Monday, July 17, 2006

NASCAR Meets South Park?

If the Cup race at Loudon was scripted, the script would have been written by South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I was working on some cartoon panels to carry on the South Park metaphor, in my analysis of Sunday's NASCAR Nextel Cup race, but it turned out to be somewhat time consuming, and may not have been worth it, funny as it was, because we who use Blogger never know if it will upload our pictures successfully.
So, I'll present some narrative of what I had planned.Because it's funnier if you think of the players as South Park characters.
Tony Stewart, played by Kyle Bratlowski, had the car to beat, that was the consensus of most of the drivers who commented on it. Even the winner of the race, Kyle Busch (Butters Koch), expressed some regret that he couldn't race Stewart for the finish. What had happened is that Ryan Newman, played by Eric Cartman, had some kind of hissy fit while Stewart was about to put him a lap down, and deliberately ran Stewart into the wall. The accident made it necessary to replace the radiator in Stewart's car, putting him 23 laps down and out of the top ten points standings.
While millions of Stewart fans screamed "Oh frak!"--at least those who watch Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica, the rest yelled another F-word that has the same meaning and purpose--instant Karma came into play, when Michael Waltrip, played by Tweak, dutifully holed Cartman's, I mean Newman's, radiator shortly after the next restart, putting Newman 28 laps down. The smug cloud from Newman hadn't even dissipated.
Before that happened, there was some beautiful racing going on. I had mentioned--forgetting that the curb no longer existed at NHIS--that Stewart liked to let the rear of his car kick out a little, as he exited the corners. Brian Vickers, played by Kyle's friend Stan, matched him move for move, and it was something to watch them slide the rear of their cars in unison, as they raced clean and hard. That is how good racing is supposed to look.
Well, that is about as far as I can carry the South Park metaphor, and I wish I had finished the cartoon panels, because they would have been funnier. But then, I possibly could have been sued for copyright violations, so its all for the better.
I do want to add this: Jeff Gordon, played by guest star Bart Simpson, crossed another name off of his hit list when he took Robby Gordon out of the race. This is where someone in the stands yells, "Oh my God, he killed Kenny!" which is replied to by other fans, shouting in unison, "You Bastard!"

Notable in this race is the performance of Reed Sorenson. Many of us recognized his talent while he was racing in the NASCAR Busch Series, and many of us felt that if he had better equipment, he could be a real contender. He proved that, leading the race for several laps, and, if he hadn't run out of fuel, could have given Kyle Busch some serious competition for the checkered flag. With Juan Pablo Montoya coming into the Ganassi fold, maybe car owner Felix Sebates has finally seen the light, that maybe he should try to get better equipment for his drivers. At any rate, Sorenson in good equipment is a good driver.

I am warming up to Kyle "The Shrub" Busch. He is obviously learning, and he is showing some humility, as much as can be expected from the cocky Busch Brothers. I thought it was quite gracious of him to mention that he would have wanted to race Tony Stewart to the finish. He raced to victory clean, no longer showing propensity to run other drivers off the track. He does have talent, and is certainly a future Cup champion.

I have never had anything against Ryan Newman. He's a competent driver with a steady hand on the wheel and, when it suits him, exhibits better than average car control. With all that, in my opinion, and with his touted Engineering degree, he should have known better than to floor the accelerator in the middle of a turn. But, in the end, that's racing.

3 comments:

Cassandra said...

Tweak as Mikey!!!!
This is a great post! I'm laughing so hard!

Tiredawg said...

Awesome post Rev. Love the idea of Cartman as Ryan, LOL LOL LOL He even looks like him a little. Who is Mr. Hand??? Jimmie Johnson???

RevJim said...

Dawg,Perfect! Shadow would like that. Notice I didn't assign a role for Mr Hanky, either...