The Pointless Forest

 

People are usually different than they appear to be. My Mother-in-law told me that even though I was a 'non-believer', she thought I'd make a really good Christian. A co-worker stated in all seriousness that I was the gayest straight man she'd ever known.

In both cases, I took those statements in the same way they were offered - as compliments, with appreciation and gratitude.

I'm a cisgender heterosexual male. I didn't choose that condition... I just am. During early gestation in Mom's belly, I had an equal chance of being male or female, and only a rise in testosterone over estrogen sent me on the path towards maleness. I also had the nascent beginnings of both male and female genitalia, eventually set by the aforementioned rise in testosterone.

During my belly time, Nature could have caused the estrogen hormone to gain traction instead of testosterone, with the result being a female me. Nature could also have very easily created a cocktail of both estrogen and testosterone, shaken (and not stirred) it, thus impacting the formative me and how I would pop outta Mom's oven, irrespective of which set of genitalia would eventually develop.

These are scientific facts. EVERYONE starts out this way.

These scientific facts have nothing to do with ideology or belief. They have nothing to do with who or what my parents were, how I was raised, the books I read in Grade school, or the people I knew and dated in high school and college.

Well-educated people understand that our knowledge of science can be misinterpreted, misunderstood and/or imperfect. During the Dark Ages, scholars proclaimed that humans were solid inside like a potato. Trepanation was used for millennia to resolve all kinds of physical and mental ailments. Modern medicines and vaccines are lifesaving miracles of science but can also have serious, life-altering side effects.

Luckily, we now have an expanded view on the science of life, and for the most part accept the foundational aspects about how and why we are who and what we are. However, there are many among us who can't accept that Nature... like science... is sometimes fickle and imperfect and doesn't always operate within the commonly-accepted parameters.

Science also tells us that sexuality and gender are not the same thing.

It's no one's fault. Science... like Nature... is sometimes fickle and imperfect and doesn't operate within the commonly-accepted parameters.

I highlight these gestational issues because they've been on my mind lately, the result of a national (international?) hysteria over what defines a male or a female, the difference between sexuality and gender, whose definitions are correct or not, and why it doesn't really matter in any substantive way.

The Point (Vinyl LP 1970; Film 1971)

This wonderful animated film, based on the 1970 Harry Nilsson vinyl LP, tells the story of a boy named Oblio living in the mythical Land of Point, where every person is born with a pointed head and everything else has a literal, physical point. Unfortunately, Oblio was born with a round head. He didn't choose that condition... he just was. 

As he grows up, his Mom knits him a pointed cap to help assimilate at school, but it doesn't really help. After winning a game of Triangle Toss against the Son of the evil Count, the Count convinces the King that Oblio's pointlessness violates the law of the land, which states that everyone and everything must have a point. Oblio and his dog Arrow are convicted of breaking the law and banished to the Pointless Forest, where they have a fantastic journey of discovery.

Of course, during his journey Oblio learns that everything in the Pointless Forest actually has a 'point', so he rightfully concludes that he must have one too.

This film had such a profound impact on my young self that immediately after seeing it at the movies with Mom, I begged her to buy me the record, which I still have in my collection. The foundational message about diversity, equality and the inclusion of others (D.E.I!!!) was burned into my mental hard drive, and I believe 'The Point' should be required viewing in every Grade school, because this isn't rocket science. Thanks, Harry.

'The Point' - complete movie

Jazz Hands

I was a Drama geek in high school but was clueless about gay folks. It wasn't until my first year in Junior College (1974) that I had many gay classmates at school and in the Theater Arts Department. My exposure to their reality was, in a word, dramatic.

Neil was a tall gay ginger in Theater Arts, and he was the first 'out' gay person I'd ever met, totally flamboyant and exuberant. I enjoyed his dark sense of humor during convos when we'd all gather in the Green Room. When he learned that I'd been an Indian Dancer in Boy Scouts, he suggested that I take a class in Modern Jazz Dance like he was to strengthen my stage chops. I took his advice and registered for the following semester.

Neil and his partner hosted a house party one Saturday night and invited everyone. At first I was a bit nervous about going to a gay party, but it turned out to be as raucous and fun as any other college party and I danced, drank and laughed a lot. I had a blast... these were my kind of people!

On my first day of dance class, I quickly learned two things. First,  Neil was a semester ahead of me and wouldn't be in the same class, so I was the only guy in a studio full of women! Second, the instructor said I needed to wear a leotard. After much pleading, she agreed to let me wear cutoff sweatpants and a tank-top instead. WHEW!

The stretching and warm-ups at the start of each class were accompanied by the Chi-Lites tune 'Oh Girl', and every time I hear it now, I think of that room of languidly-stretching humans.

Class consisted of instruction and practice on many different dance moves and techniques, but we also worked on a group routine performed to Labelle's 'Lady Marmalade', another tune that time-warps me right back into the dance studio.

