Part 20- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Photos And Commentary

Here are some dramatic images I’ve taken recently at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and my accompanying ridiculous comments.

This is a close-up and intimate shot of the backup of the Penske racer to be driven by Wilbur Powers in this year’s Indy 500 Speed Contest.


I have to get real close to take a shot like this, and if you’ll notice, the crew is giving me the evil eye.

They are one step away from stomping a new mud hole in my lower extremities, because they probably think I’m a spy for Chip Ganassi.

Or something.

They really don’t have anything to worry about, though, because in real life I’m sorta like a Penske employee.

Maybe.

And, I am loyal to a fault, so, I would never betray my caring employer.

Pretty much.

Speaking of Wilbur Powers, here he is giving a hard-hitting interview to ReVersus broadcast legend Jack Aroot.


(This image was provided to me by one of my spies, and, seeing as I am loyal and stuff, I can’t reveal my spy’s name.)

Anyhoo…if you look closely, you will see me in the background conversing with true and real Indy racing insiders.

This fact almost makes me a legendary real and fast and shiny Indy racing insider as well.

Almost.

But, seeing as my pathetic, scrawny, white, and pasty visage has been seen by untold millions on TV now, I feel like I’ve be legitimized.

I’ve been on TV.

I am whole and complete now.

__________

This is Tony Kanaan’s Frankincense car from earlier this week.


It is abhorrent.

If you look closely, you will see it is two different cars SuperGlued and duct-taped together to form one complete Indy racing machine.

See…Tony’s original ride performed as if it were a tub of excrement.

So…Tony strong-armed his teammate Hideki Mutoh out of his backup car, and had the crack Andretti/Green crew cobble up something a little more faster and better.

The car will make a prudent visit to the paint booth before race day.

Anything else would be improper.

By the way, Tony Kanaan is my pick to win the race this year.

He will always be my pick until he finally wins it.

He is due, and he better hurry the hell up and win, because I want to pick somebody else next year.

__________

Sometimes, a certain thing catches my crossed eyes, so I take a picture of it.

This is a picture for the gear heads.


In this picture, you will see stacks of gears…probably transmission gears, carefully stacked in matched sets and zip-tied together.

Also, please find the torque wrench, and some other kind of spanner, which I have no idea what it is.

I thought this picture was cool.

That’s why I’m showing it to you now.

Please enjoy this picture.

__________

Here we see Tom Scheckter’s rig.


Tom is the son of 1979 Formula One champion Jody Scheckter, who is kindly helping to sponsor his son’s sled with staggering amounts of funds derived from the profits of his Laverstoke Park Farm.

Laverstoke Park Farm is sorta like a hippie commune type farm in England where organic meat and veggies are made with no preservatives or chemicals and junk, except this hippie commune spends alarming amounts of their capital on real and fast Indy cars!

Those are my kind of hippies!

__________

Here is a jaw-dropping shot of Oral Servia’s rig.


I’m including it because it is badass!

Part 19- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Armed Forces And Bump Day At Indy

It was Armed Forces Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway yesterday.

There were many uniformed members of all service branches in attendance.

They are cool too, and much more cooler than me because I was a pogue reservist turd when I served back in olden times, and I really didn’t do anything heroic like the current folks in the military are doing now.

In an ironic twist, the poppies in my flower bed are bursting forth and blooming like crazy.

For further information on the relevance of poppies and our armed forces, I would suggest a Google search.

Or something.

Anyhoo…I hope you all appreciate what they all are doing for us now.

I know I sure do.

It was also Bump Day, and there was much drama and excitement!

Here are some random pictures and comments regarding recent activities at IMS.

This is Ed Carpantier pulling into his pit to receive expert service from his crack Visions crew.


Ed and his lovely wife are expecting a baby at any moment.

Mrs. Carpantier reportedly was experiencing labor pains trackside yesterday.

Maybe.

I bet it’s hard to concentrate on going fast at Indy when one’s wife is about to pop.

Ed is to be commended for his ability to multi-task.

That’s what I think.

This is Danica Hospenthal rumbling down pit lane at Indy in her racing machine.


Danica has not been rumbling and mumbling and mad this year at Indy because she has allegedly been taking anger management classes over the winter and has taken control of her seething white-hot rage.

She seems kinder and gentler this year, and seeing as Mr. Hospenthal has sold his business and now has more time to hang around the house and the various racetracks, I bet they spend more peaceful quality time together.

