The Weekend Starts on Wednesday

I Am A Superstar

2011-12-09T13:01:00.001-08:00

Until the accident, a late-December respite in Vermont was the much-needed so-called battery charge for our family.

One particular ski trip was my chance to move beyond “intermediate” skiing. Out on the slopes, the sun was disappearing behind the formidable mountain. Closing out day one, I’d have four more to distinguish myself and improve my technique.

For the proverbial Last Run of the Day, Viviane and I come across a black diamond called “Superstar.” Just seeing that name gets my adrenaline pumping: strong and confident notions of red, white and blue achievement, Superman, Wonder Woman, Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps in their USA Speedos. If my run were televised, Jim McKay would be in a canary yellow blazer describing it.

Viviane is smooth and light on her skis. She describes my style as Jean-Claude Killy on the green bunny runs and Jerry Lewis on the blacks.

Today, Jerry is a no show. I haven’t gone down once. The legs feel good. It’s time to master the elements, blast past the fat part of the bell curve and enter the rarified realm of the expert skier. I am a super star.

I point a pole to the beckoning trail sign. Viviane nods, and a bad idea builds momentum with the trail’s steep decline and wind-blown moguls. (Are the scary bumps called “moguls,” because they mimic Donald Trump’s hair?)

My wife is out in front, finding her way down the difficult slope. I gather too much speed and try to cut back in a groove between slick moguls, a move that would have looked good on the chalkboard. Too bad we’re not in a classroom but sliding down an iceberg. My skis hit a rut and pull to the side. My top heavy body surges in the other direction as if launched from a circus cannon. Except my arms aren’t stoic at my sides. This is a flailing, out-of-control, agony-of-defeat cartwheel.

NASCAR drivers see crashes happening in slow motion. Wayne Gretzky once explained when he scored a goal, time slowed, and the puck appeared the size of a pizza pie, the goal as wide as the Hoover Dam. None of that here. It’s an instantaneous, oh-snap blur, white canvas screaming toward my face. Greg Louganis couldn’t have hit the surface at a more precise 90-degree angle. It sounds like chomping a mouthful of Cap’n Crunch. I bounce like a Super Ball. On the second revolution, my head smacks the rock-hard mountain like a bowling ball dropped from a roof. Finally, silence.

It is a sad reflection of our You Tube culture that laying there, thankfully breathing (albeit stunned) and reassured my skull was not split like a rotten pumpkin, I wonder if anyone on the chair lift captured my spastic circus-act flop. Please tell me no one camera-phoned this. I’m destined to be an internet laughing stock. Without royalties.

There are no cameras or giggling. I’m alone, in one piece.

This can’t be that bad. The morning papers said a Manhattan window washer survived a 47-story fall. All my digits are moving. But as the commercial says, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.

That initial crunch wasn’t the give of snow. It something in my shoulder breaking.

My wife kept her wits and balance, which kind of describes our marriage, and had pulled to a stop below. The grade is too steep for her to come up. All is OK, no worries, I reassure her with a sprightly lefty Super Star-like thumbs up, confidently gesturing like a downed lineman pinned to the stretcher as he's carted off the field to the crowd's roar of sympathetic approval and relief the game will again resume. Yet I do not feel confident and am rather worried. The covenant of marriage allows making claims to your life partner that you do not believe. She tells passing skiers following her gaze up the mountain, “Oh, he’s fine. He’s just catching his breath.”

All I can do is flash a dumb smile and that thumbs-up with the arm I can move.

“Baby, just put your skis on and ski on down!” she urges.

Maybe an expert skier could do that. I’m an eternal intermediate, forever checking that middle box on the rental line, a reckless overachiever who flirted with bragging rights for super-stardom beyond his proficiency and paid the price. The run couldn’t have been named “Devil’s Emergency Room” to scare me away? I try to stand, but the shoulder is shot. I slide on my bottom across the slippery surface, faster and faster down the steep hill. This is not going to end well. I dig boot heels into the ice, and lurch to a stop.

The mountain is quiet, save my gasping. I lean on my good shoulder and crawl, inches at a time, across the mountain, toward the woods. Isn’t that where animals go to die?

Someone, it’s a ski instructor, is waving his poles and shouting down from the lift. “Do you need me to radio for help?”

Up there, I’ve looked down at the meek humiliation of the daring and the clumsy, those unfortunate injured skiers who are strapped in and carted away on the Red Cross sled. Yeah, call it in. Now I’ll know how it feels to be present for your own funeral procession. Like driving a stock car at the track in Charlotte, which had different ending of hearty slaps on the back and a framed photo on fake marble, I’ll check off another bucket-list experience.

Viviane says they closed Superstar after my crash. Too treacherous; an out-of-control intermediate from the city was nearly killed. My fast-fading manhood is revived. Yes, it was the ferocious mountain, not me. Mother Nature won today’s battle, the war is mine. I am a superstar…until I find out Viviane was conjuring a well-meaning fib, something a married woman says with noble intentions but nary a shred of truth.

The doctor examining me says he’ll take x-rays but it looks like a broken collar bone. “What do you do for a living?” he asks, sounding not that interested.

“I’m with NASCAR,” I tell him. He smiles, makes eye contact for the first time, and asks if Jimmie Johnson is going to win a third championship.

In the mirror, I basically have no right shoulder. The disappearance of a frequently used body part is sickening. My arm is dangling low like an ape’s, the shoulder having apparently said, hasta la vista. The surrounding skin is already yellowish green. I want to puke.

“This looks pretty bad. Do I need surgery?”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I want to know this. Earnhardt moving to Hendrick: is that going to change the competitive balance in the sport? I mean, Dale Jr., Gordon, Johnson – that’s like a Murderers Row or the Purple People eaters. What a lineup! They’re gonna dominate!”

I’m in starting to shiver, slipping into shock maybe. The dull pain is starting to spread to my chest. I’m wondering if they’ll screw rods into my body like some of the drivers I’ve talked to, or if I’ll be limping around like the Hunchback of NASCAR in New York.

“Do I have to stay in the hospital?” I ask.

“We’ll fix you up here, and you’ll be out in just a few. There’s quite a separation in the bone break. You must have hit pretty hard. Hey, I’ve seen some hard hits in NASCAR this year. I couldn’t believe Gordon walked away from that lick in Pocono. How about those HANS devices and new softer walls? They’re really making NASCAR much safer.”

“This hurts a lot. How long will the pain last?”

“Oh, it’s like any bone break,” the doctor says. “We’ll give you some strong medication. Did you know Dale Senior broke his collarbone at Talladega, the car just flipping like crazy, and then he drove the next week with that broken collarbone?”

“Yes, he actually won the pole and the race. Watkins Glen. Road course. Toughest course to drive, I’d imagine, with a painful injury like that. Doctor, I’m on the first day of a five-day vacation. Do I have to go home? We can get back to New York in about five hours.”

“It’s up to you. Frankly, you’ll at first be uncomfortable wherever you are. You can stay in the lodge. Hey, speaking of New York, that track NASCAR was building is not going to happen?”

This dance goes on until the doc gives me a sling and bottle of horse pills. He tells me to see an orthopedic surgeon back in New York. “I’d bet that doctor will want to operate. If I were you, I’d avoid surgery. You could place one end of your collar bone on one side of the room, and the other end on the other side, and the bones will find each other. The collar bone is a truly amazing thing. You should be OK in a few months.”

He was right. I got better. (The collarbone can find anything; too bad it couldn't go work for the goverment and find Amelia Earhardt.)

I was in tip-top shape but then gruesomely rolled an ankle at Texas Motor Speedway. What used to be a jutting ankle bone at the bottom of my skinny chicken leg soon resembled the kind of plump tomato my grandmother would have proudly thrown in the pot for Sunday’s sauce. You hit 40, and you become spastic. Your body grows hair in odd places and progressively falls apart. TV commercials offer electronic devices to alert the authorities when you become incapacitated.

I can accept that. Harder to deal with is how I’d viewed those who get hurt on business trips as losers. I’m in that club, too. Not exactly on the bucket list.

Each NASCAR track has a well-staffed mini-hospital in the infield. It’s meant for drivers, not clumsy, aging, accident-prone PR people. I hobble to the Infield Care Center for an ace bandage and a tape job. I’m hosting media, will be on the ankle all day, and need to stabilize it. The Speedway doctor won’t tape me without taking x-rays. Sure enough, the tip of the fibia is broken.

The doc shows the film – a chunk the shape of India floating beneath the shin bone. The kind, gentle and efficient folks in the Infield Care Center strap on a metal boot, hand me crutches, and suggest I see an orthopedic specialist back home.

“I know,” I say. “I bet they’ll want to operate.”

The busted ankle brings out the best in service companies. Avis fetches my car at the hotel, no charge. Continental bumps me to first class with curb-to-gate wheelchair service. I make a mental note to fake an injury before a future trip. In light of recent events, pretending won’t be necessary.

I return to New York to see another doctor. You can guess what happens when he hears I was hurt at a NASCAR race. The orthopedic surgeon at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village secretly wishes he were Tony Stewart’s jack man:

Clumsy PR Guy: So, it’s broken. Bummer. But there’s no ligament damage, right?

Doctor: No, none. What amazes me is how fast those drivers go when they are so close to one another. Extraordinary, isn’t it.

Clumsy PR Guy: What about the tendons?

Doctor: The tendons are fine. You don’t have to worry about that. They say it’s the roar of the cars and the whole massive feel of it. You go to a race, and you are just blown away and hooked.

Clumsy PR Guy: I have been elevating the leg and keeping ice on the ankle. How long should I do that?

Doctor: As long as needed. I hear NASCAR is still looking at building a track in the New York area. Jersey? Near the Meadowlands? Out on the Island? No, no, Staten Island. Yes, that’s it. Is it true? That would be great. That sport really needs to be here in New York.

Clumsy PR Guy: Unfortunately, there’s not enough political support, and that’s not gonna work out. Listen, getting back to me and the ankle, I imagine there’s some sort of physical therapy ahead?

Doctor: You will absolutely need rehab. We can make a recommendation – plenty of good places. It really seems to be a sport that has caught on like wildfire. I have a friend at ABC, who was a big skeptic but is now completely sold on it. They show your races, right?

Clumsy PR Guy: Yes, ABC is a partner, and NASCAR is very popular. I sit at a computer all day. My main exercise is hitting the send button on email. So I like to run at night. When will I be jogging again?

Doctor: Should be a few months. Just between you and me, it gets pretty wild at some of those tracks, huh? What’s it like?

Clumsy PR Guy: It’s fun. The fans are a panic. I writing a book on them. There’s a fan who took the NASCAR flag to the top of Mt. Everest. Another guy walks around at the track naked except for a Goodyear tire and Tom Sawyer straw hat. Come to think of it, he walks a lot, and I’ll be walking a lot. I can do that with the cast you’ll give me? No crutches?

Doctor: Yes, of course. I don’t understand Staten Island. Why didn’t they just didn’t go buy the land at Grumman airport out on the Island? It’s totally available.

This is a top ankle and knee guy in New York magazine’s list of the city’s best doctors. He’s in demand and hard to reach. I was able to see him instantly. You see, his assistant is a Sprint phone-carrying NASCAR fan. She saw “NASCAR” on my email requesting an appointment. I was promptly slotted in. Getting my first preference for follow up appointments was a snap. I just had to answer a few questions about what Dale Jr. was like, and does he really have a girlfriend?

Who says they don't love NASCAR in New York?

For more stories like these, Andrew Giangola’s critically acclaimed book, THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY, is available online and wherever fine books (and some crappy ones) are sold.

The Other Side of Smoke

2011-11-20T18:22:00.000-08:00

When little Spencer Roy was 6, he wanted a tattoo. Not one of those temporary Cracker Jack ones. No, he asked for a real tattoo – needles in flesh. A Tony Stewart tattoo.

That was, of course, out of the question. There are laws. But the boy’s mom, Stephanie, had an idea. She watched every NASCAR race at home with Spencer, and Tony was her driver, too. Mother and son named their cat, “Tony Stewart.” The family’s pet fish is “Tony Stewart.” Step out of their shower, and your wet feet meet a Tony Stewart bath mat. You don’t have to be a mentalist to guess Stephanie’s computer password. Then there are the Tony Stewart cars and cups and flags and stickers throughout the house.

Considering the various and sundry ways the Tony Stewart name infests the Roy’s home, the idea of branding a family member’s skin “Tony Stewart” wasn’t so outlandish. Maybe Stephanie, as an agent representing the Roy clan, would get the tattoo.

A race was coming up a Martinsville, Virginia, Stephanie’s home track. The Roanoke mom knew Tony would be doing an autograph session in the Salem Civic Center. She showed up, inched to the front of the line, and offered her bicep. This wasn’t the first time Stewart had been asked to sign a body part. He laid pen to flesh with big, confident strokes – a John Hancock with verve and flourish, the kind of assuredly bold signature you’d expect from a driver Stephanie and Spencer love because “he will move your butt out of the way or put you into the wall if he has to.”

Stephanie found a phone book and a tattoo parlor. For forty bucks and a little bit of sting she could again show how far she’d go for the boy suffering a serious heart condition who she loves so much. It took about 20 minutes to make Tony’s signature permanent. Stephanie had to keep hitting the brakes she was driving so fast to get home. Little Spencer was just tickled pink. To this day, he’ll gleefully lift his mom’s shirt sleeve to show total strangers the tattoo of the only driver in NASCAR who matters.

Six years later at Richmond International Speedway, courtesy of “Make A Wish,” a wonderful organization helping children with life-threatening medical conditions, Spencer got his chance to meet the driver on his mother’s arm.

Tony Stewart met Spencer and Stephanie Roy at his motor coach in the drivers and owners lot before September’s Chevy Rock and Roll 400 race. Stephanie came prepared with orange fingernails with jet black tips and the number “20” etched on. Stewart showed up wearing his orange fire suit and a big smile. He greeted Spencer with a fist bump and began to treat the boy like a long-lost friend.

Spencer flipped his program open to Tony’s page, pointing to his man.

“Who’s that goofy guy?” Tony asked. “You picked the ugliest guy in the whole book!”

Spencer laughed and turned to another photo of Tony.

“You’re laughing, but I don’t get better looking in any of these photos, do I?” he asked. “No wonder I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Stewart spent 15 minutes making Spencer crack up while signing a heap of paraphernalia handed over with assembly-line precision by his PR man Mike Arning.

Bad weather was headed for Virginia as tropical storm Hannah moved in. The 37-year-old two time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion did a rain dance jig, attempting to ward off the precipitation so Spencer Roy would be able to see his first NASCAR race. Stewart promised the boy if he won the race, and he had every intention of doing so, he’d climb the fence at Richmond just for him. Together, they’d celebrate in Victory Lane.

A hospitality tour was waiting. Stewart’s PR man motioned to the group, reminding the driver of obligations backing up. Stewart said goodbye to Spencer, then found a way to kick start a conversation he didn’t want to end. The cycle of attempted goodbyes followed by more joking repeated itself a few times. Finally, after a series of high-fives, it was time to go.

“Remember: after the race, Victory Lane,” Stewart said as he walked away.

Spencer and Stephanie had seats directly in front of the No. 20 pit stall. Spencer was physically in Virginia but more accurately in heaven, throwing up his hand every time Tony’s race car flew went by.

The boy had been a NASCAR fan almost his entire life, and only had two drivers. First was Ernie Ervan, known to some as “Swervin’ Ervan, the driver of Philip and Georgia Gregware, who lived above the Roys and took care of Spencer for several years when Stephanie worked weekends. Phil’s nickname was “Curly,” but before Spencer could talk, he couldn’t say that. He just called Phil “Ernie.”

When the real Ernie retired from NASCAR in 1999, Spencer immediately switched allegiances to Tony Stewart. The boy’s medical condition, Prolong QT and mydocardial disease of the muscles, makes comprehending complex things difficult. While traditional learning – the Pythagorean theorum and the Magna Carta, and the arcane a + b = c equations and historical events each of us suffered through and mostly forgot – is difficult, Spencer has strong intuition and is sharp as a tack. Watching the races on TV with the Gregwares (every Sunday the families would share a home-cooked meal and the race), Spencer would pick his own driver. Spencer liked Tony Stewart’s personality, his driving style, everything about the guy.

After adopting Tony as his driver, he’d followed him on TV for years. Now he was at the track in Richmond, watching this momentous freight train of race cars zooming by, close enough to make his wheel chair shake. It felt to Spencer like the whole earth could be thrown off its axis. Could goose bumps have goose bumps on top?

Spencer wanted Tony to lead the pack. He was rooting hard, encouraging Tony to go faster and faster as the laps ticked off. Stewart had a solid car and was running up front. He was in contention. Would he take the checkers, climb the fence, and meet Spencer in Victory Lane?

As the laps wound down, it was turning into a battle between Tony and reigning NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. The Home Depot and Lowe’s cars battled on the final laps in a thrilling bumper-to-bumper duel. They tore around the three quarter mile track, Stewart on Johnson’s bumper, Stewart moving along side on the banks, even with Johnson, enough the momentum he carried through the turns faded and his rival burst ahead on the straightaways.

The cat and mouse game continued for several thrilling laps. The crowd of more than 90,000 was on their feet. Spencer’s arm shot up each time Tony rocketed past, right on the No. 48’s tail. But this day, this race, was not to be for Spencer or Stewart. They couldn’t catch Jimmie Johnson, and Tony finished second.

Spencer was crushed. He didn’t make it to Victory Lane. He was quiet and withdrawn, not himself for an entire week. But as the days passed, who won at Richmond didn’t seem to matter as much. The end of the race faded in his mind. Spencer Roy’s weekend in Richmond holds a sharper, more intense memory that grows in prominence as other recollections fade. Spencer had met his hero, and he was larger in life than even in the boy’s grandest dreams.

America’s Anchor Finds his Slice of Heaven

2011-10-31T08:09:00.000-07:00

When American Presidents visit war zones, NBC anchor Brian Williams often tags along. It’s a humbling responsibility to beam the first draft of history from hot spots around the globe. The downside of these hastily scheduled trips, beside stinging windstorms, lousy hotel room pillows and time away from the family, is missing NASCAR races.

But Williams always brings a piece of his beloved sport with him. For instance, when President Obama first toured Baghdad, he spoke to military personnel at the Al Faw palace, built by Saddam Hussein and now occupied by the U.S. military. Williams decided to mark the territory in a fashion any fellow fan would understand. He plastered a Dale Earnhardt “3” sticker onto one of the palace’s outside walls.

“As far as I know, it’s still there, on the wall of a guest house on the bank of a skanky man-made lake,” Williams said. “I figured it’s about time the Iraqis knew about the real ‘Intimidator.’”

This was not an isolated incident. Williams goes nowhere without a supply of black No. 3 stickers in his bag. He has to replenish the stock frequently, especially since he slaps a number three decal on every car he rents.

“My goal is to eventually sticker the entire U.S. rental fleet,” Williams explained. “Half the time I turn the car in, the rental guy thinks it’s an official number, some code from corporate headquarters, and it stays on the car. I have to admit, when I’m driving, I keep an eye out for my Dale stickers. Haven’t seen one yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Whether it is stickering deposed dictators, rent-a-cars and his own Mustang GT, injecting racing analogies into election night coverage, or extending a business trip to attend a dirt track race, Brian Williams could be the NASCAR fan wielding the largest and most persuasive megaphone. His appreciation of racing has percolated since his dad introduced the young boy to Joie Chitwood’s Thrill Shows and local dirt races near their home in upstate New York where NASCAR’s Bodine brothers ran. Listening to the throaty engines and crunching metal during beloved Demolition Derby nights ignited in Williams a life-long passion for fast cars going in circles.

“It’s plain and simple: I like speed,” he said. “Just give me the first turn at Talladega, when they come around at speed on the second lap. I defy you to replicate that feeling anywhere else in life. You don’t know if it’s your heart thumping or the eruption of all that American horsepower coming around that turn. These are full-blooded, normally aspirated American-built cars doing exactly what they are supposed to do, driven by men whose bravery is never fully discussed or recognized. And I love every second of it.”

The greatest blessing in anchoring NBC Nightly News, Williams declares, is the opportunity to meet people he truly admires. Among the world leaders, captains of industry, humanitarians, scientists, and rock stars he’s broken bread with, none ranks higher than Dale Earnhardt. Williams was able to meet and grow close to Dale after taking a job with NBC News in 1993. “Call it one of the perks of knowing the president of NBC Sports,” he explained.

At the 1998 Daytona 500, Williams took his 10-year old son, Douglas, to meet Dale. “My son asked Dale if he could put his hand on the number three machine – which is what Douglas always called it, ‘the number three machine.’ Without hesitation, Dale said, ‘Absolutely,’ and led us through a scrum to the car. He told my son, ‘If we win, you come back for the trophy presentation.’”

Dale wasn’t asking, he was ordering Douglas to do this.

Of course, Earnhardt dramatically won the race. The fans went bananas. Earnhardt did a few celebratory doughnuts in the infield grass. The Racing Gods must have been making up for the two-decade curse because his spins in the grass took the uncanny shape of the number “3.” Brian and Douglas Williams watched as a group of fans ran to the beaten up turf. Some jammed chunks into their coolers. Others laid their bodies down in the deep tire tracks, communing with the celebratory ruts.

Victory Lane was rocking like a van on Lover’s Lane.

Earnhardt memorably shouted, “Daytona is ours! We won it, we won it, we won it!” Dale found time during the rollicking celebration to call over Brian and Doug to pose for pictures. Those photos, along with Dale’s No. 3 die cast car, and hats he signed are proudly displayed next to signed letters from past U.S. Presidents in Williams’ Rockefeller Center office.

“He was that kind of guy to remember us at such a big moment,” Williams said. “The King, Mr. Richard Petty, opened the door to drivers carefully crafting a media image, and Dale took that to a new level. Dale realized ‘the Intimidator’ was a title that worked for him and the sport. He knew the value of that iron-headed reputation and how to market it. But he didn’t always follow that image in his personal life. He made it very big but never got rid of that regular guy side, fixing ball joints and front ends. And he had a marvelous soft side few saw. I'll always remember his smile more than any glare. He had a warm, crinkly, wry smile, and loved to tease people. Dale started racing when the family was down to its last can of beans, and he clearly relished becoming a successful, self-made businessman.

By the end, he was very happy with where he was. He’d tell us, ‘If I die racing, please understand that I died doing what made me happy.’”

Three years after standing in Victory Lane with his son and his racing idol, Williams was on vacation watching Earnhardt’s final race on television. “Having seen him flip seven times and walk away, I didn’t think anything of his last-lap crash at the Daytona 500,” he said.

Soon after, word came through NASCAR had lost its greatest driver. Williams rushed back to his New York office. A host of messages were waiting for him. One was absolutely haunting. “There was a voice mail on my answering machine – it was Dale checking in to say hello, wanting to know if I was coming to Daytona. It stunned me. I put the message on an audio CD. To this day, it’s hard to listen to.”

Many in the media – clueless about NASCAR but hip to Williams’ curious passion for racing – came to him for comment. “It was one of those Margaret Meade moments for mainstream media, as if they were discovering a new civilization: ‘Brian, tell us about those NASCAR fans and NASCAR Nation.’ I was a rare member of mainstream media asked to explain the meaning of it all. I wrote an essay about Dale for Time magazine. It was a horrible week.”

It’s been said NASCAR needed Dale Earnhardt’s passing to reach its full potential for coast-to-coast popularity. Following the tragedy at Daytona, many new fans discovered big-time stock car racing. For Williams, some of the old magic disappeared.

“It’s not that the sport immediately changed. It’s just that my guy was gone. I still look for his car when they come around on the first lap. I’m still subconsciously scanning for the black No 3. I am hopelessly devoted to his memory.”

Following Earnhardt’s death, Williams ventured deeper into the roots of the sport, the racing that first sparked his love of automobiles, those small local tracks he loved as a kid and now could sample during his journalistic travels. The steel-skinned newsman becomes earnestly poetic when discussing small-town racing.

“These tracks are glowing islands of light, smoke, and noise that dot the countryside and roar to life on Friday and Saturday nights where fans encounter the sport in its purest form,” he said.

Growing up in Elmira, N.Y., Williams first attended races at the Chamon County (SP?) Fair Grounds. His family moved to the Jersey shore, where the inquisitive and well-read teenager became a regular at Wall Township Speedway, Flemington Speedway, Stafford up in Connecticut, even heading up to Portland, Maine for short track races.

“Ours was a pure American home – the garage was for stuff, and the driveway was where you kept your car so everyone could see how you rolled. You kept meticulous care of that machine, and on Saturday, everyone could see you washing it.”

As Williams rapidly ascended to the pinnacle of TV journalism, he bought a summer cabin in Montana and became part owner of a dirt modified team. He’d already driven Talladega, reaching a very impressive 181.5 mph. He makes a point of emphasizing the additional half mile an hour in recounting the feat. “That’s the definition of being alive,” Williams proclaimed.

With his place out west, the east coast news man could get seat time running dirt on Friday nights at a small dirt track outside Bozeman ambitiously called Gallatin International Speedway, feeling the heat coming up his legs and a special kind of claustrophobia sliding into the turns.

