Whose Shake Is This!!?

NASCAR has spoken! Brian France and Mike Helton give The Carl a slap on the wrist.

The word has come down from on high and once again, the utter hypocrisy of NASCAR has reared it’s two-faced head and the bigger man, the better man, has lost the battle and the war.  The Carl gets a 3 race probation. Not suspension, PROBATION, for nearly killing Brad Kesolowski at 195 mph over a petty grievance that could have been better and more elegant solved with fisticuffs. The Carl was 150 freaking laps down when he sent Kesolowski airborne. It doesn’t matter if you feel some self-entitled need to wreak payback, you just don’t do it at Atlanta. The Carl should have been suspended for 3 races for his deliberate stupid behavior….not given some candy-ass worthless probation. Last year, Carl Long got  a 12 race suspension and his NASCAR career (such as it was) essentially ruined for having an engine that was 0.17 of an inch larger than allowed.  Wow!!  0.17 of an inch…. now that’s dangerous, yes?  12 race suspension for that. And yet His Royal Highness,  Carl Edwards got a pissant 3 race probation, a mere slap on the wrist for THIS:

His Royal Highness, The Carl, was 150 freakin’ laps down when he decided to exact some revenge for a petty slight on lap 5. And he had all race to think about how he was going to do it. And THIS is how he chose to do it. Stupid, classless, characterless, ignorant, and it could have been potentially deadly, not just to Kesolowski, but to fans in the stands. This can’t POSSIBLY be what NASCAR meant when they said, “have at it boys.” And if it is, then SHAME of them. All of the them. SHAME on Brian France, Mike Helton, and most especially, The Carl. We all thought, well…most of us, thought The Carl was a better man, a bigger man, than that. But we were wrong. Clearly, like, for example, Tiger Woods, he is not the bigger and better man he portrays himself to be.  He is clearly all image and zero integrity. And NASCAR just slaps him on the wrist.

If I were Carl Long I’d want my career back ((not that it was much of a career, but such as it was, I’d want it back)) If I were Kevin Harvick, for example I’d want my money and points back for all my petty penalties over the years ((and he does, by the way)). And Chad Knaus, for all his evil mechanations, never put a fellow driver or crew chief in harm’s way by his pushing the envelope of rule Section 12-4-A actions detrimental to stock car racing, yet he had to sit out 4 races as recently as last year. If I were Roger Penske I’d send Jack Roush an invoice for the uncalled for damages to Brad Kesolowski’s #12 MOPAR FloTV Dodge.

But we’re talking about bigger men here. So Long and Harvick and Chad and Roger Penske will do none of the the above.

So who is the bigger man?

Carl Edwards? Or Brad Kesolowski?  I think that one’s fairly obvious.Yes?

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Why I have not shot myself in the head because Jimmie Johnson won his 2nd focking race in a row at Las Vegas last Sunday, is an utter and total mystery to me at moment, especially in light of the fact that none other than Jeff Gordon (yes THAT homo Jeff Gordon) pretty much said that Jimmie Johnson’s utter dominance of NASCAR is boring as focking hell. Not in those exact words mind you, but you can pretty much read between the lines. When even Jeff Gordon thinks his protege is boring as piss, what I’ve been saying about Jimmie Johnson all along has strayed from merely being my humble opinion to plain focking truth.

Evil mechanations of Chad Knaus.? Check! At Vegas, on the final pit stops, Knaus called for a 4 tire stop. Gordon’s crew chief Steve Latarte called for 2 tires to maintain track position.

Damned ability of Jimmie Johnson? Check! Johnson was able to cruise through the field and with 4 fresh tires, blasted by Gordon for the boring and tedious win.

It’s hard to hate Jimmie Johnson. It really is. He’s good guy. He’s honest, hard-working, straightforward, and exceedingly pleasant. He’s handsome, but not a pretty boy. He came up the ranks the hard way…paid his dues on 50 cc motorcycles, off-road racing, the local tracks, and ASA.  He’s the best focking driver in NASCAR. But….but…he bores the crap out of me. And not just me….even his fans are not as crazily enthused with him, as, for example, Junior’s fans are (obviously). Hell…Jeff Gordon’s fans are more passionate. Even Matt Kenseth sparks up more enthusiasm among his fan base.

So why have I not shot myself in the head yet?  Or hammered a wooden stake through my heart? As Jeff Gordon says, “I just think it depends on the rivalries and the stories…What we need is Kyle Busch and [Tony] Stewart to be butting heads, banging one another and talking trash. That would be good television.”

Wait. What?? Did I just actually quote Jeff Gordon?? Bring me that wooden stake and a ball-peen hammer….

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Yes, I know it’s the Holidays. Christmas, New Years and all that and I hope it’s happy. Also, it’s not only the end of the year, but also the end of the Decade. But if you’re expecting anything Holiday or Fin de Year/Decade related, or a sad parade of Top 10 Lists, well, best prepare yourself to be disappointed. Or at least, dispense with those expectations entirely and then you won’t be disappointed at all, and might, when all is said and done be somewhat pleasently surprised, albeit vaguely.

Most likely, I will leave the Decade Stuff, the Best O’ The Year Stuff, to better, simpler minds. There is one GREAT Best of The Decade List I saw recently, and i highly recommend it. Ben Cohen has complied a Top 10 Best American Sports Writing Of The Decade. This is GREAT reading. Fabulous stuff. If I could write 1/10th as well these sportswriters…well…I’m begging the question. Onward.

