This Week in Motorsport
I used this weekend to catch up on all the racing I missed last weekend due to the Project MERCATOR activities about which I have yet to bloggy blog. (Soonest!) The F1 Chinese Grand Prix was run on Sunday, 17 April while the A.L.M.S. visited the streets of Long Beach, California on the previous day, Saturday, 16 April.

Formula Fun!
The lesson of the Chinese Grand Prix? Drive angry. '08 World Champion Lewis Hamilton (№ 3) of McLaren (Mercedes) was the first man to win a grand prix in 2011 besides reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel (№ 1) of Red Bull (Renault), but without question the best drive of the day belonged to Red Bull's Mark Webber (№ 2). Murphy's law came down like a tons of bricks on Webber during Saturday's all-important qualifying, knocking him out of contention after the first of the three qualifying sessions (Q1). While the grizzled Australian has been slower than his youthful German teammate, Webber still has one of the fastest race cars on the grid & it was shocking to see him eliminated in Q1 alongside the six cars from the three newest & lowliest teams in F1, Team Lotus (Renault), Virgin (Cosworth), & Hispania (Cosworth). Starting from eighteenth, Webber drove furiously, executing pass after pass as he stormed his way through the field. He didn't just have a chip on his shoulder, Webber drove like a man possessed; I'd not before seen the like. On the grand prix's final lap, Webber passed '09 World Champion Jenson Button (№ 4) of McLaren to finish third in the race. On the podium! From eighteenth to third! There is no doubt in my mind that if the race had been longer Webber would have mercilessly chased down both Vettel & Hamilton to claim the victory himself. Previously, the most impressive making-up of positions I'd seen was in '09, when Button (then driving for Brawn [Mercedes], since bought by those Kraut bastards & renamed simply Mercedes) clawed his way from, I think, twelfth to fifth at Brazil to secure his drivers' world title, but even that pales compared to Webber's run from eighteenth to third. Third! If Webber always drove with that kind of fury no man—not Vettel, not Hamilton, not '05 & '06 World Champion Fernando Alonso of Ferrari—could deny him the World Drivers' Championship. John Dryden wrote, "Beware the fury of a patient man." More than that, beware the fury of an Aussie in a hurry.

By Endurance We Conquer
Most of my fears about the streaming online "broadcast" of American Le Mans Series (A.L.M.S.) races on the espn3.com website were realized when I watch the Long Beach race on Saturday. The streaming image froze up four times, though the audio commentary continued even while the image was accompanied by the gaily-colored pinwheel of frustration, my Macintosh's "busy" signal. I was helpless during these periods, with the "escape" command that was supposed to deactivate the full-screen image being non-responsive. The Macintosh was, in those moments, effectively a radio with a framed picture of a pixelated race car. The pixelation was a recurrent phenomenon, occurring with no discernible pattern. The moving image was smooth & clear more often than it was jerky & pixelated, otherwise I would never have made it through the whole race. That wasn't even the worst of it. In order to watch a race on espn3.com, I must sit at my desk with an open internet browser; this is to me an irresistible temptation. Despite my interest in the race, as various thoughts passed through my head I'd wish to follow-through on ye olde interweb. It is important to note that Long Beach is the briefest race on the A.L.M.S. calendar, at two hours in length. There is simply no way I could sit at my desk through the six-hour race at Laguna Seca or the ten hours of the Petit Le Mans; with the constant tantalization of the bottomless tubes of ye olde interweb to explore I'd expire of old age before getting through either race.

So what in the Sam Hill am I supposed to do? I've learned over the last two years that I love endurance racing, but the sacred 24 Heures du Mans comes only once a year. I need my fix more often than that. Because of the extensive break to allow teams to compete at Le Mans, the next A.L.M.S. race isn't until early July. I'm going to violate my principles & watch the cut-down race edit on E.S.P.N. 2 the day after the Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park; I watched a cut-down race edit on C.B.S. last summer & found it a thoroughly distasteful alternative to watching a race in its entirety on Speed, but with the full races no where to be found on T.V. this year & the full coverage on espn3.com having been deemed wholly inadequate, the time has come for desperate measures.

In happier news, Easter Sunday was the official test day at the Circuit de la Sarthe, immortal home of the Le Mans 24 Hours. 11-12 Juin approaches as rapidly as a Peugeot 908 with the pedal to the floor! Make ready! Make ready! The 24 Heures du Mans is coming!