“A dirt modified car is a different animal, 800 horsepower monsters, really,” Williams said. “Your whole life is one controlled skid. Asphalt is great – it’s sticky and fast and hot and lot of fun. But dirt is a whole different experience. I have so much respect for dirt drivers. And as a fan, you can measure your good time by the amount of track you wear home on your body.”

Scruffy, dirt-kicking, splintered-grandstands, small-town NASCAR appeals deeply to Williams, who was once a volunteer firefighter and maintains his Irish-Catholic working class roots. He is known mostly for work performed solo behind a desk while wearing an expensive suit, but he appreciates the camaraderie and profound bonds forged among sweat-stained men on a team getting dirty to pursue a common goal.

“The sport of NASCAR is a reflection of America, a place with a real romantic side, which I see in hard-working people asking to be entertained at a small race track on a Friday or Saturday night,” Williams said. “NASCAR is a great slice of America. If I have a layover for a weekend, I will always find out where the small tracks are. There, I feel at home, watching working mechanics, contractors, firemen, builders, school teachers by day, and on the weekend driving a car put together with chewing bum and bailing wire. All available money goes into car, and if they’re lucky, they can steal away Monday night in the garage to pound out Saturday night’s dents.

“NASCAR fans don’t ask for much. They save up all week for a few hours of entertainment. They find being at the track preferable to sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater. It’s like being in on a wonderful secret –sitting in the infield, the smell of the track, the lights coming up. It’s just a hugely patriotic crowd – a tough, largely working class crowd, but don’t get me wrong, decent people. During the National Anthem before the engines fire, you can hear a pin drop. The fans come out to see family and neighbors running super stocks, modifieds, just basic entry-level stock car racing on a dirt track, on a Friday night, capping off a long work week. I tell my children not to root too loudly against any given driver, because that might be his wife, mother, or kids sitting directly in front. It’s a true slice of heaven.”

Houston, We Have Fan

2011-07-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

COL. DOUG HURLEY IS PILOTING THE SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS, WHICH LIFTED OFF THIS MORNING EN ROUTE TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION. DOUG WAS ALSO AT THE CONTROLS FOR THE ENDEAVOUR FLIGHT. TODAY'S LAUNCH MARKS THE FINAL MISSION OF THE 30-YEAR U.S. SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM. HERE IS DOUG'S CHAPTER IN THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY:

It’s not unusual for a NASCAR fan unable to tune to a race – maybe he’s on the job or waiting to get root canal – to sneak a quick online update. One fan, Doug Hurley, a Colonel in the Marine Corps, got his NASCAR fix at work on a laptop computer in a unique place – 250 miles above the earth moving at 17,500 mph in zero gravity.

Hurley, the pilot of Space Shuttle Endeavor, hadn’t missed a race in eight years since being introduced to NASCAR at Watkins Glen and feeling a rush of excitement he could only call “indescribable.” He wasn’t going to let a small thing like manning the controls of the most complex machine ever built get in the way of finding out how Joey Logano did at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“It’s not a very well-kept secret at NASA that I’m a pretty big NASCAR fan,” Hurley says. The second line of his official NASA biography states, “Recreational interests include hunting, cycling and attending as many NASCAR races as possible.”

While training in Star City, Russia with cosmonauts preparing to work on the International Space Station, the Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel watched NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races on the Armed Forces television network deep into the night. On board the Endeavor, he took DVD copies to two of the most notable races in the history of stock car racing – the 1979 and 1998 Daytona 500s. He’s lobbying to have these classic races included in the permanent library on board the International Space Station.

Hurley grew up in Apalachin, NY, a town so small it had no stoplight. On cloudless nights, he’d gaze at the wide sky, densely speckled with the twinkling lights of stars from galaxies billions of miles away. Doug was only two years old when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, but remembers news clips of Sky Lab missions sandwiched between the Saturday morning cartoons.

“As a young boy, you think, ‘Wow, that would be pretty neat to go there and do that,’” he said.

He liked what the military stood for and to help pay for college enrolled in the Navy ROTC, program at Tulane University. During college, he spent a week at a Navy jet base in Jacksonville and got to ride in a fighter plane.

“That was the defining moment. I knew what I wanted to do.” Hurley excelled as a Naval Aviator and a test pilot. He was the first Marine pilot to fly the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet.

Despite his fondness for speed, Hurley never paid much attention to NASCAR, even though he’d lived 45 minutes south of the road course at Watkins Glen. That changed when his cousin Nanette began dating Greg Zipadelli, then Tony Stewart’s crew chief for Joe Gibbs Racing. Nan and Doug had spent many holidays and summers together as kids and remained close as adults. He jumped at her invitation to watch the race from Zippy’s pit stall at the Glen.

“From the moment I heard the first engine roar to life, I was unequivocally, unbelievably, completely and totally hooked on the sport,” Hurley said. Since then, he’s attended more than 20 races and holds season tickets at Texas Motor Speedway.
Nanette and Zipadelli are now married with three kids, but Tony and the crew chief he called “the big brother I never had” have parted ways. After a stellar decade with the No. 20 Home Depot car, including two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships, Stewart left Joe Gibbs Racing following the 2008 season to form his own team, becoming the most successful driver-owner in NASCAR since Alan Kulwicki won the title in 1992. The separation was a tough, emotional time for Zippy.

“Loyalty is a big thing with Zippy, and he decided to stay with Joe Gibbs, who gave him a huge opportunity. That’s where his heart was.”

Most No. 20 fans also guided by their loyalty simply followed Stewart to this new No. 14 ride. Hurley stuck with Zippy and his new driver, teenage phenom Joey Logano, nicknamed “Sliced Bread,” as in “the greatest thing since…”

“Joey is amazingly grounded for a person his age facing tremendous challenges and responsibility,” Hurley said. “If you compare him to Zippy or me, we were selected for our jobs – Greg as crew chief and me into the astronaut program – in our early ‘30s. Joey is 19 and handling the pressure of big-time auto racing very well. At the outset, there was skepticism about his abilities in a Cup ride, but his true talent quickly became apparent. NASCAR banned testing for 2009, which was the right move to save costs, but it hurt newer guys like Joey. And then you have him going into a new car much different than the NASCAR Nationwide Series cars he was driving. Considering all that, he’s figuring out a lot of things pretty quickly. Joey’s been blessed with tremendous talent and the help of a core group of guys who have been with Zippy from the beginning. He and Zippy have been a great team, which they proved when Joey became the youngest driver ever to win a Sprint Cup Series race at New Hampshire in 2009. Joey battled hard all day and Zippy made a great call to win the race. I’m predicting Joey is going to do very well in the ears to come. Plus, he is just a super nice guy. He’s got solid support from his parents, and it shows.”

Hurley, who is 42 and favors the flat-top hair style reminiscent of the flight directors and fly boys chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff, sees many parallels between the sport he loves to watch from the pit stall and his own job strapped into a rocket soaring toward the wide blue yonder. “My background is as a fighter pilot, so the speed, the adrenaline rush, the eye-hand coordination is somewhat similar. A big part of the excitement for me is getting so close to the action. Fans can feel a bit of that, sitting off the turn with the cars coming right at you. They can get some of that speed adrenaline rush a fighter pilot feels.”

In some ways, NASCAR drivers face tougher challenges than astronauts, Hurley says. It’s a surprising perspective from a decorated Navy test pilot snapped up by the astronaut development program as soon as he was eligible, a four-time recipient of the NASA Superior Accomplishment Award who helped orchestrate the mind-boggling tasks of an upside down rendezvous with the International Space station, five space walks, the replacement of half dozen 250-pound batteries in the unforgiving blackness of space, and the transfer home of a Japanese astronaut.

“The biggest difference is NASCAR is much more in the public eye than what we do as astronauts and what I did as a fighter pilot,” he said. “When we launch shuttles into space, of course that’s highly publicized, but months of training are largely done without constant scrutiny. NASCAR drivers live in the limelight virtually year-round. Being in a dangerous, high-pressure environment, it’s not easy to manage outside eyes prying in.”

There are obviously many differences between astronauts and race car drivers. Flirting with danger – the lurking, unpredictable set of unseen circumstances that can snuff a life out in a blink – is not one of them.

Hurley was avidly following NASCAR when drivers Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, and Dale Earnhardt Sr. were killed over a nine month period from 2000 to 2001. He personally strapped the STS 107 crew into the Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated upon re-entry over the southwestern United States in 2003.

“Nothing prepares you for losing seven friends in an instant on a national scale,” he said. “NASA had a tough decision after the loss of the Columbia just as NASCAR had a tough decision after losing its most famous and maybe greatest driver. Where do you go? What do you do? The right answer is you fly again, and you race next week. You just make sure you’ve learned from the previous events so it won’t happen again.

“The danger of what we do is always in the back of my mind. But I think human space flight is better from the Columbia accident, despite losing seven people who can never be replaced. It’s the same with NASCAR. We lost Dale Earnhardt Sr., and will never get him back. But some very positive things came from that tragedy. The sport made significant improvements to the cars and tracks and has never been safer.

“What happened with Dale and the Columbia are eerily similar. We’d seen foam fall off the Shuttle for years. We tolerated it. NASCAR had some bad accidents that seemed like freak occurrences. It took a huge event in both cases to bring about productive change – losing the most famous driver in what looked like an innocuous crash and the Shuttle burning up over Texas after a piece of foam dislodged. But some pretty smart people worked hard to fix the problems. And we’re much safer as a result.”

Just as NASCAR is seeking expansion opportunities, so is NASA. Missions are being planned for the U.S. to return to the moon and possibly beyond to Mars. Perhaps one of our own remarkable fans will be at the controls. Whatever is next for Doug Hurley, all of NASCAR Nation wishes him “Godspeed.”

Why Is Kenny Gregory Wearing a Shit-Eating Grin?

2011-07-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

When the Joy Mining Machinery Toyota Tundra makes its debut tonight in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Kentucky Speedway, one fan in attendance will wear an extra wide grin.

Kenny Gregory, known in the infield at "The Fathead Guy" will be wearing that shit- eating smile (even though, he points out, no one has ever been known to have exibited any form of happiness immediately after swallowing human feces).

Kenny names Kyle Busch, who owns the ruck, as his favorite NASCAR driver.

But tonight, even more important, is the Joy Mining logo on the Kyle Busch Motorsports truck's hood. Gregory spent 35 years working for the Franklin Pa.-based Tool and Die Maker. He retired in 2003, and saved up enough to now travel the NASCAR circuit, taking his life-size Fathead driver stand-ups to up to 25 NASCAR races a year.

(Either Gregory saved a ton of bread, or it will come out in a few years he's the next Bernie Madoff. Whatever the case, mazel tov, Kenny, you love the racing, the fans love you, and you deserve to be at each and every race.)

Many fans know Gregory as a gregarious and tireless networker in the campgrounds, using the Fatheads to stimulate conversation, debate and new friendships. Kenny was the same at work, receiving several awards for cost saving for the company of 8,000, which is a leader in developing equipment to extract underground coal and other bedded materials.

Tonight, 2009 and 2010 World of Outlaws Late Model Series (WoO LMS) champion Richards will be at the helm of the Joy Mining Machinery Toyota Tundra Gregory will be pulling for.

"We look forward to providing Josh Richards and Joy Mining Machinery with all the tools necessary to develop from NASCAR rookies into household names,” team owner Kyle Busch said in a statement.

There has always been a strong connection between the men and women who work in the mining industry and racing, especially uber-fans like Gregory, so the association makes sense. (Many fans know the story of The Lucky Penny Girl, Wessa Miller; her dad Booker is a retired coal miner.)

"When Josh starts winning races, you can bet his Fathead will be right there at my camper along with Kyle, Jeff, Jimmie, Tony, Junior, Danica and the others," Gregory said.

Known as "The Fathead Guy," Gregory's full story is documented in the NASCAR Library Collection book, THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY, which is the perhaps the best book none of you have read, and will make for excellent source of heat when the Chinese finally take over.

Goodbye but not Farewell (or something like that)

2011-04-19T08:14:00.001-07:00

Ranking life's bittersweet days, this one, my final day at NASCAR, easily shoots to #1 with a bullet.

After eight-plus seasons helping to tell the NASCAR story, I've accepted a great opportunity as VP, Strategic Communications for IMG College.

As you may know, college sports are booming – with radiological meltdown to the left of us, wars to the right, our President even found time to fill out his Brackets. This is a chance to take a leadership role with a fast-growing organization transforming the business of college sports. Being Italian, I fully respect an offer not to be refused.

I'm about as excited as one can get nowadays without the authorities being alerted and the building sealed off.

It's not easy to leave NASCAR, especially amid a thrilling season that has 'em cheering in the press boxes. I genuinely love our sport (jeez, their sport in a few hours); heck, I slept with the fans in their converted school buses and wrote a book about it!

From my first race in 2003 at Talladega (hallelujuah, can it be scripted any better), I've smoked the proverbial exhaust and savored every hit. I am blessed to have been surrounded by extraordinary people who may have talked a bit funny to this New Yorker (and me to them as well) but who leave a mark nonetheless.

NASCAR was not a Dickensian gig: It was the best of times, it was the best of times.

There is no breed quite like NASCAR fans. Show me another place on earth with as many empty beer bottles and as few fights as a NASCAR race.

One fan contributing to that heap of empties -- now recycled at an impressive rate, mind you -- calls me "Lucky Dog." The source of my good fortune is the mere fact I work for NASCAR.

He's right about the nickname. Everyone who works in this industry owns it, too, contributing to a continually unfolding great American entreprenerial success story that happens to bring joy to millions.

I will always treasure my Lucky Dog status. My enthusiasm for the sport won't ever wane. I will continue to root for the courageous drivers and hard-working people who bring this immensely enjoyable traveling circus to millions every week for 10-month stretch.

In the meantime, to those partners, colleagues, and media members who have heard this news and have written or called to playfully declare that I am a "jerk," "ass", "peckerhead" or various other body parts that shall go unmentioned, thank you, I am flattered. I will miss you, too. I sincerely hope we can stay in touch, particularly if you owe me money.

As of April 25, I can be reached at andrew.giangola@imgworld.com

I wish each of you, and everyone involved in this wonderful sport, and those who watch, good health and continued success.

As the great Warren Zevon said, Enjoy every sandwich.

Andrew Giangola

Gaby Giangola's horror novel, CYANIDE SMILE is available on lulu.com. Just click:
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/cyanide-smile/9918315

A Matter of Life and Death

2011-04-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s the many hours spent huddled around campfires telling stories. Or because so many NASCAR fans enjoy fishing, and we all know how fishermen exaggerate. The priceless raw material out there – the soap opera playing out in the garage, the late-night revelry in the campgrounds – certainly contributes to it.

Whatever the reasons, NASCAR fans have amazing stories to tell about other fans. There are some bona-fide whoppers.

In sifting through tales of out-of-the ordinary NASCAR fandom, it’s difficult to separate historical truth from possible urban – or in this case, shall we say “rural” – legend.

It’s fitting the most fantastic story I’ve come across, which several high-placed industry sources confirm to be true, originates at Talladega Superspeedway, the track known for the highest speeds, most spectacular wrecks, and biggest, rowdiest fan parties.

Talladega is NASCAR’s largest track, a 2.66-mile tri-oval ringing a large, raucous infield. Tens of thousands of fans come to ‘Dega in RVs, campers and converted school buses, often arriving at the track days before the race, and once there, flying their flags proudly. In fact, when fans set up camp in the infield, the first task is to mark their turf and announce an allegiance by raising their NASCAR flags.

At one Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega not too many years ago, a fan was raising the banners of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and of course his dad, the late great Dale Sr., the ubiquitous black No. 3, a flapping pennant seen at this track and wherever the circuit visits, then and always.

The fan happened to be performing this flag-raising ritual during one of the fierce storms that will, with little warning, tear across the Alabama countryside. This time, the rain and winds were no surprise. The fan saw the sky darken and greenish-black clouds gathering wrath in the distance, low, fast and fierce, like the flyover to come on Sunday. He’d be damned if a little weather was going to prevent the flags of the Earnhardts, NASCAR, and the U. S. of A. from going up before the cars hit the track for qualifying.

In the driving rain, the fan was securing his metal flagpole. An apocalyptic crack of thunder, loud as if the sky had split apart, erupted. It came with a brilliant flash of blue-white light. The searing bolt of electricity beamed into the flagpole.

Even a mild lightning strike generates nearly a billion volts of juice. This unlucky fellow holding the pole was instantly fried to death by the sizzling laser. His buddies inside the camper heard the thunderclap and a thud – the body hitting the ground. They ran outside to discover their burnt and lifeless friend. They waited out the storm, and following a brief discussion featuring mild dissent quickly dismissed, the group made an improbable decision: to dig a shallow grave there in the infield and continue their race weekend plans. After all, “it’s what he would have wanted,” they agreed. One mumbled a joke about it being the NASCAR version of the movie, Weekend at Bernie’s. Since none of the crew had any special religious convictions, did it really harm anyone, including the deceased fellow’s family, to delay a funeral, anyway? Their friend was horribly, tragically dead. Nothing would change that. You can book a church and get flowers and cold cuts anytime in modern day America. After the race, they’d take care of grim details no one wanted to think about just yet. Until then, a race was to be run.

The weather cleared. A southern belle proudly belted out the National Anthem with 180,000 people proudly at attention, hands over hearts then lifted to the sky cheering military jets screeching past. Gentlemen started their engines. The roaring pack of 43 cars freight-trained around the track. There was the requisite big wreck. And one happy driver surged first to the checkered flag.

And then, after the last drops of adult beverages were sprayed in a banshee Victory Lane celebration, a few hundred yards away, the boys dug up and cleaned off their friend. They solemnly reported the death to local authorities. Not many questions were asked. An open-and-shut case of death by lightning strike. No one’s ever charged Mother Nature with murder. Tough to prosecute that one. The boys lowered their flags and drove home with a little more room in the pickup truck than when they arrived a few days earlier.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans" by Andrew Giangola (Motorbooks, 2010)

The 21 Coolest Things About NASCAR

2011-04-04T10:40:00.001-07:00

NOTE: This article appears in the premiere issue of SPORT LIFE magazine, now available in many book stores.

In so many ways, beginning with its moonshine-soaked roots, NASCAR is different than the traditional “stick and ball” sports. Here are 21 points of differentiation…and reasons to get a ticket to experience a great American sport.

A chess match at 180 MPH: 43 of the world’s most fearless drivers gun their growling beasts around high-banked tracks at hair-raising speeds, wedged closer than you get to your neighbor when parking at the Wal-mart. When they’re up to speed on that first lap, the thundering procession shakes you to the core. “I get goose bumps so bad, I can’t shave my legs before a race,” says Judith Barr of Lexington, SC.

Sensory overload: You don’t have to be a gear head to succumb to the rush from the massive display of American horsepower that whooshes past so fast it could dry your hair. “Absolutely freaking nothing beats the assault on the senses like 43 cars roaring around a race track,” says Amy Marbach of badgroove.com. “Attending that first race in person burned NASCAR fandom into my heart and soul.”

Unparalleled access: Fans can purchase garage and pit passes to get up close to the drivers. Those intent on nabbing an autograph usually succeed. Even from the King, Richard Petty, always on the scene in his trademark shades and Charlie 1 horse cowboy hat.

Trespassing welcomed: Try to go on the field before the Super Bowl. You’ll be arrested. But fans can walk the track before the Daytona 500, or any other NASCAR race for that matter.

The Pits are anything but: Seven highly trained professional athletes scramble “over the wall” to change four Goodyear Tires and dump in 18 gallons of Sunoco Green E15 fuel in less than 14 seconds. It’s crazy, chaotic, and completely choreographed.

A Family Sport: Where else could you spend four hours with your family on a Sunday afternoon and not hear a word they say. (“If you don’t like the family you came with, you can be adopted in no time, jokes Julie Geary, a Tony Stewart fan from southern NJ. “You can have a whole new family before the race is over!”)

Family Feud: Let’s face it. Many drivers, who travel the circuit together week after week, don’t particularly like one another, and will occasionally use a bumper to demonstrate this. Several simmering feuds from the 2010 season portend to boil over this year. “Every driver will remind you of someone in your family; there’s lots to love, and they will drive you crazy, too,” notes Judy Diethelm of Nashville.

No Secrets: Watch NFL coaches on the sideline covering their mouths with their clipboards or baseball pitchers putting mitts over their faces during on-the-mound conferences. In NASCAR, there are no secrets. Heck, fans can listen to all driver-crew chief conversations on Scanners. “There's no other major sport where fan can hear live communication between teammates, during the competition,” observes sports writer Hampton Stevens.

B.Y.O.B. NASCAR tracks allow fans to bring their own alcohol into the venue.

No Time Outs: The action never stops. And there are no interminable, momentum-killing breaks to review a call on replay.

‪The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: Super Chef Mario Batali said NASCAR is “the Super Bowl meets Woodstock meets the Iowa State Fair.” Indeed, fans start arriving at the track on Wednesday, get the party rolling, and by Sunday afternoon, a pretty good race breaks out.
‪
The longest season in professional sports: Don’t believe your mother. There is no such thing as “too much of a good thing.” NASCAR races for 10 months – a 100,000-person rolling barbeque moving from state-to-state February through November. Fans sweat out a two-month off-season and then get busy for Daytona again.

Watch history being made: While NASCAR is rich in history and tradition (hey, we have drivers of yesteryear named “Fireball” and “Coo Coo”), the sport continues to forge new history. Current champion Jimmie Johnson has won an unprecedented five consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titles during the most competitive period in the sport's history. Making the full field his personal lapdog is an astounding accomplishment.

Drive my car: Few of us can dunk a basketball or wallop a golf ball 300 yards down the fairway. But regular fans can drive it like they stole it in real stock cars at racing schools on the same tracks NASCAR drivers mix it up. Says Chris Stuart of Charlotte, NC: “I have so much more appreciation NASCAR drivers after trying to wrangle a NASCAR stock car...coolest experience ever!”

An Affordable blast: Ticket prices to a race are inexpensive compared to most pro team games. And parking is free. Grandstand tickets for the Daytona 500 are $55. Fans can pre-order $45 seats at the road course in Watkins Glen, NY. Texas Motor Speedway offers backstretch tickets for $20.

Neither Home nor Away: Most sporting events feature two teams, creating a divided crowd. In NASCAR, there’s no home or away team; 43 drivers race to the checkered flag on the same field of play. Ten fans together could be rooting for 10 different drivers.

Miss Sprint Cup. And Miss Coors Light: Any girl who is hot when covered head to toe in fireproof Nomex, is, well….really, truly, genuinely, extremely hot.

A sea of motor homes: The infield is a throbbing shantytown of RVs, trailers, motor homes and repainted school buses, thousands of camping vehicles of varied sizes, shapes and payment schemes. “You can drive your home to the race,” says Chris MacNicol, a.k.a. “Talladega Tireman,” who goes to the track naked except a Goodyear Eagle around his waist.

The Smells: From the late-night campfires to burning rubber on pit road, the smells of NASCAR are totally unique. “The high octane fuel and burning rubber in the pit area and garage – which is our locker room – smells a lot better than old sweat socks and jockstraps,” says long-time fan Paul Harraka, Sr. of Wayne, NJ.

Duty, Honor, and God: From the Stealth Bomber to the Thunderbirds, NASCAR's awe-inspiring pre-race flyovers signal the sport’s diligent support of the U.S. military. War heroes and fresh-faced privates mingle on pit road. There’s even an invocation often praising Jesus Christ. Even if you’re not a Christian, you have to respect NASCAR not caving into the sanitizing forces of political correctness.

NASCAR Nation: Camping in the infield, grown men wade in inflatable kiddie pools. During rain delays, mud wrestling contests occur. Every fan you meet out there would give you the shirt off his back…if he were wearing one. Junior fans aren't necessarily sending Jeff Gordon fans holiday hams, but they all get along. NASCAR and its fans are an altruistic sports community which rallies around good causes, always willing to give back, help and share its good fortune. Put another way: Show me a place on earth with as many empty beer bottles and as few fights as a NASCAR race.

Nursing Junior to a Championship

2011-03-24T08:40:00.001-07:00

Some people live to save the world.

Barbie Robbins lives for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Once time, Junior wrecked and was shaken up. Barbie, who was at home, thousands of miles from the race, put on a nurse’s outfit. She wanted to channel healing vibes to her number-one driver.

Every morning, the 49-year-old Californian wakes up underneath a collage of Dale Jr. photographs pasted above her bed. Before shedding her No. 88 pajamas, Barbie bee-lines to the computer to vote for her man in the NASCAR Most Popular Driver contest. She punches up her MySpace page, checks the guest book for new NASCAR friends and gazes at the latest Dale Jr. photos posted.

In one shot, the driver is sleeping peacefully in his race car. Thought bubbles, like those in cartoons, rise from his head to a superimposed cloud framing Barbie’s smiling face. A photo of Dale’s car speeding past the start-finish line has the caption, “Junior looks at Barbie.” A shot showing Junior with chin on clenched fist, deep in thought, is captioned, “Hmmm…should I call Barbie?” A photo of Junior appearing surprised is tagged, “Is that Barbie?” In another one, NASCAR’s biggest star is with fellow driver Tony Stewart who exclaims “Look Dale, there she is again. I think Barbie is stalking you!”

