Denny Hamlin Wins -or something like that at the Goody's 500 at Martinsville, VA

So, whatever, whiner Denny Hamlin, who only a couple of weeks ago blamed Toyota motors for his lackluster performance so far this season, somehow managed to win at Martinsville–in spite of that– in his first top ten finish of the season.

I can’t believe it…I thought it was the end for us.

Fairly melodramatic words to spew out for all and sundry to hear, especially your employer, so early in the season, but these NASCAR drivers are a sensitive lot and it doesn’t take much to push them to the brink .

It’s only March, Denny.

We couldn’t make a Blingee even if we wanted to since only Jimmie Johnson seems to be blessed with Blingee worthy victory lane photos. Funny that.

yes…

again

My seconds will wait on you in the course of tomorrow morning

Your faithful obedient servant,

Carl Edwards

sayonara sucka

So the Atlanta race is over.

The highlights are as follows:

The track was rough on everyone’s tires

There was the usual driver bitching,whining,moaning and complaining. Someone hurt someone’s feelings, somebody else didn’t place nice with the toys, someone doesn’t know how to share. You know, the same problems you have at work every day, excepting of course for the parts where you don’t make millions of dollars and the waking working hours of every single one of your co-workers aren’t devoted to making you happy and feel good about  yourself and confident of your abilities.

Denny Hamlin for example, is now publicly criticizing Toyota for being  “behind in their motors”  and not being one to go out on a limb by himself, he’s dragging the “motor guy” at JGR out with him, alleging they’re holding regular confabs to determine what it takes to make “a good reliable engine and make as much power as we did when JGR was running Chevrolets three years ago” and so on and so forth.  No doubt the “motor guy” (who surely has a name but Denny’s probably not in the shop often enough to know what it is) is eternally grateful for Denny’s expert input. I mean, does Denny have to do everything for these people???

But the Big Story was not the ineptly sung dove sono that we must hear every week from 98% of the drivers, the Big Story was Carl Edwards sending Brad Keselowski’s car airborne and into the catch fence–mere feet away from the front rows of fans– at the end of the race. It was retribution for Keselowski taking Edwards out of the race earlier and similar to when Keselowski wrecked Edwards at Talladega last year to take first place and putting Edwards back at 24th place. It’s an official and ongoing duel sanctioned by NASCAR.

And Edwards can do as he pleases, after all he did this once:

So there’s no telling what he will do next. Slay a wicked driver? Take out a few fans? He’s a driver–he’s entitled.

An unapologetic Edwards said he didn’t expect Keselowski go airborne. As Keselowski was spinning through the air Edwards asked over his radio for someone to tell him when/if Keselowski got out of the car.

Edwards was summoned to the NASCAR hauler, ostensibly for a dressing down, but we all know what really happened. The Veuve Cliquot was uncorked, the complimentary hookers were trotted out, and Edwards was thanked most sincerely for providing them with a dramatic video clip. Anything to keep the sport  in the public eye. Desperate to hang on to the few fans it has left,  NASCAR wants its pretty boys to be bad boys.  So what we have now are  prima donna drivers throwing down the gauntlets. It would certainly be more interesting if this was followed with pistols at dawn instead of using their cars as weapons.

The Church of St. Mary and St. Joseph, now  known as St. Joseph’s, was built in 1843 and was the fourth Catholic Church built in North Carolina. Although several hundred Catholics were settled in North Carolina by 1789, the date the state was incorporated into the Diocese of Baltimore; there was no Catholic Church in North Carolina until 1839 when the Church of St. Paul was built in New Bern. The  construction of other Catholic churches followed in Fayetteville and in Raleigh. The Church of St. Paul and the Church of  St. Joseph are now the only remaining structures of the original four churches.

St. Joseph's

St. Joseph’s was initially home to a handful of  Irish immigrants who were allegedly brought to North Carolina by a flamboyant Italian entrepreneur who hoped to make a fortune in the Carolina gold rush. The regional gold rush was short lived and was quickly eclipsed by the discovery of gold in California. Local mines closed and the many of their owners left the area, but these immigrants remained.  St. Joseph’s became a spiritual and cultural touchstone for them and for the following generations as they carved out their hard scrabble life far away from any major city or town, and very far away from their homes in Ireland.