A tranquil home is a happy home.

Maybe.

This is a top-secret spy photo of the Bob Kravitz Commemorative Weenie Journalism Special.


It was being prepared in the event we didn’t have a full field of 33, and a wanker field filler was needed.

Luckily, we did not need Bob Kravitz to race at Indy this year, so he can stick to writing biting and legendary commentary in the local fish rap.

We really dodged a bullet this time.

Pretty much.

Part 18- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Zombies At Indy

I’ve seen a lot of things in my 40 plus years attending real and fast Indy 500 racing events.

I’ve seen heinous crashes, projectile vomiting, spirited fistfights, police brutality, rain of biblical proportions, public displays of affection and nudity, and abuse of exotic and illegal intoxicants.

Never did I think I would see the living dead amongst the throngs of enthusiastic Indy fans milling about the Vigoda Plaza area.

But that is exactly what I witnessed today.

There I was, minding my own damned business and sipping on a cold beer, when I looked up and saw four shadowy apparitions floating across the plaza.


Zombies!

Wheeler, Newby, Allison, and Fisher.

Four long-dead heartless conservative industrialists had returned from the grave.

They were hungry.

They needed to eat, and only live human brain matter would satisfy their ravenous appetite!

Knowing I had nothing to offer them, and seeing as I am afraid of no man…living or undead…I walked up to them and asked, “Which one of you is Fisher?”

The guy second from right in the photo above, said, “I am Fisher. Why do you ask, foolish mortal?”

I replied, “Because I went to your namesake elementary school…Carl G. Fisher School. That fact makes me a legendary Indy racing insider. Do you know where the school is?”

He replied that he did not know…

Having been tricked and made a fool of by a brainless mortal, he let loose a shriek of agony from the depths of his tomb, and he and all of his zombie buddies vanished into thin air, leaving behind only a small pile of smoldering dust…which was quickly swept up by the crack IMS Ecology Crew.

I returned to my cold beer and sat down and said to nobody in particular, “Dumbass poseur zombies….”

Kinda.

Part 17- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: HotWheels At Indy

Mattel/HotWheels, Inc., LLC, is now a major sponsor for all things IndyCar.

They’ve been kind enough to pour eleventy billion dollars into the sport of real and shiny and fast Indy racing, and in return they were allowed to plaster their trademarked logos all over everything at IMS.

As evidence of this fact, I cite the following picture.


This is a life-sized version of a HotWheels car.

Its coolness cannot be underestimated, even though it is an old beastly Panoz showcar sled with no engine.

What kid wouldn’t want to have this car in his collection?

I had a humongous HotWheels car collection when I was a young disgruntled youth….damn near a suitcase full of the things.

They would be worth untold millions today.

Unfortunately, all of my HotWheels cars met with a gruesome fate.

See…I was not only a disgruntled youth. I was also extremely destructive.

Once I grew tired of my HotWheels, I would crush them in my dad’s woodworking vise, or smash them with a ball peen hammer, or set them alight in a hellish conflagration using some sort of liquid accelerant.

One day I was sitting on my front step, merrily crunching some selected vehicles from my collection with a mallet, when my uncle arrived for a visit.

He was none too pleased at seeing me destroy objects he had probably given to me as a birthday present a few weeks before.

Therefore, he felt it necessary to give me a smart thump on my thick noggin with his Indiana University class ring.

Who could blame him?

In our family, close relatives were certainly within their rights to hand out discipline when necessary.

I guess it really is true.

It does take a village.

Or something.

Maybe.

Anyhoo…today I have a very small collection of HotWheels displayed on a dusty windowsill in my garage, because my garage is where all my cool shit is.


And if my boys touch my HotWheels, I will hurt them too.

Probably.

Part 16- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Old Crap At Indy

If you have been paying attention the last few years, many of you may have noticed that I like old shit.

Cars, airplanes, buildings, bridges…

I appreciate history.

In the garage area, there is a small parking lot reserved for the motorcycles belonging to teams and their crews.

Usually, one only sees modern-day rice-burning crotch rockets, rumbling Harleys, and fancy schmancy European imports.

Here’s something I saw which was a little out of the ordinary that caught my eye.

This is an old BMW motorcycle of 1950’s vintage, and it is cool too!


If you look closely, you will see it is a 2-cylinder opposed engine, with shaft drive and a carburetor that one can adjust if one wants to.


It was manufactured in Munchen, which is German for Munich, in case you were not aware.

