July 25, 2007 — Wax On, Wax Off

Charity has a hairy side and it's on Tony Stewart.

I opened my e-mail yesterday and scenes from “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” flashed before my eyes.

As it turns out, Stewart is a — I think the technical term is “walking fur ball,” and he told a men’s magazine that he’s willing to get his upper body waxed if someone raises $100,000 for the Victory Junction Gang, the Petty-backed camp for critically ill children. The problem is, when someone such as Stewart speaks these days, there’s someone with a Web site who says, “Cool! Game on, dude.”

“Kevin Harvick says he’s going to raise the money and be there to witness the pain because I’m like a Chia Pet on steroids. I mean, I make Chew-bacca look bald,” Stewart said in the interview.

So, here comes one of those video Web sites (1dawg.com), ready to broadcast the entire hairy affair, complete with a sister Web site called waxtony.com. According to the site, we’re still $99,980 from waxing-Tony-dot-ouch, but if the rest of the cash comes through, then NASCAR fans with strong stomachs and a touch of the sadist everywhere can tune in online to the event and wait for those special, special words …

“We gonna need more wax!”

I’m all for helping the Victory Junction Gang. I’m just not sure I want to watch the very beginnings of Stewart’s hair-free lifestyle.

I mean, “whoa, Kelly Clarkson!” Whatever happened to putting on a charity golf tournament?

July 18, 2007 — Of Smoke And Drink

Honest answers apparently aren't the best ones.

Let’s start with a disclaimer: “Pardon the Interruption” — or “PTI” for short — is better than anything this side of baseball play-by-play man Jon Miller that ESPN has in its lineup. While much of the network’s programming has become too dumbed-down, hipped-up or just Bermanized to the point of inanity, PTI remains smart, funny and entertaining, due mainly to co-hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Kornheiser’s former radio show was the best thing on the air, and Wilbon, with whom I’ve shared many a press box, is one of my favorite people in this business, period, whose insights are generally right on the mark.

That said, I am hardly a Tony Stewart apologist, but the PTI guys and ESPN were very quick to condemn Stewart for his post-race comments Sunday — the ones that included enough Schlitz references to make you believe the brewery will be on Stewart’s hood at Indianapolis.

He’s not being the proper role model, they said.

We’ve heard all that before, yet we, the media, complain if athletes are too vanilla and then pounce as soon as they say something that offends in this era of political correctness.

Stewart was defiant on his radio show, saying that he wasn’t talking about anyone but him. He wasn’t urging a bunch of 16-year-olds to go out and drink a case of beer. He was talking about how a 36-year-old guy would spend his vacation, knocking a few back in his Indiana home. It was nothing unlike what Charles Barkley would say or a host of racers from another era would have said.

Sometimes, we in the media ask for too much — we criticize athletes for being too bland and then pounce on them when they stray from the script.

We, of all people should understand where Stewart was coming from. By the time vacations roll around in this business, we’re all looking for the first Big Gulp margarita we can find.

Professional athletes as role models? Let’s see, people tend to get shot wherever Pac Man Jones shows up. Then, there’s the recently indicted alleged dog-fighting kingpin Michael Vick, whose lack of humanity — if the federal charges are true — is so very disturbing that I can hardly wrap my brain around it. Can we even mention baseball these days without thinking about steroids?

To paraphrase Barkley, if you want your kid to have a role model, be one.

At the end of the day, Stewart’s choice of beer concerns me more than the fact that he chose to tell us he was going to drink it.

July 11, 2007 — Daytona Delivers

Pepsi 400 was a race worth talking about.

All the talk surrounding NASCAR has been about anything but what was happening on the track.
The news has been dominated by:
A: Dale Earnhardt’s decision to join Hendrick Motorsports.
B: Who’s caught “fudging” (Brian France’s word) with the Car of Tomorrow? And should they be flogged or just forced to sit through all of ESPN’s “Who’s Now” segments?
C: Where will Kyle Busch end up?
Any news on actual racing seemed purely coincidental — at least until the series arrived back at Daytona for the annual sometime-around-July 4 Pepsi 400.
Once again, on NASCAR’s favorite stage — the hometown track of Daytona Int’l Speedway, the Nextel Cup Series delivered with its closest finish of the season.
Like the Daytona 500 that kicked off the 2007 season, Daytona produced an exciting climax as a final footnote to the restrictor-plate races for the Car of Yesterday.
The old car and the old track teamed up one last time for what was arguably the best show from NASCAR’s top series since the Daytona 500.
When it was over, Jamie McMurray’s long-awaited return to victory lane — some five years in the making — had ended by the nose of his car.
That race gave people something to talk about — from the beginning (the wreck of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin) to the end (McMurray’s relief).
And all that talk was finally about racing. Thank goodness.

July 6, 2007 — Getting A Different View

Amateur shutterbug gets a vest, professional lesson.

Several weeks ago, I got the chance to make my first trip to Virginia Int’l Raceway with a recorder, a couple of notebooks and my trusty Pentax *ist DS digital SLR camera.
I’ve covered my share of races — from dirt tracks here in the south to all three major races hosted by Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Darlington, Kentucky, Chicagoland, Atlanta . . . you get the idea.
But I’d never had a chance to put on a day-glow photographer’s vest and shoot the race I was writing about. No surprise there. I only recently picked up photography as a hobby — and sometimes as a job.
From a composition standpoint, I’ve always had a little bit of an eye, but now digital photography gives me the immediate gratification that I always craved with cameras.

With a little coaching from my friend and professional photographer, Suellen Holmes, I have made a little progress and occasionally take a decent photo.
But I’d never taken any at track speed before the trip to VIR.
NSSN works with some of the best motorsports photographers in the business — Steve Etherington, Harold Hinson and the guys at HHP Photos, the shooters under contract with Champ Car and Dana Garrett with the Indy Racing League to name a few (and I left out more talent than I named).
But I never had full appreciation for what they do until I wandered around VIR in my own day-glow vest, lugging camera, bag, lenses with me in near 100-degree heat.
Doing the interviews for the feature story on what makes vintage racers tick in the July 4 issue of NSSN was the easy part of the day. The racers were all very accommodating as were the folks at VIR.
By the end of the day — with some 300 pictures on data cards — I was wiped out and didn’t know whether to drink the $3 bottled water I’d just bought or pour it over my head.
The pros usually have a couple of cameras and huge, heavy zoom lenses, so I had it comparatively easy as I wandered from turn to turn, looking for just the right shot while experimenting with the full-speed motion of the cars through the lens.
By the end of the day, I had a few shots that worked, a bunch that didn’t and whole new respect for the pros of motorsports photography.