Games and Fun
GRRRR!
The Cup race at Talladega Super Speedway this weekend was very, very aggravating for me as all three of my drivers got taken out in lap 18 by a bonehead.
Super Speedway racing is very much it’s own animal. Daytona and Talladega are both long track, 2 miles + with such steep banking that a driver never has to take his foot off the gas. They can go flat out, using the brake lightly to help steer or slow the car if necessary. Originally, it was a “Who has the most powerful drive train” situation, but with the advent of “restrictor plates” which limits the amount of air coming into the engine, all the cars pack up together on the track. The only way they could make in progress (and I believe it was Dale Earnhardt Sr. that really perfected this) was to team up with people and “use the draft.” When you are going 190 mph, aerodynamics matters. One car punching a hole through the air can be fast, but not as fast as two cars, nose to tail. The car behind is sucked up into the vacuum of the car in front and he can “bump draft” by hitting the car in front of him to make it go even faster (CC’s will build the cars which extra steel bars in the bumpers for this reason alone). (I wonder if the actual length of the line, how far back from the nose to the final vacuum at the tail end of the line also has significant effect.) Two cars are not as fast as three cars and so on. The more cars in a line, the faster a line goes, depending on how good the car in front is.
Trying to pass is difficult because if you step out of line, you lose the draft and are instantly sliding back down the track. If you are going to pass you have to find someone to step out of line with you, someone who will not “hang you out to dry” by just stepping back into line leaving you all by your lonesome watching the race go by. So the day is spent making deals, either through intuition, hand signals or by CC and spotters running messages. Ideally, teammates work together and help each other out but while all cars may look alike, not all cars are alike. One car may have an aerodynamic package that your car may run better with than you teammate so guess who you new best pal is? So super speedway races are thinking races, lots of strategy, lots of deal making.
Bump drafting on the straightaway is fine and dandy, bump drafting a car the is not directly in front of yours, say a car that is making a turn, usually results in turning that car around. And because everyone is bunched up what would be an accident involving a couple cars will involve a dozen or more commonly referred to as “The Big One”. Announcers speak of the “The Big One” as an inevitability. Some drivers prefer to run up front and hope it happens behind them. Some drivers prefer to run in the back for most of the race and hope it happens far enough in front of them they can avoid it.
Well.
The race started yesterday with the Robert Yates drivers Elliott Sadler on the pole and Dale Jarrett on the outside. Mark and Dale Jr. both qualified back in the pack, but by lap 20 they had moved up into the top ten. Elliott’s car was strong, I mean REALLY strong. He could maintain his lead even without someone behind him. It was looking like a damn good day for my guys. Elliott would cement is 11th place in the standings, Mark would get up there to 2nd or 3rd place in the Chase poised to make a run for the Cup and Dale had a shot to place well, if not win, bolstering team confidence and get things ready for 2006.
When Jimmie Johnson decided he wanted to bump draft going into the turn, either that or he was trying to run Elliott over. He got up too far under the #38 taking the air off Elliott's spoiler, lightening the amount of downforce his rear wheels had on the track, and then bumped him, turning him completely around so that his drivers window was looking right at Dale Jr.’s drivers window and it just got worse from there. Dale had nowhere to go and Mark got into the back of him and then bounced off the wall. The chain reaction sent Michael Waltrip into a barrel roll down the track that ripped off his rear axle.
Same thing happened later on lap 65 when Ryan Newman also tried to bump draft through the tri-oval starting another chain reaction that ended up with Scott Riggs car flipping and spinning end over end casting of sheet metal like the Dance of the Seven Veils. I believe it was Jeff Burton’s in-car camera who was right there as Riggs turned those nasty pirouettes 20 feet from him, looking for the entire world like some postindustrial apocalypse.
First of all, all the drivers walked away from their respective wrecks. Testament to the safety features in these cars and thank you Gods. Now, after the race the camera cornered Ryan Newman and while he waffled and hemmed and hawed, So and so and thus and such and racin’ deal and...“Yeah, I might be responsible for that…”. Jimmie however outright, before he even got out of the car "The #8 got into me”
Uhm…Jimmie, the #8 was two to three car lengths behind you.
