12:03: Both Waltrips are in the booth. What did I do to deserve this? I can’t explain why these two men annoy me so much. They’re both knowledgeable and more insightful then a lot of the guys who do this. But I just can’t stand either of them. Recordings of their voices run in a continuous loop on the loudspeakers in my personal version of hell.
12:04: There’s rain in the forecast, so we need to get a weather report from a weather guy who’s so metro he makes Michael Waltrip look like Bruce Willis. He wants us to know that after this shower there’s a biiiiiig area of “rain-free air.” Please, please keep cutting to him throughout the race.
12:15: Dale Jr. is in the booth! I’m still not sure how I feel about his beard, which made its debut last year. I think I like it. It makes him look older. He seems confident, which is a great sign.
12:21: Ooh, ooh, it’s a commercial for Valvoline NextGen motor oil, which is 50 percent recycled. I just read in the paper this morning that the Roush cars are all going to use it this year. Apparently they used it last year, too, because the commercial’s angle is basically “I DARE you to call me a tree-hugging weenie – watch Carl Edwards win!”
12:24: It’s time for the always-awkward pre-race concert. Ok, earlier this month, a lot of people whined that Madonna appeared to lip-sync during her Super Bowl halftime show. Of COURSE she did, just like I assume Lenny Kravitz is doing now. Stadium sound systems are universally awful, just because the sound bounces around such a huge area. Also, it’s doubtful that they’re really playing those guitars right now. It’s 60 degrees and raining, and those conditions do not make instruments happy. By the way – Lenny Kravitz? Can we send a copy of this to every uninformed blogger/sports writer/commentator who uses interchangeably “NASCAR fan” and “toothless KKK member who only listen to Hank Williams Jr.”?
12:33: Ooh, ooh! The trailer for “G.I. Joe”! Now, I’d pay money to watch Dwayne Johnson read his grocery list, but you’re throwing in Bruce Willis, too? Yes, ma’am. (I have an idea… can we put Johnson and Willis in the booth instead of the Waltrips? I feel like I would enjoy that a lot more.)
12:35: Now it’s time for Mikey Waltrip’s contribution to the broadcast, a segment reporting on the “silly season,” which refers to all of the off-season shuffling of drivers and crew members. It’s actually a nice piece, aside from a really awful gimmick where they make various drivers pretend they’re at a press conference. Painful. Guys, the Oscars are tonight, and there’s a reason y’all weren’t invited.
(About that – Rick Santorum’s campaign is sponsoring Tony Raines’ car today, and so both David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos asked him about it in interviews earlier this morning. Gregory actually asked Santorum which he’d watch, as if you can only choose one, and as if there are deep cultural and political indicators attached to the choice. Well, I’m watching both, because my political identity isn’t tied to my entertainment choices.)
12:38: Trackside interview with Kyle Busch, and Darrell asks him if he’s okay after crashing earlier in the week. Come to think of it, Waltrip asked Dale Jr. about crashes, too, and he spent some time in his opening going over the week’s various wrecks. Why is he suddenly obsessed with this? I mean, he didn’t just suddenly notice that racing occasionally involves crashes. I’m starting to wonder if Waltrip is laying the groundwork to be the eventual chief spokesperson on NASCAR safety standards or something. Maybe he just bought stock in a seatbelt company.
12:47: Interview with last year’s surprise winner Trevor Bayne, who just turned 21 last week. What a wonderful young man. He’s talking about visiting Kenya in the off-season.
12:49: Time for a talk with Jimmie Johnson. (How is he the only Johnson in this sport anyway?) He’s talking about wanting another 500 win – hey, cheating appears to be good luck, so maybe this is your year – in part because Chad Knaus couldn’t be there for Johnson’s win in 2006. He’s “not in any of the pictures.” Um… Knaus wasn’t there BECAUSE HE WAS SUSPENDED FOR CHEATING. Stop acting like his grandma died or something.
12:52 – Jeff Gordon interview… aaaaand the Waltrips want to talk about crashes. (I’m telling you – stock in a seatbelt company.) His family also went to Africa in the off-season – to Rwanda, where he does some charity work. I’d like to add this to the Lenny Kravitz concert footage in that package we’re getting together for the anti-NASCAR bigots.
12:57: Finalmente! The interview Fox has been hyping for the last hour is here! Danica Patrick is the third woman to start the 500, and so of course Darrell Waltrip asks her about her crash in the Gatorade duel. My thoughts on Patrick – it’s extraordinarily hard to transition from open wheel racing to stock cars. Indy cars are like rockets, whereas driving a stock car is like wrangling a baby elephant. So far, I think Patrick’s going about it the right way, easing into the Sprint Cup series and learning from those around her. I’m preemptively pissed off at all the people who don’t really watch racing that often, who don’t remember how NASCAR chewed up the likes of Dario Franchitti, who’ll say horrible sexist crap if Patrick doesn’t lead all 500 laps.
Patrick’s 10 Super Bowl commercials are “the most by any celebrity.” Each Waltrip calls her a “girl,” which since Darrell just mentioned that she’s about to turn 30, is demonstrably inaccurate.