The establishment of the nearby Abbey Basilica of Mary Help, at Belmont Abbey, in the 1870s shifted the locus of worship for area Catholics to the abbey church. The little country church fell into disuse by the early twentieth century although many of the founding families continue to make use of their original plots in the churchyard. The Church of St. Joseph is now only open once a year for a celebratory mass on the feast day of St. Joseph, March 19.

Much of the history of the church rests among the silent stones of the cemetery. The next installments on St. Joseph’s will take a deeper look into the history of the church and the people who worshiped there.

Today was practice and garage gossip

According to deeply embedded secret sources, the talk of the garage is what’s the deal with the Hendrick rear axles–as in why have they had so many rear axle failures this year–”some” (related to “they”) say this has something to do with massaging the extra-legal possibilities of rear camber. Things that are making a lot of people say “Hmmm”

You heard it here first.

More action shots from practice

Neighborhood Theater NoDa

George Clinton

This is a very different band than what you were used to hearing in the ’70s, in fact they are a shell of their former selves. Most of the members are new, everyone’s older, and there are no lavish sets or costumes. Nevertheless, when George Clinton walks onstage, he can still work the crowd.

Yours truly and her wonderful and intrepid husband (who took these fantastic photos) got to the theater before the doors opened ***very excited***and we were able to get a place right at the stage. I could have patted Clinton’s foot had I wanted to.  I would have never been able to get anywhere near this close to George Clinton at a concert during their heyday-when I was a poor college student and couldn’t afford concert tickets anyway.

Diaperman

The crowd was a mix of black and white, young and old.

Nothing brings youth like embracing your passion.

While the few original  members of the band are older, they shed age like an old skin once they started playing.

I have to admit, dancing in the crowd made me feel young again too.

When you see my mother tell her I’m all right

I’m just funking around for fun

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Glitter Graphics

Winner of the Shelby American 400

Early in the race the commenters predicted Carl Edwards would win because his wife just had a baby and in NASCAR, if you can get your wife to give birth you will win the next post-delivery race. Apparently there are statistics to back this up. Just ask Darrell Waltrip, he says it happened to him once, so it must be  so.

There was the usual driver whining and moaning. Early in the  race Kyle Busch had difficulty with his pit stops as in he couldn’t manage to get out of his pit stall what might be called a timely fashion and Jeff Burton complained vehemently on his radio that his car just plain slap would not turn. No turning, and yet he managed not to fling himself headlong into the wall on the turns, thankfully.

And then there was the issue with the mysteriously flashing caution lights. Mysterious as in they flashed on several occasions when there were no actual cautions.  What could account for such a thing? Technical glitches? Maybe. Or could it be ghosts? Could the Willard Library ghosts be on a field trip to a NASCAR race to see what all the fuss is about? Then they got bored and decided to play with the lights. I like the idea of the Gray Lady thinking, “Wonder what will happen if I tinker with this switch. Oh look, they’re slowing down and they’re confused. Hmm, let’s do it again and see what happens. OK that was fun. Now what are we going to do?”

Jamie McMurray slammed his teammate Juan Pablo Montoya into the wall, which inflamed Montoya’s volatile Latin blood. Something tells me ugly words were bandied between the two of them off camera.

Jamie (nose bloodied): What’d I do??

Montoya (flicking specks of dust from his Mechlin lace cuffs) : filthy pig-dog

Junior had a meltdown

So far, situation normal

33 laps to go and Jeff Gordon  and Jimmie Johnson are racing side by side for the one and two positions. ***Yawn***

Could the ghosts please start tinkering with the lights again.

Jimmie Johnson passes Jeff Gordon –

Again, situation appallingly normal

I think we all know how this is going to end…

Blingee to follow

missing from this scene: me, Mapp & Lucia, a vodka tonic & a plate of hors d'oeuvres

No matter what,  I will read the Mapp and Lucia Series every year. I should be able to recite every volume by heart.  It doesn’t matter that I know exactly what’s going to happen and who is going to say what. I actually like I know who is going to say what- I still find it fresh and funny.  I love Mapp and Lucia and those in society with them.  I’m not so sure I’d want to have lunch/tiffin with any of them, but I’m still engrossed in the petty affairs of their lives.