While having a beer at the Grumpy Troll this afternoon, I got to wondering about when, exactly men’s basketball shorts stopped being short. There had to be a moment, or a descending series of moments when that occurred. What got me thinking about that was that I was watching the replay of last night’s Wisconsin vs. UW-Milwaukee basketball game, and UW-Milwaukee has this big galoot trudging around out there, 6’7″ 310 pound (yes, you read that right) James Eayrs, who looks more like one of those Eastern Europeans sumo-wrestlers. Anyway, those basketball shorts on him looked especially ridiculous….you could’ve used them to wrap up a Minneapolis-Moline Tractor as a Christmas present. If fact, he looked like a Minnneapolis-Moline tractor. So it made me wonder…when did this goofy trend start.

Doing a little digging, I re-discovered my memories of University of Michigan Fab 5 from the 1991-92 season. The Fab 5:  Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson bagn the 1991-92 season as freshman finished the season by winning the NCAA Championship. They popularized and propelled the trend towards baggier and longer basketball shorts. When they first hit the courts in their long baggy shorts, and black shoes and socks…they were like nothing anyone had ever seen…and they played like nothing anyone had ever seen. Long and baggy became cool and pretty soon College and then NBA player began adopting the new look. BUT…

The look didn’t start with the Fab 5 however. While I haven’t pinned this down to the exact moment…the actual origin of the look began with the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team during the 1990-91 season. Back then, the Razorbacks were not nationally televised and though a pretty good team that made it to the Elite 8 that season under head coach Nolan Richardson, they weren’t poised on the brink, so to speak. They didn’t have the flair and the style that Michigan had the following year.

Early in the 1991 season, Michigan assistant coach Brian Dutcher noticed his players pulling their shorts down to their hips and wearing their jerseys untucked. Remembering seeing the Arkansas team wearing longer shorts the previous season, he ordered shorts for the Fab 5 to wear that were about 2 to 4 inches longer than average. Juwan Howard liked them, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Well…it really IS the end of the Noughties…and as much as it galls me to spit those words off my tongue, I guess there is no avoiding the reality of it. And a dreadful decade it was from a cultural, political, economic, social, emotional, ethical standpoint. If not for sports, the Noughts would have been even more a total miserable hell than it already was.

Sports survived it all. Even the Milwaukee Brewers were able to rise above by the end of the decade.

And speaking of the Brewers…

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That pretty much sums up the Chase after last Sunday’s Tum’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville. Sure, Denny Hamlin scored an impressive win. It’s a track, like Pocono, he’s supposed to win at. And he did. But…

The damned ability of Jimmie Johnson and the evil mechanations of Chad Knaus will simply not go away.  Jimmie Johnson finished second increasing his lead on Mark Martin and the rest of Chasers. Short of some sort of miracle, like a Close Encounter of the 4th Kind, this Chase is over. Finito!

Hand him the damned trophy and start the Daytona 500 countdown clock.

Meanwhile, NASCAR has to come up with some solutions to make the Chase more competitive and interesting. For both the drivers and the fans. But…

One shudders to think what kind of nonsense Brian France and Mike Helton will/can/could cook up THIS time to save the Chase, the NASCAR, their legacies…. Brrrr!! The horror!!

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It is inevitable, inexorable. It’s not even going to be close. Jimmie Johnson will take it all, including the cake and the frosting. There is almost no real point in watching NASCAR anymore this season since we already know who is going to win. All else is hopeless and hapless and nearly as balls-on thrilling as last Sunday’s 6-3 Cleveland vs. Buffalo beatdown by the shores of Lake Erie.

Now ofcourse, Junior Nation will keep somewhat tuned in for any heroic adventures their intrepid hero might encounter, such as a top 15 finish. And yeh yeh yeh, I’ll be rooting for Kenseth to win out and all that as a fuck you toNASCAR for the Chase. But really now, NASCAR will be in a real ratings slump if this goes on.

This has become the most boring Chase of all time.

And since tonight’s race is at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, short of making Jimmie Johnson race in reverse on flat tires, who do YOU think is going to win tonight’s NASCAR Banking 500 only from Bank of America at Charlotte? Ne?

But…that’s not all…

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When I began this war of words, or as I affectionately called it back then, blooging, the idea was fairly simple to me. My first bloog post, on June 23rd 2001 was thus:

Saturday, June 23, 2001

Test

This is a test of the BLOG concept. I’m not sure if I like this concept. But I shall toy with this for a bit until it grows tiresome and banal. It probably has already. I’m going HERE for a Beer.

posted by Michael Smith at 7:46 PM

Blogging had become, or was becoming all the rage, and as y’all will someday figure out, if something is all the rage, then I will rage against it. It took a descending series of moments, but once I grasped the gestalt tightly in my little fists of fury, the race was on. The stupid, the banal, the paltry, the insipid, the doomed, the bored, the damned, the quisling, the bored and the damned, and all the rest of that dross became grist for my sullenness. I tore through the hell of others’ bloogs with a vengence in an insect-burning, snake-roasting rampage  that would have made Jack Barron and Morton Downey Jr. proud.

Proud…yeh…..that’s a pretty unreasonable quixotic notion, but….onward.

Rather than moving that hate-machine over here, I’m letting it burn where it is. But don’t think for a moment that I’m out of fuel….that all I’m going to do from now on is reenact a weekly supercollider experiment with particles of anime and particles of NASCAR.

There still are insects. And I have a magnifying glass. And the sun is very bright.

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