Barbie sends daily notes on the life and times of Dale Jr. to dozens of friends met on the web. On race day, members of the virtual club sit with their laptops in front of the TV telecast, typing bulletins to one another. If Junior is rammed by another driver, Barbie will fire off sailor-worthy cusses. She’s known online, and among many in the physical world, as “Junior’s Baby 8 Girl.” Some in her San Diego neighborhood call her “NASCAR Chick.”

Most days, she puts on a Dale Jr. t-shirt, which had been ironed and carefully set out the night before. She selects a Dale Jr. hat. There’s a set rotation – on Sunday night, shirts and hats are matched to days of the week. She has been unable to find Junior Under ‘Roos and will take any leads offered. At the corner store in her San Diego neighborhood, the counterman catches a glance of her NASCAR garb and long Stevie Wonder-style braids and invariably shouts, “Hey, NASCAR Chick!”

Barbie Robbins, formerly of Chicago, Illinois and a nondescript civilian life, now of San Diego, California and a minor celebrity in her neighborhood and Auto Club Speedway 104 miles due north, became Junior’s Baby 8 Girl after seeing the driver in a TV interview.

The attraction was mystical and instantaneous. The Sicilians, as any fan of “The Godfather” knows, have a term for such otherworldly instant connections: “The Thunderbolt.” The thunderbolt is deeper and more complex than what Americans might call “love at first sight.” This is not puppy dogs and floating hearts. The thunderbolt is serious, life-altering destiny not to be messed with.

In Sicily, the Thunderbolt is called, “lu lampu.”

In San Diego, Barbie Robbins told the TV screen, “Damn, he fine!”

The hour she first believed, she watched Dale Junior answer the reporter’s questions, slightly impatient, index finger prone to reach up and clean his ear, a plain spoken North Carolina boy saying “y’all” and “ain’t” whenever he darn well pleased, a regular dude of unkempt rugged good looks who’d rather be hunting or fishing than facing questions about the so-called Earnhardt family legacy.

Barbie saw beautiful unvarnished authenticity in a glossed-up world populated with too many candy-ass pretty boys, and was zapped by the thunderbolt. She started tuning to NASCAR races to see the free-spirited cowboy ride. He was courageous and could drive that car. He had his own chocolate bar. She hates chocolate. It was the sweetest candy she’d ever tasted.

Junior’s Baby 8 Girl is never to be bothered on Sunday even during family emergencies, always eager to display the Dale Junior tattoo covering one shoulder blade and to speak wistfully about the “Junior Nation” one coming to the other. She never shies from a chance to promote the individual who is the object of many of her waking thoughts and desires. And some while she’s asleep. Ask Barbie about her life, and she’ll flatly tell you, “It’s all about Junior!” There’s a twinkle in her lagoon-green eyes, and she’s not joking.

Junior’s Baby 8 Girl wasn’t the kind of woman to go trawling for celebrities occupying a central position in her life. It was out of character for her to feel an intimate connection to any pop culture icon – those distant figures of tabloid renown captured and co-oped by the media to sate the public’s insatiable appetite for unconsummated fantasy, tart gossip and computer wallpaper.

The possibility of Barbie connecting with a NASCAR driver was more remote. It wasn’t because most African American women in Southern California have little in common with the front men of a sport rooted in Carolina moonshine. It’s just that while Barbie had watched Indy Car with cousins, she wasn’t much of a race fan. She wasn’t opposed to it. Racing was cool, but there were so many other things to do on a Sunday afternoon. Beside, she actually prefers connecting with people personally in the flesh, over a Bud Light and a Newport, rather than plumbing the lives of public figures through supermarket checkout magazines.

Then came the lu lampu. She didn’t plan it. No one asks for the thunderbolt. Now there’s an unmistakable connection, a spooky empathy at play.

“When Dale Junior does an interview, and I see he’s sad, it makes me sad,” Barbie said. “I will pick up on his moods and will really feel the same way.”

After Dale Jr. left the team formed by his father – which after Senior’s passing was run by his step mother Teresa – to join the NASCAR powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports, Barbie noticed the driver was relaxed, freed from the politics and pressure of the family business. The days following his shocking move from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to join Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson at a new team brought relief to the driver and his biggest fan.

“Watching Junior talking about his new team in the press conference, you could just see how happy and excited he was. And so was I.” As she likes to say in her emails, “Life is Gr88t!!!!”

Even cocooned in her car on the freeways of California, Junior Baby 8 Girl is identified by a batch of Dale Jr. bumper stickers drawing odd looks. “Sometimes on the highway, a driver will pull alongside. He’s seen my Dale Jr. stickers. The look on his face, says, ‘That is not her car.’ Yes, it’s my car, and I’m a NASCAR fan! I’m a redneck with a permanent tan! But when I get to the track, I’m just another race fan, fitting right in. I’m probably the most crazy fan, like an Energizer bunny but doing all I can to not jump over that fence and grab onto Dale Jr.’s car. But I’m still just a fan. Every other NASCAR fan I’ve met has been awesome. They don’t care if I’m black, pink or orange. I’m not into black or white. I’m into Green. Number 88 green! That’s all that matters”

Getting close to the driver of the number 88 green car is the weekend’s main goal. “I have my Junior Station set up where I lay out my hoochie outfits, oops, I mean respectful, family friendly NASCAR-themed clothing,” she says. To look her best, Junior’s Baby 8 Girl sits for eight hours to get her hair specially braided. Getting ready for the drive north, she cranks up Jackie Wilson’s “Baby Workout.”

Grilled foods are wrapped in foil. The ice chest is filled with Bud Light. Most of the beer will come back, since NASCAR fans offer theirs to her all weekend. “NASCAR tailgating rocks,” she said. “Oh my god, two times a year, drinking beer at 8 a.m., it’s the only way to party. Those other so called big sports events have nada on NASCAR.”

She loves seeing the new crop of Dale Junior t-shirts and having her picture taken in his colors. She once bought a bunch of new tees in the parking lot and began dancing for fans snapping her picture. She didn’t know it, but the goods were illegal knock-offs. The police snuck up and busted the counterfeiter. Nearby at her SUV, Junior’s Baby 8 Girl was posing in her new wares. She explained it was her car, she bought the shirts not to sell but for herself as she is the biggest Junior fan. She said the photos were not to encourage the sale of illegal merchandise but to promote her favorite driver. No, she was not being compensated.

Yes, she does this at all the races. Yes, OK, it’s a little over the top. No, she’s not kidding about all this.

The cops shook their heads and pulled away.

She’s found a niche, making dozens of friends at the track, on a first name basis with Auto Club Speedway President Gillian Zucker, a familiar face to some of the team crews. Yet still feels on the outside, nose pressed against the glass. Myriad web sites, fan magazines, TV and satellite radio coverage bring fans their NASCAR fix whenever they want. But not all the time, any time. Life beckons. There’s a job to go to, assignments looming, appointments to make, groceries to buy, a boy to raise. Thankfully, her son drinks the NASCAR Kool-Aid, too, and they’ve not missed a single race at Auto Club Speedway since 1998. Pit passes bring them close to the drivers. At one race, Junior nearly bumped into them before the drivers’ introductions.

“I reached out and touched Junior for a hot second, rubbed his arm, spoke to him,” she said. “I said, ‘I want a hug,’ just to let him know, ‘Dude, I love ya, I’m always loyal, dedicated and right there with ya.’ His smile was priceless.” Telling this story, her eyes filled with tears.

Try to squeeze Peyton Manning’s shoulder before a game. You’ll be handcuffed and thrown in jail. The chance to get up close is what Junior’s Baby 8 Girl likes most about the sport. But as near as she can get to the drivers, it’s only twice a year. When race weekends start, and she’s at work punching information into the computer, there’s no way to know what’s going on in the race shop and at the track. The data entry position is a job, not a career. Her dream is employment at NASCAR, winding up on the inside, a life with no barriers to knowing what’s happening with Dale Junior exactly when it’s happening. She brings her resume to each race she attends. You never know.

At work cut off from NASCAR on a Friday afternoon can make a fan like Barbie very frustrated. She sometimes has a premonition, like before the race at Talladega. She felt something wrong and snuck a peak at the internet. Dale had blown a tire during a practice run and crashed. A feeling of dread washed over her.

The online NASCAR network kicked into gear. Friends with jobs allowing them to follow NASCAR on SPEED or Sirius sent news. Junior was fine – checked out in the infield care center and released, walking to the garage to set up the backup car.
This time, Barbie could leave the nurse’s outfit in the closet.

-- Published with permission from THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans by Andrew Giangola (Motorbooks, 2010) --

What Would Morgan Shepherd Say to Charlie Sheen

2011-03-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

If you can forget for a moment his five innocent children, Charlie Sheen’s televised national meltdown makes for riveting entertainment.

(How absolutely nutty must wife number three be if CHARLIE gets custody of the kids? He admits to ingesting more drugs than humanly possible and claims to be an extra-terrestrial warlock with an extraordinary brain, Adonis DNA and Tiger blood. And the crazier wife more dangerous to the kids? What must she be like? Extra-extra terrestrial?)

Now, one of my all-time favorite movies is NETWORK. As today's major networks suck on Charlie's teet for unpasteurized Rant Milk that translates into easy ratings, you can see a lot of Martin Sheen's son in Peter Finch’s stark-raving-mad television character.

Charlie, too, is mad as hell; at what, who knows, because surrounded by his "Goddesses" in an oversized home filled, he says, with peace and love and good food, he also claims to be a winner. In fact, a bi-winner! (Charlie’s answer when asked by ABC's 20/20 if he’s bi-polar.)

I’m glued to all of it, checking Twitter by the hour to see if @CharlieSheen has posted.

I need a break, and a shower, and something to uplift my spirit and restore faith in all that is decent and good in people who are of this world and have human blood, and go home to one woman, and won't likely be carted away to the hospital any time soon for ingesting a briefcase full of cocaine with half the cast of Debbie Does Dallas.

I got what I needed, and it came from an unlikely source, NASCAR driver Morgan Shepherd, who is the polar opposite of Sheen, most notably in his faith and humility and charitable nature.

Morgan went to Sin City and put on his Superman outfit.

I'm going to rip the story right from Faith Motorsports, because they tell it so well --

“Shepherd catches shoplifter: Most NASCAR drivers don't come to mind when you think of Las Vegas crimefighters, but then again, most NASCAR drivers aren't 69-year-old Morgan Shepherd.

The veteran of 44 NASCAR seasons was getting out of his rental car in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store Monday evening just minutes away from Las Vegas Motor Speedway just as three men burst from the store's entrance with security forces trailing behind. Thats when Shepherd, a daily jogger and fitness perfectionist, sprang into action.

"I just got out and took off after them," Shepherd said. "I caught one of them just as they were getting ready to hop a little wall at the end of the parking lot. I yanked him down and got on top of him."

Shepherd said in a matter of seconds a Las Vegas police officer pitched the ageless NASCAR driver a pair and handcuffs and continued pursuit of the other two suspects, along with the store's security force.

"I cuffed him and sat on top of him," Shepherd said. "The police department officers showed up and asked if I could hold him a while longer while they ran down the others. I told them he wasn't going anywhere."

Shepherd said while the young shoplifter pleaded with him to let him go and about the possibility of going to jail, Shepherd used the time to lecture the youth about his poor choices. (Faith Motorsports)(3-1-2011)

A Moment in the Sun

2011-02-19T04:56:00.000-08:00

NOTE: ON SUNDAY, FEB. 20, JACK HEGE OF LEXINGTON, NC, WILL BE ATTENDING HIS 53RD CONSECUTIVE DAYTONA 500. AUTHOR ANDREW GIANGOLA HAD THE CHANCE TO SPEND THE 2009 GREAT AMERICAN RACE WITH JACK. HERE IS HIS STORY, WHICH BECAME THE LEAD CHAPTER OF THE BOOK "THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY":

Before the 51st running of the Daytona 500, eighty-two year old Jack Hege was led into the “driver’s meeting” – a mandatory gathering of drivers and crew chiefs, attended by dignitaries as well.

This fascinating pre-race meeting before NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races is unique in sports. Before battling on the track, the competitors file into a room and sit next to one another like fidgety students in the auditorium poised to bust out on the last day of school. Military heroes and the rich and famous attending the race are first recognized. The NASCAR race director then recites the rules of the road for the particular track – pit road RPMs, yellow line regulations, double-file restart pointers, and the like. The meeting that started off like the Academy Awards finishes like a local city council zoning meeting. Chapel follows.

The rookies generally sit in the front. One notable exception was when Pamela Anderson was Grand Marshal and strutted in wearing a white leather micro skirt that was a violation in the garage area, and probably the entire county. That was the first known driver’s meeting in which veteran drivers Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. arrived 15 minutes early and were spotted in the front row.

Here at the Daytona 500 pre-race meeting, a wide-eyed Jack Hege was led to the V.I.P row of folding chairs facing the drivers and crew chiefs. He was next to NASCAR Champion Bobby Allison. A few seats away, a grinning Tom Cruise caught the eye of his buddy Jeff Gordon and nodded in conspiratorial assent as if his Days of Thunder character Cole Trickle was getting ready to rumble this afternoon. Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow was to Jack’s right. Singer Gavin DeGraw shook Jack’s hand. For the son of a chicken farmer who worked 46 years in textile factory, this sure was an unusual place to be on a Sunday morning.

While Jack Hege had attended every single Daytona 500 – an astounding 51 in a row – about this time, he’d usually be seated in the grandstands off turn four. Jack wasn’t even sure a driver’s meeting was held prior to the inaugural “Great American Race” on February 22, 1959.

If there was, it surely lacked the pomp, circumstance and boldface celebrity presence infusing with a palpable buzz the hanger we was in. Yes, it’s a good bet Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were not introduced alongside Lee Petty and Red Byron at that race in ‘59.

Jack took his V.I.P. seat after chatting with Raymond Parks, the first NASCAR championship owner from the sport’s inaugural 1948 season. Parks sat stiff and upright in his seat, patiently listening and saying little. He is 94 years old; his wife Violet now does most of the talking. Parks was the best-dressed man in the room, in a dapper suit and snazzy fedora, reminiscent of how a half-century ago the once-prominent Atlanta liquor-store merchant who sold his spirits on both sides of the law brought formality to a rag-tag sport in financing many of its early drivers, including Byron, who raced in the 1940’s and ‘50’s and won the first NASCAR championship. Jack Hege attended many of those races. Sixty years later, looking around the packed room, he thought, I’m one of the few original fans left. Everyone else is gone.

Sandwiched between big-name athletes and A-list celebrities who jetted in to Daytona, Hege’s hang-dog face alternated between wondrous disbelief of his role in this unexpected scene and the blunt satisfaction of being recognized for a well-deserved lifelong achievement.

Adhering to Daytona 500 tradition, Mike Helton, president of NASCAR, began the meeting by announcing the dignitaries on hand. After recognizing actor Gene Hackman, he thanked one of the sport’s most loyal fans, Mr. Jack Hege, for attending every single season opener. The drivers and crew chiefs, NASCAR executives, captains of industry, Grammy-nominated singers, Heisman trophy winners and NFL coaches exploded in applause.

Hege froze for an instant – as if the room’s boisterous decibel surge had shorted his hearing aide – then smiled and nodded. Despite his outward embarrassment, Jack believed there was no more devoted NASCAR fan than he. Were any other men or women present at the birth of NASCAR still showing up and rooting for whoever was running up on the leader’s tail? And now the competitors he admired were saluting one humble fan’s contribution the sport. Hearing the applause, Jack was an old man living a little boy’s dream. Moments later, Tom Cruise would get an equally boisterous reception. But Jack Hege had arrived in NASCAR.

Walking slowly on sore knees towards his seat across from pit road, the same section through the years (“because that’s where the action is”), Jack recalled the infield at the new Daytona International Speedway as a no man’s land. There were no media centers, speedway clubs or mini grocery stores. The grandstands were a mere 15 rows high. Even row three, where he sat in 1959, offered a clear view across the track. The infield was nothing but dirt and a large rectangular lake running parallel to the long backstretch. The lake within the track was formed after millions of pounds of soil were dug out and piled high to create the track’s formidable banking. The three-story banks tilted 31 degrees, as steep as dirt can be stacked before running downhill.

Jack opened his eyes wide and said, “The cars running on them banks would shoot down the backstretch, come apart and go crashing off the track. They had boats on standby in case a car went in that lake!”

Before starting his incredible Daytona 500 streak, Hege watched NASCAR races on nearby Daytona Beach. The cars ran south for two miles on A1A and took a sharp left turn through rutted sand onto the wide, level beach. They ran north on the smooth, hard-packed sand before taking another quick left onto paved A1A where the cars reached speeds of 150 mph.

“There were no grandstands at the first beach races. You’d stand five or six deep and had to watch for cars coming and then run,” Hege said. “There were no loudspeakers. We’d listen to the race on the radio.”

In 1958, Jack’s friend Jimmy Meyers drove down to Daytona in his new two-door Chevy hard top. Fans parked their cars on the beach, in the center of the race course, and watched from the grass-covered sand dunes. Before the race was over, Jimmy wanted to return to the motel. He pulled his car onto the course and gunned it ahead of the field. Instead of turning left onto A1A, Jimmy kept driving up the beach. Two drivers followed. They drove behind Jimmy for a half mile before realizing they were off the course and turning back.

“NASCAR raced stock cars right from the dealer’s lot. Jimmy had a white car and there were no logos on the back anyway. It was easy to mistake him for a racer,” Hege said.

Jack and friends from Lexington would pile into a half dozen cars and drive down to Daytona Beach in one shot. Jack always had a Chevy – a ’55 Bel Air that could do 110 mph, a ‘58 Impala, a ‘62 Impala two-door hardtop.

Hege was in relatively good health, but he didn’t want to drive to the 2009 Daytona 500, which would have been his 51ststraight season opener. Though he had five race tickets, the streak appeared to be coming to an end, and it made the local newspaper. Greensboro resident Ron Collier was among dozens of fans who saw the story and contacted the paper, offering to accompany Hege. Collier met Hege at a Krispy Kreme donut shop. The two men hit it off, and Collier agreed to chauffer Jack to the race, bringing his son and friends, and keeping the streak alive.

When Jack was behind the wheel, the Daytona trip took nine hours. “You could do it in eight, but you’d get caught,” he says. There was no interstate system; the caravan from Lexington took two-lane highways all the way to Central Florida.
At those beach races, just about anyone who wanted to cheat Bill France and his merry band of speed demons out of eight bucks could duck onto the beach for free.

Hege knew part of his ticket money went to the beloved daredevils fishtailing in front of the breaking surf. He always paid, but when his Chevy passed through the opening in a line of men Bill France paid to stand watch on the beach, two or three friends were hidden in the car’s trunk. “Racing was a poor man’s sport,” Hege said. “Bootleggers got together and ran. People wanted to see it, but about a quarter of them didn’t want to pay. And they didn’t.”

Up until the 1980’s, Hege – and all fans – paid for the tickets with cash. NASCAR founder Bill France’s wife, Annie B., who handled the track’s financial matters, wouldn’t accept credit. If a family couldn’t pay for the tickets with cash or a money order, she reasoned, they couldn’t afford it. Instead of a day at the races, the money was better meant for food and clothes. Everyone who knew Annie B. says the Speedway wouldn’t exist if not for her dedication to the fans and diligently caring for the finances of a growing family business.

Each year, Hege’s ticket order was taken by Juanita Epton, known to everyone as “Lightning.” Juanita’s husband gave her that nickname. He said he never knew when she’d strike. “Betty Jane France {wife of Bill France Jr., the second president of NASCAR} warned me if anyone came to the window and asked for ‘Juanita,’ be extra nice because they’re from church,” Lightning said. She knew Jack as “Thomas J. Hege,” the name she’d enter into her ledger when he called, one of the track’s first ticket renewals each year.

Jack, who never married, had extra money and time to follow NASCAR throughout the southeast. He was a regular at tracks like North Wilkesboro, Rockingham and Martinsville. Once, on the way to the North Wilkesboro race, Jack discovered he was carrying the wrong envelope containing tickets to the Martinsville event. There was no time to turn around to retrieve the proper tickets. He proceeded ahead to the track. “The ticket manager saw I was in reservations, and got me four new tickets,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I enjoy going to the races. People appreciate you and treat you right.”

Over the years, Hege has crossed paths with individuals of interest and note. He shook the hand of George Wallace when the Alabama Governor attended the 1972 Daytona 500. Three months later, Wallace, who was running for president was paralyzed in an assassination attempt. He had lunch at the Red Lobster with L. G. DeWitt, owner of Rockingham Raceway. The night driver Tim Richmond moved his sponsorship from Folger’s to Old Milwaukee, he found himself having a can of beer with the sensational driver with the perpetual tan outside the motel of the press conference.

“Tim was a charger, the kind of driver I liked. He reminded me of Curtis Turner and Fireball Roberts. He had too many girlfriends and died of AIDS not too long after that.”

With a career and life taken away too early, Richmond never won at Daytona. Even if he did, for Hege, it probably wouldn’t have topped the first Daytona 500, still fresh in his mind for its three-way photo finish.

“We came from the beach to this giant new track,” he explained. “Everything was so new. And then after five hundred miles, there was nothing like that finish. It was so close, no one knew who won for three days. They had to look at photos to see it was Lee Petty.”

Prior to each race, Jack spends a week in Daytona Beach, always at a beachfront motel. He drives up and down the coast highway, keeping an eye on the world going by his window, noting developments large and small, new palm trees planted, a burger joint he hadn’t seen, motels built and destroyed. Taking all that time off, he worked the Monday after the race. By parking a mile away from the track, he could avoid the worst traffic. He did the driving while friends slept hunched against the doors. Back in Lexington, he grabbed two hours of sleep, and went to work.

No one slept the night of the 2001 race. As Michael Waltrip surged to the checkered flag, Hege watched a last-lap wreck putting Dale Earnhardt Sr. into the wall. After the smoke cleared, Jack walked to his car. He’d seen worse crashes, like when Lee Petty went airborne over the wall, landed in a ditch outside the track, and lived to tell the tale.

On the car radio, he heard the news. Over and over again were replays of Mike Helton’s heartbreaking announcement: “NASCAR has lost Dale Earnhardt.” Jack’s favorite driver was gone. “We listened to the AM radio all night long. They were going without commercials. Every station had fans calling in, paying tribute. It was like the loss of a president.”

Hege is reminded of “Senior” in today’s hard chargers like Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart, all cut in the up-on-the-wheel, no-holds-barred mold of the sport’s earliest competitors. As Hege slowly moved through the wall-to-wall crowds in Daytona’s Fan Zone, he said he missed small-town feel of the sport and the reckless flamboyance of yesteryear. He chuckled in the memory of driver antics that were downright crazy.

“Curtis Turner had engine trouble at Rockingham, smoke pouring out. Did he slow down? No. He drove the car until it exploded. He then got in his airplane and took off from the speedway. He flew that plane under the power line going from the infield to the press box. The FAA grounded him for that.”

Flamboyant wheelmen with a devil-may-care attitude weren’t the only risk takers. In the early 1960’s, a group from Wisconsin spent the night on Daytona Beach. Four fans slept on quilts on the sand next to their Oldsmobile convertible. When morning came, only three were left. The tide had carried one person away. “When I left the beach the night before, they had their guitars out. They were singing and dancing and drinking,” Hege said.

The Daytona 500 is such a monumental event in sports, and I felt truly fortunate to spend its 51st edition with Jack Hege, the man who’d seen them all, and this time was duly honored for his devotion. If Jack stays healthy, I hope he will continue to come back and share with others his personal slice of the colorful history of a sport that’s come so far.

Before we said goodbye, I had one final question for Jack. I wanted to pinpoint the one particular thing that drew him to Daytona every February like a migratory bird.
Hege didn’t pause at all. “Everyone wants to see and do something different, I reckon. And racing has been that. You want to see and do it all.”

No one can say they’ve seen everything. But from experiencing first hand the pioneering races on the beaches of Daytona, where fans popped from the trunks of cars, to today’s events drawing 200,000 fans in person and a TV audience of millions more around the world, it’s safe to say no NASCAR fan comes closer to seeing it all than Jack Hege. The smart money says, come mid February next year, he’ll be headed toward Daytona, like a migratory bird, pointed through a hard-wired instinct to where it feels right.

For more stories like Jack’s, THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans (by Andrew Giangola, Motorbooks) is available on the amazon.com, the NASCAR.COM Superstore and anywhere fine books are sold.

Gavin DeGraw: One of the NASCAR Family

2010-12-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

The phalanx of young women in a state of toe-tapping anticipation is, on balance, a wholesome display of American youth in hip-hugging jeans and fruity lip gloss. They stand in neat rows in front of the stage at the Hard Rock Café in New York’s Times Square. Eyes lined various shades of bewitching black are trained on the empty seat at the piano in the center of the dramatically lit stage.