Dance class really helped me with stage presence and smooth, sure movement. One night after taking a date to see a play at school, she demanded that I perform my dance class routine in her driveway, which I nailed while lit by the headlights of my Triumph TR4A. Although this all happened a lifetime ago, I'll always be grateful to Neil for convincing me to take the class, which also helped in my later career as an automotive technical training specialist, where I performed over 200 classes, presentations and speeches.

My programs were NEVER boring!

*****************************************************

Dad taught me that everyone is important... that everyone matters, regardless of who or what they are. My Boy Scout experience taught me to treat others with the honesty and respect they deserve, regardless of who or what they are. My life has been filled with all kinds of people, many who were and are part of the LGBTQ+ milieu, and in almost every case I've become a better person for having them in my life. 

Whomever a person chooses to love and/or spend their life with, or how they choose to present themselves to the world are deeply personal decisions, and it shouldn't matter what others think about it. Sadly, in 2023 it's become an issue for some with power and influence who try to mandate and legislate human behavior and interpersonal relationships based on their own narrow-minded vision and beliefs, along with their willfully ignorant confusion about sexuality and gender. 

Don't be like them, because they're as wrong as they can be. It's really not their fault. Humans... like nature and science... are fickle and imperfect and don't always operate within the commonly-accepted parameters of behavior.

"It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first." - Miyamoto Musashi, swordsman and philosopher - 1584-1645

All images, Gracias de Google Images; all videos, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.

Need For Speed

I read something recently that really pissed me off. 

Something that echoed a sentiment I’ve heard most of my adult life.

It was an article (in a non-auto-related online mag) about NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Danica Patrick, who had successfully qualified her car for the Pole Position at the 2013 Daytona 500, the first time a female driver had achieved this lofty perch. The article talked about how important she was in the pantheon of modern sports heroes, how she has become a role model to millions of young girls and women, how her singular efforts were making a huge difference to the sport of motor racing in general, and to NASCAR in particular. During that race she led several laps, ran in the Top 10 the whole time until getting shuffled back on the final lap, placed a very respectable 8^th at the finish and generally kicked some country-fried ass. It was an auspicious start to what has turned into a very sub-par season for her. Racing is HARD.

But it wasn’t the article itself that pissed me off, oh no... it was the comments posted by people who obviously have no knowledge or understanding of motor racing.

They belittled and insulted Danica, and all other race drivers (including 7-time F1 World Champion Michael Schumacher!!), as not being real athletes simply because motor racing is not considered as a ‘true’ sport, and therefore no one who straps on a brain bucket and grabs the steering wheel is qualified to be classified as an ‘athlete’.  "How..." they screeched, "...is Danica, or any other NASCAR driver, sitting in a car and turning left for a few hours, even comparable to the effort it takes to play football or baseball or basketball or hockey or any other traditional stick-and-ball sport?"

And that REALLY pissed me off.

Tiny little Danica, all 100 pounds of her, muscled her 3300-pound car at average lap speeds in excess of 195mph at Daytona FOR OVER 3 HOURS.  The corners are banked at 31 degrees… even the front straight is banked at 18 degrees, and she competed with 42 other racers, each one confounding physics to keep their cars on the asphalt and away from the concrete walls and out of the grassy infield that sucks cars in and spits them out.  Each driver is strapped to their seat by a six-point harness, surrounded by a roll cage, with the engine howling at over 9000 rpm, liquefied tire contact patches barely gripping the track surface, the cars always wanting to shear off and smack the outside wall.  The physical, emotional and mental strength it takes to compete in this type of environment… well, you either understand it or you don’t.

And that’s just oval track racing. Road racing is another animal entirely. Some personal context: 

I’ve been a motor racing fanatic as long as I can remember.  I attended my first drag race at Irwindale Raceway as a Cub Scout in 1965. Dad took my brother and I to Riverside Raceway during the heyday of the Can-Am Series, and we watched the green hankie fly to start the first California 500 at the now-long-gone Ontario Motor Speedway.  As an adult, I’ve been fortunate to attend and/or work races at Long Beach, Perris, Charlotte, Laguna Seca, Sears Point, Talladega, Fontana, Phoenix, Denver, Cleveland, Homestead, Indianapolis, Houston, Buttonwillow, Road Atlanta, Road America, Pomona, Daytona, Las Vegas, Willow Springs, Fort Worth… and those are just the ones where the cars had four tires and wheels. Add in jet skis, snowmobiles, drag boats, motorcycles… well, you get the idea.

I’ve also had the extreme good fortune and pleasure to spend time on-track in a variety of race cars, from mild to wild. Open-wheel formula cars at Sears Point and Willow Springs. Baja Class buggies from Ensenada to San Felipe and back again. Slammed euro-sedans slicing through the turns at Road Atlanta. Innumerable blacktop autocrosses from sea-to-shining sea. Hardcore sprint and shifter karting, both indoor and outdoor, with the track surface whipping by mere inches from my skinny ass.