1:06: talking about Kasey Kahne, now officially a Hendrick driver. Mikey calls him a “kid.” So at least his infantilzation isn’t confined to one gender, which I guess is something.
1:10: Opening ceremony… brb.
Aw, Matt Kenseth’s daughter had her hands over her ears. Not a reflection on the national anthem sung by the guy from Train, which was wonderful. It’s just that it’s REALLY loud down there. Also, it continues to freak me out a little that camerapeople are swarming around the drivers and their families during the invocation and anthem. They can’t exactly shoot from far away. That camera is within four feet or so from Driver X, his wife and his minor child. There’s no way, absolutely none, that I could handle that. I would kick someone.
1:16 Metro Weather Guy is back!!! There’s a rain-free area south of Daytona, but still a lot of moisture headed our way. Now comes the time when the Fox broadcast people have vamp to fill the air time. Hilarity ensues. In this case, “hilarity” means “some of the most excruciating stuff you’ve ever seen on live TV in your life.”
1:26: Interview with reigning champ Tony Stewart – why wasn’t this part of the regularly scheduled pre-race program? I love Stewart. He’s so grumpy, and he very clearly has a limit to how much he’ll put up with Fox Sports’ goofy pre-arranged “improvisation.” But it does prompt another good discussion of how last season ended, which was Hollywood epic. Seriously, will not ever be topped.
1:30: Brad Keselowski still looks 12, bless his heart.
1:38: Now the Waltrips are singing. Way to ruin a really fun interview with A.J. Allmendinger, who – alas – got married in the off-season, and not to me. Sigh. One less cute man who’s willing to sing in public.
1:42: Mike Joy says “the ceiling has lifted off to the southwest.” I would’ve preferred hearing that from Metro Weather Guy, but whatev.
1:50: Hmmm… the Richard Petty “King’s Speech” segment is pretty awesome. Great idea, and well executed. Except that “The King’s Speech” was the big Oscar winner a year ago, so the timing is odd. (And there’s also the fact that Fox Sports just took an historic speech that inspired a nation to defend itself in war and turned it into a promo for a sporting event, which is… something.)
The last three hours, or, NyQuil and an interminable waste of time:
2:11: I think I’ve seen Kevin Harvick one time, one of those “walking through pit road” shots. Why aren’t they talking to him? Oh, because Darrell Waltrip needs to talk about Twitter instead.
2:13: Kasey Kahne is still on the market, ladies. If I were at all into Kasey Kahne I’d be really excited right now. Ooh, he’s showing off his knee surgery scar. Man, the track cannot dry fast enough.
2:16: OK, here’s a legit issue with a Waltrip. Mikey still owns a team, one with a driver (Clint Bowyer) in this race. Why is Mikey in the booth, again?
2:30: Still raining in Florida. I’m doing laundry. Here’s something I’m a little concerned about – I’m still fighting off a cold, and I need to take another dose of NyQuil. But the last time I took cold medicine and fell asleep on the couch, I woke up an hour into an MSNBC special on Jeffrey Dahmer… which was weird.
Regan Smith also got married in the off-season. So, stuff race car drivers do: Tweet, get married, go to Africa.
2:35: Martin Truex Jr. is here! He and Mikey shot some new NAPA commercials in the off-season (what fresh hell is this?) – ah, but did he get married or go to Africa?
2:37: FINALLY talking with Kevin Harvick, who shut down his Nationwide team last year so he and his wife could focus on having a baby. (Congrats!) He also got to meet Cesar Milan, and is now trying to pick a beanie weenie-related fight with Trevor Bayne. I can’t really explain it any better than that. That really was the interview.
2:47: Still raining, so Fox Sports decides to put us out of our misery and re-air the last 25 laps of the Bud Shootout, thank goodness.
…
4:31: Well, I’m awake again. I vaguely recall hearing something about light gray skies over toward Orlando, and the jet dryers are on the track. Fox Sports is now going with the Daytona 500’s top 10 greatest moments, which I think is a good idea. You know, I really don’t understand this. If you’re in the business of broadcasting a sporting event that’s routinely impacted by weather, how do you not have contingency plans in place? It’s WEATHER. You can see it coming days ahead of time. How hard is it to build into your broadcast plan what you’re going to do if you have to fill a four-hour rain delay? Whether it’s a recap of the season so far, a rebroadcast of another race or some other special, surely they can have something in the can.
5:09: Cancelled for the first time ever. This sucks. The 500 will run tomorrow at noon, when I’ll be at work, naturally.
Wow, before I could even finish typing that sentence, the Fox Sports crew was signed off and out of there. Isn’t that nice. You expect viewers to sit around for five hours watching your pained interviews with drivers who’d probably rather be taking a nap and listening to Darrell Waltrip tell the same stories over and over about his 500 win, but once NASCAR calls the race, man you guys disappear faster than fried pickles at Tony Stewart’s house.
Meanwhile, there’s straight up nothing on TV on Sunday afternoons in February. I’m pretty much tied to my couch at this point trying not to run a fever, and it’s either “Cops” or that show where David Tutera buys people extravagant weddings up until the Oscars start at 8:30. Yeah, I’m in a pretty crabby mood right now.
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