Junior's Jump

I haven't looked very hard, so I'm sure there's been commentary about Dale Jr.'s move to Hendricks Motorsports that's less convincing than this piece by Matt Crossman, but, I have to say, I think he's trying to make a controversy were none need exist. I understand why: an opinion piece that suggested that things will probably turn out just fine might be a little boring. However, some of Matt's points are just plain wrong. For instance, he writes that:

All the best drivers are obsessed with success and winning. Put too many guys like that together, and they inevitably will butt heads. And by too many I mean more than one.
At some point in the near future, Rick Hendrick will have to deal with the fallout. And even the deftest touch won't solve this issue.
A lot of analysts look to other sports, so let's go there. The closest comparison is Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter being teammates with the Yankees. There was tension immediately surrounding who would play short and who would play third. Their tenure as teammates has not been successful.

But as my Yankee-fan friend Nick pointed out in an e-mail to me: "A-ROD won an MVP playing with Jeter and Jeter almost won one last year. They're both playing great this year...the Yankees have finished 1st each of their seasons together. How is that not successful?"

Another point against Matt is that the #5 team is already a strong team. They aren't going to need to pull resources away from the #48 team in order to get up to speed. This is why it makes sense to me that they'd put Junior in the #5 car and not the #25 car, even though Casey Mears seems to me to be the weakest link among the Hendricks drivers.

Now, if Dale Jr. wasn't Dale Jr. - that is if he was just a driver with 17 wins over tktk years, with no championships, who has had to struggle to make it into the Chase - then maybe I'd question trading away Kyle Busch. After all, Kyle has been pretty strong this season and it seems like all he needs is a little mentorship and a little growing up before he'll be a genuine championship contender.

On the other hand, I can see how replacing a hot-head like him with someone like Dale Jr. - who's a pretty steady and stable (not to mention humble) guy on the track - might be a really good thing.

But since Dale Jr. is Dale Jr., this is really a no-brainer.

My favorite part: I want to see all of the Jr.-lovin'-Gordon-haters' heads explode when they're no longer able to talk shit about Hendricks.

Jeff Gordon

Of course Dale Earnhardt fans were going to jeer at Jeff Gordon when he surpassed their hero's place on NASCAR's all-time win list. Did anyone who has actually been to a race recently really expect different behavior?

Not that it isn't understandable:

Jeff Gordon vs. The Intimidator was a genuine rivalry: two of the sport's greatest drivers battling week-after-week for the win, year-after-year for the championship. But after his death, Dale Sr.'s fans have shifted allegiance to his son, who, while by no means a bad driver, hasn't done anything to suggest he's anywhere near Gordon's class. The amount of fan support for Dale Jr. leads to a kind of weird imbalance: he's more popular than any other driver, even the (at least) half-dozen or so who are better than him. So, instead of getting to cheer his wins, his many fans are left watching Hendrick drivers dominate Sunday-after-Sunday and Gordon surpass his late rival's record. Take this resentment and frustration, add in a day's worth of Budweiser, and voila: booing, littering, and generally throwing a tantrum.

I have to admit: when I first got into NASCAR, I didn't want to like Jeff Gordon. He seemed too clean-cut, plus he won all the time, and it's always more fun to root for the underdog. But the more I watched him race, the more respect I had for him because, well, he won all the time. Gordon is just too good a driver, too strong a competitor to dismiss. Plus, while it may be exciting to root for the underdog, it is also exciting to watch someone who is the best at what he does do his thing.

My Jeff Gordon theory is that he'll eventually be seen as the last of the old school drivers - his big rivalries were with Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace, and Dale Sr. - and the first of the new generation of drivers - he's not from the South, has a corporate-friendly image, has had great success while still very young.

Talladega

My fiance is not so much into watching NASCAR races on TV, so it's rare that I get to see both the Busch Series race and the Cup Series race like I did this weekend.

I enjoyed the Cup race enough: yes, it is always a pain to have a finish under the yellow flag, but NASCAR seems to have done all they can to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The hardest racing is going to take place during the final laps, which translates into a bigger risk of someone wrecking. During the restart with 23 laps to go I predicted there would be three more caution flags: I was right, although the last one ended the race.