While I am in no way equating my on-track escapades with the likes of Ms. Patrick or Herr Schumacher, I can tell you with certainty that being an athlete (while extremely important) is only a part of what it takes to drive a race car with any level of skill or competitiveness. I can tell you about how my arm muscles burned and my hips were sore and my legs ached and my knees were bashed and my breathing was labored and my heart pounded out of my chest and my fire suit was drenched with sweat after running a dozen laps around the track at Sears Point in an open-wheel Formula Mitsubishi… and that was only a race driving SCHOOL.

And no matter how difficult or physically demanding any of my driving escapades were, I WAS NOT RACING.  I was just driving, learning, doing, and still got the crap beat outta me, still climbed from the cars with legs of rubber, barely able to catch my breath.  I may be in pretty good shape, but a full day of autocrossing on smooth asphalt would result in my resembling a large bowl of ugly jelly by day’s end.

I know what I’m talking about here.

And so I offer a hearty 'KISS MY SKINNY ASS' to anyone who thinks that driving a race car is not an athletic sport.

For professional racers, multiply my efforts by a factor of 10, plus add in the speed I could never achieve, because I ain’t that fast.

The ability to run flat-out, regardless of the size and/or shape of the track or the speed of the vehicle, gives my brain and body a rush of endorphins that is second only to having sex.  It gives me insight as to why professional racing drivers have the itch, the need, the competitive drive it takes to risk life and limb on track, at speed, helmet on, eyes wide open.
 

While I’ve had many opportunities to strap a bucket on my pointy head and do some serious track time, my current running is limited to indoor go-karting at the K1 Speed facility in Irvine (CA). These are not putt-putt karts like at your local miniature golf facility, oh no.  These are high-tech, 20hp DC-electric 45mph sleds with torque up the wazoo and plenty fast enough to get you in lots of trouble, if that be what yer lookin’ fer. Professional and amateur racers run at this place when they're in town for fun and to keep their chops sharp.  Karting is seminal and brutal, even in K1's sterilized 'retail racing' environment.

Most folks will head to this place to thrash around the course with their friends, bumping each other and sliding around and whooping and all that, not really doing serious laps, just goofing.  Not me. I head there right after work when the place is still empty and the track is clear of what I like to call ‘rolling chicanes’, i.e. typical drivers. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be the only kart on track, and that’s when I can really have at it. I can achieve maximum speed on the relatively short course, finding the fastest line and ripping off one fast lap after another, clipping apexes and sliding along the outside turn siding and hauling ass.  Without other karts to contend with, I get into a zone of lap lap lap lap, hopefully each one faster than the last, until the short minutes have expired and I’m drawn back into the staging lanes.

When I drag my butt out of the kart, I am sweaty and breathing hard and my arms are shaky… and I’m totally ready for another session.  Wait for the next session, chug a bottle of cold water and then jump back into the kart for another round of lap lap lap lap faster faster faster, apex accelerate straight hard turn apex turn apex accelerate lap lap lap.  It becomes a blur, my head is totally clear except for the vision of the upcoming turn and where I need to have the kart on track to hit that next apex just right lap lap lap lap lap lap IN.

The last time I was at K1, my fastest lap was less than ½-second off the standing track record, which accorded me no small amount of satisfaction, being an old fart and all.  During that visit, I did three sessions, one after the other, the second and third being the only kart running.  When I was done, I could barely stand, out of breath, my legs were rubber and my arms were burning and… I WAS IN A STATE OF NIRVANA… and this was only an electric go-kart!!!! I could have run another three sessions if I'd had the dough.

I reckon the point I'm trying to make is this: those who denigrate motor racing as not being a real sport with real athletes should STFU and try it sometime before making ignorant noises with their pie holes.  As I've written before, the science involved in motorsports takes the idea of competition to a whole other level, bridging the gap between the physical and mechanical worlds and offering a unique perspective on how the human mind operates at-speed.

This past October, The Artist and I attended the IndyCar race at Fontana's California Speedway (I refuse to call it Auto Club Speedway) to watch the season-ending event for the series, and it was a barn-burner. We were there for every race between 1997 and 2004, then went back when the series returned to the track last year after a 7-year hiatus. We watched in horror as Greg Moore crashed heavily on the back straight during the 1999 race, watched his crew strip the pit once the race resumed (that NEVER happens), watched the Medivac helicopter liftoff to the local hospital, watched as the flags were all lowered to half-staff while the cars still screamed around the oval. When the race finally ended, the PA announcer told us Greg had died of his injuries, and the grandstands grew quiet while we all silently mourned a fallen champion, a racer, a kindred spirit.

But we were back at Long Beach and Fontana the following year, supporting a sport that we love and cherish, supporting the amazing athletes who choose to compete in such a dangerous thing, plugging in to the highly-electric and eclectic activity that punches our buttons and gives us a visceral joy that nothing else can... except for the aforementioned sexing.

