FANTASY AUTO RACING TEAMS (F.A.R.T.)
1993-2007
Less than a quarter of the way through our 15th season, Steve and I have mutually agreed to pull the plug on FART.
Our decision came on the heels of Tony Stewart's comments last week, but that was hardly the only reason for it. In fact, his ensuing spanking by Nascar officials and his failure to stand up to them was merely the last of many straws over the past few years.
It would be easy to say the sport died with Dale Earnhardt on 2/18/01, but really the collapse started when ESPN lost their contract at the end of the previous season. Some reward for their many years of quality coverage. Sheesh. And this was followed by what we call the 'Fox-ification' of Nascar. (NBC was no help either.)
Fox Sports, no doubt in cahoots with BushCo, made damn sure they broadcast the pre-race prayer and the national anthem every week, and otherwise tailored their coverage to appeal to new young right-wing fans who only discovered Nascar thru Earnhardt's death (while leaving those of us who had followed the sport for decades out in the cold).
This led to such 'innovations' as the idiotic playoff system and the mysterious 'scoring loops' used when freezing the field under a late caution. I'm an atheist, so natch I don't believe in anything unless I can see proof of its existence. They could, at the very least, paint lines across the track where the scoring loops are said to exist. It's a little concept I like to call ACCOUNTABILITY!
And so after they began that nonsense, Steve and I decided not to count any race that was decided by 'scoring loops'. This was the beginning of the end for FART, and the process was sped up by numerous rough driving incidents in 2006 (in the midst of which I nearly quit), a disgusting trend that was continued this year, mostly by Juan "Pendejo" Montoya. This resulted in many ugly arguments between us in the online chats we would have during the races.
All of the above factors led to decreased enjoyment of the races and our fantasy league. In fact I went so far as to cancel the season a few weeks ago after the Stewart/Montoya incident caused our worst race-chat argument. But we were in the process of hammering out a deal to continue the season as late as last week when the whole Stewart radio show thing rendered it a moot point.
Throughout the 2007 season we were very disturbed by the increasing number of debris cautions (we even punctuated them with a chat window background pic of Roger De Bris from 'The Producers') and the lack of any visual evidence of said debris. The TV cameras couldn't find it, yet this was merely laughed off by the Fox announcers.
What Stewart said on his radio show last Tuesday was not news to us, and we cheered him 100%, as finally a driver voiced what we had been thinking all season. These 'phantom cautions' or 'entertainment cautions' or whatever you want to call them were being thrown whenever a driver got too big of a lead, and Nascar officials wanted to bunch up the field in hopes of a close, exciting finish.
The problem is that Stewart voiced these concerns only after the Phoenix race, where it was HIS big lead that was wiped out by a phantom caution. Granted he added that he thought they 'haven't run a fair race all year', but that didn't stop everyone from thinking he was just whining because it happened to him, which is certainly valid, but misses the point Steve and I thought he was making for us.
But the most ridiculous part of the whole thing was Nascar's initial response to Stewart's comments, saying that it's all about safety, safety, safety. To say that this missed the point is a huge understatement! It IS about a lack of integrity. It IS about playing god and manipulating race results. And it's NOT about them wanting Jeff Gordon or any specific driver to win or lose, but about wiping out one driver's lead to precipitate a close finish.
And it IS about Nascar thus ceasing to be a legitimate sport and becoming a pseudo-sport like, yes, pro wrestling.
Sure, a close finish is exciting, but only because, at least in a legit race series, it doesn't happen every race. When races are run on the up-and-up, and you have races decided by more than a car length or by a few seconds or more, then and only then are the close finishes really exciting.
But if you start...and I am going to use the word...FIXING races so that every finish is decided by mere inches, and you do it long enough, it won't be that exciting anymore. At some point it will become routine.
Then what? How do you keep fans excited by the finish then? Will you have to have at least one car slide across the finish line upside down and on fire, a la Clint Bowyer? And when that's not enough? Will it take more drivers getting killed on the last lap a la Earnhardt? At what point do the fans and Nascar just mutually decide to turn it into a blood sport? And you can say I'm exaggerating, but that's the road they are heading down, and that's where it leads. Period.
Anyway back to Stewart...Nascar has a meeting with him Friday morning to spank him, and he comes out of the meeting with his tail between his legs and his brain lobotomized, saying from now on he trusts them when they say there's debris. WHAT...A...PUSSY! I'm sure he got their standard threat, "Nascar can get along just fine without you", but if he had any real balls he would retire or go back to IRL. So Tony's a pussy. Fuck him.
Same goes for all the other drivers who continue to participate in the current Nascar, many of whom have made statements this season about the phantom cautions, but none as critical as Stewart's. Many drivers just shrugged it off, saying they're in the entertainment business.