Meanwhile
I was watching the V8 Supercars race on Sunday (a delayed broadcast of the races from the Hamilton Street Circuit in verdammt New Zealand on Saturday & Sunday, 16-17 April) when the Jack Daniel's-sponsored cars caught my eye. There, emblazoned in huge white letters across the black hood (bonnet, as they'd say) & doors of the Holden Commodores, were the words "Jack Daniel's." In Formula One, McLaren is sponsored by the Diageo conglomerate, with Johnnie Walker whisky prominently advertised on both Lewis Hamilton's & Jenson Button's cars. The Force India (Mercedes) cars sport Whyte & Mackay branding on their flanks. I've no objection at all to alcohol sponsorship, especially since auto racing's richest traditional source of sponsorship revenue, tobacco, dried up in the mid-'00s thanks to draconian E.U. regulation, but there is something delightfully macabre about giant alcohol adverts on race cars when everyone knows that drinking & driving do not go well together. The grim joke has legs: Grand-Am's Rolex Series is bracketed by dual title sponsorships, being the Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask № 16; the A.L.M.S. is formally the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón. The gorgeous black & gold livery currently gracing the Lotus Renault cars in F1 is patterned after the John Player Specials cigarettes liveries (original) Team Lotus cars sported back in the 1970s & '80s, which begs the question: Which seems more ill-advised, driving a Lotus Renault while smoking a pack of John Player Specials or driving a McLaren while drinking a bottle of Johnnie Walker?

V8 Supercars is a principally Australian touring car series which features a fierce rivalry twixt Holden (General Motors) & Ford Australia. Unlike the "space frame" silhouette cars used in the D.T.M. or the ridiculous & utterly non-stock "stock cars" used in the abominable N.A.S.C.A.R., the V8 Supercars start life as more-or-less normal Holden Commodores & Ford Falcons & are then retrofitted to be safer, faster race cars. I don't understand silhouette cars at all. If you're going to build a pure race car, build a pure race car, like a Le Mans Prototype or an F1 rocket. If you are an automobile manufacturer looking to show off your products & prowess, modify a production car, as is done in V8 Supercars or the G.T. classes at Le Mans. But to build a pure race car & then hamstring its aerodynamic potential by putting a road-car shell around its innards, as is done in the D.T.M.? Nonsense, bloody nonsense.

Project GLOWWORM
I didn't wear a hat to Mass yesterday. A gentleman generally removes his hat indoors, & I'd certainly do so—as I have done—upon entering a church, but I didn't bring one for the walk from Lumi to the church's threshold even though that walk was, due to the Christmas-&-Easter Catholics flooding the parking lot, the longest of the year. Why? Because during Mass there's nowhere to put a hat but beside me on the pew, & with the Easter crush I knew there wouldn't be a square foot to spare for my headgear. If you're puzzled as to why I couldn't put my hat on the floor beneath the pew then you've clearly never seen a Catholic Mass: under the pew is where my legs go during the frequent bouts of kneeling that punctuate the celebration of Mass. To my good fortune, neither rain nor bright sunshine bombarded me during the treks from & to Lumi.

After Mass, my father used the X-700 to take a series of snapshots of me in my growing collection of hats, both with & without my newish spectacles. I left the house today without the roll of film, which I'd set on the front table specifically so I'd remember it, but tomorrow I will try again to drop the film off for developing. The photographs will be posted to the FaceSpace by the end o' the week if not sooner.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day: SKApril
The Toasters, "2-Tone Army" (live) from Live in London (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The obvious choice from The Toasters would be their most famous song, & one which I support wholeheartedly, "Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down," but "2-Tone Army" is more in keeping with the overriding spirit of SKApril, & indeed the Eastertide. I've only one non-live Toasters song in my library, "Pendulum" from the third Asian Man Records Mailorder compilation, Mailorder for the Masses. I don't I've ever seen The Toasters live on stage, but I know that somewhere around here I've got a Toasters patch; where else could I have acquired such a thing if not at a Toasters show? I've been to so many shows over the last thirteen years that I readily admit having some trouble recalling which bands I saw with which other bands, accompanied by which friends, at which venue. At the time, each time, I was more concerned with having a ball than with keeping a comprehensive chronicle; sue me.