For me, no other professional sport can measure up to motor racing, because unlike football or baseball or basketball or hockey or any of the rest, the race driver commits life and limb to pursue his or her need for speed.  They know the risks, and we fans do too. They know every race holds the chance for the ultimate success or the ultimate loss, and yet... they keep on driving, and we keep on supporting their efforts.

That's why ripping off hot laps at K1 Speed is so intoxicating for me now. I get a whiff of the red mist that racing at 10/10ths pours into the driver's mind and heart and soul... but a whiff is all it takes to make me fight even harder to stitch a good lap together... and then do it again.

Lead image, gracias de worldnewsnetwork7.com; Deep Purple 'Highway Star' video, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.

The Meaning Of Life

“There are some kind of men who are so busy worrying about the next life, they’ve never learned to live in this one.”
–Harper Lee, writer

When I start to think about my life, my existence, my waking consciousness, I get a little weak in the knees. That’s because my view of how all this came to be and what it means is based upon science and knowledge and reality, not religious dogma or superstition or spiritual voodoo. Of course, there are many people who would simply shake their heads and feel sorry for me because I haven’t ‘found God’, their be-all end-all answer to the great questions about The Meaning Of Life.

That being said, I totally understand why so many humans have made the decision to accept their religious teaching of choice, I really do. Life can be so complex, so venal, so cruel… sometimes only the gentle poetry of religious belief will salve a wounded soul, shredded and bleeding from the slings and arrows of daily life. I’ve always understood that our ancestors knew so little of the world they lived in, it was natural for them to create a spiritual context in which they could place themselves at the center, with everything else revolving around them. It’s the curse of being human, using that self-awareness to torture ourselves with.

Let me explain.

I’ve often shared my firmly-held belief that, as modern science (YAY!) has quantified, we humans and our Terran roomies live and die on an astral dust speck in the vastness of the Universe. Heck, it’s not even a dust speck… our Earth is an atom of a molecule of a dust speck that floats among the hundreds of billions of other dust specks that reside in the celestial ‘hood. Our puny little solar system, a galactic sweet spot that allows us to survive and plunder each other, is so spectacularly tiny as to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Are there millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of other molecular dust specks like ours where ‘life’ of some sort also thrives? Of course there are, but we’ll never have the chance to find out since we’ll probably kill each other off before then.

When I think about the amazing fortune that I/you/we have living here, sitting pretty with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, I am gobsmacked to realize how incredibly lucky we are to survive at all. The odds are against us, what with gamma rays and radiation and meteor missles and all the astral nasties that are out there, waiting to bring us to a fiery end. But no… here we are, having sex and shooting each other and poisoning that very life-giving atmosphere, seemingly oblivious to the oblivion that awaits us just outside that skinny little band o’ goodness we breathe. When I think of my existence within that context, I feel giddy and powerful and infinitesimal and obscure and terribly, terribly small.

And yet… we survive, by some weird and wonderful stroke of luck. It is invigorating to ponder how it worked out in our favor, and doing so makes me feel more alive, more grateful, more human than any dogma or doctrine could possibly provide. It makes me laugh out loud when those of the religious persuasion try and place themselves and their deity in the center of that vastness, as if their religious belief can somehow overcome and negate the powerful physical universe. Humans have used that same hubris for thousands of years, and yet they still persist, ignoring science and knowledge and wisdom, all in an effort to confirm their certainty. I say more power to them… but it is a fruitless, pointless task that only we humans waste our energy on. It’s that self-awareness thing again.

Think about our atmosphere… the life-giving, radiation-reflecting, moisture-bearing oxygen ocean that we live in every day of our conscious being. Using that most-excellent scientific method, it has been determined that the thickness of our atmosphere in relation to the size of Earth is the same as the thickness of the skin that covers an apple. Yep… THAT thin. So little is really known about how and why this skinny band of life stays glued to Earth’s surface, it’s a bit humbling to realize how tenuous our lives are, bathed in that apple skin-thin oxygen ocean, breathing in, breathing out.

And that’s just the start of it. The oceans of coalesced water molecules that cover our planet are made up of the same ones that existed at the very beginning of Earth’s transition from a ball of molten rock to a beautiful garden of habitation. Same for the resulting breathable atmosphere, recycled millions of millions (billions?) of times through the gills and lungs and mitochondria of myriad species. All the water and all the oxygen we’ve ever had is what we still have, reused, recycled, restored into the stew of life on which we all thrive. We ain’t getting any more from the black vacuum, that’s for sure. All we have is all we have.



Think about that for a moment. We breathe the same air as the dinosaurs did so very long ago. We sup from the same pool of water that a Brontosaurus peed in while grazing on swamp grass, somewhere on Pangea, perhaps in a vast wetland that we now know as Kansas. This isn’t supposition or theory. We KNOW the dinos existed, we KNOW where they lived, we KNOW what they et. Only those humans who deny an ancient Earth could muster an argument against these facts, and yet… some humans do. I am more than amused at recent attempts of high-viz religious folk who want to twist scientific history to fit their faith.

