May 2, 2008 - Circuses and Superman

I guess the circus atmosphere has come to racing. A couple of months ago Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage offered $15,000 to any driver who would throw his helmet at another. There were no takers. Besides, NASCAR would fine, suspend and take points away. In other words, it was a charade.

Now Gossage has offered Dale Earnhardt, Jr. $100,000 to compete in the IRL race at Texas Motor Speedway. Junior wisely turned it down. What's next?  Offer Hillary Clinton a million bucks to be John McCain's running mate?

I hope this doesn't lead to a bunch of phony attempts at publicity. I guess it will since Gossage
already got plenty of free ink. With so much substandard racing in NASCAR, they need something to
spice things up.

Duke Donaldson, the belch-mouthed promoter at Freeport used to jokingly say, "next week we're
gonna have a hangin!" It makes me wonder if that will be a sideshow at this month's All-Star race at
Lowe's.

Nothing would surprise me in NASCAR anymore.

By the way, a few months back, I wrote in one of my blogs that my grandmother was Superman's
housekeeper. I got some "?" EMails for that.

Well, it's true. In its infancy, Superman was a radio show. Ol' Clark Kent was played by Bud
Collyer. If you remember early television, Collyer (real name, Clayton Hemanski) was an early TV game
show host of such shows as "Beat The Clock," and "To Tell The Truth." He lived in Woodside, N.Y. and
my grandmother was his housekeeper.

Talk about a mediocre brush with greatness! Having Kevin Olson write my column was a bigger
jump to stardom!