Gavin DeGraw, the talented singer-songwriter soon to take that chair along with the adulation of fast-beating hearts, is backstage in the venue’s Green Room. The 31-year old performer has had a number-one hit single which served as the theme song to the popular TV show, “One Tree Hill.” He played to 60,000 in Denmark. His most recent album comfortably settled in the Billboard Top 10. Yet the pre-concert backstage scene isn’t the clichéd booze-and-babes bash you might expect a handsome pop star to be enjoying. Nikki Sixx he’s not.

Instead, Gavin’s dad and manager, Wayne, and his mom, Lynne, sip sodas and nibble on past-the-expiration-date cheese and crackers. Their other son Joey, who plays guitar and sings with Gavin, is tag-teaming with his younger brother in a game of who-can-top-this banter of funny pop culture references and goofy non sequiturs revealing hyper DeGraw brains never at rest. The prevalent sound in the sealed-off VIP room is Gavin’s laughter, which often follows his own quirky one-liners.

But that’s excusable. Gavin is a sweet-voiced funny dude, and if anyone has the right to enjoy his own jokes tonight, it is artist filling a ballroom with adoring girls wearing their grooviest outfits just for him.

Gavin DeGraw is at home when kicking back with family and friends. This is the company he values most when preparing for a special 2008 Champions Week concert in honor of Jimmie Johnson’s third-consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title. With an apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and a social calendar that includes taking in live music whenever possible, Johnson and his stunning wife Chandra are friendly with DeGraw. In fact, on the liner notes of his album, Free, Gavin thanked Jimmie, along with Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Brian Vickers and Carl Edwards.

Backstage, one of Gavin’s equally famous pals pulls out a new Carl Edwards phone, the kind with the driver’s picture emblazoned on the shell. The guy with the phone, Gavin’s friend Carl Edwards, declares in gee-whiz exclamation, “It’s actually pretty cool to have your picture on your own phone…a ‘Carl Edwards phone,’ I guess.”
Gavin glances at the device Carl is palming in his strong hands and shoots an exaggerated double take.

“Dude, that is you! Oh man, when you said ‘a Carl Edwards phone,’ I thought you meant it had your picture in the phone!”

A common misperception among regular people who have to do their own laundry and bus their own plates following dinner is that celebrities, when getting together, engage in meaningful and interesting discussions. Sting’s plight for the rain forest, Madonna’s fake English accent, Alec Baldwin’s political blogs, Angelina’s expanding third-world brood, and Bono’s crusade to fix the third, second and first world, may have helped create that erroneous impression. In reality, this is the conversation of famous people: a mostly forgettable jetsam of the regular and the mundane. I quite like it.

(During my first Champion’s Week in New York as a NASCAR employee, I had the pleasure of sitting with NASCAR legend Bill Elliott on a short bus coming returning to the Waldorf=Astoria from Lincoln Center. As the vehicle crawled down through rush-hour traffic, Bill stared out the window processing the exotic store-front facades slowly panning past our window. He robotically said: “Chyn-eeeze foooood….Eye-tal-yan food…Vietnameeeeze Food….French foooood…Jap-AN-eeese food….Kore-eeean fooood….” Bill noticed my befuddled stare. He admitted Dawsonville and its surrounding counties didn’t offer even a small percentage of the culinary variety of this small stretch of Broadway.)

Tonight at the Hard Rock, the conversation bounces around topics of mutual interest to young men with the world at their feet. Carl needs to find the right words to introduce Galvin on stage. The driver was selected to do the honors not only because he’s a deft public speaker. (This is a man who flew out to California to introduce the “Price is Right” Grand Showcase without looking like a nimrod.) His sponsor Aflac is hosting the Fan Fest, he owns a record company, Back 40 Records, and one of his label’s acts will open the show.

As Carl jots notes on a scrap of paper, the boys talk about life on the road with family. Gavin’s dad is his manager and of course brother Joey backs him on guitar; Carl’s mom is a fixture at NASCAR races. Carl wonders if Gavin can play one of his all-time favorite songs, Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which he attempts to sing, making it clear why Edwards races cars for a living.

They chat about a mutual desire of retiring to a Midwestern farm. Edwards owns a 200-acre farm outside of his hometown of Columbia, Missouri, where DeGraw wants a place, too. Plows and cows get the boys animated, and the level of excitement increases when the discussion turns to electronic gadgets, particularly the coolest one in our midst, Gavin’s watch, equipped with a device which, in case of emergency, can be pulled to alert local authorities. “Fifty grand if you set it off accidentally,” he declares, proudly faking a pull.

Then again, the hottest gadget could be a camera – not much bigger than a pack of smokes – wielded by a rangy gentleman in faded embroidered jeans and tight wool knit cap. He’s airy and graceful on his feet, could be a dancer, moving in, cutting laterally, and backpedaling away, as if carried in the unpredictable tide of the ocean, holding this new contraption known as a Flip camera steady a few inches in front of his face while he bobs about to stream the conversation to a site called AccessTV.com. This backstage bantering on the joys of Missouri farming and James Bond timepieces will be seen by more than 20,000 Gavin DeGraw fans in many different time zones, cyber flies on the wall of the Hard Rock Café.

The guy with the web cam offering the voyeuristic cyber-experience is Stanton Barrett – photographer, art gallery proprietor, internet content provider, Hollywood stuntman, Godson of Paul Newman, and Indy Car and NASCAR Nationwide Series driver.
Gavin first connected with his “good buds” Stanton and Carl when he sang the National Anthem at the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series race to start the season at Daytona. But that wasn’t his initial introduction to NASCAR. Born and raised in the Catskills Mountains of upstate New York, Gavin’s dad Wayne was a tough prison guard who loved fast cars and melodic tunes. Wayne introduced Gavin to NASCAR at the area’s short tracks and taught him piano.

Therefore, Gavin knew a bit about the sport before belting out, in front of 100,000 fans, the line “o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave” – a perfectly synchronized lead in to the most fantastic coda to any song he’d ever performed, the deafening roar of a fighter jet squadron streaking over Daytona International Speedway. When the green flag dropped, Gavin would discover there’s nothing like attending a big-time stock car race in person, especially the start of the season at Daytona. Once able to witness NASCAR up close and in person, he became a fan.

Traveling with his mom and dad in a bus he calls “a submarine on a highway,” DeGraw was “blown away by the whole aura of family which surrounds this sport.”
He met NASCAR Chairman & CEO Brian France and his sister Lesa Kennedy France, who runs the largest speedway operating company. He learned how their grandfather got on a plow and helped move the dirt to build a massive high-banked track many claimed was an outlandish, impractical, unworkable dream. He liked how Big Bill France put his head down and persevered, defying daunting odds and numerous setbacks to create an entire sport, just as he had worked his fingers nearly to the bone learning his craft in the honky tonk bars and sometimes empty coffee houses of New York, and when others had their doubts, also found success. He saw the way drivers’ families gather in the motor coach lot during race weekend, the wives, kids and their dogs playing together. He got the chance to see the Waltrips, the Wallaces, the Labontes, all those families at the center of the big, colorful traveling circus.

“I got to watch the race in the Office Depot pit when they were sponsoring Carl Edwards,” DeGraw said. “ I climbed up on the box, and Carl’s mom was up there. Right then it struck me: this is such a cool sport I wanted to be part of. There was Carl’s mom, and he was totally embracing her being there. Out of all the sights and sounds of Daytona, that’s what I’ll remember most – watching the race in the pits with a driver’s mom.

“Since when did it become cool to not have a great relationship with your parents? I feel I am so blessed to be experiencing all this in my career, and traveling with my parents and brother. That’s what I like most about NASCAR. All these families, doing what they love, and doing it together.”

Maybe I was wrong. Between the banter and joking, some celebrities do have important things to say.

The show was about to start. Carl Edwards jammed speaking notes he wouldn’t use into his pocket. He bounded off for the stage. Gavin grabbed an acoustic guitar and disappeared into a side room to warm up his voice. I went out to the floor where a young girl spotted my “VIP ALL ACCESS” pass.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Gavin DeGraw’s dad,” I lied.

“Really?! Can you take me back stage?”

“You really don't want to go,” I said. “It’s definitely not what you think it is.”

For more stories about NASCAR, Andrew Giangola’s book, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans is available wherever fine (and lousy) books are sold.

An Annual Thanksgiving Tale

2010-11-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

I don't cling to many traditions. But there is one I'm following -- sending out this story every year.

When you see Frosty, and Rudolph, and hear the radio stations go all Christmas all the time, and you get my sordid little tale, you know it's THE HOLIDAYS.

This isn’t a Thanksgiving recipe. It’s more a series of events that became a recipe for disaster.

You see, my wife and I like to spend weekends on Eastern Long Island. It’s nice to get away from the concrete jungle of NYC for peaceful time at the beach. Nothing beats salt air and the squawk of the sea gulls, especially when the beach is empty.

Out east, our place is tiny -- about as big as the John in Dale Jr.’s motor coach. Our kitchen is large enough for a child with an EasyBake oven, and we have no family in the Hamptons. So we don't cook. We go out.

One particular Thanksgiving, for turkey dinner, we head to a mom-and-pop diner we’d patronized before. It's actually near Riverhead Raceway. Viviane likes the diner’s rustic feel, and I prefer the small-town prices compared to Southampton’s shi-shi designer joints with small portions on the menu and large portions of jewelry on the patrons.

This particular Thanksgiving, as my wife and young Gaby (before rock and roll, and plans for a full-sleeve tattoo on an arm) settle into our booth, things feel disjointed.

The restaurant seems…well, different. Two cheery corn-fed squeaky-clean buxom-blonde peach-cheeked teenage Christian girls immediately slap down plates of steaming turkey, spilling over with rich gravy and fluffy trimmings. No menu, they just bring piles of food brought with midwestern wholesome cheer.

Looking around, the other patrons quietly enjoying their dinners are a bit, well…different. Disenfranchised, could you say?

Now, my family isn’t dressed for the Prom; Riverhead is still largely a blue collar town, and yours truly has on sweats that have been near the tide but not the Tide, if you know what I mean. I’m in need of a haircut, presently resembling Boris Said with Bed Head.

But even I look generally more presentable than the others. The men wear greasy caps and scraggly growth on weathered faces. The women appear as if they’ve been around the block several times at a high rate of speed. We are in Kansas no more.

Indeed, as our wide eyes scan the room, it becomes clear to each of us about the same precise moment that the Giangolas are enjoying a soup kitchen-style Thanksgiving dinner with the homeless.

Cookin’ on the High Side with Mario Batali and Rachael Ray

2010-11-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

It’s 3 a.m. at Texas Motor Speedway, and Mario Batali’s red pony tail is flapping in the breeze. He’s gunning a golf cart over an uneven gravel road carving through the track’s throbbing shantytown of RVs, trailers, motor homes, and repainted school buses.

“We’re on a mission to find the real Americana,” Batali says, and he’s taking his good pal along for the ride. On the back of the zigzagging cart, a laughing Rachael

Ray is blowing kisses to fans shouting, “We love you Rachael!”

Packed into the infield are thousands of camping and recreational vehicles of varied shapes, sizes and payment schemes. Some are hitched to huge cylindrical metal smokers cooking sizzling slabs of choice American beef, which catches the attention of the super chefs driving past converted old school buses with crushed velvet sofas bolted onto the roof and sleek new Prevost motor coaches that require a jumbo mortgage.

The cart’s headlights catch the reflection of silver beads hanging from the horns of a wildebeest’s head which is mounted to a school bus painted silver to resemble a 40-foot long Coors Light can.

The beads are everywhere. Fans whooping it up in all directions are awash in them – glittering strands of silver, ruby, pearl, aquamarine, cherry cola, emerald green. Some are the size of marbles, others as big as golf balls. A life-size John Wayne cutout is adorned with several strands. Gold ones for the Duke, who is standing in front of scaffolding three stories high with a jerrybuilt viewing platform up top along with a bright neon sign proclaiming, “The Redneck Taj Mahal.”

Across the way, “Sweet Home Alabama,” the one tune that from the opening guitar lick can take a juiced-up assemblage of fans into blissed-out nirvana, is blasting from a cooler equipped with giant speakers. A dozen young men and women are swirling around the amazing cooler-slash-boom box. They’re engaged in a sort of rhythmic tribal dance, slowly wind milling their arms as if swimming leisurely through the smoky balmy Texas night.

The state of innovation in America may be declining overall, but an impressive spirit of can-do invention is on display throughout Texas Motor Speedway. A host of creative contraptions like the spindly erector-set village of scaffolding, the juke box producing southern rock and cold beer, and the smokers made from rusty underground propane tanks are helping fans view the track, cook, dance, play music, and dispense adult beverages. An enterprising fan will probably one day invent a device that does all of the above in one contraption you can hook to your Ford F-10 and tow to the races.

At the helm of the golf cart, Batali, a gregarious man with a heavy foot and military-strength RADAR for locating a good time regardless of the hour, veers down a road doglegging to the left. He drives a few hundred feet and instinctually pulls up to a western saloon. It’s an ingeniously constructed replica of a dusty storefront, the kind of plywood structure you’d see on a Hollywood lot with a hand-painted sign announcing, Me Til Monday Saloon.

“Me till Tuesday,” Batali says.

Rachael Ray doesn’t hear that because she’s off the cart before her good friend and sometime partner in crime brings it to a halt. The insanely popular chef, award-winning TV talk show host, magazine publisher, cookware entrepreneur and best-selling author busts through swinging saloon-style western doors onto an elevated black-and-white tiled dance floor.

In the middle of the floor, the object of everyone’s attention, the thing that dominates a scene with plenty of side-show diversions of eye-candy, is a gleaming stripper’s pole.

Rachael Ray marvels at the silver pole.

It seems to rise improbably from the floor, but after a moment’s reflection you can’t imagine the Me Til Monday Saloon or the raceway without it.
Rachael eyes the DJ booth and the giddy beaded dancing women and the rough-edged, crew-cut boys intent on their affection, and she exclaims in a raspy whiskey-and-sandpaper voice that’s fading fast, “We’re in the middle of a race track! These people know how to bring it!”

“Raych, the infield is the heartbeat of NASCAR,” Batali shouts. “We happen to be in the geometric center.”

This comes from experience. Batali has been to nearly 50 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races since Rich Bodmer, a friend from The Sporting News, brought him to an event at Dover International Speedway.

The globally renowned uber-chef, who darts in and out of Greenwich Village traffic on his Vespa, immediately “fell in love” with the speed of the sport, along with the drama-laden cat-and-mouse games drivers and crew chiefs will play to outfox the other teams.

Batali has been known to bend the rules – of what a restaurant should serve and how a restauranteur should act. He takes off-putting parts like beef cheeks and squab liver, and from the seemingly inedible cast-offs makes incredibly delicious dishes served in restaurants cranking rock and roll music way too loud. He wears shorts in the winter.

When you’re with Batali, the notion that some rules apply exclusively to other people starts to make sense.

It’s no surprise his favorite driver-crew chief tandem is Johnson and Chad Knaus, the duo in the garage known to be most adept for taking periodic expeditions into the gray areas in NASCAR’s black-and-white rule book.

But the combination of creative wits at war and creative techniques to push cars to breathtaking speeds was only part of the sport’s appeal to Batali.

NASCAR is famous for its multiple-day tailgaters, and the chef, who had recently returned from Spain where he and another famous fabulous New York running mate, Gwyneth Paltrow, shot a highly rated PBS series, Spain on the Road Again, naturally wanted to assess the foods of NASCAR and its fans as well.

“I got to Dover and expected hot dogs and hamburgers,” he said. “What I saw and tasted was surprising and delicious. The fans were making crab soup, crab cakes, crab stuffing, pasta with crabs, and lasagna with crabs. These were almost luxury food items being made right in the camp grounds. It was a real eye opener.”

Batali next went to Pocono Raceway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Talladega Super Speedway, and Texas Motor Speedway. He found delightful regional variations and hard-core race fans doubling as “obsessive foodies.” He saw each track expressing the region’s food. In Pocono, they were cooking venison and quail.

At New Hampshire, it was lobster and chowder. In Texas, beef and brisket were all the rage, and at one camp site, he saw an entire steer on a spit, barbecued for 48 hours then carved with a giant sword and served on white bread.

“That, my friend, is impressive, and you see that kind of cooking creativity all over the circuit. I like to say, NASCAR is a microcosm of the James Beard Society. It’s like going to a three-day rock concert with great food – Woodstock meets Mad Max meets the Super Bowl meets the Iowa State Fair. I’ve gone to a lot of sporting events, and I will tell you NASCAR fans are not only having more fun, they’re also eating better than fans in other sports.”

Batali has seven strong-selling cookbooks, and the NASCAR experience motivated him to write one of them, Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style, the first major cookbook attached to the sport. Batali developed recipes like Eggs in Hell, Speedway Guacamole, Restrictor Plate Chili, and Brickyard Barbecued Game Hens to capture the taste, texture and smells of the racing culture. The second-generation Italian-American boy from Seattle who went to high school in Spain is now as comfortable and familiar in tapping the cuisines of Renaissance Tuscan aristocracy and modern day Spanish field workers as he is in channeling the cooking styles of NASCAR fans in the campgrounds of races across America.

“I see myself as an interpreter of 3,000 years of cultural and gastronomic history,” Batali said. “I’m blessed because I don’t have to come up with too much that’s new and revolutionary. I’m someone who explains to people how they can make dishes that have been part of other cultures for many, many years.”

He happens to be very good at it. Batali’s record in “Iron Chef,” a televised 60-minute cooking competition among the world’s top chefs, is an astounding 31 wins and three losses. While the taste of food is subjective, and cynics would contend critics can be bought and swayed, that kind of winning record against the titans of the culinary world suggests Batali may be the best chef on the planet.

So when Texas Motor Speedway pitched him on the “Asphalt Chef,” a culinary battle at the race track pairing top chefs with NASCAR drivers, Batali accepted, and roped in his friends Rachael Ray and Tim Love, a meat-loving Texan who favors cowboy hats, western shirts, dusty boots and Crown Royal whiskey.

Love is no cooking slouch; he grills a mean rattlesnake, has an Iron Chef victory to his credit as well, and he’s well known in the Lone Star State.

But his celebrity Q factor is nowhere close to that of Batali, who has the rare distinction of being able to truthfully open a conversation by saying, “When I was on Oprah…” Yet in pop culture awareness, Batali is still a notch below Rachael Ray. Through her food and talk shows, lifestyle magazine and products now including a personal brand of dog food, Ray exists in the upper echelon of celebrity, able to elicit shrieks and tears from grown men and women through merely showing up in a public place. The dogs probably recognize her, too.

The Asphalt Chef competition was held next to a large pool in the shape of Texas below the condominiums overlooking Turn 2 of Texas Motor Speedway. Track executives have completely lost their minds, said people who comment on these kind of things when the announcement was made about new luxury condominiums to be built at the speedway. Today, the condos are worth more than a million dollars each.

While a band played light Texas blues and well-heeled corporate guests and friends of the speedway settled into their chairs at the Lone Star Clubhouse, the cooks were told the secret ingredient – hot chili peppers.

A 20-minute time clock was activated, and the teams scrambled for their ingredients, fired up the grills, and began chopping and marinating. Batali was paired with Juan Pablo Montoya, the Formula One superstar who had shocked the motorsports world by jumping to NASCAR. Montoya looks sharp in his chef’s smock, though he’s not smiling, probably because he hates to lose, whether it’s the Daytona 500 or tiddlywinks, and who wants to get up in front of a group of rich people, out of your element, not only losing but appearing foolish in the process. Juan’s eyes are locked in concentration on a pepper he’s slicing.

Rachael Ray was matched with Carl Edwards, who informed his partner he doesn’t grill, can barely prepare toast, and pulls the cheese off his pizza as part of a health kick ruling out nearly all foods outside of soup. “Carl tells me all this with a big smile on his face as if it’s good for our team,” Rachael later explains.
Tim Love, toting a bottle of Crown Royal, cooked with fellow Texan Bobby Labonte. The duo’s rib eye steak marinated in Coca-Cola with shrimp, cannoli beans, basil and chili peppers drew strong reviews. Bobby earned extra points for working his sponsor into the recipe.

The judges swallowed any concerns that blood from a grater-induced cut on Carl’s finger might have made it into his team’s dish. There had been a catch can at the bottom of the grater Carl didn’t see. The driver was grinding the cheese with a strong sense of purpose but nothing came out. So he ground the cheese faster and harder. Carl is one determined dude, and he finally just bore right into his finger. The judges overlooked that and thoroughly enjoyed Carl and Rachael’s chili and spicy quesadillas, heavy on the onion and garlic.

But Mario and Juan Pablo ruled the night. Their winning dish was an impressively presented Vietnamese-Colombian surf and turf consisting of a flank steak with red curry and a summer roll featuring Napa cabbage with shrimp, chili peppers, scallions and cilantro cooked in orange juice.

Batali denied that the dish’s fancy name and multitude of ingredients contributed to yet another Iron Chef triumph. “Juan Pablo and I won for three simple reasons,” he said in accepting a faux gold medal for his efforts. “Tim was drinkin’, Carl was bleedin’ and we were cookin’.”

Despite Edwards’ cheese-grating mishap, the professional cooks were impressed by the NASCAR drivers’ determination and sportsmanship. “These guys are not just danger mavens. They’re cool, and they’re real people, not like many celebrities today,” Batali said. “I don’t care where you live or how much money you earn, I judge anyone by two things. First is your attitude toward food – the ability to enjoy and share delicious things. Second is the way you treat busboys. I look at a lot of celebrities and they don’t make the cut by that standard. NASCAR drivers do.”

Human decency, generosity and community spirit are traits also shared by the hundreds of NASCAR fans Batali has met. His late-night jaunt with Rachael Ray in Texas reminded him of exploring the infield at Talladega at a time way past most folks’ bed time.

“Some fans had created a whole bar scene with a parquet wooden floor and Tikki lamps. They’d ring a bell and serve gumbo to anyone who wanted it. Anyone! I love that about these fans everywhere you go on the circuit. They epitomize the essence of good cooking: making something delicious and sharing it with your friends.”

Just as a friend introduced Mario to NASCAR, he was able to sell his good friend Rachael Ray on the sport. “I sincerely had the best time of my life at the track,” Ray said in the shred of her voice remaining. “I’m just upset it took me 40 years to discover all this. I’ll be back.”

Mario Batali and Rachael Ray are world-famous figures, wealthy beyond the dreams of most NASCAR fans. Yet, they are celebrities of the people. In the morning, they arrived at the racetrack in a private helicopter. But by nightfall, they were among the fans, passing good jokes and even better bottles of wine, and tearing it up in a golf cart on the way to the most extraordinary western saloon imaginable. They found the geometric center of the sport and are now proudly part of it.

Published with permission from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans (Motorbooks), which is available on amazon.com and wherever fine (and ridiculously insipid) books are sold.

A Matter of Life and Death

2010-10-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s the countless hours they spend huddled around campfires. Or maybe it’s because so many of them enjoy fishing, and we know how fishermen exaggerate. The wealth of priceless raw material available—the daily soap opera in the garage, the late-night revelry in the campgrounds—certainly contributes to it. Whatever the reason, NASCAR fans have amazing stories to tell about other fans. There are some bona-fide whoppers.

In sifting through tales of out-of-the-ordinary NASCAR fandom, it’s difficult to separate historical truth from possible urban — or, in this case, shall we say “rural” — legend. It’s fitting the most fantastic story I’ve come across, which several high-placed industry sources confirm to be true, originates at Talladega Superspeedway, the track known for the highest speeds, most spectacular wrecks, and biggest, rowdiest fan parties. (Oh, yeah, and the track that was supposedly built on an Indian burial ground.)

Talladega is NASCAR’s largest track, a 2.66-mile tri-oval ringing a large, raucous infield. Tens of thousands of fans come to ’Dega in RVs, campers and converted school buses, often arriving at the track days before the race and, once there, flying their flags proudly. In fact, when fans set up camp in the infield, the first task is to mark their turf and announce an allegiance by raising their NASCAR flags.

At one NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega not too many years ago, a fan was raising the banners of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and, of course, his dad, the late, great Dale Sr.—the ubiquitous menacing black No. 3, a flapping pennant seen at this track and wherever the circuit visits, then and always.

This particular fan happened to be performing this flag-raising ritual during one of the fierce storms that will, with little warning, tear across the Alabama countryside. This time, the rain and winds were no surprise. The fan saw the sky darken and greenish-black clouds gathering wrath in the distance, low, fast, and fierce like the flyover to come on Sunday. He’d be damned if a little weather was going to prevent the flags of the Earnhardts, NASCAR, and America from going up before the cars hit the track for qualifying.

In the driving rain, the fan was securing his metal flagpole. An apocalyptic crack of thunder, as loud as if the sky had split apart, erupted. It came with a brilliant flash of blue-white light. The searing bolt of electricity beamed into the flagpole.

Even a mild lightning strike generates nearly a billion volts of juice. This unlucky fellow holding the pole was instantly fried to death by the sizzling laser. His buddies inside the camper heard the thunderclap and a thud—the body hitting the ground. They ran outside to discover their burnt and lifeless friend. They waited out the storm, and following a brief discussion featuring mild dissent quickly dismissed, the group made an improbable decision: to dig a shallow grave there in the infield and continue their race weekend plans. After all, “it’s what he would have wanted,” they agreed. One may have mumbled a joke about it being the NASCAR version of the movie, "Weekend at Bernie’s."