And so it goes… the chemical merry-go-round that supports our lives on this planet, all with little or no help from us humans, with the notable exception of our insatiable desire to pollute and deforest and deface and deplete. Maybe, just maybe, if more people considered our incredibly finite natural resources and apple skin-thin atmosphere, they’d think differently. But no, we humans don’t like to go there, because it allows our self-awareness to consider our own mortality, and we dinna like that not one bit, NO SIR, NO MA’AM.

For me, it’s different… WAY different. See, I have come to grips with my life, my pending and unavoidable death, and my place in the whole grand Circus Maximus we call civilization. In my world, devoid of religious fables or dogmatic belief, we each have only one life to live, our conscious life. We are borne by other humans, created via the tried-and-true method of sexual procreation, and we live this conscious life until our bodies are no longer able to regenerate skin and bone and infection-fighting white blood cells. When I die, and I surely WILL die, my conscious life ends and… well, that’s the end of my conscious life. There is no ‘afterlife’ to speak of, there is no heavenly paradise awaiting me or anyone else. I be dead and gone, and nothing can or will change that fact. Others might disagree, but they simply cannot prove what their belief systems tell them, because they have ‘faith’ that tells them what to believe. How human, how self-possessed, how self-aggrandizing that is.

However, in my world, the incredible energy that pumped my heart and powered my brain and allowed the wondrous capability for me to actually live… that energy will not be wasted, oh no. That energy, just like all the water and all the air… that energy will be recycled into the amazing ephemeral grid that powers our atmosphere, allowing it to cling to this small Blue Earth with a tenacious grip. My life’s force will be absorbed and reused in some other way that matters not a whit to me, because I’ll be DEAD, because my conscious life will have ended. Mixing with the filtered radiation and sunlight and oxygen and water molecules, that invisible ocean in which we live… that’s where my energy will survive and thrive. I dinna care if it’s used to sustain a human or a tree or a rabid wolverine or (shudder!) a Republican or a patch of kelp floating off the Cali coast. I couldn’t care less how my life’s energy force will be utilized, but I know it will be, and it will not leave this Earth.

We are surrounded and infused by the energy, the life force, the primal motivation of every living thing that has ever lived and died on this Earth. The unseen ocean of atmosphere is chock-full of goody, filling our lungs and eyes and ears and hearts, a steamy and fragrant cocktail that we all sip on, every second of our conscious lives. And when we finally take the dirt nap, we unwillingly donate our energy essence to those we leave behind, those not yet born, to drink deeply from our collective pool of chemical funk. Yum!

Does any of this make you uncomfortable? Have you ever given even the smallest amount of time thinking about this type of spectral philosophy? Does your religion of choice prevent and/or discourage musing on alternate views of birth and death?

I reckon my philosophy could be construed as being based on reincarnation or Buddhist teachings, but I don’t see it that way. This Earth, this planet, this massive object hurtling through space… it is a living thing, and it feeds off of the teeming bacterium of life that covers the land, fills the oceans and spews crap into the atmosphere. We live, we die, we live, we die, we live, we die… and our Terra is the best recycler there is, at least in this tiny corner of the galaxy. It takes all we can give it, and when we have finally dessicated the surface and used up the resources and destroyed the ozone… when the surface of our world can no longer support ‘human’ life (and we haven’t blown it to bits with our self-aware bullshit), it will regenerate another type of life that can and will survive in the crappy environs we’ve left behind.

I rather enjoy the idea of that. Of course, it won't matter to me, because my energy… OUR energy... will power whatever life forms that survive and thrive in the hellscape we self-aware humans created.

Soooo… The Meaning Of Life. I could be trite and say it’s ‘to love one another’ or something insipid like that. Nope, ain’t gonna do it, I want to be honest here. For me, TMOL is simply to live every moment, every second, every day with verve and vigor and purpose and conviction, because no matter what you might think or believe, we only get one shot at a conscious existence. Anything that happens before or after this conscious life is of no consequence, because none of it… NONE OF IT… can be proven or established as fact. Doesn’t matter how grand or banal your life and times may be, the important thing is to derive all the maximum mental, emotional and philosophical joy you can.

Do you dread having to go grocery shopping? Not me… I love to walk the aisles, picking and choosing the items that will make me a happy wolverine come mealtime. Talking with strangers who need help figuring out how to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe. Shagging a cart that some miscreant left in the middle of a handicapped parking space. Checking out the Hot Wheels display, looking for that vintage Corvette Stingray to add to my collection. It is ALL GOOD.

Hate cleaning the bathroom? OMFG… you need to read my last essay titled ‘You’re Soaking In It’ to know how much enjoyment can be had with a sponge and some Comet.

