NASCAR event for more than about 20 minutes.

THE KILLED-BUZZ CONCLUSION:

Maybe I wasn't buzzed enough.

Or maybe another network is broadcasting Ferris Buehler or The Godfather (any part), or maybe Peter Popoff is healing again ...  maybe I'll check back once in awhile to see if the race will end before midnight.

THE SURPRISINGLY SELF-AWARE BUT STILL BUZZED SELF-REALIZATION:

I'm sure I'll be too embarrassed to keep this up after viewing it in a sober state of mind tomorrow.  For any of you to mke it to the bottom of the post, you guys must be buzzed (or worse) too.

 

Ryan Briscoe has demonstrated how drivers should handle situations where they are subject to some measure of scorn/ridicule/or other form of enmity following an accident caused largely by their own error.  Many of you may recall either witnessing or hearing reports of  another popular driver being peeved at Ryan's lack of traction upon exiting his pits - resulting in a collision that took them both out of the closing stages of their most important races of the year (the Indy 500). 

Here's pretty much how it goes:

1.  Stay in your car until the initial heat blows over.  If another racer is exhibiting threatening behavior, ... say, marching down pit lane towards your pit with fire in his/her eyes, stay in the cockpit and make sure your tire changers and fuel men are between your car and said "fire-in-the-eyes" marching driver;

2.  Be handsome, good humored, and engaging.  People rarely hold a grudge against disarmingly handsome/beautiful drivers who readily engage the press.  The good humor thing helps too, but only as a supplement to the disarmingly handsome thing.  Briscoe's laughing yet mildly self-deprecating statements during the Indy 500's Victory Banquet were PERFECT.  A foreign accent helps in this regard, particularly a British, Aussie, or New Zealander accent.  If not a native of one of these countries, you may want to quickly brush-up on such an accent and employ it liberally.

3.  Pay NO attention to the stone cold faces and lack of supportive comments regarding your freshman year with the top team in the series when asked by interviewers about just how frustrated they may be with your performance to-date.  Just keep your chin up and refer to "2." above.

4.  WIN the next race on the schedule.  Yes, Ryan won the next race on the IndyCar schedule (Milwaukee).   A mile long track with 28 open-wheel cars racing around it for a couple of hours ...  A race where nearly every other driver had a shunt of one form or another, he stayed clean and finished first.

Simple strategy, perfectly executed.

There's probably a best-selling business book in there somewhere.

I've lived in Indianapolis, Indiana most of my life. Part of the ritual of living here is visiting the track sometime during the Month of May. I've been traveling a great deal over the past 8 months or so, and was fearing I might not get the opportunity to make the spring pilgrimage while the cars were running. But my afternoon opened up, the weather was great, and there were 22 spots still open in the 33 car field for this years Indy 500. I figured the practice action would be great. So I closed up my computer, left the office, and headed for 16th & Georgetown Road - the Capital of Auto Racing - The Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The scream of the cars reached out and clawed at my brain more than 1 mile from the track - grabbing the deepest recesses of my memories and pulling me as though I was on autopilot into the infield of the 2 1/2 mile race complex. Each time I pull into the Speedway, memories flood back into me: of my father taking me to the fourth turn of the track and showing me A.J.'s line through the turn - about 6 inches between the tires of his front engined roadster and the white concrete wall at the exit of the turn each and every lap, of the thrill of seeing Jimmy Clark pace the field in his British racing green Lotus, of the nearly silent punch of the STP red turbines of the early 70's, of the horrible fireball at the beginning of the '64 race, the thrill of seeing Tom Sneva break the 200 mph barrier, and so much more. This time was no exception.

For well over an hour, I just wandered around on my own - watching cars practice from the start/finish line, heading back out to the garage area to take in the mass of fans milling around, listening to the (very good) band "Psycho Dots" playing on the plaza, then moving south to the wide sweeping vista available of the first turn from the inside of the track. I could spend days walking around, listening & observing.

After a short while, I headed back from the first turn to meet my brother at his suite on the main straight. As I walked there, I got a call from work. A minor glitch with travel arrangements for an upcoming visit by corporate dignitaries. As I chatted on the cell phone and walked towards the Hulman Terrace Suites, I noticed I was about to walk through Gasoline Alley, the road from the pits to the garage area. There are always a swarm of "yellow shirts" stationed along the alley.

Yellow shirts are those volunteers who direct traffic at the track. They wear, ... yes, ... yellow button-down type shirts and gold safari helmets. There are HUNDREDS of yellow shirts arrayed around the massive complex at any given moment in May: at the car and pedestrian entrances to the track, along all in-track roadways, at all controlled access gates, at each ramp up into a grandstand, outside each concession stand, etc. They are EVERYWHERE. The ones who've been there for over a decade or two get some of the more cherished assignments. Among these is the "Gasoline Alley" station. Yellow shirts who have roadway assignments are given whistles. Most use the whistles much the same way Kelly Scott uses exclamation points. A yellow shirt will blast a whistle and give a wild arm signal to a pregnant woman with a youngster in a stroller just the same as he or she would a menacing beer truck. It's just a fact of life that must be endured by those choosing to visit the track during the Month of May. There is simply no getting away from the whistle of the yellow shirts, PARTICULARLY when walking near or through the pedestrian pass-thru area of Gasoline Alley.

It was a relatively calm appearing moment in the Gasoline Alley area, I quickly deduced while walking and chatting with my colleague from work. Nonetheless, I scanned the area, accounting for as many yellow shirts as possible and giving them a wide berth, along with the gaggles of autograph-seeking youths waiting for drivers to happen by. Having quickly sized up the area and charting my path through it, I set about to make the thirty foot journey across Gasoline Alley. About 3 to 5 seconds into my journey - and now focused back on my cell phone conversation - it happened.

