How Do You Spell Greed? N-A-S-C-A-R

NASCAR, the ultimate blue collar spectator sport, appears to need a tune up. The sport with the deep country roots, the wonderful, colorful history written on the backroads of the southeast United States, the sport that has its stars return the embrace of its adoring fans like no other, has blown a gasket.

The Daytona 500 is referred to as the Super Bowl of NASCAR. In the middle of February each year, nearly a quarter of a million people come together in Daytona, the place where NASCAR was invented by Bill France Sr., to celebrate speed and the drivers who dance with the devil for a living. I have had the privelege to witness this incredible spectacle in person five times. The last few years, unable to attend in person, I have successfully resold my precious tickets, Sprint Tower, Section B, Row 44, the most spectacular view of the most spectacular sporting venue that I have ever experienced.

From those seats I witnessed the awesome daredevil driving of Dale Earnhardt through the grass in a sports car race, I saw the tragic passing a few days later of the sport's icon, I've seen Tony Stewart go inverted at 185 mph on the backstretch like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, I watched Air Force One fly over the track and wave its wings at the fans, I've seen the F-16 flyover at night (and scare me right out of my seat), and more, much more.

I'm probably not going to experience that particular perspective again. The reason is that NASCAR has been priced right out of the action. Reselling my tickets this year at a substantial loss cost me a lot of money, as the economy's slowdown continues to take a toll. Several weeks ago, the Daytona International Speedway, having difficulty selling seats for the 500, cut the prices on remaining backstretch seats by 50%.

You can guess what that did to the resale market. Prices fell right off the table. The problem was very simple. Regular people, the people whom NASCAR proudly points to as its strength, can't afford to go to the races. Saturday night, the opening show of the racing season, the Bud Shootout at Daytona, was sparsely attended.

It's not just the price of admission, not by a long shot. The locals have all cashed in, in the past. If you can deal with the price of the tickets, you'll choke on accomodations. Hotel prices in Daytona TRIPLE during Speedweek. This year, a lot of those rooms are going empty.

The price of the ticket package for the four days of Speed Week, Thursday through Sunday, has escalated meteorically over the last ten years. The cost of hotel rooms has done likewise. The Daytona 500 ticket that I'm giving up, the Sunday ticket alone, is $350. The sponsoring car companies are hurting, people are being laid off from work in staggering numbers, and the greedy are now left to figure out how they'll respond.

My response : I'll watch it on TV. Maybe.

It Takes a Thief: Bernie Made Off With Really Big $$$

Yesterday's Tribune published a list, several lists, actually, of the people scammed by smiling Bernie Madoff, the New York based thief who masqueraded as an investment advisor for a few decades and stole $50 billion. There's some pretty heavy hitters on the list, e.g.:

• Kevin Bacon - actor, rocker and Footloose guy
• Newton Minnow (as trustee)-the former chairman of the FCC
• Larry King-"Bernie Madoff...hello..."
• Sandy Koufax- famous Dodger pitcher from the 60's
• Kyra Sedgwick - actress. I see her all over, but what's she been in?
• John Denver - well, the estate of. Man, ripping off a dead guy?
• John Malkovich - scary!
• Steven Spielberg - movie genius, apparently gullible investor
• Elie Wiesel Foundation - like looting the widows and orphans fund
• A French investment bank, a French consumer bank and a French insurance company - insert your own punchline.

There's some discussion about whether Bernie is a psychopath. Hah!

Bernie's under house arrest--in his $7 million dollar Manhattan apartment. Hah!

Bernie has a 55 foot yacht on the French Riviera. Hawhnhh! (that's French for "Hah!")

Bernie has a $21 million house in Palm Beach and a 10 handicap. No more hah's. No more Bernie stuff. There is too much information to summarize, and it just gets sleazier and sleazier. But there's a happy ending: it's Friday, none of us had enough money to make Bernie want to rip us off and there was actually a bit of good in the Bernie story.

His sons turned him in.

Hah!

