Over the past however-many-years-it’s-been, the Silent Pagoda has stood magnificently as a shining beacon of … something. But alas, it will stand no more. This is the final post.

No journey lasts forever, of course, and certainly not the weird ones. What began as IndyCar.com’s questionable & ill-conceived experiment quickly grew into a cherished national treasure, I think, probably on par with like Charles Grodin and Arby’s and things of that nature. (You know, not crazy super-cherished. Only moderately so.) Then it became a poorly managed hedge fund for some reason. And then a “Widespread Panic” cover band. Then it was terminated for a bit. And then it wasn’t! And then it was an offshore gambling site/denim wholesaler, but that too was short-lived and maybe illegal as well, although it’s a moot point now. Because eventually, the Pagoda returned to its natural state: making obnoxious and disjointed and vaguely coherent observations about a sport it knew nothing about. And that is how it stayed, more or less, until today — when it mounts its trusty steed and rides west, golden spatula held high, its work here mostly completed.

Or if you wanted to get all serious about it and put it another way, in less dramatic and maybe more realistic terms: It was an IndyCar blog — kind of — and now it’s not, the end. (But whatever. Tomato-tomahto, really.)

Regardless of how you put it, I can’t thank IndyCar enough for the opportunity. That may sound whorish and contrived, but it’s very much the truth. Likewise, I’m exceedingly grateful to the readers & the commenters who ultimately gave this site its identity, which is best described as … something. And to the Pagoda’s cadre of confidants, cabinet members, spiritual advisers, technical consultants, sommeliers, “friends of the program,” contributors, drug-mules and everyone else who so richly deserves an acknowledgment … well there’s just too many of you to list here. I apologize, and promise to repay you later — probably with wonderful Persian silks and other valuable commodities, or maybe horribly awkward phone calls of gratitude. I’m guessing the latter.

For now, though, it is time to shut it down and go about our business. It would be foolish to get all melodramatic about this, for that is not the Pagodian way. No, our way is paved with quiet dignity and grace and snorting lines of silver polish off a Cocker Spaniel; we have no taste for needless theatrics. And besides, in three years or two or even one, nobody will even remember the Pagoda at all, and that is probably for the best. But I will. I’ll remember it as … well, something. Something I was immensely proud to be a part of, and if that’s too mawkish for your liking, well then SO’S YOUR STUPID FACE!

Godspeed, everyone. See you on the backstretch.

Love,
Roy

The 2010 IndyCar season has passed, but it left this world doing what it loved: handing Chip Ganassi his winnings. It was a season well-lived for the most part — a spirited, plucky season full of changes & holograms & crazy IZOD beach parties only accessible by wakeboards or helicopters. There seemed to be lots of announcements of various kinds, for good or ill, but none of them were streamed to the masses particularly well. Some races shined, others did not, and in the end we were left wanting more — which is all any season can hope to be.

Let’s get to the awards.

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Best Starting Command: The Mayor of Motegi (and also MY DREAMS!)

It speaks for itself, frankly. God bless that fearless Japanese manwolf.

(The only way it could have possibly been any more hardcore was if he bit the microphone in half and then got yanked off the stage by a grappling hook attached to a low-flying 747, “Dark Knight”-style.)

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Marty Reid Memorial Excellence in Broadcasting Award: ABC/ESPN (Watkins Glen)

If you’re NOT Marty Reid and you plan on winning this award, well you’d better bring something special to the table — something so stroke-y and sad and inept that it drools malaise. And shits failure. And make no mistake, ABC/ESPN choosing to skip the green flag at Watkins Glen so that they could have Vince Welsh explain what tires are was ALL OF THAT. And them some.

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The Disaster Narrowly AVERTED Award: The Delta Wing

Hahaha, remember that thing?!? Part of me never wants to mention it again. But the other part never grows tired of picturing Scott Dixon having to explain the aerodynamic features of the Delta Wing and what they look like … but only being able to do so by silently & embarrassingly pointing to the crotch on a man doll — and then crying softly.

But ultimately, the right decision was reached. Because as the Bible probably says, “pixelated & aroused is no way to go through life, my son.” Amen.

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The Disaster NOT AVERTED Award: The Championship trophy

Okay. It’s here to stay, apparently. But WHY, you ask?