Unhappy with how your life has turned out, even though you've tried to fix it? THEN CHANGE IT. Holy crap, our time is so short on this planet. Change your job, find a new mate, tell your kids to suck off someone else's money teat for a change, move somehwere else... just DO IT. Do what you need to do to make yourself happy, even if it hurts, even if it is hard, even if it costs you everything you own.

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." -- from Mitch Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie'.

You get the picture.

Like the song says, “Love this life… don’t wait until the next one comes.” Breathe in deeply, walk in the rain, grab your honey’s butt just because you can, do a good deed daily. Make every second count, even the ones spent without reason or direction. Wake up in the morning and be glad a meteor didn’t take us all out overnight, that the atmosphere is still so clingy, that the coffee you make doesn’t taste like Stegosaurus pee (or does it?). Our waking and conscious lives are chock-full of amazing and wonderful things to eat/drink/taste/touch/feel/hear/smell… don’t waste a second of it being a typical self-aware humanoid. Be like the birds overhead, the descendants of those peeing dinosaurs, flying and spinning and chirping and jumping and living in the moment, living the life they live, without fear of the unknown. Because in the end, it is all unknown, all undeciphered, all uncontrollable. We are just Bozos on this celestial bus, squeaking each other’s noses as hard as we can.

"Life's journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy Shit... What a ride!" – Mavis Leyrer



TMOL lead image Gracias de sapientology.com; Quicksilver Messenger Service 'Fresh Air' and Crowded House 'Love This Life' videos, Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.

NASCAR Is Not Evil

A great quote often attributed to Ernest Hemingway goes like this: "There are only three true sports – bullfighting, deep-sea fishing, and motor racing. Everything else is just a game."

I am a motorsports fan. I love almost every form of two- and four-wheeled racing, with the notable exception of motocross, which bores me to tears. Road racing is my passion… open-wheel formula and closed-wheel sports cars make my eyes spin just watching them slice from apex to apex, exhaust blasting and dust flying and bits of exotic rubber shredding off at every corner. I’ve been fortunate to spend time at the wheel of many different types of road and race cars during track days, autocrosses, off-road tours and racing driver schools. Driving a race car on-track is third on the list of things I enjoy most during my life’s waking hours.

That’s why I wince whenever another racing fan disparages NASCAR as not being ‘real' racing. It’s a very common feeling among fans who believe their series is far superior than anyone else’s, and nowhere is that divide more pronounced than between the road racers and the oval racers. Think the Farmers and the Cowmen. The Skiers and the Snowboarders. The Hatfields and The McCoys. The Conservatives and the Liberals. You know… a simmering resentment that borders on (and sometimes turns into) open hostility. Thankfully, there are some of us who look at all racing disciplines (including motocross) as a uniquely vibrant symbiosis of man, machine, science, chance and luck.

NASCAR racing, and the premier Sprint Cup Series in particular, is a singular example of that symbiosis… professional racing that has been cooked down to its most brutal and elemental format. There are many people, including hard-core race fans, who don’t seem to grasp the nature of classic oval racing that is central to NASCAR’s existence and popularity. “All they do is go fast in a circle for hours and hours” is the most common criticism of the genre, which is woefully uninformed about the incredible effort it takes to go fast in a circle, sometimes for hours. A bit of understanding goes a long way towards gaining an appreciation for the sport. Let me help.

The most popular lore about NASCAR’s history refers to mid-20th century Southern moonshiners in their souped-up cars outrunning the revenooers while trying to deliver their cargo of White Lightnin'. While this historical episode is absolutely true, the oval racing phenomenon has its roots much, much further back… back to horse races at 19th century American county fairs, to the bareback match races in dusty Arabic town squares, to the chariot races and nascent Olympic stadium foot races in ancient Rome and Greece. Yep, it goes that far back, and the connection is not just passive. Men have competed in the oval format, with and without their mounts, for millennia. It is human nature to test ourselves against each other in a closed-course environment while spectators cheer and drink and gamble and fight and puke and enjoy the spectacle.



A modern top-echelon Sprint Cup racing machine is NOT a 'stock' car, even though NASCAR stands for ‘National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing’. The name harkens back to 1949 when the organization was formed and they really did race cars that were essentially stock or barely modified for competition. In them days, the racers also had guns and knives and fistfights in the pits so the they could handle on-track disagreements, and they were lucky to win enough prize money to pay for their race expenses, especially if a car got wadded-up. These days, like all other mainline professional sports, it’s all about The Benjamins for the mega-bucks multi-car teams with expensive equipment and personnel and rigs and sponsors that demand free tickets and team clothing and fresh flowers on each hospitality center table while they dine on gourmet food.