I didn’t get a chance to hear it run, but I bet it runs smoothly and efficiently, because it was built in Germany, and Germans will put up with no shenanigans when it comes to their machinery.

Probably.

This next motorcycle is what is known as a Moto-Guzzi. It is from Italy.


After some quick intardnet research, I’ve concluded this Moto-Guzzi is a V7 Ambassador model of late 1960’s vintage.

I could be wrong, though. It has happened before.

Anyhoo...this Moto-Guzzi is cool. That fact cannot be argued.

Please note that this Moto-Guzzi has a sidecar attached. Sidecars are cool because one can fill them with cold beer or hawt chicks or a good dog and still have room to trail a guest on the back seat thingy.

This Moto-Guzzi appears to be in original un-restored condition.


Also, it is leaking oil onto the ground. That’s cool because that means it needs to be worked on, like most Italian-made things, and it doesn’t get any more cooler than to be turning wrenches on a classic Italian motorcycle.

That’s what I think.

Part 15- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Media Legends At Indy

The Indy 500 always brings out the bestest broadcast and print journalism legends anywhere.

This fact cannot be denied.

I thought it would be nice to show them hard at work at Indy covering all the action with their hard-hitting and in-depth interviews and stuff.

Here we see Gary Lee fixin’ to interview 2-time Indy 500 champ Arie Lippback.*


Gary asked Arie about his record setting 237mph lap he did back in olden times.

I bet Gary asked Arie, “How’d it feel?”

Broadcast legends always ask that question.

Anyhoo…Arie said something like, “I don’t remember. That was a long time ago.”

I don’t think Arie really wanted to be interviewed and asked the same dumb questions he’s asked at Indy every year.

If you look closely, the expression on Arie’s face seems to express this sentiment.

Arie is old and grouchy.

Maybe.

Sorta.

*Way back a long time ago, one of my best racin’ buddies had a great girlfriend, but she didn’t know a lot about racing. She didn’t know how to pronounce Arie Luyendyk’s last name, and one time in a semi-drunken state she pronounced it as “Lippback.” She never lived it down, and the rest is history.

__________

Next, we have Jammy Billson** being interviewed by a local CBS affiliated legend whose name is unknown to me.


Jammy said something nice about one of his weight-loss supplement sponsors, and suggested that, real soon, he’s gonna start using some of their products so that he can lose some of the substantial blubber which can be found on his person.

Jammy doesn’t look all that outta shape to me, but, then again, I didn’t eye-ball him real close like I did the following female version of a broadcast legend…

**When my oldest son was but a wee lad and just learning to talk, we watched a lot of open wheel racing together on TV because I am a good dad. This was at the time when Jimmy Vasser and Alex Zanardi were teammates with Target/Chip Ganassi. They both were winning just about everything out there at the time. My little boy couldn’t say “Jimmy Vasser.” It came out as “Jammy Billson.” I beat him severely until he pronounced it correctly. I thought you should know.

__________

This is IndyCar Inc., LLC, television-interviewing legend Lauren Bohlander conducting a riveting interview with EJ Viso.


The two of them make a cute couple. I sensed a certain kind of connection between these two.

She is a vision, and I bet EJ would like to date her.

If EJ dates Lauren, the next interviewer should ask him the age-old Indy interviewer question, “EJ…How’d it feel?”

Pretty good, I’m guessing.

That’s what I think.

Part 14- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Roger Penske...My Boss?

This is Roger Penske at Indy.

He is The Captain.

Roger don’t play.

With that in mind, I should inform the interested reader that I sometimes do some sub-contract labor for Roger Penske’s organization.

Therefore, I should probably watch what I say in regards to him.

Otherwise, I might find my ass out on the street and jobless, begging for money at the end of an interstate ramp.

That would be below average.

Anyhoo…as I said, Roger runs a tight ship, and he will tolerate no amount of shenanigans from his associates. Roger will give an associate one chance, and if an associate Effs up, that associate can expect some consequences.

As evidence of this, I cite the following picture.


These Penske associates probably participated in some garage area hi-jinks…like short-sheeting Helio’s bed, or sprinkling chili powder into Will Power’s undercrackers.

Maybe.

As a disciplinary measure, Roger Penske had them do some mundane tasks like stencil his name on all the new sets of racing wheels so that other nefarious race teams, like AJ Foyt’s, wouldn’t steal them. And, if those associates know what’s good for them, they’ll be careful about unsightly overspray too!