That’s easy! Because God and/or IndyCar won’t close a DONG-SHAPED door without opening a WANG-SHAPED window. It’s true! Let there be no mistaking this, people: WE WERE GETTING THE MAN PARTS THIS YEAR ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, whether we liked it or not. You know what that’s called? Rape.

In IndyCar, “no” means “YES!”

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Most Awkwardly Contrived Moment: n/a

Nothing was awkward or contrived this year! NOTHING!! That’s because I roll with the Droid X™, which can do ANYTHING … including acupuncture and estate planning and — yes — squashing any potentially awkward moments in life! For instance, I told this one lady at the Flag Room “Congratulations, when are you due?!” as I rubbed her giant belly and she was all “I’M NOT PREGNANT, YOU DICK!!” and then she started sobbing. It was on the verge of getting ugly, but I quickly pulled up a clip of “Barbershop II” on my Droid X™ and showed it to her & we had a good laugh — all was forgotten! Thanks, Droid X™!!

Anyway, buy the Droid X™. All other phones are awful & give you eardrum cancer.

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The “I’d Rather Be Accidently Super-Gluing My Eyes Shut” Award: Mid-Ohio

Oh, can you even imagine?!?! The horrible pain and the wretched awfulness of it all and the embarrassment – OH THE EMBARRASSMENT!!! Everyone would be like GAAAH, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!? and you’d have to explain your negligence with something along the lines of “Well I was just flipping through the channels and then my remote died & I accidentally watched like 17 seconds of that vile race and now my corneas are melted into ruin! I CAN’T SEE!!!”

At least with the Super Glue, you’d be given cool drugs. No such parting gifts from Mid-Ohio. Except shame. (And blindness, maybe?)

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Best Moment: Tony Kanaan’s win at Iowa

It was the high watermark of the season, really, when we were reminded ever-so-briefly that superior engineers & equipment & wind tunnels can win MOST oval races, but not all. Statistically, those luxuries will only guarantee victory 99.9998% of the time. Or thereabouts.

But if that 0.0002% happens to be Tony Kanaan or Ed Carpenter or Sarah Fisher or anyone else truly beloved by the IndyCar faithful, well that just might be fine with us. It’ll have to be.

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Best Race: Sao Paulo

ANY race that begins with towering clouds of cornstarch & cocaine(?) as the cars roar through a bullfighting ring & someone promptly bunny-hops their car onto Marco Andretti’s face is DESTINED FOR GREATNESS, and this one delivered. Because of course it did. Because it’s Brazil. Because NOTHING in Brazil is un-entertaining, although that’s not entirely why this race was the best.

No, this race marked a new era in IndyCar, and it felt like that. Which is to say, it felt different than any other season-opening race in recent memory, even from 2,000 miles away. This was IZOD’s coming out party — and it felt like IndyCar’s as well. Such was the lasting impression of that Sao Paulo race. And also the season.

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Your 2010 Paggies, ladies & gentlemen. Goodnight, everybody!

For instance, when my mom’s birthday rolls around, I will line my kids up in front of the speaker phone and give it a go once more, knowing full well that THIS WILL ALL BLOW UP IN MY FACE, probably. No matter. We’ll discuss the particulars beforehand:

When she picks up & I give the signal, say HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDMA!!! super loud, okay? Got it?

And we’ll rehearse. And we’ll rehearse once more, just for good measure, and everything will go swimmingly. I will make the call and my mom will answer and I will GIVE THE SIGNAL VEHEMENTLY and … nothing. Jesus. Quite peeved, I will whisper-yell their lines threateningly as my mom is all “HELLO!? HELLO!? IS ANYONE THERE? HELLO!?” because old people tend not give up on phone calls without a fight. Still nothing. And then one of my kids will just haphazardly blurt out a “Happy Birth–” before getting cut off by the other kid who quickly follows suit, but not simultaneously — which causes both to stop & stare at each other quizzically. So very, very awkward. I will put an end to this ugly amateurishness as I intervene and explain to my mom what our intention was — but not without harboring deep-seated disappointment in my totally inept kids. (HOW WILL YOU EVER ONE DAY TEAM UP TO RIGHTEOUSLY AVENGE MY DEATH IF YOU CAN’T EVEN PULL OFF THIS SIMPLE TASK?!?)