Today’s Sprint Cup race car is a purpose-built, handcrafted, tube-framed, metal-clad, mega-horsepowered speed device that owes its existence to science, technology, human endeavor and sheer madness. The cars are an exercise in building a machine to stringent technical specifications which allows them to reach speeds in excess of 200mph while competing with 42 other cars on the track at the same time. Depending on which track they're at, their engines can produce as much as 800 horsepower. Their eggshell-thin sheet metal bodies are formed and tweaked and massaged to reduce drag, increase downforce and promote aerodynamic efficiency. The chassis is fabricated from thick-wall metal tubing that can withstand a crash where an impact can measure to 100 times the power of gravity, or 100G’s, all while protecting the flesh/blood/bone driver strapped inside.

Once the cars are inspected to ensure they meet the technical and safety specifications, the driver proceeds to lap the track as fast as the laws of physics will allow. The science involved is the part that has me so enamored with racing in general. Combustion. Torque. Friction. Gravity. Geometry. Inertia. Momentum. Aerodynamics. Thrust. Thermal expansion. Deterioration. Turbulence. Calculus. Metallurgy. Chemistry. The mind reels at the complexity involved in order to ‘go fast in a circle, sometimes for hours’. My years working in the performance tire industry taught me about how tenuous the connection is between the tire and track surface at the limits of adhesion. The tire tread surface literally melts when it contacts the ground at speed, morphing into a gooey patch that just barely maintains friction, keeping the car moving forward but almost losing the safety of friction-based traction. SCIENCE, BABY.



Another distinction of the Sprint Cup Series: these are endurance races, as opposed to a shorter ‘sprint’ races. Most of the oval races are 400 or 500 miles long, with a 600-miler run at Charlotte (NC) each year on Memorial Day weekend. The smaller ovals usually run lap counts as opposed to miles due to their slower average lap speeds (100mph is slow?), but the challenges are no less daunting. This format is unique to NASCAR, as the US-based open-wheel and sports car series run only a few high-mileage endurance events each year.

The endurance nature of the NASCAR events are where the real racing challenge happens. Visualize this: 43 cars and their teams have qualified for a race, and they all compete at maximum speed on the track at the same time, requiring multiple pit-stops for new tires and fuel… FOR 500 MILES. Each lap is another opportunity to mess up and crash or get spun out. Each pit stop is another opportunity to get it wrong, drop the car off the jacks before the tires have been mounted, stop in the wrong pit (yes, it happens), drive into or out of the pits too fast, run over a tire or air hose or some other infraction and incur a penalty. And always... always, there is the chance for mechanical failure. There are myriad ways a race can go into the dumper, and it all happens while the race is progressing at high speed.

The ever-present danger that accompanies NASCAR competition brings with it an edge that fans and spectators are hesitant to admit is like a narcotic. While it’s been almost a decade since the last spate of crash-related deaths in the series, the chance for a horrific accident is always there, waiting to snatch the life of an unlucky driver while everyone watches. Having witnessed life-ending race crashes in person, I can speak from personal experience – it changes you.

Remember the comparison I made earlier to the chariot races in Rome? Modern technology has made the racing vastly safer than even 10 years ago, but like Steve McQueen’s character, race driver Michael Delaney, said in the classic movie ‘Le Mans’: “Auto racing is a professional blood sport. It can happen to you. Then it can happen again” When asked why men race and risk death, he responds, “Racing is important to men who do it well. Racing is life. Everything before and after… is just waiting.”





On the negative side of the typical NASCAR Sprint Cup extravaganza, there is a real over-the-top true-blue American carnival atmosphere to the events, and the entertainment aspect has begun to make it seem just a wee-bit saccharine, a tad contrived, a little overly-patriotic. Most of the drivers now have to be clean-cut corporate shills, always remembering to name-check their sponsors while on camera, have cookie-cutter cute blonde wives, love God and country and bow their heads in prayer during the pre-race invocation. Gone are the rough-and-tumble types that built the sport from a strictly regional series. The sanctioning body also has a reputation for meddling with qualifying results and making questionable calls during the races. Yes, sometimes the races can be boring if one team hits the right set-up and runs away from the field, stinking up the joint. All that is true, but overall, it's still the real deal.

The TV broadcasts are another matter. Sometimes the commercialism involved with the sport can be overbearing, with sponsor logos on absolutely everything. In fact, there are times that the racing action is limited to only half of the screen, with the rest taken over by the running order scroll, banner ads, several screen 'bugs' and at least three different sponsor logos. A recent development has the race in a small screen portal with no sound while the commercials are rolling, mostly ads with the drivers hawking everything from auto parts to furniture rental to boner pills. Sometimes we'll record the race and watch it later that day or the next, speeding through the commercials and turning a 3-1/2 hour broadcast into a much more viewable 2 hours. I'm not the type to go bonkers if I find out who won before I watch the damned thing... at least not all the time.

