IMMORTAL: Curtis Turner

I listened to the entire Nascar race today on the radio, working in the backyard on your average weekend family handyman projects. But the more I follow today's Nascar, the more I hate it - a bunch of whiny-voiced pussies racing cars that they can't even ding up for fear of sponsorship complaints. They have to drink whatever crappy drink is laid out for them in victory circle. Today, they were complaining because of trash getting on the grills, as if the point was to take this million-dollar machines and have them in a vaccuum to make the racing sport pure. Fuck that. They should race on dirt with Wal-Mart bags blowing in tornado circles in the turns and then we'll see who can drive and who can't. It sucks. When a little faggot like Tony Stewart is the resident tough guy (don't get me wrong, I like Tony Stewart), then you've got a bunch of punk asses driving cars.
So I figured I hadn't done an IMMORTAL in some time, and Curtis Turner fits the bill more than anybody. He was from Nascar's early days when they still raced on the beach at Daytona, and he would get drunk most of the night before, sleep a few hours on the hood of his car, and then go win races. He got blacklisted late in his career for trying to unionize the drivers, but he also was a legend. Most notably was his weird penchant for flying his private plane while drunk. One Sunday morning, he landed it in a church parking lot because they had run out of drink onboard. And supposedly, when he finally died in a plane crash, everybody figured he did his famous trick, where he told his guests to fly the plane while he took a nap, regardless of the guests' ability to fly an airplane.
Thinking back on looney-tunes like Curtis Turner, as well as Junior Johnson and the other oddballs from back then (CooCoo Marlin as well, who just recently died), Nascar needs some retuning. I know it's on an upswing for the middle class Dodge with Hemi dads to act like they're suburban rednecks while pumping the latest sterile Brad Paisley or Toby Keith offerings while refilling at the convenience store on their way to go pick up the new Larry the Cable Guy DVD at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. But that'll fall off, and Nascar better remember its roots - all those dirtbags filling up the dirt tracks and half-mile asphalts every Friday and Saturday night. Those guys are all still wearing #3 t-shirts, and #8 by association, but there's no real superstars they believe in to carry the torch anymore. It used to be a family-business and you'd stick with driving families. Who the fuck was Jeff Gordon, or Jimmie Johnson's dad? Probably insurance salesmen. Fuckin' Nascar.

Wrestling Tanka - Explanation

The Japanese poetry style of haiku is really only the first 5-7-5 syllable set of a larger group-composed poem. Traditionally, one person would write that stanza, then a second person would write a two-line 7-7 syllable stanze behind it. This two-part poem is called tanka, whereas the first part is haiku. Ideally, you'd continue this by sending the second part to a third person, who would write a 5-7-5 third-part, without seeing the first one, and then that third piece would get sent to a fourth person who would write a 7-7 piece to attach to that, and eventually you'd have 100 people taking part and the entire collection would be something or another, for better or worse.
Being me and Rev. Axl Future have written wrestling haiku back and forth to each other over the years, we decided to give it a shot at doing some tankas, where one of us writes the first 5-7-5 piece, and the other follows up with the 7-7 part. They'll be posted here, as we get them done, through regular people's mail, on postcards, because regular mail and postcards are wonderful blessings on shitty rainy days. There's nothing special about electronic mails. It may take us a while between putting sets up, but we are out there, doing this, somewhere or another.

Death Valley Driver Video Review #149 Hype

DVDVR #149
Dean always makes the cover images too goddamned big for my ancient computer with the hamsters on wheels chip inside, so no cover. A week late on the hype, but ain't nobody here anyways. I watched a great wrasslin' tape out of Kansas, featuring a bunch of guys I'd not only never seen before, but actually hadn't even heard of at all. And there's the culmination of the IWA King of the Death Match 2000 comic book.