Point being, when we learned that Kanaan & Helio would be giving the Starting Command Saturday night from inside their cars on the grid, we learned that it was doomed to fail. Because that is God’s way. We knew this. We accepted it, well before it all went queer. And “go queer” it did — in a hurry. In a big, off-sequence fireball of AWKWARD.

And that right there was the Miami race. Not the “fireball of AWKWARD” thing, of course … but rather the predictability of it all. Not in a bad way, though. Not even in a boring way. Quite the opposite. Some things are predictable, for good or ill, and the Cafes de Brasil was one of them.

It was a fine race, frankly, full of trippy sparks & lead-changes & Bob Jenkins saying fascinating things like “Ryan Carpenter-Reay Mears the Fourth,” just as he always does (bless his heart). Plus, Danica and Kanaan again seemed on the verge of PLAYING FOR BLOOD and knife-fighting each other at supersonic speeds, and that is never not fun. Milka crashed, obviously, and Will Power did too and there was a roughly 300-lap caution — ONE CAUTION LAP FOR EVERY SPECTATOR IN ATTENDANCE!!! HOORAY!! (Good riddance, ISC, you spiteful f–ks. I hope your greedy little shitcircus gets hit up on Federal RICO charges & then drowns in a river.) Oh, and the whole race felt non-contrived & entertaining — just as we hoped & knew it would be.

But ultimately, it ended as only it could: with Dario winning the Championship somewhat anticlimactically and Ganassi partying deep into the sultry South Beach night and Kanaan shoving people into the pool at the “W” and is this 2009? No? It might as well be. But never mind all that. It’s not important anymore.

Because Saturday’s race feels like it happened a fortnight ago, and there’s been only 6,000 new developments in sponsorships & empty rides, as well as a worrisome uptick in 7-Eleven’s being angrily vandalized & set ablaze. These are heady days.  The season is over, yes, but we have plenty of time to look ahead to next year. Like, eons. Sigh.

So for now, let us begin the process of tying off THIS season. With our yearly Awards Show. Indeed, The Paggies® are upon us, and it is your duty as Americans (and also a few notable Europeans who we accept as Americans around here) to submit your Award Nominations. The best & most unique submissions will be chosen, and for that you’ll win six pounds of gold doubloons — although not really.

There were many plausible explanations for why water was seeping through my basement ceiling … none of them good. It was if my beloved can lights were crying — and so was I for that matter. Because the cruel defect causing this shitstorm would certainly not be an easy fix. Nor a cheap one. It never is. Nor was it in this instance, when it was determined that our master shower was improperly installed and blah blah blah it’s been slowly & quietly flooding the innards of our house for quite some time. (HOORAY for hidden toxic mold!!! Take THAT, my family’s respiratory systems!!!)

Fast forward to this morning — Day 3,48something of Operation Master Bathroom Remodel & Mold Removal. Or so it feels. I honestly don’t know when it began. Such is the mind-bending scope of the project, which is better described as endlessness wrapped in disarray wrapped in a billion sq. ft. of Visqueen. Stupid, miserable Visqueen — it succeeds in keeping like six grains of dust from escaping any given room … and yet takes the agility of a cobra to contort your way through it without incident. I have the agility of a wood stove, you see, and thus “incidents” abound & my blood pressure red-lines AND GODDAMNIT I HATE VISQUEEN!!

Indeed, tensions in my home are running high right now. Patience is not. The whole ordeal has taken its toll, and our already tight quarters have become significantly more so. We’ve been more-or-less confined to our living room, caged & doomed to an eternity of playing “Zingo!” for cash while snapping at each other sharply. Sometimes the power is cut, other times the water. Sometimes both. Sometimes it’s 300 degrees & when the TV works, my daughter insists on watching “Yo Gabba Gabba,” which is about on par w/ shoving low-grade LSD down your eye-sockets. Everything’s gone sideways in our house, and frustratingly, nothing is ever where it’s supposed to be. Everyone is irritable.

It’s not that we’ve spent too much time together, except that’s precisely what it is. We’ve run out of things to talk civilly about, and even uncivilly as well. A tense boredom hangs in the air like a thick cloud of drywall dust, which — ironically — also hangs in the air. Uneasiness abounds. Even the most innocuous of the mundane can spark a full-blown turf war of sorts; because why not? What else is there to do?

ME: Where’s my toothbrush?

WIFE: Look in the sock drawer!!

ME: DAMN YOU, WOMAN!!

