Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 10:15:02 -0500 (EST)
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Re: Is Anarchy in fact Left?




On Tue, 8 Jun 1999, mokey wrote:

> ...and now to be somewhat ironical:
> It seems to me that watching the Indy 500 on teevee would be exceptionally
> boring anyway.


Actually, it's kind of boring when you're there--the race, that is.  You
have to have a little background in watching auto-races to follow what's
happening out on the track because very few time are the cars lined up
1-2-3.  Normally it'll be, like the 1st place car followed by the 12th
place car followed by the 9th place followed by the 2nd place because
they're all going different speeds and are on different laps.

But......a walkman kind of radio takes care of that and lets you know
what's going on around the track--it's huge.

However, "The Greatest Spectacle In Racing" has little to do with the
race, it has to do with watching people on a massive scale; 350,000 was
this year's estimate, most of them dirnking.  It's tamer than in years
past and not nearly as many people are arrested, but there are some
serious substance abusers there, plus, my 14 year old daughter said she'd
"never seen so many nearly naked people in her life."

Goat mentioned the fly-by of the B-2 and I did to, but you have to ask
yourself what kind of clout a sporting event has if they can just order up
a $2 billion B-2 for entertainment.

Next year the Speedway is adding an F-1 race and I'll most definitely go
to that;  I want to see what a $5 million race car looks like, even if all
of the drivers are european twits and are named "Nigel" or "Manfret."   

I've never been to a NASCAR race, which are cars that resemble regular
cars except they are painted with all of these garish corporate
advertisements, but we're going to try to go to Indy for the Brickyard 400
in August if we have any money left after this month-long holiday tour of
the U$.

In essence though, america is the land of gasoline and cars, so racing is
a natural.  The cars run off of alcohol fuel though, and so do most of the
fans.  Now that I'm thinking of it, that seems a natural too.




carp