Well that's all fine and good if you want to appeal to the same idiots who like pro wrestling, but don't expect me and Steve to continue watching your fixed races or basing FART on your bogus results. And we are not alone. The latest poll numbers I've seen show 95% of fans disapprove of 'entertainment cautions'. If Nascar thinks they are making real race fans happy with artificial close finishes, they have their heads planted firmly up their backsides.
To Tony Stewart we say "Fuck you for letting Nascar cut your balls off." To the drivers who willfully participate in 'entertainment racing' we say "Fuck you, you had no balls to begin with."
And to Nascar we say "Fuck you, fuck your phantom cautions, fuck your scoring loops, fuck your rough driving, fuck your playoff system, fuck your Fox Sports coverage, fuck your right-wing appeal, fuck you, suck my balls, and fuck you."
I skipped watching the Talladega race this week, and I felt so very liberated. Same for Steve. We didn't miss it at all. We only wondered why we didn't quit six years earlier.
And to those who say we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, all we can say is, the baby was floating face down anyway.
Good riddance, Nascar. Your fuel gauge just hit E.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
ABBIE AND SAM
The second week of April is always a bit somber for me. It was 18 years ago on the 12th that Abbie Hoffman died, and 15 years ago on the 10th that Sam Kinison died. Both are heroes of mine. Both are role models to me. (I named my first two 'baby ALFs' after them.) Neither was ever afraid to speak his mind, and neither ever worried about who they'd piss off in doing so. Both passed away too soon.
Abbie was the clown prince of the antiwar movement during Vietnam, helping lead some of the greatest PR stunts of the movement (throwing dollar bills at the NYSE, the exorcism of the Pentagon, etc.), and of course was front and center as one of the Chicago Seven (Eight).
The morning of the day the shit hit the fan in Chicago in August 1968, Abbie was in a restaurant having breakfast when two cops confronted him and demanded that he take off his cowboy hat. He eventually did, revealing the word "FUCK" written on his forehead (a similar incident got me kicked out of Job Corps), was promptly arrested, and spent the rest of the day being bounced between precincts just long enough to keep him away from the Battle of Michigan Avenue.
He delivered two of my favorite courtroom quotes. When on trial for wearing a shirt with an American flag motif (many mistook the shirt as being made from a flag), considered 'desecration of the flag' (though many others had worn similar garb without being tried, proving that Abbie was really on trial for the thoughts in his head), he stood before the judge, the torn shirt lying in view on a table, struck a defiant pose and declared, "Your honor, I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country."
The other was near the end of the Chicago trial, when he quoted Lincoln's inaugural address of 1861: "'When the people shall grow weary of their constitutional right to amend the government, they shall exert their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow that government.' If Abraham Lincoln had given that speech in Lincoln Park, he would be on trial right here in this courtroom because that is an inciteful speech." The quote is as timely as ever today.
As for Sam, he is remembered for many classic bits, but if he could only be remembered for one, it would rightfully be the "Phone Call From Hell". He would call up 2 or 3 guys from the audience, listen to their stories about how some bitch broke their heart, pick a winner, then have a phone brought on stage so he could call her then and there and tell her off Kinison-style. This was a much-needed public service, and I wish I could have enlisted his help, though I was able to do it myself, in a way, at karaoke once using Sam's version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight". (Not to mention my "Jagged Little Parody", in which I spoke my mind and didn't care who I pissed off...Deja vu!)
More inspirational for me, though, was one of his many visits to the Steve Dahl Show. Never mind the mind-blowing show when Slash called from his car, then showed up in the studio to trade veiled drug references with Sam while Steve microwaved Oscar Mayer Zappetites right there in the studio (I labeled the tape "Zappetite For Destruction"). The visit that really stood out for me came just weeks after Sam's younger brother Kevin committed suicide in 1988.
At a time when any other guest or host would have steered clear of such a subject, Sam tackled it head-on with the sickest, darkest, and funniest humor possible. The highlight was when he talked about the wake. He told of standing in front of the casket next to his other brother Bill and their mother. When she said, through her tears, "He was the best...God always takes the best...", Sam and Bill looked at each other, then Sam said "So what are you trying to say, Mom?" Everyone at the wake cracked up. "Give us something to live for, will ya?" He had done his good deed for the day.
I always knew that Type 1 diabetes would someday claim my oldest brother Louie, and upon hearing that show, I immediately knew I would remember it when the inevitable day came. Sure enough, after Louie died in 2000, I kept Sam's example in my memory and maintained my sense of humor through the first huge loss of my life.