And off we go, right into a heated 40-minute discussion regarding ACCEPTABLE & UNACCEPTABLE TOOTHBRUSH LOCALES that goes on for 40-minutes longer than it ever feasibly should. It is beyond dumb.

And if that sounds painfully similar to this whole ZOMG I HATE THE NEW INDYCAR CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY! kerfuffle, well it should. Because it is. It’s the dumbest of Dumb Debates, and I’m as guilty as anyone for fanning its flames. Simply put, it was brought on by boredom & tension & because why not? What else is there to talk about? There’s a palpable uneasiness in IndyCar right now, mainly because the last race we remember was three fiscal quarters ago — and all the custom-made surfboards in the world & IZOD Girl’s rack won’t change that. We’re restless & bored and our focus is all queered up. That is no way to live. F–k this noise.

[peels back six layers of Visqueen to find some straight-up PERSPECTIVE]

You know what? It’s a trophy, you guys. And a rather cool one at that, frankly. If only because it’s interesting. But whatever. It could be a bronzed minotaur buying a hooker for all we care. It hardly matters. It doesn’t matter. Not in the grand scope of things.

Because in the grand scope of things, we’re down to our last 200 laps of the year. That’s it. That’s all we have. And by God, it’s time we started focusing on that. It won’t be long, after all, before the IndyCar season parachutes into that Vast Desert of Nothingness otherwise known as the off-season. It won’t be long before we’re begging for St. Pete to get here, but feeling as though it’s still some 48 lightyears away.

There are worse things than a mildly anticipated race. Like having no race at all.

Similarly, it won’t be long before my kids would rather jump head-first into a grease fire than play “Zingo!” with their parents. It won’t be long before my son will be holed up in his room playing “Halo 12″ or whatever as my daughter bitches about other girls & hates on her mom & does whatever else it is teenage girls do, which — if memory serves — can be quite unpleasant.

No, there are far worse things than being cooped up with my wife & two toddlers in remarkably close & dusty quarters. Like, for instance, NOT being cooped up with them at all.

Word. I’m out.

[exits through Visqueen-covered doorway ... trips & falls & almost suffocates self]

RROWWRRR!!!! Behold, my children!!!! It is I, Hálfdan the Conqueror, the immortal DEMON OVERLORD OF THE LOST TRIBE OF GERMANIA, reborn through the FIRES OF HELL!!!! AARRRGGGGHHH!!!!!! BOW DOWN, HUMANS, for I have come to FEAST UPON THE SOUL OF THE INDYCAR VICTOR & RAPE HIS HEART VALVES & RIDE AROUND ON MY WHEEL, just as the elders foretold many moons ago.

COME TO ME, MY DEAR!! Look into my eyes. Do it now!!! I BECKON YOU!!! I WELCOME YOUR DEMISE VICTORY WITH OPEN ARMS!!!!

It’s Friday and there’s no IndyCar this weekend. So here are my NFL picks for Week 4. I’m taking all bets in the comments section. But bet against me at your own risk.

(Favorite in bold, followed by the spread. My picks are underlined.)

At NY Giants -3 Tennessee
At New England -14.5 Buffalo
At Baltimore -10.5 Cleveland
Pittsburgh -2.5 At Tampa Bay
Cincinnati -3 At Carolina
At New Orleans -4 Atlanta
San Francisco -3 At Kansas City
At Minnesota -11 Detroit
At Houston -2.5 Dallas
Washington -3.5 At St. Louis
Philadelphia -2.5 At Jacksonville
Indianapolis -5.5 At Denver
San Diego -5.5 At Seattle
At Arizona -4.5 Oakland
At Miami -2 NY Jets

Monday Night Football:

Green Bay -3 At Chicago

Below is a preliminary list of the classes being offered, the professor’s name, and a brief description of the class in the professor’s own words.

Remember: Fall Classes begin this fall! Don’t be late! Sign up NOW!!!

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CLASS: Geography 201
PROFESSOR: Jack Arute
PROFESSOR’S CLASS DESCRIPTION: “Hey, gang! Ready to discover the WORLD? We’ll start in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — where three mighty rivers (the Mekong, the Thames, and the Baltic Sea) join together to form the Great Barrier Reef! And from there, we’ll go wherever the balmy coastal tradewinds of Moscow carry us!!”