As I write this essay, the 2011 Daytona 500 is only hours away and, thanks to a newly-repaved track surface, race official's meddling and last-minute changes to the cars, it seems as if there will be a very odd type of race, where two cars can 'pair-up' nose-to-tail and run almost 10mph faster than the field. The practice and warm-up races have yielded an unfortunate race strategy, so it remains to be seen what will happen on Race Day. Oh, I'll watch it all right, even though I have a sinking feeling the race will wind up with a bunch of paired-up cars drafting around the track, all keeping their distance from each other so they can make it to the last few laps and then shoot it out for the Checkered Flag.

That's what happens sometimes. I've also seen boring football and baseball games, but methinks even if the Daytona 500 is less than stellar, the next race will see the competition get back to normal.

NASCAR racing is not evil, is not dumb, does not ask the fan to think too hard, but offers limitless opportunities to revel in the classic American sport of stock car racing. Yes, they race at high speed in a circle for hours, but when you have a better understanding of the challenges involved, it creates a drama and excitement that few other sports can equal. Make it a point to give NASCAR racing some of your valuable time, and remember the incredible amount of science involved, the sheer courage required, the risk of death and the reward of finishing First. It might... just... snare you. You're welcome!

UPDATE: As I suspected, the 2011 Daytona 500 turned into a race dominated by two-car drafting pairs, which were able to lap faster than individual cars or an entire pack of them. The drivers were allowed to communicate with each other via their on-board radios so they could set up their strategic pairings while whizzing along at 195mph. Although I was disappointed at this turn of events, the race was really exciting and yielded a surprise winner: 20 year-old Trevor Bahne, racing in only his second Sprint Cup race. Driving the Wood Brothers #21 Ford, Trevor was fast all day, drafted like a champ and held off several veterans to capture NASCAR's crown jewel. It was the first win in 10 years for the Wood Brothers team, who last won the 500 in 1979.

I am not a fan of this new type of 'drafting pair' speedway racing, yet I know it will happen again the next time they visit Daytona in July and during both upcoming races at my beloved Talladega (boo hoo). I reckon I'm old skool in many ways. I figger that every car is out there to beat every other car. When drivers can work together to gain an advantage, whether they're on the same team or not, well... that just doesn't seem to be in the spirit of ANY type of motor racing. The reviews on the race were mixed. I dinna like it. Oh well... that's racing!

'Thunder Road' trailer, Michael Waltrip In-Car Camera clip, 'Ben Hur' clip and 'Daytona 2009 Finish' clip all MUCHISMAS GRACIAS de youtube.com. Talladega image courtesy of markjbelis.com.

My Response To A Facebook Friend Who Claims That No Good Can Exist Without The Grace of God And The Bible

Cool... that is why your faith gives you strength and support, and if that works for you, more's the better. If you believe there is no good in your life without reliance on your spiritual master and benefactor, then you have your guidebook. There are billions around the world that might differ on which guidebook is the right one, but that's a quibble, yes?

I am not a wretch, am not lost, am not blind, don't want or need a guidebook, and revel in the wonderful, exasperating insanity that is our waking existence. I live a very good life, thankyouverymuch. It's not perfect, but then if it was, how boring would that be? No rollercoaster means vanilla, every day, all the time. I like chocolate and strawberry, too! And it melts! And sometimes it drips on your new shirt!

I see the beauty of the natural world in all its complexity, and I know in my very center that this is the only life I will live in a conscious state. I breathe in and out with my internal gills, accept the dimensional illusion of light receptors in my eyes as the 'real' world, and wake up every day with the knowledge that the electrical impulses that power my heart and lungs and bloodstream will keep me moving as long as they are able. Once that ability fails, my time will be over and done with. My energy center will be absorbed into the vast power generator that is our small Blue planet, to be re-used in some other way.

We exist in a vacuum, floating in space, protected by a micro-thin layer of atmosphere that is akin to the skin on an apple. We have all the water, all the oxygen, all the CO2 and nitrogen that there ever was or ever will be. We breathe the same cocktail that the dinosaurs did, albeit a bit more, shall we say, chemically enhanced? To me, that is one of the most amazing aspects of life right now... and the new dinosaurs are the birds that fly around us and we burn their ancient remains so we can drive to fetch a double latte' and buy a new shirt because we ruined the other one with melted ice cream.

Honestly, when I consider your worldview, it gives me even more to ponder. It allows me to chew the cud that is thoughtful analysis of why my feet stick to the ground, why the very sight of my wife's smiling face gives me butterflies and the knowledge that someday soon, I will have a track day car with which I will indulge my need to drive as many fast laps as I can, over and over and over again, until my helmet pops off my bald head from pure, unadulterated bliss. And I will have the dinosaurs to thanks for that.

Oh my gosh... our life is a wonderful, mad, horrifying, fantastic rip in the vast time-space continuum. And we each seek out that which helps us to make sense of it. We are so lucky to have the chance to choose how we live it, and I am eternally grateful to have people like you and my wife and all the other humanoids I like to share the ride with. Like some sage once said, 'We are all just Bozos on this bus.'