I may as well admit it, secretly I want to be like them-except I would of course prefer to have more depth. The principal characters live in nice houses and are tended to by a small domestic staff. They do not have to work, they lunch, they have tea, they play bridge, they have dinner parties, and they paint and have their own art exhibitions; they are unashamedly at the center of their universe. The real battles occur between Elizabeth Mapp and Emmeline “Lucia” Lucas as they spend their life forces tussling for social ascendancy. Phoebe-Lou Adams in a review in The Atlantic wrote, “Nothing that Lucia and her enemy, Miss Mapp, did was ever of the slightest importance, but they did it with Napoleonic strategy, Attilan ferocity, and Satanic motive.”

I spend the bulk of my days doing nothing of the slightest importance too. Were that I were in the magical worlds of Riseholme or Tilling, still doing nothing of particular importance and living a self-indulgent life basking in literature, art, music (ickle Mozartino), and whatever else I had to do to wake up every day knowing the very worst thing I would  deal with was the machinations of my social arch rival. Piece of cake.

Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older.

Who among is hasn’t done that?

In addition to Mapp and Lucia, and somewhat in that tradition, I also have to check in with the world of Bertie Wooster. This  year’s re-read is The Code of the Woosters.

Bertie thinks he has successfully squashed his valet Jeeves’s attempt to get them on a round-the-world cruise, something Jeeves has tried before without success.  Jeeves’s whole attitude recalled irresistibly to the mind that of some assiduous hound who will persist in laying a dead rat on the drawing room carpet, though repeatedly apprised by word and gesture that the market for same is sluggish or even non-existent. Bertie refuses to be decanted into any blasted ocean-going liner and lugged off round the world.

Instead, a twisted series of events lead him to Totleigh Towers, home of Sir Watkyn Bassett, his soppy daughter Madeline who thinks every time a fairy blows its  wee nose a baby is born and the stars are God’s daisy chain, her fiancé Augustus Fink-Nottle, newt fancier, her cousin Stiffy Byng whose petulant Aberdeen Terrier  Bartholomew  is the bane of Constable Oates’s existence, Stiffy’s fiancé, the Reverend Harold “Stinker” Pinker, and Bassett’s right hand man, Roderick Spode, who is built as Bertie tells us … as if nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment.

Bertie’s mission at Totleigh Towers is twofold and daunting. He is to repair the rift between Madeline and and Gussie Fink-Nottle. He is also expected to pinch an eighteenth century silver cow creamer that was unscrupulously acquired by Sir Watkyn Bassett before Bertie’s Uncle Tom, a rival antique silver collector and connoisseur could buy it from an antique shop on the Brompton Road.

He is summoned on this mission that conveniently requires his presence at one location by Gussie–The only thing we can say with any certainty is that in some way -how we shall presumably learn later-Gussie has made an ass of himself again–and his Aunt Dahlia–I was looking forward with bright anticipation to the coming reunion with Aunt Dahlia-she, as I may have mentioned before, being my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin.

Once he arrives at Totleigh Towers all hell breaks loose when it seems Gussie and Madeline have irreconcilable differences and Madeline decides she will marry Bertie instead and Sir Watkyn is reeling with the prospect of having Bertie as a son-in-law as he suspects Bertie is really there to steal the cow creamer and Constable Oates’ s purloined helmet mysteriously ends up in Bertie’s suitcase just as Aunt Dahlia is is pestering him to find a place to hide the cow creamer she just removed from Sir Watkyn’s collection, and Sir Watkyn, Spode, and Constable Oates are searching the premises for the cow creamer at which point Gussie barges in to knot Bertie’s sheets hoping to escape out the window.  It quickly becomes very complicated in that P.G. Wodehouseian way. Just when it seems Bertie is so deep in the soup he will never get out, Jeeves will come to the rescue as he always does. When placed against the sharp relief that passes for quotidien life at Totliegh Towers, that round-the-world cruise doesn’t look so bad after all.