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CLASS: Advanced Phys. Ed.
PROFESSOR: Tony Kanaan
PROFESSOR’S CLASS DESCRIPTION: “We will punish our bodies through endless circuit-training & 68-mile jogs through volcanic killing fields that will having you begging for sweet, sweet death. We will nourish ourselves with tree bark and Human Growth Hormones. Then we will Tweet our adventures to all the disgusting fatbodies out there, filling their flabby hearts with guilt. (Que quer isso dizer? Sacrifício!!!! Hihihihihihihi)”

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CLASS: Remedial Television Production
PROFESSOR: ABC Sports IndyCar Technical Director
PROFESSOR’S CLASS DESCRIPTION: “boobies boobies boobies i love the boobies I need to borrow $3 this is borrrring and dumb can i go now?”

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CLASS: Philosophy 301
PROFESSOR: Paul Tracy
PROFESSOR’S CLASS DESCRIPTION: “My philosophy? It’s pretty simple. Practice doesn’t breed champions … my LOINS do. That’s just the way it works. Learn that shit, homes.”

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CLASS: Pre-Med
PROFESSOR: AJ Foyt
PROFESSOR’S CLASS DESCRIPTION: “You can read all them queer doctor-books all you want. But them books ain’t never had fibromyalgia, thrush, hepatitis-K, jaundice, Taiwanese Super-Rabies, the shingles, sickle cell somethin-or-other, the Dengue Fever, and massive head trauma because some Mexican broad wasn’t lookin’ and ran over your face with a Chevy Silverado. Some people call that a medical encyclopedia right there. I call that JUST ANOTHER F–KING TUESDAY. You don’t like it? Then don’t take my class, Princess ShitForBrains.”

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CLASS: Geology 101
PROFESSOR: Scott Dixon
PROFESSOR’S CLASS DESCRIPTION: “Come learn about rocks.”

_________________

More classes to be announced at a later date.

But I don’t notice the problem right away. Not at all. Not until I happen to sit up straight and marvel at the SHEER ANGULAR DISTANCE my spinal column just unspooled in order to get vertical. Because the difference between how I WAS sitting and how I’m sitting NOW is all kinds of shocking. And rather disheartening. (THIS is what good posture feels like???  GAH!! IT BURNS THE SPINE!!!) Plus, this new upright position will inevitably make me feel like that asshole from The New Yorker, all stiff & uppity and mocking poor people for sport. But I certainly don’t appear like that to others, of course. It just feels that way.  It feels that way because for the last six hours I’ve been slumped over my keyboard like a fat bag of soup. That is not a pleasant realization.

Fascinating, right? Not at all?? Good. Then the time is right for us to adjourn to the mountaintops of Motegi. You are now ready. Five Pagodas for that which was decidedly awesome … one Pagoda for that which was uncomfortably pathetic and/or Marty-Reid-ish. My call.

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Jack Arute sweats profusely, appears disheveled — 3 Pagodas
From the looks of things, Jack ran the 62 miles from the hotel to the track whilst pulling a rickshaw, quickly threw down some jalapeño burgers & “saki bombs,” and then immediately went on air. But not before spending the previous 36 hours sleeping in an infield smokehouse, probably!

Starting command — 9,328 PAGODAS!!!! AAARRGGGHH!!!!
SWEET MOTHER OF MOTHRA I DEMAND THAT THIS BE MY ALARM-CLOCK CHIME EVERY GODDAMN MORNING!!! And thanks to Shane Rogers, such wonders are now possible. Here, take a listen. I’ll wait.

[rocks the double-handed SHOCKER sign while headbanging the wall]

Holy shit. HOLY. SHIT. That is BEYOND magnificent. It is MAJESTIC!!! I now demand that ALL of my mornings be kick-started with it. The alarm will go off and that guy’s voice would ROCK THE HOUSE at 190 decibels and I will instinctively react as follows:

1. wake up ENRAGED & focused
2. instantly ninja-flip to my feet
3. ferociously nun-chuck a hole through the wall toward the bathroom
4. CRANE-KICK THE TOILET SEAT UP BECAUSE F–K YOU, THAT’S WHY!!!
5. expel EXCELLENCE
6. dominate the day that lies ahead

It’ll be like starting each morning with an equine-strength shot of meth STRAIGHT TO THE JUGULAR. ATTAAAAAAACK!!!!!