Addendum

On the evening of Sunday January 25th, local Palm Beach teens, outraged upon finding out that their trust funds had disappeared into thin air, T.P'ed Madoff's Florida home. The teen vandals then called and informed the Palm Beach Post of what they had done, explaining that it was an act of retaliation. Then they put a woman on the phone -- I'm presuming it was their mother, or maybe an older sister who had also lost her trust fund but was just too mature to participate in the vandalism -- who corroborated the story but would not provide any names. The housekeeper of Madoff's estate -- a two-story, five-bedroom, seven-bath home featuring a boat dock, a spa and an in-ground pool -- refused to press charges on the vandals. I am unable to get the picture uploaded, but you can see it here:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/01/26/0126tpmadoff.html?imw=Y

This reminds me of the nightmarish day that I too found out that I did not have a trust fund. I thought about reacting in the same way, but since no one had defrauded me of my money (it just simply didn't exist), I realized that toilet-papering my parents' houses would not be an effective retaliation as I would likely be caught in the act due to my amateurish vandalism skills, and then I'd be forced to clean it up.

Oh, and Kyra Sedgwick is in "The Closer," a cable television show that I believe has won awards. And she has been married to Kevin Bacon for something like 20 years. Since the Bacon-Sedgwick household appears to really have taken a beating by Madoff, I am going to go out on a limb and say that IF Madoff's housekeeper had pressed charges, and IF the Palm Beach PD needed to begin an investigation, the first place would be to start would be Kevin and Kyra's homestead.

My Friend's Dad

I received a call from a friend on Sunday morning. He was calling to let me know his dad had passed. It wasn't a shock to me, nor was it a shock to the family, as Stan had been fighting a losing battle for quite some time. The news of the sad event came with a couple of stories, and it stirred a few memories. The son and I have known each other over forty years, since we were 11 years old, so we have some stories to tell.

Stan was a physically small guy, apparently on the quiet side, with not so good eyesight and an unassuming demeanor. That was the apparent Stan. I learned, over the years, that Stan played a little golf, knew his way around a poker table, enjoyed a cocktail, and had a pretty sharp sense of humor. When you're a kid, other kids' dads are just guys, and you don't get to know much about them, unless the relationships last, and 99% don't.

We lived in on 82nd Place in Chicago, and when it was time for high school, my friend and I both went to a Catholic high school in the suburbs. That was an opportunity to get to know one side of Stan, as he would drop us off at school on his way to work. Stan worked in the administrative offices at Polk Brothers in Melrose Park. For the younger readers, Polk Brothers was a forerunner to Best Buy, though I think they sold a lot furniture, too. TV sets and couches, that was Polk Bros.

The trips to school were not unusual, unless you have a lot of intervening years to colorize them, and I do. Stan's car, for about a hundred years, was a faded beige four door Buick LeSabre, a large, boxy, frumpy sedan that was always parked in front of his house like big steel sand dune. It had a complementary, equally bland interior of beige cloth with the shiny pattern that I think is referred to as brocade by people who know that kind of stuff. Being in the Buick was kind of like invading a black and white TV show: everything around was devoid of color. On school days, Stan would come out and start the car about ten minutes before lift off and fire up a highly unsavory cigar, turn on the AM-only radio that was permanently tuned to station WAIT, a bland-as-the-Buick broadcasting outlet that played elevator music, and Stan would sit and wait for the car to warm up. Even when we were not heading for school, Stan would sit and warm up the car and light his stogie and listen to his elevator music before heading off to work. I didn't realize how rigid was the process until my friend pointed out to me the dark brown spot on the beige headliner above the driver's seat. A lot of cigar smoke from a lot of rides.

The warming up the car part was a ritual in name only, because, as I recall, the Buick offered little heat in the winter. The car had its own karma, but no air conditioning, so we got even on the heat part when winter ended.

At some point in our high school years, Stan replaced the Buick, upgrading to Oldsmobile Delta 88, gold on the outside with a black vinyl top and a black interior. The Delta 88 was one step from the top of the Oldsmobile line, a very nice car in its day. This one had air conditioning, it had an FM radio and the cigars were discontinued, at the behest, I assume, of Stan's wife. With no cigars, the warm up time was substantially reduced. Stan drove the 88 the same way as the Buick, kind of like a bus driver, very methodical, though he would occasionally punch the accelerator and zoom and cackle quietly in enjoyment.

The FM radio, by the way, was now tuned to WAIT-FM, same crappy music but now in static-free monoraul FM. We were so sad when we learned that WAIT came in FM...