But the ending of the Busch race more than made up for a somewhat disappointing Cup finish. I've always wondered why the second place cars in restrictor plate races haven't tried harder to make last lap passes. Well, I mean, I know one reason why they don't try for these passes: a near-certain second place finish is too tempting to give up, when the consequences of getting hung out to dry might be getting passed by four or five cars. I guess what I mean is that despite this risk, I'm always a little surprised more drivers don't go for it. But after seeing Bobby Labonte pull it off, I think the reason we don't see it is because unless you're a really experienced driver, you'll have no chance. Labonte's move around Tony Stewart coming off of Turn 4 was one of the greatest moves I've seen in a restrictor plate race.

On a personal response note: for years, I haven't been able to watch a restrictor plate race without feeling physically uncomfortable waiting for the inevitable crashes. Maybe I'm jaded or desensitized or maybe the racing is just better, because I was able to enjoy these without worrying.

Movie Chat: Talladega Nights

Talladega Nights

I considered not writing about this movie, but I realized that was because I'm not very good at writing about comedies (which is ironic, in a way, since I wrote my thesis on "comedy", but that's a little different). But this is just a blog, so why not practice?

I didn't like this as much as I liked Anchorman, which I thought had a unique vibe for a big dumb comedy. Anchorman seemed loose and quirky with the best gags coming out of left field.
Talladega was funny enough, but the only thing that really got me laughing (as opposed to chuckling or snickering) was the "Baby Jesus" routine. I liked the cast, for the most part, but I thought Sacha Baron Cohen's entire role was misconceived.

And I suppose it is unfair to criticize a big dumb comedy on the merits of how well it deals with its subject matter, but I think it misses out by centering on a feud between a redneck and a Frenchman rather than dealing with a conflict actually drawn from the NASCAR world - like rednecks vs. those mid-western and west coast pretty boys that advertisers and sponsors love so much (Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, for example). Maybe that would have been too much like Days of Thunder, though.

I've never done this before. Really...

I've never done this kind of post before, but I thought it might be fun (i.e., requiring a lot less effort than my last post). Here are a couple of recent searches that brought people to my blog. Since I doubt that what they found here was all that useful to them, I will do my best to help them out:

kill bill feminist: To sum up: my take is that Kill Bill is a pseudo-feminist movie, or, rather, its "empowered" heroine is really a 14-year-old male geek's fantasy.

difference between CART and Indy cars: Well, I am a bad racing pundit, because I don't know any of the specific technical differences between Champ Cars (CART is now the Champ Car World Series) and Indy Cars. However, from a more-or-less ignorant fan perspective, the main difference is that Champ Cars have something like those Turbo Buttons in racing arcade games: each car has a limited amount of "extra horsepower" that they can activate by pushing the Power-to-Pass button. This means that Champ cars can actually pass each other on road and street courses AND it adds a whole new level of tactical and strategic considerations to the racing.

indy versus nascar: In terms of money and audience, there's no contest. NASCAR is the champ and the Indy Racing League is the chump. The big bucks flowing into NASCAR has made it the place for the best American race car drivers. However, in terms of sheer racin' excitement, those open-wheel whackadoodles often have the stock car boys beat. This is partly because, it is harder for stock cars to race side-by-side on those popular 1.5-mile ovals than it is for Indy Cars, which, because of their smaller size and greater manuverability, are able to dogfight, lap after lap.

"highest grossing sports movies": The highest grossing sports movies are dumb, raunchy comedies, like The Waterboy, even though dumb, uplifting, sappy melodramas like Seabiscuit give them a run for their money.

all about wener dogs: I am a sloppy editor and this guy is a bad speller, as this took him (or her) to a post of mine where I reference "Wener Herzog". Sorry: The Forager Blog has no opinion on weiner dogs (i.e., dachshunds). Try here.

blog my girlfriend: For any and all visitors from Spain: my girlfriend's blog is here.

calvin and hobbs comics on achievement: Try the storyline involving the time machine, which ends with Calvin getting an "A" on his writing assignment. The lesson: he achieves the most when he is allowed to express his creativity.

rob zombies movies: I kind of liked Rob Zombie's first movie. The Devil's Rejects on the other hand is just about the most awful and unpleasant movie I've ever seen ("just about" brought to you by 8mm).

I hope all the folks who stumble onto this blog looking for answers to these or other important questions eventually find what they are looking for.