So yeah. I rather enjoyed that lively fellow.

Sato did not explode any cars — 5 Pagodas
A shocking turn of events, really. This is like Bob Sanders playing an entire quarter of football and NOT shredding every tendon in his body AND OTHERWISE RUINING MY LIFE.

Let’s hear from young Master Sato, who is still riding high … but handling the accomplishment with grace & quiet dignity. Takuma?

Indeed. Such poise. Such presence. Welcome to Sato Country, bitches! WELCOME TO MANDOM.™

Danica moves up 7 spots … without passing a single car — 1 Pagoda
Good ol’ Motegi. It’s just like Mid-Ohio … BUT EGG-SHAPED!!

Helio wins — 2.5 Pagodas
Well of course he does.

I’m not saying it’s not well deserved, because it certainly is. I’m just saying that if you’re THRILLED by this & were ardently hoping for it to happen & you don’t work for Roger Penske, then I hate you. Truly. You’re the type of dirtball who reads “The Little Engine That Could” and immediately starts rooting for the HILL. Shove off, Frenchy.

The VERSUS.com Chat – 4 Pagodas
It was a success, I’m told. A good time was had by all, and many performed quite admirably. But not me. I do not tolerate these things well. Lindy does, but I don’t. Because whatever it is that allows her to calmly keep her head & respond to 900 comments at once, I don’t have that. I have whatever the opposite of that is. (A cerebral infarct, perhaps?) Between administering the Chat, signing people in, handling breakdowns in the system, mainlining coffee grinds, getting yelled at by Versus.com higher-ups for insinuating that Arute snorted 9 cubic tons of coke, trying to read what 7,500 people are saying in real time, hosting houseguests AND watching the race … well it was all so disorienting & frenzied & I felt like a stroke victim roughly 17 seconds in. And it only got worse from there.

Ultimately, as this photo shows, I went mad and set fire to my computer and just paced around my garage crying softly & whistling Rick Astley tunes. Tough night.

Motegi’s place in the schedule — 1 momentum-killing Pagoda
We covered this last year. And now we’re pretty much in that same boat. It’s a rickety boat, for sure, all barnacled & broken — one that will putter into the Miami docks some 19 lunar months from now. GET READY, EVERYONE!! WHO’S FIRED UP FOR THE SEASON-DECIDING CHAMPIONSHIP NOW?!?! Ugh.

Perhaps we didn’t take full notice of it beforehand, but now that we’ve looked at the calendar and MARVELED AT THE EXTENSIVE LENGTH OF TIME between Kentucky (Sept. 4) and Homestead (Oct. 2) … well it too is an unpleasant realization.

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Because for the next 100 or so miles, we crawled up & down winding dirt roads and one-lane blacktops at LITERALLY 12 mph. That’s not a joke. Nor hyperbole. GPS Lady apparently wanted to give us the scenic route — and if it took three weeks & a divorce to get there, so be it. Have you ever been in a terrible rush & slowly inched along behind a tractor tiller deep in Southern Indiana hill country as your scorned wife silently fumes next to you? Holy Jesus. Misery. Total misery. If I could’ve crawled into the glovebox right then, I would have. The resentment in the air was so thick, you could cut it with a court summons.

ME: You hungry? Let’s stop and get something to eat. Where should we –

WIFE: Why don’t you ask your stupid girlfriend?

A two-hour trip became an eternity. But all was not lost. Because somewhere along State Driveway 101 or whatever it was called, we happened to come across every decent-minded Hoosier’s holy land:

Milan, Indiana. The real-life home of the Hickory Huskers.

It was like popping out of the dense woods & straight into the Lost City of Atlantis … only AWESOMER. I had heard of Milan, of course — just as every Indiana native has. I wasn’t really sure it still actually existed, though, nor had I ever been there. I reacted accordingly: by parking the car & snapping pictures like a nerd & reverently bowing my head & snapping MORE pictures, totally in awe of its historical significance. Haha, my wife was now furious AND mortified!! But I had no time for that. THIS is the original home of the Goliath-killer, I thought — the Valley of Elah. Simply being there put me in the mood for some stone-cold GIANT SLAYING. It was a sign, alright. A sign of things to come later that night. A wonderful sign for Ed Carpenter or Dan Wheldon or ANYBODY else not affiliated with Penske or Ganassi. It had to be.