My friend and I eventually got cars and didn't ride with Stan anymore, and life took its course, and eventually Stan and his wife of many years sold the old house on 82nd Place and bought a condo in the 'burbs and retired. When his son told me on Sunday of Stan's passing, he told me also about something Stan did in his last few days.

Stan told his son to ask Stan's best friend, with whom he'd been friends with 68 years, to come and see him. in the hospital. When the friend arrived, he and Stan spent a little time together, Stan and his friend of 68 years. Stan bade him good bye and gave him a gift.

Stan gave to his friend, in the words of his son, "the Holy Grail of 85 year old men".

Stan gave his friend his 1996 Oldsmobile 98, top of the line.

The friendships that last, they can be pretty amazing. Top of the line.

Brain Itch Songs

I just found a blurb about Brain Itch Songs and the top 10 of all time. Brain Itch songs are those that you hear and find them stuck in your head, and there they play, over and over , until you find yourself trying to force the song out. That usually embeds them deeper. They go away, and then can pop up again at random.

The Top 10 in the article is led by Beyonce's If You Like It Put a Ring On It. My radio time is pretty limited and in a stuck pattern, so I heard this for the first time just last week, and I admit that I immediately wanted to hear it again. It's like candy, or circle cakes, just gimme one more.


The other songs on the Brain Itch list were YMCA, Who Let the Dogs Out, I'm Too Sexy, Mambo #5, Tub Thumping, Mmm Bop, Don't Worry Be Happy, We Will Rock You, and 867-5309 Jenny.

Each of those songs has some measure of Brain Itch for me, but I have some others that make my list. The BIS (Brain Itch Syndrome) is, I find, OK when it's a song that you like and it's with you, not so good when someone with whom you spend a lot of time is experiencing BIS and sharing, and downright maddening when you get a BIS song in your head that you don't like. Dogs Out, Too Sexy and Jenny are all in that last category for me. I absolutely couldn't stand 'em then and I still can't.

The list represents a pretty narrow music diet, too. I would guess that most everyone has some songs on their personal list that are going to be way outside the mainstream. The BIS'ers come and go, too, and sometimes I don't even know their proper name. An old Paul Simon song from the Rhythm of the Saints album comes to mind. It starts with a tribal drum corps, I don't know the song's name, and when the song came out I found myself pounding out the drum solo (and aggravating everyone) at will.

Bette Midler's Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy afflicted me for a while. Crosby Stills etc.'s Judy Blue Eyes was a long time affliction. The opening riff from Purple Haze was a BIS for over a decade. Who among us has not been BIS'd by New York, New York? Or how about Friends in Low Places and, for me (and my son) the recently unearthed Start Wearing Purple?

Other music genres and obscure songs make my list, too. Bolero (the song from "10") was a BIS'er for years. There's some old country songs I found that stayed for awhile, like the Statler Brothers Do You Remember These and Susan When She Tried.

The family can all disappear into Black Velvet Band, the traditional Irish song, with a little suggestion. There's that song from Music Man in there ("...starts with a P and that rhymes with pool!"), a clump of ABBA songs (these are particulary addictive, be careful), a couple of Dean Martin's, and I'm not even going to begin telling you about the polka music that rattles in my brain.

Only two songs come to mind as BIS'ers that aggravate me: Whole Lotta Shakin' and Rock Around the Clock. Aaaarghhh....

So share some of your musical afflictions, it's cathartic, and yes, I liked Mmm Bop. There, I'm outed.

PS, Different Topic: Roddy boy was on Letterman last night. This is the first of his TV show appearances that I have witnessed, and it ain't pretty. Rod strolled out on stage confidently, giving a wave of acknowledgement to Paul Schaefer as the band played My Way. Rod was just plain weird, throwing a few factoids about the Ed Sullivan theatre (where Letterman's show is staged) at the host, grinning when Dave lampooned him and then using the familiar technique of avoiding the question when Letterman became serious. Rod reminded Dave -twice- that he has two daughters who need to know that their father didn't do anything wrong. As I watched, I felt clearly that Rod lives in multiple realities. I'm serious. This guy is behaving as if he has already had the big nervous breakdown and flitting from world to world, like changing channels. Rod behaves like a self-crowned celebrity, a fawning sychophant, a wronged champion of the people, a crook caught in the act and like he's running a stay-out-of-jail campaign, sometimes all within a couple of minutes.

Maybe he's only a little nuts. All those roles, except one, look like the real thing.