Since none of the crew had any special religious convictions, did it really harm anyone, including the deceased fellow’s family, to delay a funeral anyway? Their friend was horribly, tragically, irreversibly dead. Nothing would change that. You can book a church and call in flowers and cold cuts anytime in modern-day America. After the race, they’d take care of grim details no one wanted to think about just yet. Until then, a race was to be run.

The weather cleared. A southern belle proudly belted out the national anthem with fans proudly at attention, hands over hearts and then lifted to the sky cheering military jets screeching past. Gentlemen started their engines. The pack of 43 cars freight-trained around the track. There was the requisite big wreck. And one happy driver surged first to the checkered flag.

And then, after the last bottle of champagne was sprayed in a banshee Victory Lane celebration, a few hundred yards away, the boys dug up and cleaned off their friend. They solemnly reported the death to local authorities. Not many questions were asked. An open-and-shut case of death by lightning strike. No one’s ever charged Mother Nature with murder. Tough to prosecute that one. The boys lowered their flags and drove home with a little more room in the pickup truck than when they arrived a few days earlier.

This story is the epilogue in "The Weekend Start on Wednesday" (Motorbooks, 2010). It is shared here with permission, and may be quoted with proper attribution to the NASCAR Library Collection book.

There's Nothing Flat About Tireman

2010-10-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Throughout history, a host of useful and important inventions have come from unplanned accidents.

In China 2,000 years ago, legend has it a cook mixed charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. The concoction exploded in vivid colors. Fireworks were invented, and life immediately got better for teenage boys.

In 1879, a researcher spilled a chemical on his hand. He went off to lunch, forgetting to wash his hands. The bread he munched on tasted unusually sweet. The world would get its first artificial sweetener, saccharin.

Penicillin was discovered by chance in 1928 when a British scientist was experimenting with bacteria in petri dishes.

And so it was for Chris MacNicol, who for five dollars purchased Joe Nemechek’s right front qualifying Goodyear tire at the 2004 Daytona 500. The tire was heavy. MacNicol put it down. Looking at that wheel, he had an epiphany. Wearing only shorts, he sat in it. When he got up, the tire stuck. Hilarity ensued. Fans gathered around. Photos were taken, autographs signed.

Tire Man was born. And now he has the most photographed valve stem on the circuit.

Most celebrities need a build up to develop their base. It’s usually gradual. The biggest stars of modern times, The Beatles, played for years in relative obscurity in seedy German strip clubs before the madness began.

Talladega Tire Man, however, happened instantly. Fans saw the buff dude in the Goodyear Eagle and frayed straw hat and instinctively called out, “Tire Man!” He was an immediate Pied Piper for the enthusiastic NASCAR masses, who formed a bellowing impromptu circle in the infield. A Florida state trooper was called in to investigate the ruckus. She approached the well-built young man mugging for the cameras in a role he’d been waiting his whole life to fill.

Picture the scene: female state trooper in her snappy uniform, addressing 30-year-old Chris MacNicol, ostensibly naked, save a race car wheel.

“Please tell me you have something on under that tire,” the officer said.

“Why don’t you look?” Tire Man suggested.

The cop was flustered and embarrassed. Here was this good-looking muscular guy, could have been a Chippendale’s dancer, his formidable, well-rounded pecs dancing a happy jiggle when he laughed. They didn’t cover this in the training academy.

Tire Man respects the law. His dad is a retired cop. He wasn’t about to let the trooper lose face, particularly in front of dozens of preening fans awaiting the outcome of this peculiar showdown. He reached into the Goodyear. A hush settled over the crowd. He yanked up his shorts. Major cheers.

The state trooper tipped her cap and moved on, utterly relieved with the quick and suitable ending, escaping the awkwardness of hauling in a guy, for what? Wearing nothing but a Goodyear? Was she supposed to impound the tire and take it back to the NASCR R&D Center for inspection?

On the day Tire Man was born, so many fans wanted their photos taken, it took Tire Man and his dad six hours to walk from turn four to their campsite in turn one. Chris sensed what Superman felt wearing that cape. He innately knew he’d be inside this tire at other tracks…especially his beloved Talladega Superspeedway.

“He put on that tire, and the whole thing was absolutely immediately hilarious,” said his dad, Bruce MacNicol. “It was the best scene at any sporting event I’ve ever seen. All the women wanted to know what he had on underneath. Chris said, ‘an inner liner.’ A few of the ladies got a little risqué, but it was all in good fun.”

Tire Man’s supportive wife wasn’t there, and maybe that was a good thing. “As lucky as I may be to be married to the guy, I have not yet ventured to the track to see him wearing the tire ‘live,’ though he has put it on at home and modeled it for me,” Tonya said. “The funniest part is seeing pictures of Chris, and in the background there’s a large crowd taking even more pictures…and then there’s the line of people waiting to meet him. Just amazing!”

Tonya and Chris met in college, where he was pursuing his degree as an exercise physiologist. Chris had back problems, and took to swimming. Tonya was a life guard, and they’d swim together when Chris wasn’t doing cannon balls off the diving board. It took more than four years, but he made her laugh till her sides hurt, and finally got his girl.

Even though Chris is hoofing around the track mostly au natural, posing for pictures with scores of strange women of unknown repute, Tonya completely supports her husband’s alter ego.

“Chris is not shy about anything. He loves the sport of NASCAR and anything that puts him in the center of it. I love the whole idea of Tire Man, because I know Chris loves it. He is such a people person, and whatever he can do to make people smile makes him the happiest. I look at his website and Facebook page in awe of the friends he’s made and the loyalty they show. The man they see is the same one I’m at home with every day, who makes me smile and makes me crazy all at the same time. I have nothing but pride when I hear someone say, ‘That’s your husband? I just saw him at the track.”

“I just love making people laugh,” Tire Man says. “I was the class clown, the guy always doing the stupid stuff no one else does. I’m kinda like Mikey, the kid in the TV commercial, who will eat anything.”

If you take an informal poll of NASCAR fans, many have seen Tire Man, in person or through internet photos or in features in NASCAR-friendly outlets like The Sporting News or SPEED. When ABC News’ Prime Time Live ran an in-depth series on NASCAR, they found Tire Man. Even Will Ferrell, appearing on talks shows to promote his film, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, remembered venturing out into the infield late at night and marveling at this gregarious guy in a straw hat with a tire around his waist.

During the week, when Tire Man goes back to his civilian “Clark Kent” persona, he is a sales rep for a medical supply company, specializing in breathing devices. At the company’s annual sales meeting, a photo of Tire Man went up on the big screen to motivate hundreds of managers from all over the country.

“It’s an amazing and diverse bunch that congregates around Tire Man,” says Tire Man, who like Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley, frequently slips into referring to himself in the third person. “I have met everyone from CEO’s to the gainfully unemployed. But for five days twice a year, we hail from the same place and hoot and holler side by side. After doing this a few years, I’ve built a lot of friendships and going to races is really like a reunion.”

Tire Man is built like a bull that goes to the gym. Still, the first time wearing the wheel, he was supporting its full 45 pounds against his skin. “I suffered a severe tire rub in my right quarter panel,” he says. He still has a scar on his hip where the tire sat that day.

He went home, got out a saw horse and circular saw and went to town on the tire. There was all kind of noise, and smoke and rubber all over the place but also a method to the madness. Tire Man sliced away some rubber to insert pipe insulation. He drilled holes for U-bolts attaching to two-inch heavy-duty Dickies suspenders.

The tire now hangs from the suspenders, steadied against his hips.

The trickiest part is going to the bathroom. Tire Man has to lean back and use a side wall for required stabilization and leverage. “At every race, someone will inevitably walk in the bathroom, and you’ll hear, ‘Holy S--t!'”

Even before the creation of Tire Man, Chris showed his devotion to NASCAR in curious ways. About a year after he married Tonya, Dale Earnhardt won a race. Chris celebrated by diving into the biggest mud hole that he could find.

“You guessed it - off comes the wedding band,” Tonya explained. “Apparently Chris searched for nearly four hours for that ring before having to come home and confess what had happened. Bystanders took pictures, and he came home with a stack of photos showing him digging through the mud pit looking for his wedding ring. I just had to laugh. I guess everyone must have anticipated I was going to make his life miserable. They took pity on him and posted messages to me on his website vouching for how long he had searched and how sad he was. Needless to say, the ring he wears today is from Wal-Mart.”

Tire Man wasn’t always so passionate about NASCAR. Although his dad was a drag racer in Detroit and a friend of NASCAR driver Benny Parsons (the two men belonged to the same Masonic lodge in the Motor City), he grew up indifferent to racing. In fact, he’d never been to a NASCAR race until college, making his first trip to the track under mild duress while at Jacksonville State University.

“My teammates on the baseball team wanted to hit the race at Talladega. To be honest, my first reaction was, ‘I’m not watching that crap.’ I just had no idea, and like a lot of people resorted to the stereotype that it’s not a sport, and would be boring. I had no interest at all.”

The fellas talked about how cool the race would be. Their resistant teammate was not swayed. Instead of Rusty and Dale at Talladega, it might was well have been Anthony and Cleopatra at the Metropolitan Opera. There was nothing intriguing about hanging around a race track. It sounded like a colossal waste of time. Then his buddies promised a big party. Bingo; that was the magic term the gregarious, outgoing class clown needed to hear. Now they were speaking his language. Six strapping ballplayers loaded into a pickup truck, heading for the Alabama border.

"From the moment we rolled into Talladega, I was hooked,” he said. “I went just to hang with the guys. Seeing those cars going ‘round and ‘round, I started to ask questions, learning about the drivers and their history. It really grabbed hold of me. And to be 19, in the middle of that huge party. Oh, man, I was in heaven.”

Since 1993, Tire Man hasn’t missed a single Talladega race weekend. There have been big parties and sad, poignant times as well.

“In the infield, if you go to the second to last light pole on Talladega Blvd. headed towards turn 1 and 2, you will find a memorial plaque for Steve Citrano embedded in his camping site,” Tire Man explained. “Stevie Wonder, we called him, because he was mechanical genius. Stevie was always fixin’ someone’s motor home and most of the fixin’ was on his own which kept breaking down on the way to the track About five years ago, we lost Steve to a diabetic induced coma. We found him on Sunday morning before the race. That race was rained out and finished on Monday. We stayed and watched the race in his honor, then somberly packed his things and left the track. At every race, we display checkered flags at his plaque, because Stevie Wonder has finished his own race.”

Tire Man started taking his dad, Bruce, to races in 1995. At first they rolled out sleeping bags and slept under the stars in the bed of Bruce’s Ford Ranger pickup truck. He now travels in style to races at Daytona, Atlanta, Bristol and Talladega in a 35-foot Fleetwood RV with comfortable beds and satellite TV.

Tire Man and his dad have spent some of their closest times at the track. Chris is considering tires for his two boys, six and four. “Maybe a bicycle tire!” he says. Eternally level-headed Tonya is putting a kibosh on that for now.

“One day, I do want them to see the reaction their dad gets at the race track,” she says. “I think Tire Man encompasses everything about Chris. It’s really his character, his charisma, his charm that draws people in. Anyone can throw on a tire – but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to like the man wearing it. When people meet Tire Man they are definitely meeting Chris – the guy that loves to smile, loves to laugh, loves NASCAR, and loves his family.”

For more stories like Tire Man’s, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans by Andrew Giangola is available on amazon.com, the NASCAR.COM SuperStore and wherever fine (as well as crappy) books are sold.

Smoke Wins and So Does Spencer Roy

2010-09-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

It’s fitting that as the traveling circus stops in Richmond this weekend we hear from Stephanie Roy, the Tony Stewart-loving mom whose son Spencer spent a memorable Make a Wish with the two-time NASCAR champ at Richmond International Raceway, chronicled in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday.

Stephanie had previously taken a big one for the team by getting Smoke’s tattoo on her arm. Spencer had asked to be branded with his favorite driver, but he was just a young boy. So mom caught Smoke at an autograph signing, got him to plant one on her bicept, found a nearby tattoo parlor, and made Tony’s signature permanent, all before dinner time, suprising her delighted son to no end.

Well, following Smoke’s big momentum-building win in the red Office Depot Chevy last weekend in Atlanta, Stephanie wrote to us with good news. Here is her email:

I wanted to let everyone know that we were all sooo excited to see Tony win Sunday nite; it was AWESOME!! And also, that we got some important information yesterday.

When Spencer was at Duke University Hospital in May 2008, they took some samples from him to be tested. Two years later, we’ve now gotten the results back.

Spencer has been diagnosed with Timothy Syndrome, a very rare form of long Qt syndrome.

They only know of 20 people in the whole world with this, and Spencer makes 21.

After reading everything about it and talking with his doctors, this has been one of the answers we've been looking for throughout 14 years of Spencer’s life...and it happened to come immediately following Smoke's win in Hotlanta.. I think that is what is making this so ironic: Smoke gets a win that was long over due, and we get questions answered that have been long over due.

We still have a long road ahead. But Spencer is a very strong-willed young man and will not let anything slow him down. He started high school yesterday, all dressed out his new Tony shirt and hat looking good!
When he got home, I asked how his first day went, and if he learned anything.

His response was, "OMG there are sooo many girls."

I cracked up laughing. Then he announced, "Yep and I’m goin’ to ask one out"

"Oh," I responded. "Do you know her name?"

"No," he says. "Not yet."

So as you can see, he still loves the ladies....just like Tony. Hahaha

If you get a chance, please let Tony know we were all excited for him on Sunday, and we’ve had a great start to the week as well.

So there you have it. Please, if anyone sees Smoke at the track this weekend, let him know about his and our friend Spencer Roy’s good news. Maybe Smoke will even lend a line for Spencer to use to get that date. Good luck, Spence!

Holy Bidet! Holiday Disptach from Venice

2010-09-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

Oh, the irony.

For long-awaited vacation, NASCAR guy goes to Venice, the city without cars.

Yep, there are zero automobiles in the stunning lagoon city the Italians built on the Adriatic to fend off the Barbarians.

But that's where our family went on summer holiday. To get around this town, you walk, or board a Gondola, Water Taxi, or the Vaporetto, those ubiquitous water buses cruising the canals. Get sick, and there are ambulance speedboats.

(For taking my break in a city without streets or cars, please allow me to extend fast apologies to Bill France Sr., Bill France Jr., Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Sr., Darrell Waltrip, Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Jim Hunter, my favorite personalities in this sport, for their plain-spokeness, torpedoes-be-damned vision, and attitudes unaffected by the winds of political correctness.)

Venice's architectural treasure trove of well-preserved medievel buildings flush against the winding grid of canals will remove your breath. "Epic," as the kids say on Facebook.

At every turn, there's another unexpected find. You can't take a bad picture. Just point the camera, press the button, and you've got a postcard.

Suffice it to say, Venice is like nothing you've seen. Just go there someday, if you can.

As a personal plus, the apartment we lived in for a week, allowing me to discover my true inner Guido, had a bidet. And that alone is life altering. (Cue Mad Man's Don Draper describing daisys and a soft summer breeze.)

Depite Venezia's wondrous, historic ambiance, the soaring chapels and countless mask shops (Gaby bought one to wear when she plays bass on stage), the restaurants with aloof waiters who deliberately puff their cigarettes before sauntering over to present the check, the gondola captains in black trousers and striped shirts favoring their romantic cargo with Italian songs, etc. etc., my favorite Venician moment wasn't soaking in any of that, or slurping pasta lathered in black squid ink, or watching glassblowers ply their ancient trade, or waking up to the clang-gong-dong, clang-gong-dong bells atop the churches outside our bedroom, or any of the continual unexpected glimpses of beauty everywhere.

No, this trip, the enduring memory was relaxing in the town square's local cafe, sipping Venezian Cappuccino. A lithe Italian girl in a tight mini-skirt struts by, her four-inch stilleto heels clacking against the old stones, and Gaby declares: "Is that a HOOKER?"

My daughter's voice -- a mixture of childish innocence and hard-boiled mean-streets-of-New York City skepticism -- booming off tiles set hundreds of years ago in this unique city of my home country, made the whole trip worth it.

JetBlue: Good PR or Bad PR?

2010-08-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

Everyone’s an armchair PR expert.

Even our blue-haired aunts with scant knowledge of the game of high-stakes, world-class reputation management will say, “as long as they spell your name right,” when weighing in on a peculiar situation that produces gobs of ink, not necessarily for all the right reasons.

Yet in stories corporate flacks don’t plan, what constitutes positive coverage? What makes a brand mention negative?

The line isn’t as clear cut as you may assume. It’s often fuzzy...and intriguing.

When the shit hits the fan, and the fan is a General Electric model, I like to know how pros in the field perceive the overall “impression” for GE. In thse sort of situations, I go to sharp-witted colleagues who share my kooky gallows humor in an exercise called “Good PR or Bad PR?”

For example, the terrorist released to cheering flag-burning crowds is wearing a Nike T-shirt, the bold swoosh clearly visible in a wire photo seen around the world.

For Nike: Good PR or Bad PR?

Lest you believe our e-mail parlor game for a virtual posse is a cynical endeavor among a heartless group, you're only partially correct.

Good PR or Bad PR doesn't only produce sorely-needed levity in a world gone mad. The exercise spawns creative and surprising insights…as with JetBlue.

I don’t have to recount the incidental details of Steven Slater, the fed-up flight attendant who concluded one particular trip from Pittsburgh – and a two-decade airline career – in a blaze of glory reverberating from A1 of The New York Times to Japanese TV news.

You undoubtedly know the pertinent facts: the surly passenger’s bag-bonk to the head (items in the overhead bin do indeed shift during flight); the final near-giddy, now-famous, profanity-laced, adios muchachos PA announcement infinitely more entertaining than any connecting flight information; two beers swiped, carry-on bags hastily grabbed, emergency chute activated for a glorious amusement-park swoon down toward unemployment.

That these details are a now-familiar rehash is half the point here.

How the heck does news like this travel so far and so fast?

What’s the tipping point for the bizarre to go main-stream?

How does a disenchanted and dangerous JetBlue employee become an overnight working-class folk hero?

And more importantly, for Jet Blue, Good PR or Bad PR?

According to Ken Ross, who oversees communications at Netflix: “Good PR for JetBlue. Alert flight attendant decides to test functionality of escape slide under real-life circumstances. Slide deploys properly and provides safe escape...inspires confidence that in a real emergency, equipment would work...good PR for JetBlue.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is world-class spin.

Reading Ross's take, Tod McKenzie, former senior Public Affairs exec at PepsiCo added: “Said attendant also demonstrates JetBlue's commitment to fostering positive employee morale by celebrating small triumphs with a Bud Light.”

Others, like Showtime PR boss Chris DeBlasio, wondered, "Was it necessary for some media accounts to include the fact that the accused was found in bed with his partner at a seaside apartment in Rockaway?"

To which Pete Millerman, a writer in Brooklyn responded, “From a 'good journalism' standpoint? It was completely superfluous reportage - the type of thing a principled copy editor or journalism professor would red 'x,' or call you out on. From a perspective of picking up the NY Post and reading the news? It was a hilarious and awesome tidbit, made the story juicier, fleshed out the whole scenario in another dimension, and added to our already vivid mental picture of the maniac's personality.”

Mindy Kramer, Director of Public Relations at Office Depot, just wanted to know, “Why was he allowed to have two carry-on bags? I mean come on, that's just not fair.”

The arrest photo nabbed the attention of Molly Choi, who runs marketing and for Cape Classics, an importer of fine wine: “Is Slater giving that tattooed cop directions on how to fasten his seat belt by inserting the metal buckle till he hears a click, and adjusting it by pulling on the loose end of the strap?”

Our PR Peanut Gallery buzzed with jokes and astute observation...much like the rest of the country.

Some noted JetBlue is a fun, clean airline, offering complimentary in-flight DirecTV, which provides a wide image-halo berth when an employee has a bad-air day.

Ironically, passengers at 38,000 feet would watch the bemused Slater neighbor interviews, the psychiatric breakdown sound-bytes, and the late-night free-for-all meltdown recaps.

On balance, it’s presumably good PR, so long as the DTV signal is clear and the viewing passengers’ free nuts and diet Coke are well within their “to be consumed by” date.

My overall take is Good PR – at least in the groundswell of support for the man the Post dubbed “wing nut,” particularly in cyberspace, where legal restrictions of the “ongoing investigation” have muted the usually chatty Jet Blue social media mavens.

But Slater himself (“Jet Blue-Natic” in another Post headline) doesn’t need spin. The foundation for his sainthood has been set already. By his former employer.

When a flight makes global news, it’s usually tied to catastrophe or passengers locked on the tarmac for half a day without water or Facebook.

And when a departing employee becomes known worldwide, he’s likely fleeced millions, manipulated an industry, or truly “gone postal.”

By those measures, Slater’s potentially dangerous but in-the-end relatively harmless actions, are downright refreshing; a happy ending, in more ways than one.

He went bonkers in the maniacal high style you'd expect from Will Ferrell in Anchorman's film cousin Flight Attendant. If anything, during the sweltering summer of Satan’s lair, Americans want to be entertained.

The Slater narrative on the tarmac of JFK in front of his gleaming, modern terminal in an otherwise dirty, crowded, ill-designed airport – grabbing the farewell frosties, jumping into bed with his partner immediately after an operatic “take this job and shove it moment” – helped expand the story and earn the Daily Double -- simultaneous covers of the New York Post and the Daily News.

But do not underestimate the assisting power of the JetBlue brand – those clean, fun, youthful, slightly rebellious pioneers cracking jokes as we streak across the harshly unfriendly skies while watching free television!

Imagine a ValueJet flight attendant cursing out coach and busting home via the deployed chute after a non-water landing. Don’t think she’d be the object of fawning t-shirts and adoring fan pages.

In a New York Times column dissecting JetBlue's Slater response, Stuart Elliott reported “the tone of comments about JetBlue, as elicited by the Zeta Buzz online media mining technology, was 70% positive and 30% negative on Wednesday, compared with 59% positive and 41% negative on Tuesday.”

Comments about Slater were even more glowing -- at 93% positive, according to Zeta, which was better than both the New Orleans Saints after winning the Super Bowl and one Chesley B. Sullenberger III, of “Miracle on the Hudson” fame for successfully landing a US Airways bird downed by geese on the frigid Hudson River in January 2009.)

So, good for Jet Blue. For doing nothing -- except giving Americans free onboard TV and building a great brand. You've unexpectedly attained Good PR.

As for our peanut gallery’s suggestions to JetBlue?

The best advice may have come from J. Christopher Kervick, a Connecticut judge. “The PR depends on what they do from this point forward. ‘We care about our employees and are making the full array of employee assistance programs available to him, etc. While we regret any inconvenience to our passengers, we believe they can certainly all understand the day-to-day pressures our flight attendants are under.’ That kind of thing.”

That kind of thing indeed. If any of us grow mad as hell, can’t take it anymore, and go out in a blaze of glory in a certain region of New England, may be wind up in front of this wise judge.

___

Andrew Giangola is author of the critically acclaimed new book, THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans, available online and wherever fine books are sold. He is currently attempting to contact Steven Slater to write his life story, GOING OUT WITH A BANG (double entendre intended).

A PRICKLE PICKLE

2010-07-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

From time to time, we see examples of over-the-top fan devotion.

Judy Barr, a huge Tony Stewart fan from South Carolina, wrote this letter to Gillette, explaining a very peculiar situation related to racing and shaving and goose bumps and prickles…well, let’s just let Judy explain it.

Here’s her letter to the NASCAR sponsor and maker of a razor Judy uses often with frustrating results:

July 27, 2010

I have a “prickle problem” caused by goose bumps popping up on my legs when I watch NASCAR races. Can you help me?

You see. When shaving my legs, I use a Gillette Fusion razor because it is endorsed by my favorite sport/drivers (and the NASCAR logo on the handle is pretty cool). The problem I have is: the Gillette Fusion is not prickle proof. And I can't stop watching NASCAR. I'm in a prickle, you could say.

I can’t help being prickle prone. They come because of the goosebumps I suffer when exposed to any kind of NASCAR coverage. I cannot dreprive myself of NASCAR and since this isn't France, I certainly must shave. I have learned that I cannot shave my legs on race day simply because it is a waste of time. The prickles will percolate.

This past Sunday, is a perfect example of powerfully preposterous prickles. I shaved my legs prior to getting ready to go to work, believing I would be okay until the fly over or when the green flag dropped, since I would have limited access to NASCAR while at work. When I got out of the shower, I had a Twitter message on my phone from a spotter telling his followers to turn on ESPNU. I did as told and watched as one of my NASCAR driver favorites was elk hunting. I was fine with him shooting the elk right there on TV; I was not prepared for the NASCAR coverage that followed. I had nothing but goosebumps; the goosebumps led to prickles on my legs not even 15 minutes AFTER getting out of the shower.

Come on! This is driving me to the point that I do not want to shave my legs, especially on race day.