It was not.

Fast-forward to whenever it was Saturday night when it became clear that Helio was going to win. I’m not terribly sure when that was, exactly. With 10 laps to go? Five? My wife & I were watching from the pits — a difficult place to keep track of such things, particularly when neither of us are “race people.” All I know is that the entire area was crazy-ABUZZ with energy as Carpenter & company battled for the lead … and then totally & remarkably deflated when they weren’t. Everyone looked at the scoring pylon at roughly the same time & somehow saw #3 sitting atop it. And everyone kind of groaned. I won’t remember much from the race, but I’ll remember that unmistakable ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!?! vibe that quickly harshed our shit like a wet blanket of predictability.

Helio coasted to victory, of course. It was all kinds of anticlimactic. It was anticlimactic on steroids of some kind, but not really. Because steroids are unpredictable & volatile — no, this was “anticlimactic” on fiber pills & a sensible 8 hours of sleep. The kind that wears immaculate house slippers. Such a letdown.

Upon exiting the Speedway, it was obvious that fans weren’t happy about the outcome. But through gritted teeth, they repeatedly muttered the time-honored mantra: “That’s racing.” I heard it no less than 30 times.

Well you know what? That little mantra doesn’t sit well with the casual American sports fan. It certainly doesn’t sit well with me. It’s a vague, miscellaneous catch-all that tries to explain away the worst aspects of the sport, but does so poorly. It’s hollow & dumb and I have no use for it anymore.

Week in & week out, all the best drivers aren’t even in the field??? Mm-hmm. “That’s racing,” I’m told.

Nine different people can drive a better race than Helio Saturday night and LOSE to him? Yep. “That’s racing.”

In fact, Curt Cavin credits Helio’s unlikely win to an archaic relic of the past — seemingly tongue-in-cheek, but I can’t say for sure:

Remember, there are examples in other sports where the one who shouldn’t win utilizes the only advantage he has and does. Like when basketball teams held the ball in the era before the shot clock.

HOORAY FOR US INDYCAR FANS!!! We’re still subjected to the same broke-ass tactics that were outlawed by mainstream sports some 60 years ago!! (You know, because they were ruining the sport & so forth.) In Cavin’s basketball analogy, an inferior team would take an early lead & then win by holding onto the ball for the next 983 straight minutes. Captivating theater, it was not. It wasn’t even sporting. So it was fixed. See if this sounds familiar:

The National Basketball Association (NBA) had problems attracting fans (and television coverage) before the shot clock’s inception. This was largely due to teams killing the clock once they were leading in a game; without the shot clock, teams could pass the ball nearly endlessly without penalty … Very low-scoring games with many fouls were common, boring fans.

The shot-clock came into existence in 1954, by the way. Which brings us back full circle.

To where? you ask.

Why to Milan, of course — who won the Indiana High School Basketball title that very same year.

Some consider it the greatest upset of all time. A fluke for the ages. It most certainly wasn’t. It was simply a matter of the little guy being better than the powerhouse, which is a rarity for sure. But not an impossibility. Because unlike the fictional Hickory Huskers, the real-life Milan team was exceedingly well known beforehand. They didn’t just come out of nowhere with a new batshit crazy coach & a mute 2-guard savant; they advanced to the Final Four the year prior. They didn’t just beat country rubes & obscure mining towns to luck their way into the Championship game; they thrashed Oscar Robertson’s nationally renowned Crispus Attucks in the semi-finals — the team who would go on to win the next two Indiana state titles (1955 and 1956).

That final game was not a fluke. It was hardly an upset. Hollywood works like that, but not REAL sports. Because in real sports, there are no flukes. The best team might not always win, but whoever COMPETES the best does. Period. Every time, without exception. Be it an underdog or a favorite, a David or a Muncie Central. That’s sports.

And this is what’s so maddening about IndyCar. Those basic principles of legitimate competition seem absent. Because on a night when Ed Carpenter, Dan Wheldon and Tony Kanaan all clearly competed better than anyone else, they all lost. To a middling, uninspired Goliath. On a fluke — a fortuitous, fuel-conserving loophole in the system that everyone hates. And worse still, they lost anticlimactically. Well of course they did.

And in case you’re confused as to why we have problems attracting fans (and television coverage), don’t be. Keep telling yourself this: That’s racing. And then please start thinking of ways to fix it.