I have endured many more trying times in the years since, the senseless killing of my mom at the hands of medical incompetence, the 'Three is a tragic number' incident (no, not Earnhardt's death, though there's that too), my trainwreck of a breakup, being wrongfully fired (supposedly for something I didn't do, but really for being antiwar and atheist...punished for the thoughts in my head, yet more deja vu!), just to name a few, and of course I've had to endure the Bush administration's stupidity and their illegal war. And I have maintained my sense of humor through it all.
And I have Abbie and Sam to thank. Abbie endured an unjust war, Sam endured a tragic loss. Each did so with their sense of humor intact.
My own sense of humor has been my lifejacket, and Abbie and Sam each supplied a generous breath of air to help inflate it.
The second week of April is always a bit somber for me. It was 18 years ago on the 12th that Abbie Hoffman died, and 15 years ago on the 10th that Sam Kinison died. Both are heroes of mine. Both are role models to me. (I named my first two 'baby ALFs' after them.) Neither was ever afraid to speak his mind, and neither ever worried about who they'd piss off in doing so. Both passed away too soon.
Abbie was the clown prince of the antiwar movement during Vietnam, helping lead some of the greatest PR stunts of the movement (throwing dollar bills at the NYSE, the exorcism of the Pentagon, etc.), and of course was front and center as one of the Chicago Seven (Eight).
The morning of the day the shit hit the fan in Chicago in August 1968, Abbie was in a restaurant having breakfast when two cops confronted him and demanded that he take off his cowboy hat. He eventually did, revealing the word "FUCK" written on his forehead (a similar incident got me kicked out of Job Corps), was promptly arrested, and spent the rest of the day being bounced between precincts just long enough to keep him away from the Battle of Michigan Avenue.
He delivered two of my favorite courtroom quotes. When on trial for wearing a shirt with an American flag motif (many mistook the shirt as being made from a flag), considered 'desecration of the flag' (though many others had worn similar garb without being tried, proving that Abbie was really on trial for the thoughts in his head), he stood before the judge, the torn shirt lying in view on a table, struck a defiant pose and declared, "Your honor, I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country."
The other was near the end of the Chicago trial, when he quoted Lincoln's inaugural address of 1861: "'When the people shall grow weary of their constitutional right to amend the government, they shall exert their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow that government.' If Abraham Lincoln had given that speech in Lincoln Park, he would be on trial right here in this courtroom because that is an inciteful speech." The quote is as timely as ever today.
As for Sam, he is remembered for many classic bits, but if he could only be remembered for one, it would rightfully be the "Phone Call From Hell". He would call up 2 or 3 guys from the audience, listen to their stories about how some bitch broke their heart, pick a winner, then have a phone brought on stage so he could call her then and there and tell her off Kinison-style. This was a much-needed public service, and I wish I could have enlisted his help, though I was able to do it myself, in a way, at karaoke once using Sam's version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight". (Not to mention my "Jagged Little Parody", in which I spoke my mind and didn't care who I pissed off...Deja vu!)
More inspirational for me, though, was one of his many visits to the Steve Dahl Show. Never mind the mind-blowing show when Slash called from his car, then showed up in the studio to trade veiled drug references with Sam while Steve microwaved Oscar Mayer Zappetites right there in the studio (I labeled the tape "Zappetite For Destruction"). The visit that really stood out for me came just weeks after Sam's younger brother Kevin committed suicide in 1988.
At a time when any other guest or host would have steered clear of such a subject, Sam tackled it head-on with the sickest, darkest, and funniest humor possible. The highlight was when he talked about the wake. He told of standing in front of the casket next to his other brother Bill and their mother. When she said, through her tears, "He was the best...God always takes the best...", Sam and Bill looked at each other, then Sam said "So what are you trying to say, Mom?" Everyone at the wake cracked up. "Give us something to live for, will ya?" He had done his good deed for the day.
I always knew that Type 1 diabetes would someday claim my oldest brother Louie, and upon hearing that show, I immediately knew I would remember it when the inevitable day came. Sure enough, after Louie died in 2000, I kept Sam's example in my memory and maintained my sense of humor through the first huge loss of my life.
I have endured many more trying times in the years since, the senseless killing of my mom at the hands of medical incompetence, the 'Three is a tragic number' incident (no, not Earnhardt's death, though there's that too), my trainwreck of a breakup, being wrongfully fired (supposedly for something I didn't do, but really for being antiwar and atheist...punished for the thoughts in my head, yet more deja vu!), just to name a few, and of course I've had to endure the Bush administration's stupidity and their illegal war. And I have maintained my sense of humor through it all.
And I have Abbie and Sam to thank. Abbie endured an unjust war, Sam endured a tragic loss. Each did so with their sense of humor intact.
My own sense of humor has been my lifejacket, and Abbie and Sam each supplied a generous breath of air to help inflate it.
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