NASCAR, LOL!

OMFG NASCAR! Ostensibly it has it's roots in the moonshine running & the associated street racing culture of the early to mid 20th Century, which both centered on the car's performance, how hot it was. To find out "what's under the hood" famously, according to Hollywood, a rival had to challenge the owner to a race & win the "pink slip" or title to the car. But still, Hollywood fiction is often a romanticized, jazzed up version of reality.

 So shortly after the last good war, along comes Mr. France's NASCAR claiming it's roots are the same as depicted in Thunder Road, having started on the beach & areas of Daytona in 1948 & involving some former moonshiners & street racers. Then when it got a home of it's own, the famed Daytona Speedway & safely distanced from the illegality of transporting illegal alcohol & street racing, NASCAR developed the mythology about being practically founded by moonshine running daredevils in American Muscle Cars while inexorably distancing itself from them, morphing into what we see today: an unamerican, rootless, boring parody (unless there is a fiery crash!). 

NASCAR today has nothing in common with the quintessential "American" mythology of Apple Pie, The Flag & Mom because it's no longer "nothin' 'bout" another American icon, every woman's rival for affection: a fast, light, massively motored, 'merckin-made, earthbound (most of the time anyway)  4-wheeled projectile. "What's under the hood" these days in NASCAR may as well be a question about the sewers of Brooklyn. 

 Indeed, NASCAR Today is all about boring conformity & the cult of personality, having been reduced to being about driver performance & safety (not that I knock the importance of safety because we all love watching spectacular crashes as long as nobody gets hurt).

  But other than the safety component giving us the thrill of seeing a balls on, 15X end-over-end fiery crash with an unscathed Superhero emerging from the flaming mayhem like a real life Iron Man (IDR if it was a NASCAR race, but I swear I've seen exactly that on TV & was chilled and thrilled beyond belief), NASCAR isn't American at all because it no longer has a  thing to do with moonshine running or illegal street racing & the associated American automobile brands & models, all of which are icons of the 20th Century American car culture it nevertheless still claims as it's heritage. 

So NASCAR might as well slink up in stiletto heels & a tight shiny halter top & ultra-miniskirt to the Japanese, rice burning, .3 litre, 4 cylinder technology driven "drifting" culture for further inspiration because it is definitely no longer about 400 CID (6.6 liter) V8 propelled American Muscle Cars & other American iconography like older women, more whiskey & younger money (sorry,Tom T. Hall).

In NASCAR the cars all have to be exactly the same & it is getting worse, now they have a NASCAR body and frame that has to be used and I think an engine, with no actual Chevy's and Ford rivalries as we knew them. In today's NASCAR, innovation, originality, technological advancement have no place. Such things are forbidden because anybody caught coming up with ANYTHING NEW for the racing vehicles, even the simplest engineering refinement like polishing a fuel port that's not in the strict rule book & gives their car the slightest performance edge, gets fined & sanctioned.

Now even some rednecks of the armchair variety no longer watch NASCAR because of the intractable boredom of 30 or so exactly identical cars, except for the individual sponsor decals & colors, going round & round on a track while obnoxious announcers periodically extol the supposed heritage of the game & the virtues of the "Chevrolet" team versus the "Ford" & "Mopar" teams  as if any of that actually remains.

 Indeed, NASCAR, with the car no longer in the equation, is not "American," nor glamorous or exciting & not even male in any meaningfully superficial sense, not that I have any regard for the two poses in this list of "nots", but it's just not.

 Clara Peller, who became an American advertising legend (as everything else "American" has) may as well have been doing an ad for NASCAR instead of Wendy's when she  iconically asked, "Where's the Beef?"

There, I said it! I been thinking this for like 30 years and finally got it on paper, I think pretty well, not that this, or NASCAR is of any true importance, but a lot of delusional people think it's everything (shout out to fervid basketball & American football fans), their identity, the root of their being and at least as important as their families if not moreso.