Is there anything out there that is prickle proof? (I have searched long and hard to find a prickle- proof razor and have come up short.) Will the fine folks at Gillette please help me find the razor to beat all razors on race day?

I am out of options and would appreciate your feedback on how to attain a Prickle Free Race Day. I feel if you are able to assist with "5 o'clock shadow," my prickle problem should be easy to fix as well.

(Unfortunately goosebumps cannot be controlled, and I refuse to live in a world without NASCAR.)

I thoroughly enjoy the Gillette Young Guns and Gillette Fusion commercials. It is because of these commercials that I have searched you out to assist me with my Prickle Problem.

If you have any solutions to my NASCAR - Gillette Fusion problem, or would like for me to test drive new options for a better prickle-proof razor, please feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely yours,

Judy Barr

Real American Idols

2010-06-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

In separate incidents this weekend at the Coca-Cola 600, two fans recognized me as “the guy who wrote the NASCAR Fan book.”

That’s an uplifting jolt for a formerly nondescript civilian.

But also very depressing.

I will never be able to urinate in public again.

I joke.

It was actually a weekend more serious than frivolous as NASCAR honored the fallen men and women of our armed forces during our annual Memorial Day race.

I was humbled to have been invited to Charlotte Motor Speedway's Medal of Honor dinner to speak about The Weekend Starts on Wednesday along with one of the remarkable fans featured, Cpl. John Hyland, who lost a leg in Iraq and would sing the national anthem prior to one of the sport's biggest races of the year.

The stage up in the Speedway Club featured three comfy chairs set for an “intimate discussion” in an Actor's Studio-type atmosphere. What I didn't know was the low-slung cushiony chairs were on brass wheels on a very slippery floor.

I’m always excited to talk about my book, so when introduced by Doug Rice, who would call Sunday's race on the radio, I bound up to the stage like a giddy contestant on The Price is Right. I flop into the chair...which flies back as if it were shot from a cannon. I yell, WHOAH and dig my heels in. The chair miraculously stops two feet from the back of the stage and a good drop which may have killed me.

There are only 90 living Medal of Honor recipients, and three are being honored tonight. One soldier, Bob Maxwell, smothered a grenade in eastern France in Sept., 1944, saving his platoon. Had he picked up the grenade, Bob explains, it likely would have detonated, killing him and his unit. So he dove on it. Amazingly, Bob survived the injuries and walks with only a slight limp.

Another Medal of Honor hero singlehandedly took on 13 enemy combatants in a Korean foxhole, killing every one of them in brutal hand-to-hand combat.

“I jumped in the hole and scared the devil out of them,” he explained. He impaled one surprised Asian fellow with his rifle and shot the rest.

The story is told in a way that has everyone laughing. If I tried for a year, I wouldn’t do it justice.

Surrounded by this into-a-nearby-phone-booth, awe-inspiring, Greatest Generation heroism, it would have been the lame PR guy killed amid the excitement of speaking publicly after his freaking chair slid off the stage.

Thankfully, the seat that became my ride stops a few feet before I would have plummeted to my premature demise.

After a fun and entertaining Q&A with Cpl. Hyland, a genteel older lady whose wool blazer sported several glittery red, white and blue American flag pins, as well as a larger clear rhinestone pendant reading, “It's Not the Destination It's The Journey,” asks me to sign her Medal of Honor book, a well-done coffee-table compilation of those honored. She mistakenly believes I'm a war hero (even though I'm clearly a p-ssy from Long Island). Waddaya gonna do. I sign.

Real book signings of the tome for which I'm responsible will happen at the track and local mall. Cpl. Hyland joins one, and does a slew of media interviews. He is feted at the Speedway Club, meets VIPs, and is introduced at the driver's meeting. All of that is a prelude to THE moment -- performing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Over eight years, I've had many memorable experiences doing PR for NASCAR. Sunday was tops. Declaring in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday I would do my darndest to get Cpl. Hyland to sing at a track (without a clue how to do that) and then seeing John (standing courageous and tall, serious and focused and intent on staying in the zone when "Taps" finishes so he can hit that first note with perfect pitch) in his smart dress blues belting out a heartfelt, beautiful, melodic version of "The Star Spangled Banner" brings me to tears. I'd like to thank Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray for making it OK for a grown man to ball his eyes out at a race track when something really good happens to you and your team after you've worked so hard for it.

"I didn't get to leave Iraq on my own two feet," Cpl. Hyland said. "To walk out on stage under my own power, in my hometown of Charlotte, singing for my country, my sport and all the fallen heroes, was amazing."

Get this: Corporal Hyland is actually a Sergeant. The Army Scout for the elite First Calvary division was promoted after being blown up on Sept 11, 2007.

Now you or I, we get a promotion and insist on the use of our new title. We change our busines cards and get it inscribed on the office door. We correct people who repeat our "old" affiliation. Corporal is just fine by John. "It's what I was when I got hurt," he says.

He nailed a very tough song in front of 130,000 or so at the race, about six million on TV and 3.5 million listening on the radio, doing so after a long day of commitments in the blazing North Carolina sun and the usual 30-some odd pills taken every few hours.

Even after swallowing the back section of Walgreen's several times a day, watch closely and you see the soldier wincing in pain. The titanium leg attached at the army hospital outside San Antonio is actually his good one. The leg they saved hurts like hell. When Cpl. Hyland changed in the NASCAR radio hauler, he showed his remaining foot, metal rods and screws visible through the skin. The look of it is painful. But he never, ever complains.

Cpl. H makes it around the track pretty well. You'd never know there's a huge rod going thru his pelvis, one side to other, basically holding together his torso.

Hollywood types enjoy coming to our races, and we saw the lovelier than lovely Jessica Biel a few times as she promoted the new "A Team" movie. John hadn't made a single demand all weekend long. It was time for his first one: just ten minutes alone with Jessica in the hauler. Any hauler.

"John is a chick magnet," I told the lovely Ms. Biel. "But I think it's because of all the metal holding him together."

Actually, it's his bravery that draws the women. Chicks dig guys who dive on grenades, and kill a foxhole-full of bad guys, and are blown to shit but then walk into the limelight under their own power to honor God, country, their families, their sport and, most of all, themselves.

Fans from Book to Field a Team in King's Cup

2010-05-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Kurt Busch, Kasey Kahne, Elliott Sadler, and A.J. Allmendinger have no idea what’s in store for them on the track tomorrow.

When these top NASCAR drivers strap in their go karts on Tuesday to run in “The King’s Cup – Karting for a Cause,” Richard Petty’s annual event helping the Paralyzed Veterans of America, they’ll be going up against a group of fans featured in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans.

Steve Deuker (“Ryan’s Hope”), Natalie Sather (“This Girl Wants to Be Jeff Gordon in a Skirt”), Kenny Gregory (“The Fathead Guy”), and Judy Barr (“The Summit of Fandom”) will be racing for the team, “The Weekend Starts on Wednesday Chapter Buddies." They’ll go up against the NASCAR drivers and 30 other teams vying for the King’s Cup” at Victory Lane Karting in Charlotte.

“The Weekend Starts on Wednesday features two wounded veterans – Cpl. John Hyland and Sgt. Russ Friedman – so we wanted to honor the Paralyzed Veterans of America and have a little fun racing,” said Steve Deuker, who organized the Chapter Buddies team.

Deuker, a lifelong racing fan who traveled to Charlotte from Minneapolis with his wife Christine to attend the NASCAR Hall of induction ceremonies, watch the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and run in the King’s Cup, is pumped up after running 50 laps in a stock car at Carolina Speedway’s Dirt Track Racing School in Gastonia.

“What I like about this event is you can run against NASCAR drivers and other fans,” Deuker said. “NASCAR fandom is made up of such diverse occupations and lifestyles. Being in this book, we’ve formed lifelong bonds with other remarkable fans, including two military heroes. It’s going to be unforgettable racing with them while helping wounded warriors.”

Deuker likes his chances for fielding a competitive team, even with the varying experience of his drivers.

Kenny Gregory, known to fans as “The Fathead Guy,” for bringing life-size, driver stand-ups into the infield, has participated in two kart races in Pennsylvania. However, he finished last both times. “They used a sun dial to time me,” Gregory said.

To make up lap time, Deuker is looking to Natalie Sather, who won a national go kart title, and was the first woman to win a major sprint car championship, taking the ASCS Midwest points championship in 2007. Sather currently drives the Lady Eagle Safety Wear, K&N, Bell Helmets #94 for Sellers Racing in the NASCAR Whelen All American Series.

Sather, who grew up racing go-karts on dirt, jumped at the chance to get back in a go-kart for a great cause – even with a broken wrist suffered April 17 at South Boston Speedway.

When she was 17, Sather was involved in a spectacular T-bone wreck in a sprint car which put a 10-inch pin into her leg. Eight years later, her wreck at South Boston wasn’t nearly as violent. But the spin happened so quickly, it managed to snap her wrist right off the wheel.

Sather pitted and then drove sixty more laps with one arm.

“The adrenaline was pumping and it was hard for me to think about my wrist,” the 25-year old driver from Fargo recalled. “I was hurt, mad and upset, and wasn't going to give up easy. When people found out my wrist was broken, they were shocked I kept going, and to be honest so was I,” she said with a laugh.

Following surgery three weeks ago, Sather had a special brace made. She’s dosing on bone-building vitamins and uses a bone-stimulating machine to close a 2-millimeter gap in her wrist. She’s raced two times since the operation.

“The King’s Cup is about having fun, raising money for the PVA, and some healthy competition,” Sather said. “Well, not too healthy, because anyone who knows me, knows I'm extremely competitive.”

The Weekend Starts on Wednesday author Andrew Giangola will be in New York and unable to drive for The Chapter Buddies (because he is in New York, not from New York).

“Me being in New York is beneficial for the team, because the only thing I drive is my wife crazy,” Giangola said.

To take his place, the book’s author recruited Michael Cherry, a driver with Revolution Racing in the Whelen All American Series, as well as a serious go kart ringer. Last Friday, Cherry beat NASCAR Nationwide Series drivers Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse in the Aflac 200, a go kart event held by Aflac and NASCAR Fuel for Business, a consortium of B2B partners.

The King’s Cup takes place from 4:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Up to 30 teams will compete in the endurance karting event. The top 15 squads will qualify for the two-hour endurance feature race. NASCAR drivers sponsoring teams through their foundations include Greg Biffle, Kasey Kahne, and Elliott and Hermie Sadler.

Last year’s championship team, The Kurt Busch Foundation, will return to defend its title after The King gives the command to start the engines and waves the green flag.

“Our veterans have made it possible for us to do what we love,” said Petty, the long-time spokesperson of PVA, a 64-year old organization founded by spinal cord-injured service members who returned home from World War II. “This event is a great way to kick back and have some fun, and it’s a great way to give back to those who have given so much for our country.”

“Richard Petty is a great champion for our members and their families and we deeply appreciate all that he and his family do for us,” said Gene A. Crayton, national president of Paralyzed Veterans.

Tickets are available for $25 online at www.pva.org/gokart or at the event. All proceeds will benefit the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

Sprint, Best Buy and Reynolds Consumer Products are among the sponsors of the event, and Freightliner is bringing several of their hauler drivers to participate as well.

A silent auction will include more than 70 items, such dinner with the King and autographed sports memorabilia, including a copy of The Weekend Starts on Wednesday, signed by the author and chapter buddies, along with Tony Stewart, who wrote the Foreword, and Kyle Busch, who penned the Afterword.

To learn more about The King’s Cup - Karting for a Cause, please visit www.pva.org/gokart.

Papa Was A Rolling Stone

2010-04-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Strange things, often unexplainable, happen on the road.

That one morning, a peculiar email text message came in from an unfamiliar phone number. Actually, several will arrive.

The first asks, you’ve had something 2 eat?

I am in North Carolina, mobile, time pressed, bummed there’s no room for a quick stop at Chick-fil-A. And I’m pissed at myself for not printing decent directions for all the driving to NASCAR race shops that will be done today.

Normal people just erase. But I never met an email I didn't like. There is a tidal pull to respond.

(Confession: Like a true addict, I’m now replying to just about every incoming note. Even spam. Those, I answer with a customized phony “automated out of the office” response. For example, a course offered on civility and manners in the workplace warranted a rude, profanity-laced tirade. The growing collection of my responses is not for the faint of heart, a family audience, or appropriate to this particular story.)

Another text comes in:

I hope you’ve had something 2 eat?

It’s an innocent and caring question saying so much with so little. Uncharacteristically, I don’t find the time to try to be clever. I simply type “no,” and click “send.

Minutes later, the person behind this strange number asks:

Did u put clothes out fr laundry?

Huh? The number means nothing to me. It’s 917, my wife’s mobile phone exchange, but clearly not Viviane (who routinely throws my dirty crap into the machine without the need to text about it, which I’m thankful for).

I reckon I know what’s going on: this is a woman believing she’s texting her husband or significant other.

Wait.

How do you know that? It could be a beautiful Soho art dealer texting her grad school roommate-slash–secret lover from a glass-enclosed high-rise office with the Central Park view. But, why even consider a woman? We all do laundry. How utterly early ‘60’s-Don Draper to go assuming. Perhaps it’s a torn son, texting a slowly fading father losing his mind to Alzheimer’s or the effects of mercury poisoning from a lifetime of lunchtime tuna fish, or whatever reason is behind the shutdown of a brain. Shoot, it could be anyone; how can you possibly guess who?

I’m with the The Wall Street Journal in the middle of an impressive shop tour at Hendrick Motor Sports. You could eat off the freaking floor, it’s so clean. They have 113 people on the payroll solely to build race car engines. There are talented guys standing at built-from-the-floor machinery, manufacturing parts from raw aluminum. They make their own pistons here in this sprawling complex off Papa Joe Hendrick Blvd. Who makes pistons from scratch nowadays? Shouldn't they come on a ship in a box from an outfit across the Pacific Ocean paying their people $2 a week?

You step into another building spacey as a gymnasium and guys are twisting metal bars to build chassis from the ground up. They’re working on spic-and-span tables they built. In another room, they’re constructing carbon fiber driver seats, precisely tuned to the contour and preference of each driver’s particular rear end. The feel is very important; more than one NASCAR star has noted you actually drive with your ass. In another room, they’re artfully shaping and wrapping silver sheet metal onto cars. More guys are behind thick glass windows running dynos to check the freshly made motors' horsepower.

Lining the walls, are straight rows of gleaming engines - a tight intestinal mix of metal and wires and hoses and belts - proudly labeled “Hendrick Motorsports” on the heads. Young guys outside in oppressive 98-degree heat are being video taped running pit stops, the car squealing to a stop just like Sunday in front of 160,000 screaming fans, air guns whining, seven intent men scrambling over the faux retaining wall to change four fat tires and dump a canister of fuel in less than 14 seconds.

Back inside, computers are everywhere. Except the nerdy Banana Republic-outfitted people you’d expect aren’t running them. Next to one laptop sits a 16-ounce water bottle, filled with thick brown fluid. An abnormal bulge in the lower lip above the soul patch of the dude tapping data into the nearby module provides the clue. Yes, Nancy Drew, that is Spittle! Someday, when Congress really gets rolling, repeatedly expectorating on the job will be considered sexual harassment. But until that dreaded day, have at ‘em, boys!

Indeed, in this War Games-like computer room next to the heralded million-dollar “seven post” rig, which through the window you see shaking the crap out of a No. 5 Kellogg's Chevrolet on hydraulic pads replicating the race track, another data inputter is diligently filling his bottle with Skoal spit. (Copenhagen spit is much darker; Skoal is frothier).

This is something I can not escape. Whenever I hear the song, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” I think of Papa Joe Hendrick. And vice versa. There is no logic to this. Wherever he laid his hat, was not Papa Joe’s home. But body chemicals have aligned. Synapses are wired. The die is cast, and the papas melded. Uncontrolled thoughts haunt me.

We continue this overwhelmingly impressive tour of the extraordinarily impressive operation begat by Papa Joe. I’m no Tech-head. But this is cool stuff. There is no way another patriarch, Bill France, Sr., could have imagined the sport he created six decades ago would become this weighty, professional, significant. It is to be reckoned with. Amid the rich experience of taking in Hendrick Motorsports, there’s no time to consider the odd email messages from someone wondering if I’ve been fed and will have clean clothes.

What to do? It’s rude to be typing on the blackberry when the fine folks at Hendrick have put aside priorities like keeping Jeff Gordon in first place to host a pair of sweaty Yankees clueless in NASCAR Country. But I use the Blackberry a lot. So much, that people close to me wish to shove it where the sun doesn't shine. On the hand held, I can be dartingly quick, a thief in the night. Muscle memory takes over.

To the question of whether I've left clothes for the laundry, I tap out:

I forgot. The medication is taking its toll. I just haven't been myself lately. I wonder if any of this is worth it.

I sling the Blackberry back into the holster, a modern day (read: soft, sad) Jesse James. Seconds later, my belt vibrates.

The response:

U are a funny person, about medication and d effect its been having on u latekly, u made me laugh, about if worth it, onlytime will tell.

Only time will tell…where this is going. Indeed. But there’s scant time to process this in touring the Hendrick Museum, saying goodbyes, and now driving to meet J.D. Gibbs for the continuing NASCAR education of a big-time reporter representing a business publication whose skeptical editors need convincing this sport is worthy of ink. (To be honest, maybe we’d do better without the coverage. The prevalent sports business stories of the day concern doping, fixing games, gambling on fixed games, killing dogs fighting for sport, and burying said dogs in your back yard; NASCAR is thankfully immune to all of this, our big controversy being if Goodyear is making a hard enough tire compound and if Joe Gibbs Racing, currently running Chevys, will be called on to bring Toyota the glory it seeks in stock car auto racing.)

I’m unsure of the route to Joe Gibbs Racing. I declined on the GPS at Enterprise; accepting the device would have given the young inquisitive peppy kid with the khakis and the clipboard while more reasons to ask, while he inspected the car, unwanted questions like where I am from and did I use GPS back home. So I'm without GPS because Enterprise insists on inspecting the freaking car for dents before you leave. There is no Papa Joe Gibbs Avenue, which would have helped immensely at this point. I’m cruising along a Carolina county road at 70 mph perhaps in the wrong direction in a rented Kia minivan that drives like a boat. They saw me coming a mile away. I’m reading the tiny rental car map, Creedence on the radio, and though I’m lost, and likely to get to the shop after the next interview has started, there are worse ways to make a living, and I can't resist a little knee-driving to text back:

I feel I am funnier -- detached and whimsical -- as time goes on. Flipness is a preferred alternative state. Perhaps things are less important. I sense mortality. Do you?

I miraculously find the correct road, and the correct leafy business park, and we meet J.D. Gibbs in the operation's impressive facilities. When I was a kid, a “JD” meant juvenile delinquent. This J.D. is straight as they come, an honorable man with an under-appreciated sense of humor, playing the self deprecating card on the down beat and often. Sitting in a conference room decorated with trophies, J.D. says he came from a long line of PE majors. Folks chuckled when he went into NASCAR but they laugh no more, he notes.

J.D. has four boys, all younger than my daughter, who recently came home from sleep-away camp wearing a home-made necklace given presented by a 17 year old boy who closely resembled Ziggy Marley with a hug that lasted a second too long Then and now, listening to the slim youthful motorsports executive in the chief’s quarters of his race shop, I feel old, obsolete, on the sidelines of life scratching at potential that continues to elude me.

Some guys are born on third base with scant prospects for ever making it home. You get the sense J.D. has grown beautifully into his present role running a team that might once again field this year's Nextel Cup champion. I’m considering a life I know nothing about and wondering when the Journal's “So is Joe Gibbs Racing going with Toyota?” question will come. The guys at Hendrick had been talking as if it were a done deal, the money is right, it’s all about people anyway and Gibbs has the talent, mail it in, send Papa Joe across the Pacific for the reception.

Toyota doesn’t come up. Someone didn't do his homework or is bashful, not a condition to suffer when representing a national newspaper. J.D. pontificates generally on the state of the sport, peppered with playful jibes of how the money goes to NASCAR, and I’m looking in a wide-eyed cartoonish exaggeration at his wrist to see if he’s wearing a Rolex, tell me with a straight face who’s getting rich on this deal, truly, and before long the aimless shooting of the breeze is over, and now I sit stuck in the Charlotte airport bar draining watery supersized beers and awaiting the next mysterious text message.

The beers keep coming but the Blackberry leaves me high and dry.

She, or he, or it, hasn’t responded. The trail has gone cold.

My guess is it is a she. The husband has come home. The wife casually mentions how fun and unexpected and amusing their texting was. He goes suddenly pale, clueless, maybe panicking, because a man will immediately jump to “cheater” when confronted with the thought of his wife having a new heterosexual relationship that doesn’t concern him, just as the brain wires can automatically make you think Papa Joe was a rolling stone.

I imagine it doesn’t take long for the couple to figure out she was mistakenly corresponding with a stranger. That probably doesn’t sit well with the husband, who saw his wife’s bright-eyed delight in corresponding with a stranger. He is probably steamed, and in his seething infuriation, may even be plotting how to get into her phone and find me. They shoot horses, don’t they? I’d get worse.

Or, alternatively, maybe this is what’s happening. He’s immediately devising a plan, for later that evening, when the lights go down, to parlay his wife’s playful curiosity and temporary belief in his own poorly hidden vulnerability into the many splendored things that can happen deep in the night between a husband and wife, even if they still barely know one another.

Andrew Giangola’s critically acclaimed new book, "THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans” is available wherever fine books are sold.

The book, The Beatles, and more in my interview with PR WEEK

2010-04-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

In PR WEEK, our humble author manages to plug a friend’s web site, a Beatles song, the book of course, and kiss major boss butt in a few short lines.

PR WEEK

Habits: Andrew Giangola, NASCAR, director of business comms

April 01, 2010

Morning ritual: Banter with my wife about the fiscal recklessness of patronizing Starbucks, not our own coffee machine. I then proceed to take the dog to Starbucks.

Required reading: The New York Times, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today (dead tree versions). I also make sure to check out NASCAR Scene Daily, NASCAR.COM, the Drudge Report, the PRWeek Breakfast Briefing, and TWI-NY.com.

First PR job: I was a PR manager for Pepsi-Cola.

Proudest career achievement: The publishing of my book, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans.

Favorite city to travel to for business: Talladega, AL. To a New Yorker, this always feels like a trip to Mars. I mean that in the most positive way, of course.

Most regrettable career moment: Remaining on the telephone and going off message to tell the Associated Press that a new Pepsi spot with Magic Johnson, who had tested positive for HIV several months earlier, was “not on the front burner.”

Most distinct aspect of your personal office: It has a striking resemblance to a locale for the A&E television show Hoarders.

Best career advice you've ever given: Find a job reflecting your fiery passion(s).

The first person you would call in a crisis: Ken Ross, VP of corporate communications at Netflix. He is a wise friend who is battle-tested. He spun it when Pepsi set Michael Jackson's hair on fire.

Mentor: Jim Hunter, VP of corporate communications at NASCAR. He shows that you can never go wrong in being direct, honest, plain-spoken, and true to yourself.

Ideal job, if not in PR: Paperback writer.

Finding My Mojo in La-La Land

2010-02-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

This trip out west was slapped together quickly. First came the idea for a book signing at IMPULSE, the gift shop of Auto Club Speedway, in the Inland Valley due east of Los Angeles. Now I’d had a few private book signings with friends, which were an absolute blast. But I’m leery and wary and suspicious of the standard “book store signing.” The idea of sitting in a folding chair at a table stacked with your books, waiting for strangers to walk up and ask for your autograph seems terribly ostentatious. And cheesy. And a prescription for disaster.

Among various concerns, there is: Who the hell am I? And why would anyone want my signature?

Sure, I had signed a fan’s bare butt at Daytona. But that was on top of an RV in the infield during a crazy Daytona 500, in tight seamless context with the locale and race at hand.

When the track said they’d allow Barbie Robbins (a.k.a., Junior’s Baby88 Girl), along with Tava Miyata (the “Good Vibrations” chapter) to join the book signing, I was in. Sharing this experience – my first public signing – with fans featured in the book would very cool and entirely appropriate.

Barbie lives life out loud. Everyone at the track seems to know her. When the local ABC affiliate came to do their requisite “crazy NASCAR fan” story, they were the bee to her honey. Tape rolled and Junior's Baby88 Girl screamed and shouted about the book she’s in – my book. That just warms the cockels of my innards. Barbie is an absolute pisser who jumps up and down with joy every time Junior’s car passes. On Sunday, also known as Race Day, she is sad, because that means her time at the track is almost over.

Tava likes to have fun (she would show up at our book signing with Mexican coffee – your standard joe spiked with tequila and kaluha – as well as a Bud Light for Barbie). But outwardly, Tava is much more reserved. She’s a business owner and mother of twins who took over Wayne Miyata Surfboards when her dad passed away. A Giangola sandwich between slices of Barbie and Tava bread would be memorable. Plus, unlike most of the fans in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday, I’d only interviewed these ladies by phone; I desperately wanted to meet them in person. I was looking forward to the signing even if no one showed up.

