Bank of America 500-Lowe's Motor Speedway

A-10 Thunderbolts



...or "The House That Humpy Built".

No Robosaurus this go 'round, instead it looked like Humpy took all the dough he woulda spent on one big, cool truck-eatin' monster and rented several small trucks that had dorky fire-breathin' T-Rex-ISH heads on them. Whatever. Lotta trouble and strife for some of our favorites early on - Hamlin got took out before Lap 2. Pee Paw got knocked off by Beaver's little brother Todd.... but mostly it was ho-hum despite all of the wrecks.

THE INVOCATION: Thank goodness was less about Humpy and more about God this evening, graciously given by
Dr. Bill Theirfelder of Belmont Abby College.
Dr. T. mentioned our Lord a great deal, and ask for Grace to be bestowed upon everyone attending as well as those at home, and for them to return the favor and be good Christians. But he wasn't pushy about it or anything, you'd hardly know you were being preached at, which was nice. He did ask that the drivers be "models of excellence and virtue." Not sure what he was getting at there, but .... whatever. It was a very nice sermon and the anti-thesis of the previous night's pagan (well, Catholic anyhow - it's kinda the same.) celebration of All Things Humpy.

OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM: performed by American Idol person Kellie Pickler.
Goodness sakes! What in the world? She sounded like Cher with a lateral lisp. And I mean a fucking HUGE lisp. Her natural range isn't quite as low as Cher's, but MAY-an! did she sound like Cher. Cher run through a "country filter" half of the time, and a "what passes for R & B these days" filter. She was just a-noodlin', and a notin', and a-mellisma-ing away.... and apprantly that wasn't enough fucking around for Miz Pickler, so she also screwed with the cadence of the words now and then, too. I guess that was supposed to reflect her "jazz" influence.

But that lisp! Holy Pete. I'm not shittin' you, the first line was, "Oh ssshhhay can you sshhhee?" No lie. Sometimes her lisp was like the quiet 'sh' as in 'hush', but sometimes it was the spitty lateral lisp like the girl with the braces on South Park. Cecil said, "She's definitely got a voice. She also had too much spit in her mouth and too many 'h's. She added the letter 'h' to the beginnings and ends of all the words. I never watched American Idol, but I agree with whatever Simon Cowell said when he kicked her off the show. "

She did hit all the notes just fine, so
TWO SHTARS from Cecil
ONE SHTAR from Dixie, onaccounta she took waaaaaaay too many liberties with everything.

THE FLYOVER: Two A-10 Thunderbolts from Pope Air Force Base, N.C. Very nice. We couldn't hear them at all, so I guess NBC figured ol' Pickles was doing a good job & didn't need to be drowned out.

THE COMMAND: Mickey and Kalob Jackson, winners of the Bank of America contest for see how could shout "Gentlemen! Start your engines!!!!" the best.

Turns out Kalob Jackson, who looked all of 4 years old, was the best hollerer. He did a fine job, too. And he looked doggone cute in the process. To his daddy Mickey befell the ugly necessity of paying homage to Bank of America and Humpy Wheeler, of course. His little speech went like this:
"On behalf of Bank of America employees and customers, welcome to Lowe's Motor Speedway, the only Race For the Chase under the lights!!!!" I fuckin' hate any talkin' before the command, and this time even moreso because not only did BofA get to pat themselves on the back, but Humpy slid his greasy, levigated old self in there.

FOUR STARS from Cecil to little Kalob, and Cec goes on to give daddy Mickey ONE STAR for suffering through being a corporate schill in order to have his son ably shout The Command.

Same from me.

That's it. I'm outta here. On to Martinsville, where we can get this yucky taste out of our mouths with some Jesse Jones hot dogs.