Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 4 of 36

So there was another race yesterday, at one of the good tracks in Bristol, except you know, even if they took it down to one station on free TV, March Madness is far more interesting than Nascar. Why the fuck does Nascar think it smart to be on during college basketball all the way until NFL football? Seriously, the only thing more long and boring than a Nascar race is a Nascar season. Still though, I am going to persevere and write nonsense after each race even if I don't know a damn thing about it, to force my hair-brained Ponytail Challenge onto the world, in the hopes that Nascar can be saved from the PR people and marketing specialists and 439 page demographic analysis manuals.
Kyle Busch won the race, edging out Carl Edwards, and there's some sort of bullshit rivalry between those two. I guess young Kyle Busch is considered by the common corporate marketing scams as Nascar's main asshole. I don't know, he's one of the only ones I don't mind, because he ain't afraid to bump and rub. Carl Edwards looks too much like a baboon crossbred with an insurance salesman for my tastes, and his little Winner's Circle moonsault celebration is played the fuck out.
Bristol is small track racing, which by many is considered the best version of Nascar, but really if you go to actual small tracks, they're even better. I'd love to see Nascar speed cars at a track that tight, and if I could go to one race, it would probably be the second Bristol race of the year. Beyond that, I can't speak much on this week's race because I don't care. Sorry. It was called the Jeff Byrd 500, which is either where they name the race after some regular ass person who won a contest, to make everybody think that they can be famous, or where they name it after some dude who lost a leg in Iraq by getting exploded, to make everybody think that America is awesome.
One thing that has crossed my mind Nascar-related, since the first time I seen one of these things was during a Nascar race, and they always feature Michael Waltrip's goofy closeted self, is those NAPA commercials where big goofy allegedly macho dudes are singing songs in corny twang, but lip-syncing, and it's real over the top and supposed to be great. It is not. They make me want to join Al Qaeda.
Of everybody still in the running in my Ponytail Challenge, everybody but four people raced. One dude, who I forget now, tried to race but did not qualify. There were three guys who did not even try to qualify - old school bastard Terry Labonte, the aforementioned fruitcake Michael Waltrip, and some dude named Brian Keselowski. There is another dude named Brad Keselowski, so I am forced by ignorance to assume that Brian is the evil twin version of Brad, or vice versa. Anyways, being from previous races, Labonte and Waltrip have more points thus are higher in the year-long points standings thus far, Brian Keselowski is eliminated, and finishes 40th in this year's Nascar Ponytail Challenge. I do not have a problem with this because he is part of some new-fangled family full of clean-cut drivers. If his name was Brian Bodine or Brian Allison or he had a nickname that was some sort of insect, I would not mind him so much. As it is though, fuck him.
PREVIOUS ELIMINATIONS: 41st: Steve Wallace (did not race in Kobalt Tools 400), 42nd: Robert Richardson Jr. (did not race in Subway Fit 500), 43rd: J.J. Yeley (finished last in Daytona 500).

Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 3 of 36

So Nascar had another race that I guess was on the regular free TVs, and came from Las Vegas. Having visited Las Vegas last year, I can't think of a better and more appropriate shithole for a new school Nascar race. Both are shiny, designed to fleece halfwits of money in goofy assed ways that are not nearly as awe-inducing when you see them up close.
That being said, I did not watch a second of it. I did see a dude I know post on Facebook that he was thankful Jeff Gordon was out. I am too. Jeff Gordon is all that is wrong with Nascar; and yet they would have you believe he is the noble aging warrior of Nascar, the standard-bearer of this new era. Fuck.
Anyways, there were still three dudes who raced in the Daytona 500 (thus still on the Ponytail Challenge potential champions list) that did not even try to qualify for the Kobalt Tools 400, which is what the Las Vegas race was paid to be called - Terry Labonte, Michael Waltrip, and Steve Wallace. Obviously two of those dudes are semi-famous, although if you watch even half of one of those fucking Napa Auto Parts commercials with Michael Waltrip, you might try to blot him from your mind with chloroform. The other is Rusty Wallace's kid. As of the start of this alleged race today, Rusty Wallace's stupid kid was the furthest down in the standings, thus in my completely made up way of eliminating people one by one each race, he is the eliminated, and finishes in 41st in this Nascar competition of the year 2011.
Previous dumbasses you never heard of who were eliminated - 42nd: Robert Richardson Jr. (did not race in Subway Fresh Fit 500), 43rd: J.J. Yeley (finished last in Daytona 500).
So there. I was gonna talk about a drinking and driving race or maybe how awesome dirt tracks are, but shit man, dirt track season hasn't even started at Eastside Speedway in Waynesboro yet. I am hoping to go hit up the Virginia Motor Speedway for a big Va. Sprints weekend in Saluda in April, to kick off the local enjoyment of cars racing around in circles. At least at the local dirt track, your ass gets sore on wooden bleachers, and little kids are wrecking cars into each other on the bleachers in front of you, gawking at your beard and weird jacket covered in strange patches and wondering what is wrong with you, until his overweight mom with Little Debbie crumbs on her chest leans over and tells him something, and he gives you one last look and then turns around, ashamed. The dad never really looks at you, probably wishing you didn't exist. There's a Mexican dude with an overweight white woman up front, and like five kids that may or may not be both of their's or one of or the other of their's or his sister's or something, and he smiles at you because he knows you are both fucking outcasts here. But then you are freaked out because he also has a face tattoo. Who the fuck has a face tattoo in real life? People who have been in jail, that's who, and not, "I kinda fucked up one time" jail but for real jails, where shit is so deep and jail civilization has grown so incredibly that even though you're not supposed to have anything that could do such a thing, you get a tattoo, on your face. But the good thing is, at the dirt track races, you still see people who buy and wear wrestling t-shirts, and I will tell you from last year's dirt track observations, the top two wrestlers in the world right now are The Undertaker and John Cena. Also, if you are wondering if there are actual juggalos in your area of the Earth, in case you don't live in the midwest, then the local dirt track is the place to go. There used to be a website that would tell you where the closest dirt track (or any race track) is, but they stopped doing it.
I digress. Fuck Nascar. Support your local dirt track. It ain't racing if there ain't dirt in your beer. Of course in Waynesboro, you can't drink in the grandstands, even though the local Coors factory sponsors the whole thing. That's why you see a lot of dudes like me and the Mexican and the older juggalos piling out to the parking lot two or three times a night in packs of two or three people. You'd be amazed at how fast you can shotgun four beers during the mini modified races. And then when you hear the roar of the late models cranking up as they are circling around to line up, you know it's time to go back inside and hope that fucking kid stops staring at you. Oh to take that kid and show him a world larger than the one he knows. Would it make him better, or simply pollute his sheltered purpose in life? I am disappointed in myself for being so judgmental towards the white underclass in this Nascar write-up. But I tell you, white underclass. Think locally. Go to the Waynesboros and Saludas of the world and buy a $20 t-shirt of guys named Boogie Bradshaw or Travis Clinchfield or the local dudes who will actually be stoked you bought a t-shirt. Sure, Travis Clinchfield may be propped up by his dad's used car business, and a spoiled kid who is already racing late models at age 20, but when they run out of t-shirts, they will get more screen-printed at a shop in the industrial part of town. They will use actual machine shops to weld shit for them, if they don't already know how to weld themselves. And Boogie Bradshaw? That guy's been racing forever, and everybody knows that dude. He's good people. You buy one of his shirts and that means he's got enough money to grab a 12-pack of Miller Genuine Draft on the ride home, to wind down tonight, and wind back up tomorrow. You think fucking Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson or anybody gives a fuck if you buy a $30 t-shirt, much less one of those garish jackets that I imagine cost more than a drug dealer would feel comfortable spending (although isn't it funny as fuck when you see an urban-type black dude wearing a Nascar jacket)? Of course they don't. Your money is nothing to them.

Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 2 of 36

So this week stupid Jeff Gordon won whatever race they had. I did not include it in my life at all, so I don't know what happen, but I would imagine it was boring, but they had a lot of commercials pretending it was very macho to be bored in such a way. I do know when I was watching five minutes of The Simpsons at night, they had a stupid commercial about some dude and his wife on the couch and him talking like Nascar was somehow cool, and it was going to be in Las Vegas, which is also cool. It was at that point (amongst many in my life) that I realized just how fucking out of step I am with the rest of my fellow American humans.
Jeff Gordon originally was not liked. Regular dudes thought him a pussy, and rooted for Dale Earnhardt or Terry Labonte or other regular dudes like that - guys who still wore mustaches. But somewhere in the process of Nascar getting younger and every driver talking in a whine and looking like he runs a landscaping company, regular dudes starting liking Jeff Gordon, I guess because he raced at the same time real dudes used to. I don't get it. I hate Jeff Gordon. Hate him. Even when I don't care about Nascar, and I looked up the race to try and at least do this stupid ponytail challenge thing for more than one week, I saw Jeff Gordon won and I was like, "Man, that sucks. Fuck Jeff Gordon."
That being said, in my goofy system, he can buy his way out of elimination at some point later this season. Being not every driver who raced last week actually was gonna be a full-time racer this season, there were a handful of drivers who did not even attempt to qualify this week who raced last week. Of those drivers, Robert Richardson Jr. was the dude who had the lowest amount of points from last week, so he gets nipped off the back end of the remaining possible champions. The beginning of the Nascar season is boring as fuck. So is the end. I do not even know who Robert Richardson Jr. is, or who his father was.
42nd: Robert Richardson Jr. (did not qualify for the Subway Fresh Fit 500)
43rd: J.J. Yeley (finished last in the Daytona 500)

Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 1 of 36

Yes, I am going to cover the Nascar season this year at Rojonekku, for no real reason than I've had these wonderful ideas of how to make Nascar awesome again for a few years now, and just sitting on them and sitting on them, with no outlet for these wonderful fixes other than my own brain. So I'm just gonna get it out there now for you all in the world to see. If there is any sense to this world, I will be declared President of Nascar by my 50th birthday, they'll have dirt track races again as part of their stupid championship, and it will be a semi-sport of real men once again, instead of these whimper-voiced landscaping company presidents that seem to drive every other car.
Now understand, the day Junior Johnson stopped being relevant to Nascar is the day it probably lost its way. A circled race between shit-talking bootleggers is something real, while a parade of subliminal advertisements with a lulling white noise background and halfwit commentators is about as painfully post-modern as we get in America, on our last 9 decades towards demise. But I grew up with Nascar as background noise, even had a dog named Buddy after Buddy Baker at one point in my young life (he got run over by my mom), and I still try to go to my local dirt track a couple times a year, especially when they are running the Virginia Sprint series. Them bitches git.
Here is the basic problem with Nascar, and my basic fix. There are all sorts of minor tweaks and turns I'll add to the mix throughout the year, but this is the basic 101 of it all: Nascar's points system, even with the so-called Chase for the Cup, is stupid and not entertaining and boring. My fix is simple, and manly as well. You have 43 drivers qualify for the championship by qualifying for the Daytona 500. If you finish last in the Daytona 500, you are eliminated from contention. And that's how it works every race - the dude still on the list of potential champions who finishes the farthest back (or qualifies the worst, or whatever... there are a series of tiebreakers that happen at the beginning since there's a slew of drivers who do the Daytona gig but don't bother with the next five races) gets marked off the list. If you win a race, you get a pass to escape elimination one time for each win. And if you are in contention for the title, you do not shave nor cut your hair. Thus, as the season wears on, you have championship/playoff beards and long hair growing, much like hockey tradition, but has been picked up in other sports. This works multiple ways, in that first of all it's very easy to see who is still in contention to be Nascar champion for the year. It also gives the image of wild longhaired bearded real men, who don't fuck around. No more of this Jeff Gordon hybrid crap. Real men, who look like they would stab people with pool cues. And you call it the Ponytail Challenge.
This is important, even though Nascar fat cats would probably cringe at it, thinking they are some sort of awesome corporate affair nowadays. But let's face it, the Nascar demographic is a working class type who will sit there watching some very slow-paced action, contrary to the speeds. Nascar racing is very much like golf in that it just kinda keeps on going and going and then all of a sudden something might happen but then it just goes back to going and going until it's finally over at some point.
So with my system, in a nutshell, everybody who was not J.J. Yeley in today's race (Yeley finished 43rd... dead last) is still possibly the 2011 Nascar Champion. For the next 29 races, one more name gets crossed off the list. After 30 races, you are left with 13 people, so for those last six races, you double up, eliminating two drivers per week. That leaves you, on the last race, with three dudes in contention to be champion. Shit, you've got five in the next-to-last race. And all of them with longhair and beards. (This of course means you can incorporate the proper sponsors with post-race haircuts, or charity, or whatever. Really, this system markets itself.)
Today's race I zoned in and out of. I am a holiday Nascar fan - Daytona, whatever race is on Memorial Day, whatever one is on Labor Day Sunday, maybe Talladega if I remember - the basic bigger races. Plus, if I can catch them, the smaller tracks like Bristol and Martinsville. Those are far more enjoyable than the super speedways for me, especially Bristol. The fact they keep shaving off those small southern track races for big speedways in weird ass places like Seattle or Chicago or whatever, I don't know, it seems self-defeating. You are throwing termites into your own foundation.
I also sat outside and listened to part of it on the radio while sitting beside my pigpen, which was highly enjoyable. Nascar is one of those things that is better on radio than TV I think. Especially when you have someone like that Jeffrey Hammonds dude commentating. What is wrong with that guy? It's like his head got squeezed and his face is too big or something. I would say he looks half-retarded but that wouldn't be fair to the handicapped. And why do those dudes all wear suits? Who the fuck goes to a Nascar race in a suit? And what type of image are you fronting by having your TV people wearing suits? Really, 2011 Nascar is so ridiculously misguided, it's pathetic. They think they have been accepted.
The race was whatever, as I'm not too into the boring two-car race that super speedways are. I kinda wanted Dale Jr. to win, just because I feel bad for the dude sometimes, being a rich young millionaire who somehow is still a complete fucking failure in life, like the ultimate boss's son sleeping in the warehouse because he can get away with it. But then he was wrecked out like half of everybody else. And at the end, that Trevor Bayne kid was in the front. Who? Exactly. Trevor Bayne sounds like a guy who often had friends say he was with when actually they were cheating on their ol' ladies. "Where the fuck were you last night until 4 in the morning?" "Damn girl, why you so mad? Me and Chuck went over to Trevor Bayne's and was shooting pool in his basement. You can call Chuck and see." Or coming home from a cookout, fighting in the car while the kids pretend to be asleep in the back seat, "This always happens when you and fuckin' Trevor Bayne start hangin' around each other. You know that fool ain't had no sense ever since Kaitlyn kicked him out!" And the dude just kinda focuses on the road so as to not drunk drive too obviously, eventually cutting up the radio since it's a CCR song. That's Trevor Bayne to me.
Except he's a 20-year-old Nascar wonderkid. And the thing with racing wonderkids is they don't naturally just develop into wonderkids at that age. While local tracks around the country have old fuckers who've been racing for years, scratching at dollars and quarters to chase local points titles, there's always some teenager who started racing cars about seven years before he had a driver's license, who had an uncle or father or somebody just straight pouring money into it. That was Denny Hamlin at Southside Speedway in Richmond, Virginia. That's the Jeff Gordon hybrid model for success. And that seems like it could be Trevor Bayne, being he's 20 years old and already won a Daytona 500.
Except I looked the kid up on the interwebz, and he dropped out of high school to get a G.E.D. after his sophomore year. He's from east Tennessee (notorious pit of despair). And he drives for the Woods Brothers.
The Woods Brothers are an old school ownership team for Nascar, who barely survive in today's corporate environment. They are from my beloved Southside Virginia, and have scraped and struggled to maintain a competitive car, sometimes even without a sponsor, driving a blank slate of a car on TV. Hell, Bayne's car today lacked all the intricate little sub-sponsor stickers that all the other cars had. So them even being there at the end was a success, and probably bankrolled another half the season for them. At the end when it was paired up draft driving and stupid Carl Edwards was creeping on a come up, I thought to myself, "Fuck, why did I waste my time watching this crap?" thinking the monkey-faced back-flipper in the #99 would win, being he's one of Nascar's darlings (I think... I'm out of the loop, thankfully). But then my man Trevor Bayne slung down in his way and caught the push to the finish line. That shit was awesome. Like I could watch every fucking minute of every race for the rest of the year, and that's gonna be the only good thing that happens all year long.
So in my system, the young Bayne gets a free pass to be the last one in a future race, and every one else in the race except for J.J. Yeley is still in contention going into next week's race, which I think they said was in Phoenix. Most likely, I won't pay attention again that much, but I'm gonna try to remember to do a Monday update after races, and we'll track this ponytail challenge Nascar system on Rojonekku. But being I don't care about Nascar enough to watch it again for three months, most likely I'll just give you the simple update and then ramble about something barely related. But hey, that's better than boring you with a bunch of actual Nascar nonsense like it's important or something. And frankly, nobody pays me to do anything, so it's all of my own volition.
But congratulations to Trevor Bayne, you degenerate redneck fuck, and to southside Virginia's Woods brothers. You made Nascar interesting to me for about 37 minutes longer than it usually is most years.