Roger can play games if an associate wants to play games. He has his ways of reminding his associates who signs the paychecks.

That’s how Roger Penske rolls.

He is firm but fair.

I understand Roger has been affected greatly by the recent tough economic times, and that he is no longer a billionaire.

That is unfortunate.

I know how Roger feels, as my Individual Retirement Account (IRA) has taken a big hit as well.

Still…I wouldn’t mind swapping my IRA for Roger’s.

Many people don’t know that Roger Penske once raced real and fast cars back in olden times.

He was not always a wealthy racing team owner and corporate entrepreneur.

No.

At one time he actually drove race cars.

Here are a couple of photos of Roger Penske as a driver at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

This is Roger Penske and Dan Gurney chit-chatting at IRP. Dan had best stand there and listen attentively if he knows what's good for him! Hoosier Grand Prix, a sports car race, at Indianapolis Raceway Park, 1962. (Rick Johnson photo)

Roger Penske and FireBall Roberts discussing investment strategies at the Yankee 300, a USAC stock car race, 1963. (Rick Johnson photo)

So…you see…Roger kinda knows what he’s doing when it comes to racing.

And if he doesn’t know, he’ll hire somebody who does know.

Pretty much.

Part 13- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Spy Map

At an avid reader’s request, I’d like to present my most updated spy satellite image which identifies the locations of all silly persons who have clicked on my intardnet tomfoolery.

I made the map a thumbnail because it is big, but I figured you would want to see it in all its glory.

Or something...

So...if you click on the thumbnail you should see the full map. If not, I am sorry and not very savvy.


It is evident to me that, worldwide, there are many people who are not being productive while at work, and are wasting valuable company time and assets to read goofy and real Indy 500 related satire.

In these tough economic times, it doesn’t seem prudent or proper to be surfing the intardwebs when one should be working, unless one is like me and on vacation.

I doubt that all those little pink stickpins are on vacation, unless they are in a communist country or have received an economic stimulus package from our beloved President.

Regardless, I appreciate you clicking and reading, and I hope I haven’t made you too awful angry with my biting and disgruntled commentary.

Have a nice day!

Part 12- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Rent-A-Racer?

Here we see the crack crew of Dreyer & Rheingold Racin’ Inc., LLC, meticulously going over the outside of one of their rent-to-race Honda Indy V-8 engines.

Just about all they are allowed to do to it is wipe it off and swap exhaust headers on it, maybe, because it is currently against the law to open up a real and powerful IndyCar engine and tinker with it, because they don’t really own it.

See…Honda is kinda protective and jealous of their stuff, so they don’t let anybody buy one of their engines and soup it up.

So, Honda uses a whole bunch of ThreadLocker on all the nuts and bolts, and they really torque them down extra tight at the factory in Japan somewhere so that curious and inventive mechanics can’t tear the engines down and be sneaky and innovative.

One just borrows a Honda racing mill, and when one breaks it, one simply puts it in a cardboard box, along with a big check, and ships it FedEx Next Day Air back to Honda for a replacement power plant.

It wasn’t always like this…

Back in olden times, one used to see a lot of real and fast Indy racing engines taken apart and spread out all over a table in the garage area.

(Rick Johnson photo)

And, teams had specialists…engine guys…who could tear down and rebuild an engine in short order.

(Rick Johnson photo)

Now, all we have are dudes who bolt on exhaust parts and electronics packages.

Sorta.

Not quite as romantic…

That’s what I think.

Part 11- My Fantastic Supreme 2009 Indy 500 Photo Diary Blog Type Thang: Justin Wilson - Employee Of The Month?

Justin Wilson and his Dale Coyne Racin’ Industries crew did a super duper job qualifying for the 2009 version of the Indianapolis 500 Sweepstakes Competition.

Nice work, guys.

Justin Wilson resembles Vince from the movie Employee of the Month.

That was good cinema, and you know my thoughts on cinema...

Life is too short for bad cinema.

The fact that Jessie Simpson is in the movie makes it even more better and enjoyable.


Employee of the Month was especially funny to anyone who has ever worked in a warehouse, grocery store, or an evil Sam’s Club/WalMart/COSTCO.

Anyhoo…If Justin can win the race, he will be Employee of the Month at Coyne Racin’ Industries, I bet, and he'll get to park his car in the specially marked parking spot.


Then, he will be able to win over a high-caliber winsome lass like Jessie Simpson.

Maybe.