The event was set for the morning of the Auto Club 500 race, and then, as we say in Brooklyn, bada bing, bada boom, Sirius invited me to be Mojo Nixon’s co-host for an hour of his national radio show. The Race Gods were saying, “Go west, young man.”

On the way to la-la land, because I’ve been a traveling fool, I was bumped to First Class. No better feeling in the world than to be a Chosen One. You’re jammed into one of those narrow lumpy seats in coach, and a Flight Attendant whisks open the curtain, marches toward the back of the plane, and asks, "Are you (YOUR NAME HERE)?" At first, panic sets in. Your stomach is in your throat as you’re realizing, “Oh Jeez, the FBI is at the door, all those emails joking about the bomb in my Converse high tops have finally caught up. I’m headed for Gitmo.” (Personally, I’m a poor swimmer; I can’t breathe during the crawl without feeling like I’m drowning. I will not be able to handle my face forced down into a flushing toilet.)

But, then, alas, then Flight Attendant is escorting you to First Class...and you can just FEEL the sharp dagger stares of hatred from 200 resentful people stuck in steerage.

That's life, right? Enjoy your bag of 5.2 peanuts, folks, and tip a toast to me in the front row with your 3.6 ounces of diet Coke in the short plastic cup. I will return your toast from the province of the rich folk with a tip of my Chardonnay.

Able to spread out without the proverbial fat guy in coach spilling into my seat, I made notes for the Mojo show. Arriving in LA, I felt hopelessly unprepared, fat, old and pale. In New York, I could not for the life of me find a place to get a spray-on tan. There were no appointments for botox. Avis was out of convertibles. But I was set on doing the best I could as co-host with Mojo, who was a cult figure on college campuses nationwide in the '80’s with songs like, “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with my Two-Headed Love Child,” “Don Henley Must Die,” and of course, “Elvis is Everywhere.”

In the track’s media center, a good 20 yards away from his stuffy radio booth, you can hear Mojo Nixon’s loud voice. He’s a vibrating, pulsating, force field of energy, funny observations, semi-risque riffs, double entendre comments, and southern-fried colloquialisms.

Do you try to match Mojo’s energy? Or be the more placid straight guy? In the back of the room, listening to Mojo exorcise his mojo, I instinctively knew I’d have to get into fourth gear quickly and was glad I had the foresight to have consumed four cups of coffee earlier at Denny’s.

My notes would be useless. They were stuck together because I’d spilled the syrup from my first Grand Slam all over them. At two minutes to air time, Denny’s value meal and the Indian chef’s special from the previous night decided to have a food fight in my stomach. I was thinking this might not end very well.

Worse, than puking on Mojo’s console, what if he didn’t want me here? My appearance on his show for a full hour to yap about my book and NASCAR fans wasn’t his idea. I was worried the music and radio legend might wind up being dismissive or even resentful some schmucky guy from New York flew in to glom onto his show.

But Mojo is a man of the fans. He instantly welcomed me with a warm handshake. On air, he laughed at my silly jokes, and was genuinely interested in how I connected with those in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday. We took fan calls, including one from Tire Man, checking in from Alabama to explain the most photographed valve stem on the circuit.

The hour went fast. I wanted to say so much more. When we opened up the phones, I asked for a pscyhologist or psychiatrist -- or one who played one on TV to call in. Jimmie Johnson's wife was having a baby, and the talk among motorsports pundits was the new arrival could be a chink in Jimmie's armour. I went against the grain, explaining when I had Gaby -- or rather, when Viviane gave birth to our daughter, as I was off in the corner reading the newspaper -- it made my life better. I became a more complete human being. It rounded me and gave me important perspective. That makes me better at my job. Maybe Jimmie would be better at his. I asked for a psychologist to call in with a view.

Mojo looked at me like I had several heads. Jimmie is already otherwordly after winning four straight NASCAR Sprint Cup Championships. Are you looking for a psychologist or a psychotic, he asked. Mojo knows his audience a lot better than I do. My last long-form interview was with NPR. This was a different audience.

(Later, I'd get a note from fan who wanted me to know what I said about Gaby was the best part of the show.)

Trying to keep pace with Mojo felt like running a marathon as a sprint. “Come outside,” Mojo said when the hour was up, and in the cool California air, he gave me tips for engaging callers and moving in and out of commercials. You’ll be fine, he said.

You see, the show was a try-out of sorts for me; perhaps NASCAR and Sirius will work out a radio show all about the fans. I’m a PR guy, a sometime writer, a clueless New Yorker in NASCAR Country. I’m not sure radio is in my future. It’s in the hands of others, and will require sponsorship. If Sirius gives me the nod, I’ll give it a shot. As David Lee Roth said, “Sometimes you have to lead with your face.”

For one afternoon, I had a blast as co-host of a national radio show with an American icon. The entire hour with Mojo, I had this shit-eating grin on my face. (If Mojo heard that, he might say, Why is this type of smile called “shit eating”? If you actually ate feces, would you be SMILING? It has to be the dumbest expression coined since humans moved from grunts to spoken language. Yeah, that’s what he’d say.

Penn. School Confiscates My Book, But I Did Sign a Bare Butt

2010-02-15T19:09:00.000-08:00

DAYTONA BEACH – Kenny Gregory, known to thousands of fans as “The Fathead Guy” for mounting his life-size driver cutouts in the turf at his campsite, is a proud grandfather and nearly as proud to be featured in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans. Kenny gave his 14-year old grandson the book, and the boy enthusiastically shared his granddad’s chapter with the kids at school. That might have been okay in English class. But this was math. So my book was confiscated and has been effectively banned from a middle school in Sandy Lake, PA.

But that incident, putting me in the censored company of John Steinbeck and The Gay Sheikh, is no indication of the splendid week we had officially launching The Weekend Starts on Wednesday as NASCAR opened its season in frigid Daytona Beach.

There have been several positive reviews and a flurry of interesting news stories about our fan book. George Vecsey of The New York Times said I write “very nicely” – high and flattering praise from the esteemed columnist. Sports radio personality Chris Mad Dog Russo, who has made his dislike for NASCAR quite clear, read Vecsey’s piece and had me on his show. Mad Dog opened up by calling the book “marvelous.” A Hollywood producer with credits ranging from Erin Brockovich to Pulp Fiction heard the Sirius interview and inquired about the book’s film rights. The next day, in Arctic-like Daytona, a place Al Gore was clearly avoiding, seven fans from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday joined me and the lovely, multi-talented Miss Sprint Cup Monica Palumbo for an entertaining Q&A at the Sprint Experience in the track’s corporate display area. It felt like ten below, yet Tire Man from the book (and Chelsea, AL in real life) was on stage in all his glory, naked except for his Goodyear Eagle and straw hat, just as he’d been when he and I went live on “Good Day Tampa” three days earlier. (Both the Orlando Sentinel and the Daytona Beach News Journal would run photos of Tire Man.) Plus, I signed a few dozen books, two hats, and one bare butt. It was a man’s ass. You have to start somewhere.

We haven't sold many copies, but all the publicity felt good. With that beehive of activity and the demands from the old day job put to rest, I was able to take in the Daytona 500 with the fans. Having never seen The Great American race from atop an RV, I gladly accepted Kenny Gregory’s offer to climb his hauler stationed off Turn 1. As fate had it, Sgt. Russ Friedman (namesake of the spring Richmond race and subject of the chapter “Toasting a Hero”) happened to pass by, and he and his dad, a dentist from Patchogue, LI, joined me and Kenny’s friend Bill Strope on the motor home’s roof.

If you’ve read Kenny’s story, you know he’ an amazing, generous, selfless man. He puts the Fatheads in front of his site to generate conversations, and most fans – strangers only minutes before – walk away with some sort of party favor: a flashing rubber bracelet or glowing necklace, maybe a string of glittering metallic beads. During the off-season, Kenny helped arrange for his friend Bill, who’s been sick but is valiantly battling back, to get two weeks off from work to accompany him to Speedweeks. This was Central Florida, but the track was nonetheless meat-locker cold; 180,000 people, right or wrong, were getting increasingly pissed at Sen. Gore as the temperature dropped. Kenny and Bill were offering Sgt. Friedman and me their jackets, and running Bloody Marys and tall cans of Guinness and Bill’s amazing roast pork to the top of the hauler. Before long, I was clad in beads and lighted jewelry. Before leaving Pennsylvania for Speedweeks in Florida, Kenny had spent $400 on a heap of twinkling party favors.

“I call him ‘Kenny Claus’ because he brings Christmas with him to every race,” Bill Strope said as he served plates of brosciotto wrapped in warm mozzarella and plates of scrumptious pork. Sgt. Freidman, who was hit with a rocket propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, was watching Bill being Bill, and Kenny being Kenny, and he said, “I look at these guys and it makes me feel good there are people like this. Humanity has hope.”

Hope we may have, but we still haven’t figured reliable on-schedule winter travel. Steve and Christine Deuker, featured in the chapter, “Ryan’s Hope,” called their trip to Daytona “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” The Deukers departed Minneapolis for a connection in Alanta. However, their jet was diverted to Nashville during an historic storm that had canceled 5,700 flights along the east coast. Christine, who has been active in bringing together the fans in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday was making this trip primarily to attend Saturday’s launch event at the Sprint Experience. She’d be missing that. As the plane banked away from its course to Atlanta, she had to try very hard not to cry.

The Deukers would unfortunately miss the book launch with their so-called “chapter buddies” but nothing was going to keep them from the Daytona 500. Steve was first to rush off the courtesy bus to rent a car. In a straight shot, they drove 700 miles to Daytona Beach. “We remembered the story in your book about Miss Sprint Cup,” Christine told me. “Her plane was cancelled so she jumped in a rental car and drove to the appearance. We were inspired. If Anne Marie could do it, so could we.”

With tens of thousands of fans already in town for the Daytona 500, the couple’s lodging choices were slim. They settled for a motel called “The Value Place” in Sanford. Sure, the name didn’t indicate brass-buttoned bellhops and turn-down truffles on the pillow, but how bad could it be? “We walked in behind four farting Chinamen and were then told we’d have to purchase toilet paper for a dollar a roll,” Steve explained.

The Deukers’ 757 was too big to unload at the airport in Nashville so they were also without luggage. When we finally met on pit road on Sunday right before the National Anthem, they were wearing three-day old shirts made specially for the race. On the front was a picture of their departed son, the NASCAR Hall of Fame, and the brick they’d inscribed for Ryan Newman, who bears a striking resemblance to Joseph. On the back was their photo with Ryan from the book, and below it the title, “The Weekend Starts on Wednesday.” It was sad to see my good friends and loyal supporters without their other clothes. However, if they had to wear any shirt the rest of their stay in Florida, or maybe the rest of the winter season, there was no better garment.

“It was the trip from hell but well worth it; we’re meeting our chapter buddies here at the Daytona 500,” Steve said with a smile.

When I spotted the Deukers and their brilliant shirts, I’d been with CPL. John Hyland (“A Purple Heart and a Titanium Leg”). We’d gotten John a pace car ride with NASCAR’s Brett Bodine earlier, and he nearly met Gov. Sarah Palin at pre-race; so the soldier who’d lost a leg was choosing to bear the discomfort of hoofing it all over this massive 2.5-mile track. The Deukers were especially excited to finally meet John, who’s been through so much after suffering his injuries and enduring dozens of operations, and now has many good things cooking with a singing career cranking up.

Last season, John and I genuinely hit it off at the race in Texas. But our bond was not the typical way you’d meet someone, find common interests and share laughs. I asked questions and CPL. Hyland talked his experiences in Iraq, the dozens of operations after the roadside bomb, the difficult transition to a new life. He talked for nearly 12 hours without a break. As a writer, it was one of the most intense and exhausting days of my life.

And now John told me a very special story about his son, Hunter. He didn’t intend for the 10-year old to look at The Weekend Starts on Wednesday. But the book was found and his father’s story read. “I went home and my boy had tears in his eyes,” CPL. Hyland explained. “Hunter said, ‘Daddy I never knew what you went through.’” CPL. Hyland confessed that when we met in Texas, he told me things he’d never said before.

Before we got to pit road, a TV crew from NASCAR Media Group was beginning work on what we hope will be a documentary on the book. This time, in front of a camera in a dramatically lit room off Daytona International Speedway’s media center, John was again pouring his heart out about September 11 (the date he was blown up), God, country and sacrifice. While this was happening, Tire Man was taking pictures with delighted ladies and laughing guys in the infield. As I ran from CPL. Hyland’s intense soul-baring interview to Tire Man’s hooting jaunt through the infield – in itself an exercise in examining the modern day female libido, social mores, and sexual puns – the juxtaposition of the serious and absurd was confusing. And then I realized this may be the best, most distinctive thing about our fan book. It uncovers all sides of the NASCAR experience.

“The tire is the boundary,” Tire Man told me. “There have been times when a cold hand comes up the rear quarter panel, and I wonder if I should take these gloves off to show my wedding band.”

This was my seventh Daytona 500. I’d seen amazing finishes, triumphs of popular drivers like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the historic 50th running of the Great American Race. But this edition, sharing it with the fans in my book, seeing their joyous faces when close to the racecars and drivers, was shaping up to be the best one by far. I ran over to check on Mike Wright, who’s been to more than 250 races and has met Richard Petty nearly 200 times.
Mike was standing about as close as you can get to a racecar without touching it. The car was revving its engine to test their spark plugs. You feel that in your intestines. When the revving stopped, the six foot four truck driver from Virginia looked at me and deadpanned, “I’m like a pig in shit.”

Before this weekend, our fourth together at a race, Mike would call me “Lucky Dog,” since my job takes me to the races. Now he’s started calling me, “Crack Dealer.” I ran back to tend to CPL. Hyland’s interview, and over the course of the next few hours, Mike would text me a half dozen times. Just two words: “Crack Dealer.” I could picture him out there next to the pit boxes, in the garages, near the flag stand, dragging his good-sport wife Karen all over the track. Yeah, Mike even met up with the King.

It turned out to be one of the longest Daytona 500 races in history. Due to global cooling, at least this month, the track developed a deep pot hole on the turn not too far from Kenny Gregory’s trailer (and where fans have wheelbarrow races at night.) The delay in fixing the asphalt in the unseasonable conditions was a bummer for the TV audience, but near the Fatheads, with Bill Strope mixing up gallons of tangy Bloody Marys, no one at Kenny’s place was heard complaining. Seeing on his rooftop TV the close-up shots of the hole in the asphalt, I was wondering if most New Yorkers might finally “get” NASCAR.

When the action resumed, Jamie McMurray won a thriller featuring 21 different leaders. Crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. charged through the field in the final laps, but McMurray, with only three previous victories in his seven year NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career and now driving for a brand new team, held on to become the ninth Daytona 500 winner in the past nine years.

Before leaving the track, I stopped by Club 3, a fun bar several fans construct each year amid the RVs and converted school buses. Club 3 has its own logo, ample supplies of Alabama slammers, serious wattage in its sound system, and a gravel-voice DJ who wears a thick bushy black wig and a prosthetic bare buttocks sticking from his pants. The country and rock and roll music is played so loud, I can never find a way to ask about the point of the costume. Last year at Club 3, I’d met “The Imitator,” a Dale Earnhardt lookalike, and wanted to see if he’d be there again.

I walk into the club, and who do I encounter but none other than Tire Man, posing for pictures with Dale. It must have been 40 degrees outside, and Chris was holding his ubiquitous Coors Light, wearing nothing but Joe Nemechek’s right front qualifying tire, his red gloves, and that straw hat. I sensed it was going to be an interesting night.

Nice Review in THE BLEACHER REPORT

2010-02-13T21:24:00.000-08:00

Patti Rodisch just posted this review on The Bleacher Report --

The Bleacher Report

"The Weekend Starts On Wednesday" Takes The Checkers
by Patti Rodisch

Written on February 13, 2010

NASCAR fans come from all around the country. Fans go to extreme lengths to show their loyalty to their driver(s).

Every race fan has a story, a reason why they tune in on any given Sunday to watch a race, or pay to attend a race.

NASCAR fans stories are one of a kind. They represent the core ideals of this sport and its fans.
Andrew Giangola’s new book, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday, is just a snap shot of NASCAR fans. Their devotion and sometimes borderline obsession with the No. 1 spectator sport in the U.S. TWSW is a collection of NASCAR fans stories. From the infields of Talladega to victory lane, Giangola spoke with NASCAR fans from all walks of life.

Movie stars, college students, retired veterans, media veterans, and fans from all walks of life. In reading this book, with every story you can relate to some part of it.

For some it may be attending the race with your dad or entire family. Or it could meeting your favorite driver on pit road. It could be your annual trek to a race with friends that leaves you wanting more. Giangola is able to capture the true essence of a NASCAR fan.

Every story seems to flow into the next leaving you engaged the entire time. There are a lot of NASCAR books out there, some about the technical side of the sport, others about the fans.I have read many of them, none of them though truly capture NASCAR fans like TWSW.

There is the NASCAR and Jeff Gordon fan that climbed Mt. Everest. Dr. Pat Hickey climbed to the top of the summit and planted a NASCAR flag at the top of the world. The climb up the summit was for a cause, to promote nursing and to help support the education of nursing students at USC. Hickey got his NASCAR fix as he climbed when fans from around the world would give him updates on what was going on back at the track.

That was just a preview of Hickey’s story. There are over a dozen more stories like it. These are stories of everyday people and their love for NASCAR.

Giangola’s witty commentary only enhances the visual that the fans are painting.

If you are a NASCAR fan, this is the book for you. I wish we got more in this book. I wish every fan had the chance to tell their story. Giangola just touches on the passion and the devotion fan have for NASCAR.

You can get the book online at the NASCAR.com superstore, Amazon.com, or your local bookstore.

Mike Wright, a diehard Richard Petty fan, I think said it best, “I love the fires and the steaks and the cans of beer and the people. This is my lazy boy chair. I’m home here. When I sit and hear the ‘Gentlemen, start your engines,’ I forget everything. Nothing else matters. I’m a kid again. My heart starts pounding, and I can’t sit still. By the second pace lap, when you can smell the fumes of the gas and the rubber coming off the tires, oh man, it is instant adrenaline. If that smell could go into my alarm

Sports Business Daily's Author Q&A

2010-02-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

NOTE: THIS STORY RAN TODAY IN SPORTS BUSINESS DAILY; PRETTY COOL TO BE IN DAYTONA BEACH AND SEE THIS:

Catching Up With NASCAR Exec And Author Andrew Giangola

NASCAR Dir of Business Communications ANDREW GIANGOLA this week debuts his new fan-friendly NASCAR book, "The Weekend Starts On Wednesday." The 300-page book, with a foreword from TONY STEWART and an afterword from KYLE BUSCH, includes stories about the sport's fans and a plethora of photos.

Giangola took time recently to chat with Staff Writer Jessica Collins about his first published book and how his encounters with fans have blossomed into lifelong friendships.

Favorite NASCAR track: It doesn't get any better than Talladega and Bristol.

Car you drive: Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

Last time you got a traffic ticket: I was going zero miles an hour while "blocking the box" in a traffic jam getting into the Holland Tunnel (in N.Y.) this past summer.

Favorite NASCAR book (besides your own): LIZ CLARKE's "One Helluva Ride;" JEFF MACGREGOR's "Sunday Money;" DAVID POOLE's "Tim Richmond: The Fast Life and Remarkable Times of NASCAR's Top Gun."

Gadget you couldn't live without: BlackBerry.

Q: Where did the idea for the book come from?

Giangola: I joined NASCAR in 2003 and fan loyalty is obviously such a big thing in the sport -- it's what we sell the sponsors on, it is really the glue that keeps the sport going. In my PR job I've always been talking about NASCAR fans … and as the years passed by I got frustrated with "Who are these fans? Why are they so devoted?" I was thinking about them in platitudes, and I wanted to go explore their fandom and loyalty. I was also hearing great stories, spectacular stories. … So I went to (NASCAR VP/Corporate Communications) JIM HUNTER and said, "Why don't we do a book, and I'm happy to write it." Jim immediately embraced the concept, so I kept collecting stories.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in writing the book?

Giangola: Time. I'm one of those authors who doesn't have the luxury of retiring to the beach house and be able to tap it out with the surf crashing in the background. … While I was working races and once the media center closed down for the day I would go out to the campgrounds and the infield and I had a camera and I would take pictures. I got some really good stories that way. … It took about two years (to write the book). I would try to do as many stories as they came in or I got the idea. I would go to my hotel room and write at night and I actually wrote a few of the chapters on my BlackBerry.

Q: If someone could only read one chapter of the book, which one would you want them to read?

Giangola: "A Purple Heart and a Titanium Leg" because, for one, the military never gets enough attention and acknowledgment and exposure. The second reason is John's story is so amazing and his attitude is so amazing. If you read that chapter, he's literally imploded and his body was shattered from his heels to his shoulder blades. The fact that he survived and then RICK HENDRICK -- who didn't publicize what he did at all -- comes in and reads his story in the newspaper and gives John the homecoming he never had and gets him home for Christmas. … These stories (in the book) are of sorrow and heartbreak but also of redemption and jubilation, so I think what's unique about the book is that through NASCAR and fans you do see a slice of America. Hopefully we can illuminate some truths about the sport and its place in America and a cross section of NASCAR nation.

PHOTO: Giangola (l), With Miss USA Kristen Dalton (r),Who Is Featured In His New Book
(TOO BAD YOU CAN'T SEE THIS. Gaby says I was "leering" which I hope is an SAT word to make the insult at least personally worth it.)

Q: Was there anything you wanted to add to the book that you thought twice about because of your role with NASCAR?

Giangola: I certainly needed to be careful. The infield is a place that gets very crazy at night and sure you could write a caricature of what the infield is like, but I tried not to get very tabloid-ish there. I wanted to tell it like it was and NASCAR didn't put any restrictions on me. I think one thing that I did, and they approved it, is that we tackled some sensitive issues like how fans felt about moving races to different parts of the country. … This is not a 300-page press release. It is not a book that reads like corporate speak or like it came from some PR guy, and I am so grateful to NASCAR for letting me do that -- for letting me use my sense of humor and unique way of looking at things.

Q: Do you want to write another book?

Giangola: Absolutely. The question will be how will I find the time? I have a few ideas for books in motorsports and if NASCAR supports the topics I definitely would love to write another.

Q: What advice do you have for anyone looking to write a book?

Giangola: To find and use your voice on a topic that you are passionate about. Readers can just smell anyone going through the motions, but passion for the topic can jump off the page. Putting your words on paper can make some people feel very vulnerable and exposed, but you got to take a chance.

Chapter Buddies in the News

2010-02-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

I know, this is late notice. I could have been a heckuva lot smarter, but no one's accusing me these days of being particularly intelligent. I should have let you know last week, not now, that Chris MacNicol (a.k.a., Tire Man) and CPL. John Hyland ("A Purple Heart and a Titanium Leg") were to be on Sirius NASCAR Radio last Friday night discussing their stories.

There was no time to get out a note. With NASCAR about to launch the season, I'm busier than Michael Jackson locked in a secure underground pre-school after a neutron bomb has wiped out all adults above. Yeah, I'm more slammed than Lindsay Lohan at an open bar the night before she goes away to prison for DUI. I'm more tied up than Madonna after visiting a hardware store for rope on a kinky Friday night. I've got more on my plate than Kirstie Alley. Too busy to write this blog, but here I am, coffee from the corner cart guy drizzling onto the keyboard, apologizing for not giving sufficient advance word that two of our Chapter Buddies made a stunning debut on "Dialed in with Claire B. Lange" on Sirius Satellite Radio.

CPL. Hyland shared some very exciting news. Those who have read THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY know he sang opera before managing a Hooters then joining the Army. (A real Rennaissance Man.) Well, John is now on the verge of getting a recording contract. I don't want to give him a kunahara; enough said for now. We'll share more details on this site when things are locked down.

CPL. Hyland and Tire Man are not the only chapter buddies in the news. Today, The New York Times talks to Jack Hege, our opening chapter, who has been to every single Daytona 500, and returns to Daytona Beach this week for the 52nd consecutive year.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is set to run a story (possibly as soon as Wednesday) on Steve and Christine Deuker ("Ryan's Hope"). They'll tell their story about losing their dear son Joseph, then finding comfort in Ryan Newman, who is strikingly similar to Joe. (The Deukers have taken it upon themselves to rally the "Chapter Buddies" on a facebook page, which is very cool. I can't wait for several of the fans in the book to meet this Saturday at Daytona Int'l Speedway at the Sprint Experience -- NOON SHARP. Yeah, the Deukers will be joined by Tire Man in his Goodyear Eagle, Right Turn Ryan, The Fathead Guy Ken Gregory, Mike Wright, Sgt. Russ Friedman, CPL. Hyland, and hopefully Jack Hege and others. We'll launch The Weekend Starts on Wednesday officially to our fans, do some trivia, and give away a few copies.)

Here's the kind of people Steve and Christine are. When they heard Jack Hege (who is in his 80's and has sore knees) would be at the Daytona 500, they started to arrange for an electric wheelchair for this man they've never met. (Jack isn't sure he'll use it; to show the kind of guy he is, he doesn't want to "slow down" his friends at track.)