The re-read indulgences would not be complete without A Confederacy of Dunces. I don’t think I’m personally acquainted with anyone who has also read this. All of my friends are excellent and prolific readers but the few who have picked this one up have all quit within the first section refusing to return for a second try.  I remember having a bit of a time finding momentum with Ignatius Reilly, but my sheer fascination with his world, much less his world view reeled me in very early and I’m still firmly in its grip.

In the pantheon of humanity that comprises John Kennedy Toole’s cast of characters, my very favorite, hands down, is Burma Jones, a Cassandra like figure who sees all and understands much but who is dismissed by society at large because he is black. Jones is the only intelligent person in the book. He has a sharp mind and a smart mouth. He’s someone you’d want to spend the afternoon drinking beer with.

Listen, you ever try livin on my kind of wage? You think color peoples get grossries and clothin at a specia price?

Hey! All you peoples draggin along here. Stop and come stick your ass on a Night of Joy stool. Night of Joy got genuine color peoples working below the minimal wage. Whoa! Guarantee Plantation atmosphere, got cotton growin right on the stage in front your eyeball, got civil right  worker gettin his ass beat up between show. Hey!

Next stop is the House of Atreus.  I’m very interested in Iphigenia’s trials and tribulations, and this year’s installment of the How the Argive World Turns  will be in a brief visit via Aeschylus’s Agamemnon in which everyone has a good line or two. Agamemnon has finally returned from Troy, and everyone is glad to have him back, except of course his wife Clytemnestra, who has never forgiven him for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia so the Greek fleet could sail for Troy. Plus, in his absence, she has taken up with Aegisthus and Agamemnon will only be in the way.

The chorus/Elders of Argos are in the grey and brittle years, old men must walk three-footed, weak as babes, and stray like dreams lost in the light of day. As they bring you up to speed with the story up to that moment, they mention Agamemnon’s dilemma and his subsequent choice to sacrifice Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis as the price to raise the winds. In the end they say … he put on the harness of Necessity.

Clytemnestra, who will have none of that, officially welcomes him home with a public speech that more or less indicates she’s glad enough to see him if he can ignore the ugly  foreshadowing she peppers between the lines. He replies, Daughter of Leda, guardian of my house, your speech matches its theme, my absence; for both were prolonged. Had he been truly paying attention he would have dispensed with the attitude and left immediately taking his spoils of war with him, which included the Trojan Princess Cassandra, who Clytemnestra will murder right after she murders Agamemnon. First things first.

The Elders reproach Clytemnestra for mariticide. She shrugs this off as no great loss, I said , not long since many things to match the time; at which, that time past, without shame I here unsay. Besides she had run the place just fine without Agamemnon for years. He got what was coming to him…The guile I used to kill him, he used himself the first. And so it goes as the family sinks deeper into dysfunction and tragedy.

I may also try to slog through The Elegant Universe yet again in a futile attempt to understand even just a little tiny bit of it–so I can be intellectual and cool and say things like “Another day on the ‘brane,” but this is unlikely to happen.

The nice thing about revisiting a book I’ve already read is I have no reason to pace myself as I would if I were reading it for the first time and really liking it. I have a habit of charging part way though books I really like on the first read only to throttle back roughly two-thirds of the way along and ration out the rest when I realize I don’t want the read to end. Since I already know how these books are going to go, it’s nice just to plunge in and read away.

What’s next after I visit the old friends? I have stacks of things I’ve been meaning to get around to reading if only I could stay out of my own way. The “new” book on the nightstand is Shoutin’ Into the Fog. Growing Up on Maine’s Ragged Edge, by Thomas Hanna. Hanna grew up  in Five Islands fishing village on Georgetown Island, Maine. It doesn’t get much better than Five Islands and Georgetown; I’m lucky enough to know this from personal experience.

Five Islands Maine

As you can see I’m only four years behind getting around to this book. What are you reading?

~~~ published 2006~~~

I’m going to hate myself in the morning.

TGIF