A painful acoustic blast ripped into the left side of my face, exploding through my ear drum like an F-18 on afterburners. Instinctively, my subconscious nerve center turns my head and upper body to face the source of this violent attack. At about the same time as the visual image of the red-faced yellow shirt still exploding his hoary breath into the still shrieking "whistle" registers in my visual cortex, I feel my right shoulder and back come into mildly heavy contact with something. The whistle flies out of the yellow shirts spittle spewing face as he further contorts and bellows "did you not hear my whistle?!". With the yellow-shirt induced stimuli and the as yet unidentified contact to my rear still fighting for attention in my increasingly overwhelmed brain, I manage a "Holy Christ, YES". At this time, just moments into the event, I'm mostly focused on assessing the intentions of the apparently enraged yellow shirt, but I'm also recoiling from the contact to my rear. As the moment progresses, I notice the yellow shirt and others around me are NOT focused on me, but behind me. As this continues to register with me, the part of my brain that wants to know what I came into contact with begins to win over the part of the brain that is attempting to make sense of the yellow-shirt and his words and expressions - so I cautiously turn to see what I can see.

And there my eyes and brain finds Danica Patrick and some guy with a Motorola hat on, looking surprised and adopting a defensive posture - as though something was about to fall on them (or, as actually happened, had just hit them). I now have MANY more stimuli screaming for attention in my brain - far more than I can initially process. As the fog clears a bit over the course of a couple of seconds, I see that she is mildly amused but is quickly returning to signing autographs for the amorphous gaggle of shapes gathered around her. The guy in the Motorola hat continues to size me up, and looks at least a little bit annoyed. I'm totally confused as to what to do, but manage to chuckle uncomfortably - unable to come up with anything more than "oh, EXCUSE me" and then return my gaze to the yellow shirt who is now standing with both hands outstretched and upwards - non-verbally saying "what the F#@*, AS*HOLE". Several realizations hit me nearly at once. I'm amused that the yellow shirt had surprised me so much, I'm concerned that I was, indeed, an as*hole walking and talking on the cellphone, but I was mostly astounded at her size - Danica Patrick is tiny. Not just tiny, microscopically tiny - not even chest high. She wouldn't be admitted to drive the Dodge 'Em Cars at your local amusement park, not being any taller than Barney Rubble. And she's young. Younger than my daughter, seemingly not even 20 years of age. Yet she is genuinely pretty and has an engaging and confident aura about her (quite the contrast from the off-putting personality described by many in the media). As she grabbed the pencil from a young hand to sign another autograph, she looked at me and shook her head. Was it "no problem"? Was it "what a moron"? Was it just shifting her long locks of beautiful black hair? I have no idea.

Yes I do. It was "that was a moment of reality in my otherwise surreal life - thank-you for piercing, however awkwardly, the numbness of my non-driving life at the track".

And I'm sticking with that.

Oh, ... "#$*& off and die" Mr. Yellow Shirt, I've got me a new memory.

Lot's of tears on the Fox Sports blogs recently (many truly moving moments that caused bloggers to say they had cried).

Well, ... here's some things that don't make me cry:

1. The Patriots cadre of comedians talking about Tom Brady's ankle. Almost as bad as the Super Bowl Shuffle - keep it up boys, ... you guys are hilarious. Let's see some more smugness (all while the Giants dig in and get into a testosterone groove). And has ESPN done anything as UNFUNNY as the Tom Brady as the "missing Brady" bit? How close to being moved to tears? - as close as I am to buying a Fathead of Bill Belichick.

2. The college basketball season in full swing. My favorite time of the sports year - in part due to my passion for college basketball and in part due to the fact that the conclusion of college basketball means SPRING! Go to watch my Butler Bulldogs whenever I have the time - the greatest basketball watching experience ANYWHERE for the price - if you're in Indy during college basketball season, stop by Hinkle Fieldhouse for a dip into the soul of Hoosier basketball. How close to being moved to tears? - damn, ... wait a minute ..., there, ... o.k. now - NOT crying.

3. The Indiana Pacers. They just make me angry. How close to being moved to tears? - How far is totally far, incredibly far, unbelievably far? How can there be such a difference between college basketball and bad professional basketball? Really, totally, incredibly, unbelievably far.

4. The ongoing writer's strike. No new episodes of 30 Rock. No new Saturday Night Live. No new funny. How close to being moved to tears? - about three more reality T.V. episodes away from the first tear.

5. David Letterman ripping forward at full speed. Sometimes things do come full circle. Leno is a funny, funny man. But Letterman is THE man in late night comedy (with Conan dutifully waiting in the wings). How close to being moved to tears? - truly emotional for this proud Hoosier to see Letterman hitting his stride again after having settled with the Writers Guild in an honorable and generous fashion, but not quite enough to produce a tear.

6. A real race among presidential contenders. Good to see people spending at least a little more time parsing through the field of candidates. At least a couple of genuine statesmen/women types seem to be on the bill. How close to being moved to tears? - only will be moved to tears if we veer towards another GW type (tears of sadness - can you say Huckabee or Romney?) or towards someone who emerges as a great statesperson on the world's stage (tears of joy - can you say ... nah - not gonna do that here).

7. Saying something almost made me cry, or made me cry. This does not make me cry. I sometimes say this to express an emotion or a belief, but rarely does it actually mean I cried - I just think it will help make a point or ingratiate myself with someone else. How close to being moved to tears? - just making me think about my insincerity when saying "it made me cry" makes me well up.

8. Only listing 8 things in a list, rather than the customary 10. I'm not the obsessive/compulsive type. How close to being moved to tears? - actually, I never cry - and this definitely also does not make me cry.

I'm sorry - I have to stop now - sorry, ... I'm, ... I'm, ... , ... ,