Finally, if you saw Saturday Night Live this weekend, S.E. Cupp ("A NASCAR Alien in NY") took a shot in a skit making fun of attractive women on consevative cable news shows. Here is S.E. reaction to the SNL Fox parody, "Attractive Blonde Lady:"
http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2010/02/attractive-blonde-lady-responds-to-snl.html

Our First Book Review

2010-02-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

Amy's Bad Groove ran a nice review of our book.

Here it is:

I have three major shopping vices: Book stores, office supply stores (so yey for Tony being the Office Depot driver now because I frequent Office Depot much more than I ever did Home Depot) and Dooney purses. I love to read. I have always loved to read. I love the feel of books in my hand and the smell of the paper and glue. No matter where I am I have a book with me…often tucked into my previously mentioned Dooney.

You will not find me with one of those digital book reader thingies until they stop making real paper books. Much like my tastes in music my tastes in books are fairly various and wide (for instance the second to last book I read was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies- told you I have odd tastes).

Anyway several years ago I decided to combine two of my loves and started a collection of books about NASCAR. I started out with a couple of coffee table type books…and slowly expanded my collection.

My newest book in that collection just happens to be the last book that I finished- a book I wanted to tell you about.

The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans by Andrew Giangola is just what you would expect it be from the title and much more. I admit that when I read the testimonials on the jacket I was a little leary. Specifically Janet Evanovich’s “I laughed, I cried, I wanted to jump in my car and drive really fast.” Um okay…that seemed a little cliche to me but whatever. It didn’t stop me from reading the book and it is now one of my favorite books on my NASCAR shelf. The book really is an honest to goodness salute to the people who help make the sport go round (get it? I made a joke!) and round (and another one- I am on it tonight)- The FANS.

This book weaves part of the beautiful quilt that is NASCAR fandom. The book is divided into several sections including sections for: Lifetime NASCAR fans (aptly titled Fans for Life), Dale Earnhardt Sr Fans (Remembering Dale), Fans of the sport who are famous in their own right (Famous Faces including Tom Cruise and Mario Batali to name a few), Fans who are “well known” in the NASCAR community (Flirting with Fame), Female fans (Ladies Loving NASCAR) and other sections I just can’t remember off the top of my head.

The author strives very hard to make sure that NASCAR fans are NOT perceived as stereotypes. This book shows that fans of one of the greatest sports out there, come from all walks of life and backgrounds, and come together over the love of speed and personality and community. This book sheds light on the community aspect of the sport and not the driver / personality aspect with the point being there is no stereotypical NASCAR fan.

I loved reading this book- and I must say I did laugh (the Tire guy? He cracked me up), and I did cry (Lucky Penny Girl- if it doesn’t make you cry you are a robot I tell you), and well I always seem to want to drive fast anyway so I guess the Janet Evanovich testimonial wasn’t so cliche after all. I also have a new respect for news anchor Brian Williams and will be keeping my eye open for his 3 stickers on the rental fleet of America.

Author Giangola has quite the knack for adding in just enough flavor to set the scene without peppering the stew too much (which in my opinion can bring about the “stereotypical” NASCAR fan). Of course it doesn’t hurt that my favorite two drivers wrote the foreword (TONY) and the afterword (KYLE). Both prove that despite their hard driving ways they too not only appreciate NASCAR fans, but are both articulate as well (despite what Tony says).

I recommend this book to not just the ardent NASCAR fan but to the on-the-fence line fan, the sometimes fan, and the curious onlooker. You may just see yourself mirrored in the stories presented in this book or see the neighbor down the street, the news anchor on your nightly news, or the quiet tech support girl in the office upstairs. This book makes me proud to be a NASCAR fan…(not that I needed much encouragement there).

The link to the site is -- http://www.badgroove.com/index.php/2010/02/01/review-the-weekend-starts-on-wednesday-i-wish/

Jack is Back

2010-01-29T13:05:00.000-08:00

When Miss Sprint Cup, Anne Marie Rhodes, announced she wasn't returning for the 2010 season after three splendid years as one of the most photographed faces in NASCAR, I sensed the proverbial house of cards beginning to fall.

You see, before my own "Clueless New Yorker in NASCAR Country" stories at the very end of The Weekend Starts on Wednesday, Anne Marie was the final fan chapter. Her story stands, of course; little girl loves NASCAR, gazes into Victory Lane to see Miss Winston, and grows up to get her dream job as Miss Sprint Cup. Anne Marie did an amazing job, and won the hearts of many fans. But she's no longer Miss Sprint Cup this year, when the book hits, something I'd blindly assumed would happen.

Like many of the fans I profiled, Anne Marie impressed me. She's a graceful, beautiful, earnest, hard-working, good-natured young lady who loves God and her country and NASCAR. I'd like and admire her even if I hadn't written about her. But I'd be lying to not also recognize I was crushed she'd not be on the circuit, able to talk up The Weekend Starts on Wednesday 2/47 for our ten-month season. Please don't hate me for my sugar plum fantasies of Anne Marie bringing my book into victory lane during the winner-jumps-out-of-the-car TV shot.

What got me on edge was then hearing about Jack Hege. He's the first chapter, the story of a young man falling in love with NASCAR on the beaches of Daytona and then, like a migratory bird, heading from North Carolina to Florida each February, to attend the Daytona 500. He's done it astounding 51 years in a row.

Anne Marie, the final chapter, had chosen to move on to new adventures (she's a talented painter and I can't wait to see some of her work; maybe we'll get to preview it here). And then I heard Jack Hege, chapter one, wouldn't be attending the Daytona 500.

My lord, I thought, I'm a curse.

Was being featured as a remarkable fan in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday like getting on the cover of Sports Illustrated? The Giangola jinx? My book wasn't even at retail and the first and last fan each looked to be inching away from NASCAR. Would everyone in between follow? Tire Man would hang up his Goodyear and show up in the infield in regular clothes? Mike Wright switches from the King to Bobby Allison? Junior's Baby88 Girl shows up at Auto Club Speedway in a Jeff Gordon hat? Tom Cruise starts attending X Games instead of NASCAR races? Miss USA sashays out in a racy Formula 1 outfit?

Well, that's not the case. Anne Marie remains a big NASCAR fan, and Jack is back! Our season opener on Valentine's Day will be 52 years in a row...53 if you count watching the last race on the beach. (Check out his chapter, "A Moment in the Sun" for the tale of his buddy pulling onto the race course, with several cars following down the beach....they had to turn around and come back!)

Last year, Jack, 82 at the time, had his tickets but didn't want to drive to Daytona. Dustin Long, the motorsports reporter for the Greensboro News & Record wrote about an amazing streak of ultimate fandom about to end. A local resident saw the story, offering to accompany Jack to Daytona. In a Krispy Kreme donut shop, the two men hit it off, and Jack had a traveling partner.

Well, Dustin came through again. His recent follow up piece on Hege likely to watch the race on TV made it to an old friend of Jack's from more than 50 years ago. Once more, Jack has a ride, and will be trackside for the Great American Race.

If they want to put The Weekend Starts on Wednesday on the cover of Sports Illustrated, maybe we can break that curse, too.

My Dad Writes Rubbish, Part 2

2010-01-22T19:59:00.000-08:00

My daughter Gaby has yawned through most of this book-release excitement.

Today, she made a $10 wager that her book would outsell mine. I reminded the girl I have a pretty good head start. Mainly, I actually have a book.

While a major New York publisher is mildly interested in the manuscript of her psychologicial horror novel, CYANIDE SMILE, and in fact while an executive at said publisher took a lunch meeting with young Gaby to serve up a few plot tweak suggestions, and in fact said, "This is very good, period; not 'good for a 14 year old' but just plain good," and furthermore went on to say a veteran editor may take a good hard look at the pages of CYANIDE SMILE if the changes were made, Gaby has no book deal yet. My daughter is pretty confident. She offered her pinky, and the bet was made.

Suffice it to say, Gaby the aspiring writer hasn't been overly impressed about the publication of her dad's book, outside of lighting up in seeing her name in the Acknowledgements, and thoroughly enjoying my own stories in the back of the book, especially "Wardrobe Malfunctions."

However, we reached a turning point today. When Gaby found out The Weekend Starts on Wednesday is on sale directly below the Dexter DVD on the Showtime Store's web site, she was PSYCHED. All smiles. Wants a screen shot. Her dad is now officially a cool author, thanks to a fictional serial killer.

Say a Prayer for Wessa

2010-01-21T19:48:00.001-08:00

The sky always opens on me in Charlotte.

Heading to my first really big national interview, I was caught in a southern downpour. But it was fine. On the radio, no one knows you’re soaking wet.

As I sat down for Dave Moody’s afternoon drive show at Sirius XM’s studio outside Charlotte, a pack of Extenze Male Enhancement awaited me. They had to be for me, positioned on the console in front of my microphone. Sitting behind the wheel moments earlier, listening to the rain slam the rental car’s roof and Moody’s booming voice talking up “Andrew Giangola’s great new book,” I’d been on top of the mountain. And now, putting the headphones on, looking at the capsules I’m regularly told I need in spam e-mail, talk about cutting a man down to size…so to speak.

Actually, Moody didn’t place the penis enlargement pills there; the Extenze came from a previous guest. Hey, a race car is a pretty good place to advertise just about anything, even stuff that doesn’t work. Not that I know that from experience.

I was short of breath from the post 9.11 asthma and the general terror that strikes before a mike is opened, not because of the Extenze. Back in the hotel room, meditating to clear the cobwebs, the toilet started flushing on its own, scaring the bejesus out of me. It would be difficult to get phased when there are irregular ghosts in your room.

We got rolling, and it went really well. Dave was genuinely excited about the fan stories, and thought it was cool NASCAR let me tell them in my own voice. On a day when new rules were announced to let the boys have at it, you could say NASCAR is letting the drivers drive and the writers write. I even got in a dig on Al Qaeda.

Amazingly, Moody knew many of the fans in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday. Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, NASCAR’s “Science Lady” has been a guest on the show, as has up and coming driver Paulie Harraka, a whip smart student at Duke. Dave had been to Bob’s Party Bus and had met Tire Man. A veteran of the infield where many reporters don't trod; very cool.

Through the power of Social Networking I’d been able to alert the fans in the book and my own Facebook and Twitter friends about the appearance. Our Weekend Starts on Wednesday Facebook Fan Page added about 100 fans within hours of the interview. One fan emailed to say he’d ordered 10 copies from Amazon. Heck, I gotta go on the radio more often!

One question was especially tough: which fan story is my favorite? There are so many great stories; every fan is special in his or her own right. Along with CPL. John Hyland, I mentioned Wessa Miller, the Lucky Penny Girl, who on a Make a Wish gave Dale Earnhardt her lucky coin, “helping” him finally win the 1998 Daytona 500 after years of heartbreak and futility.

Well, I just learned that Wessa, who was born with spina bifida, had been suffering bad seizures and is in the ICU unit of a Kentucky hospital. As her dad Booker told me, Wessa is tough, she never complains. Getting to know the family in the course of writing The Lucky Penny Girl chapter, I found Wessa to be a girl with extraordinary faith and courage.

But she needs our help. She made it through a Code Blue today. Tonight, please say a special prayer for Wessa Miller.

Sippin 'Shine With Mario Batali and Rachael Ray

2010-01-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

One of the most fun fan stories to write was slurpin' moonshine and gallivanting in a generally carefree way with Mario Batali and Rachael Ray at Texas Motor Speedway.

Here's a (nonalcoholic) taste of that tale, which just went up on the track's web site - http://www.texasmotorspeedway.com/blogs/news/archive/2010/01/11/tms-is-the-backdrop-for-several-stories-in-the-weekend-starts-on-wednesday-true-stories-of-remarkable-nascar-fans.aspx

The Eagle Has Landed

2010-01-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

The best presents sometimes come late. Today's package from a factory in China by way of Motorbooks in Minneapolis is an advance copy of "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday."

To be honest, I wasn't a in love with the cover the publisher chose. NASCAR had produced a version using a photo of an orange sunset behind a race track that was dark, ominous and dramatic. (My daughter Gaby said it was great, "if you want the feel of going off to war." She nailed it.)

The white cover Motorbooks chose uses a kid as the main visual. But this isn't a kid's book, I reasoned. (Although I act like I'm 12 in some parts, only three of the 40 or so fan stories prominently feature children.) Plus, I was informed by a friend in publishing "white covers don't sell unless you're Al Gore." (I'd gladly take Al Gore's book sales but wouldn't trade my professional life for his now, as entire villages in South America are on the verge of being wiped out in this record cold, along with the Florida Orange crop. Isn't it funny all the dignitaries delayed in getting to the global warming conventions because of historically frigid weather.)

Then I ripped open the package and got my paws on the book. Man, that cover looked perfect. The book was heavier than I'd have imagined. Those on the train can use it as a weapon should trouble stir. The publisher invested in thick, glossy paper you'd never dare dog ear. (The pages are the quality of a coffee table book. But it's smaller, 6" x 9". An expresso table book?) The color photos pop -- about 75 in all. (I am growing to regret using a toothless one of myself for the story, "My Doctors Only Want to Talk NASCAR." Not a smart career move, but who needs a career.)

All in all, it looks SWEET.

The book sits next to my computer. I keep picking it up, thumbing through, smiling like a baboon. Since I began writing on bathroom walls in school, I always wanted to be a "published" author. The feeling is satisfying, and I can't sit still.

I'm going for a run and will be careful. Giddy days of happiness and good fortune are generally when one's thoughts are off in CandyLand and you get flattened by a bus.

Best NASCAR Fan Email of The Year

2010-01-01T17:52:00.000-08:00

If you were able to order a NASCAR fan over the phone, with Mike Wright, you'd say, "I want one as big as they come."

Mike is hard core. In "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans" we focus on his relationship with Richard Petty. (I don't want to say "obsession," which produces end-game images of straight jackets and Nurse Ratched. Mike is a decent fellow, a hard-working long-haul trucker. He's a patriotic, funny, down-to-earth guy -- a loving husband and now a good friend. He just happens to love NASCAR and Richard Petty, so much so that he's gotten the King's autograph more than 100 times. And the King has never turned him down.)

Mike just sent me the following e-mail. I know it's only January 1. We are still in the single figures on college and pro baseketball players arrested on gun charges. College bowl games are under way, and Twilight Zone Marathon episodes are still running with little Billy turning the drunk Perry Como fan into a jack-in-the-box and wishing neighbors into the corn field. But still, though it's early yet, let's call this the BEST FAN EMAIL OF THE YEAR. Here's Mike's note to me:

Karen and I didn't do jack last night for New Year's. Even though she asked me to try and stay up till midnight, I didn't get off the road till late, and woke up at 3:00 am on the couch with the remote in my hand. Oh well.

I did have a very nice New Year's day. Karen went to spend the day with her mother, and I had the house to myself. I decided to watch the 1979 Daytona 500. Karen found the DVD on a rare sports film web site. It's the original broadcast of that race, flag to flag with no commercials. I had not seen the whole race since I watched it with my dad in 1979.

Of course, any NASCAR fan knows knows what happened: Yarborough and Allison wrecked each other on the last lap, and The King won his sixth of seven Daytona 500's.

You would have thought I was watching it live. I was on the edge of my seat with 20 laps to go (even though, of course, I knew what was going to happen).

On the last lap, I was jumping up and down, the dog barking, the cat ran and hid. It was wild. I went and dug from the closet an old Richard Petty shirt and hat from when he was still driving, and packed a cooler full of beer. I'm going to celebrate in a big way something that happened 31 years ago.

Complete insanity. Some may say I've finally lost it...Call the guys with the butterfly nets, we've got one ready for Belleview.

Damn, life is good. How many days until the Daytona 500?

2009-12-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

As each year closes, it's become a tradition to remember those we have lost in the previous 12 months.

As a NASCAR PR guy, I'd often worked with the late David Poole of the Charlotte Observer and SiriusXM Radio. When I began researching remarkable NASCAR fans to profile in "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday," I came across a stunning story David wrote about Wessa Miller, the so-called "Lucky Penny Girl." When David passed away, I wrote the following piece for NASCAR.COM (April 29, 2009). I believe it's appropriate to re-post it today, as we look back on 2009, and wish all departed souls a peaceful journey.

IN THE END, POOLE'S HEART PROVED EVEN LARGER THAN LIFE

I'll always remember my first time in a NASCAR media center about seven years ago, completely green and alien to the sport.

In reading about NASCAR to prep for the new job, the name "David Poole" kept popping up. And there at the track, the first reporter I recognized was the man who had penned many influential articles shaping coverage of the sport. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself as NASCAR's new business PR guy in New York.

"If there's anything you ever need, about sponsors, the business of NASCAR, whatever, feel free to give me a shout," I eagerly offered.

If I had had a tail, it would have been bushy.

There was a pregnant pause, we're talking third trimester. David gave me that Poole Look and barked, "Who do I talk to about racin'?"

I felt about one inch tall, and retreated with that formerly bright tail tucked between my legs. Poole clearly was not interested in relationship with a neophyte from the sport's New York business office.

That made me all the more determined to win him over. And in pitching stories to Poole through the years, I did.

Poole didn't always agree with my e-mailed solicitations. In fact, I can think of no human being who took greater joy in puncturing balloons. But we developed the kind of cautious mutually respectful relationship you sensed he had with a lot of people.

Once in a while Poole would say, "that's a pretty good idea." And sometimes, "Andrew, that's the stupidest thing I've heard all day."

I was lucky. Sometimes it was the stupidest thing all week. Once it was the stupidest thing all year. I didn't feel too bad since it was early in the season and the year was relatively young.

That gorgeous bluntness was what a lot of people liked most about David. He suffered no fools and made crankiness appealing.

But I sensed Poole trusted me, despite my Gotham City geographical handicap, and that became clear when he'd call for "off the record" chats to go over his annual "most influential people in NASCAR list." Based on our conversations, when Poole added a name or two, and moved around a few others, it was pretty rewarding.

I was fortunate to spend time with David in Bristol in March while working on a chapter about Wessa Miller for my book on remarkable NASCAR fans. Wessa, you may remember, was the 6-year old girl with spina bifida who gave her lucky penny to Dale Earnhardt. He secretly glued the coin to his dash and went on to win the 1998 Daytona 500 on his 20th try. Dale then brought the family to Bristol and quietly, without fan fare or photo opps, bought them a new Chevy van, which they still use to get Wessa to doctor's appointments.

Ten years after Earnhardt's 1998 Daytona 500 win, planning for his lead season-opening story, David remembered the "Lucky Penny Girl."

"Anybody who's been in a journalism class has heard of the 'Where are they now?' story," he said. "I was gonna do that story with Wessa."

And how. David totally nailed the tale of the "Lucky Penny Girl" in the Charlotte Observer.

Reader response to the front-page story was so strong, Poole created a special charity, called "The Pennies for Wessa Fund." Money raised would assist the Millers with medical bills, travel expenses to faraway doctors and home renovations for Wessa's special needs.

Poole also engineered a trip for Wessa and her family to come back to Bristol Motor Speedway, where Earnhardt had hosted them in 1998, to shoot a special NASCAR Angels segment.

An online auction also raised funds for the family. One item for bid was a lunch and race shop tour with David Poole. David laughed when I called it "A Day of Masochism." One gentleman bid nearly $1,000 to spend a day with the sport's biggest curmudgeon. It was not to be.

Five weeks ago in Bristol, sitting in a news conference with Wessa Miller and her parents Booker and Juanita, David had switched seats to become part of the story. Instead of asking barbed questions, David was giving the answers. He relished talking about "Pennies for Wessa" and the journalistic mechanics of what may turn out to be his most famous story -- tracking down Wessa by way of an Internet search for a professional wrestler, speaking with Wessa's mom Juanita for two hours that first night, then walking downstairs to declare to his wife Katy, "If I can't write this story, take me off this job."

"You're not supposed to be part of the story," Poole said. "But sometimes the story becomes part of you. Every one of us has good days and bad days. A good day for the Millers is when nothing really bad happens. The things they deal with on their good days would be a pretty bad day for anyone else. But they look at every single day as an absolute gift. If all of us thought like that, it would be a much better world."

Though they didn't always agree with every one of David Poole's strident opinions, a lot of NASCAR fans would say he made the world better.

It turned out David Poole's heart was as big as his opinions after all.

What strikes me is this: Just as the "The Lucky Penny Girl" in NASCAR lore showed the softer side of crusty old Dale Earnhardt, so too will she continue to shine a light on the secret gentle side of David Poole.

If anyone wishes to donate to the fund David created for little Wessa Miller, who is now 17, that's as fine a way as any to remember him. Just visit www.penniesforwessa.org.

Celebrating Christmas with 97% Enthusiasm

2009-12-23T16:56:00.000-08:00

Two people in the NASCAR industry wished me a “Happy Hannukah” this season. It happens just about every year.

How the last name “Giangola” can be mistaken to be Jewish is beyond me. But I don’t mind one bit.

When someone assumes a person is Jewish, certain stereotypes are at play. Being dumb or a failure aren’t among them. Folks are sizing me up as a smart, successful guy. Even if that’s widely off the mark, I’ll take it. Hey, Jesus himself was born, raised and died a Jew. Count me an unofficial member of the Tribe.

A few years ago, walking with a friend past a half-lit menorah, she wished me a happy Hannukah.

“Uh, my name ends in a vowel,” I said. “Isn’t that a clue I’m an Italian Christian?”

She answered, “Well, you know, you work in the New York office, so I just thought…”

Now that cracked me up. Jerry Seinfeld couldn’t have written that. I work in New York, therefore I am a Jew.

Which brings me to the unique Christmas gift I received this year: Turns out, I am Jewish. Well, a wee bit. I'm not doused in the Manischewitz, a la Victory Lane; it's just a schpritz.

You see, my brother James, who lives in Brazil and could be considered loveably eccentric in some ways, recently had a DNA test to determine his ultimate roots. I could have saved him the time and money . Go far enough back into investigating your respective family trees, and all human beings hail from a nice couple in West Africa.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t get to James in time. He turned over his blood, and the tests came back: the Giangola’s are 3% Semitic (or as the nice official scientific-looking pie chart says: 3%, ASHKENAZI JEWISH.)

I’ll now accept the Happy Hannukah greetings, mention my brother’s blood test, and hum a song ever-present in the malls this time of year such as “White Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “We Need a Little Christmas,” “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” All written by Jews.

A year from now, next to our tree, you’ll see the menorah many assumed I’ve always had.

Indeed, we are much more alike than different.

Peace and goodwill toward you all, whether a tree or line of candles lights up your living room. Shalom and Amen.

My Dad Writes Rubbish

2009-12-22T17:25:00.000-08:00

It must have been satisfying in so-called Days of Old when an author packaged his manuscript, trudged to the post office, mailed the pages to the publisher, and began thinking about his next book.

In early July, I hit "send" on the digital manuscript to "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans" (no mailing a big burly package anymore). That feels a lifetime ago. Since then, it's been a classic "hurry up and wait" scenario -- late summer, into fall, and now the cold blunt days of winter, I've been chomping at the bit get this thing "out there." A bale of books -- my book -- left a port in China on a freighter steaming our way just last week. The book will be on the shelves in early February; the task of promoting it in a very crowded, skeptical and unforgiving marketplace is only beginning.

We'll lean on the latest tools in "vertically integrated," "user generated," "direct to consumer," "social networked" communications. I have no idea what half that crap means, and it's a miracle I've gotten this far into the first blog without the words disappearing as a result of pressing the wrong button, sending me flying into a violent tirade. You know, I'm likely to hit a stray key because I'm typing in bed, horizontal. The marketers would say the channel remains vertical. Whatever.

My publisher, Motorbooks, the world's largest producer of books about cars and racing, was nice enough to set up Facebook and Twitter pages for me. (I can barely work the toaster oven so this is greatly appreciated.) They've also teed me up for this Blog, which I hope will allow me to meet more amazing NASCAR fans and tell the stories of their love affair with this great American sport.

In one day, our Facebook page has drawn about 100 "fans,"which is very exciting since not a page of prose exists yet in the marketplace. Some of these folks came after my spunky daughter joined (because, she wrote, her dad had written some "rubbish"). Gaby's friends saw that and became a fans of "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday," believing it's a plan to shorten the school week by extending the weekend.

My goal isn't that ambitious; it's merley to continue to celebrate and pay homage to the wonderful, giving, generous, amazing people who make NASCAR a big part of their lives.

I hope the fans of NASCAR, and even some who don't follow it, can visit this blog and our Facebook page, and share their photos and feelings about the sport...and the fans who make it go. (The FB page is www.facebook.com/pages/The-Weekend-Starts-on-Wednesday/231611888139)

The marketers are wont to talk about community, another overused word. But NASCAR really is a community -- a group of like-minded people sharing common values and sensibilities. This Blog is another community fans can come to. If you know of any who are remarkable and noteworthy in their own right, please let me know. Perhaps we can share their stories, too.

In that respect, maybe things are better today. Authors in times past didn't have the chance to stay in touch with the people in their book while adding new layers to the story. In that way, technology blesses us.

So welcome to "The Weekend Starts on Wednesday blog." Hopefully, it will be a long and interesting ride, and no one will get car sick.