He kept singing the same song when he got out of the car too. “It's a little tough when you've got somebody tucked under your butt pushing you as hard as that."
“Tucked up” from two car lengths back? Wow! Must be super secret P-sycic powers. “You will move forward!” *zap* That’s what all those hand signals are: They’re casting curses out there! “By the name of the all powerful Yarborough I smite thee! Wreck damn you! Wreck!”
I dinnae buy it Jimmie Lad.
As has been pointed out Jimmie caused a Big One this last spring and also last fall as well I believe. His record at Talladega is crap. 2of2/Mini-Me gets nervous in Super Speedway traffic and nervous means twitchy and twitchy at 190 mph means wrecks.
That aside, of course after every Talladega race the question comes up of how do they keep The Big One from happening. The first suggestion that always surfaces is to pop off the restrictor plates and let the cars go so that the field is more strung out. Last year Rusty Wallace was testing there and for kicks he popped off the restrictor plate and made a run. 228 mph. We’ve lost drivers at 150 mph. Granted the safety measures are better now than they were 5 years ago, but I do not want to think of the impact of a 228 mph wreck on the human frame. I just don’t. And that’s not counting when cars go airborne which is why they started putting the restrictor plates on in the first place. In 1987, Bobby Allison got turned in the corner and was going so fast the car went airborne into the stands. If it hadn’t been for the chain link fence….very, very bad.
Another suggestion has been smaller engines. But from what I understand that would pretty much have the same result. A smaller engine trying to push a 3400 lb car is still going to have a hard time accelerating and passing. Not to mention it would be far more prone to burning out. Pulling the banking down was suggested but then you’re looking at a 2.5 mile Fontana which would be better for the drivers but jeez, people are complaining about “cookie cutter tracks” as it is.
Could the gears be played with to limit speed while stringing the field out?
In the end, it’s all just racing. These guys know what they are getting into every time they strap in. That’s why they get the big money and why it’s such thrill ride for us to watch. I just feel like crap for Dale, Elliott and Mark. Karma at least made sure JJ lost a tire blowing out his left rear quarter panel. He finished 31st.
But the day was made when Dale Jarrett, the veteran who had been hanging around in the back sprinted up the field during the last 20 laps of the race to challenge Tony Stewart, who had been battling on overheating car all day, for the win. A late caution bunched the filed back up for a green-white-checker/2 lap dash for the finish line and it was some good clean, awesome racing to watch those two dogs fight it out with Dale Jarrett in the lead when the caution flag dropped once and for all when Kyle Petty wrecked on the last lap. Jarrett showed what a class act he was by holding off the victory lap and the burn out while Kyle limped his car across the start finish line.
I love it when the Young Guns get their butt whopped by Veterans. :D Great race all the same.
Serenity
Yes, some of the Geek Posse and I ran out to see Serenity opening night.
First of all, even if you have never seen the show it is still a great ride. The story is good, characters are good, the dialogue is great, fights are awesome and the effects are just bitchin’. Especially the space battle, that is some seriously hot stuff and Firefly’s camera style is very unique. They will actually do zooms and the camera will shake slightly sometimes as if you’re watching a documentary. It’s pretty cool.
Whedon does set it up so that audience members unfamiliar with the show Firefly will get enough of the background to keep up with the story and the story is a real ride, very fast moving because they were trying to wrap up most of the major story lines and very dire, moments when you believe that nobody is going to make it out alive. (And in fact some of the characters don’t.) Characters and dialogue is what Whedon is famous for, he never works in archetypes but created full human beings each distinct and multilayered with they’re own brand of humor. No one writes snappy patter anymore, Whedon provides it by the bucket load with a flow and spontaneity that feels completely natural, as if you are sitting in on a old friends of a family. The humor buoys a storyline that becomes pretty dark. The darkness of the story sometimes limits the full range of the characters that people familiar with the show are used to. Mal for example is pretty dark in this film, thought we do get to see some lively interchanges when Inara walks back on the scene, but given the circumstances the crew is in it’s understandable. Simon’s quiet but deadly sarcasm isn’t given full flight, but there is definitely enough humor to keep the story from getting operatic. The trailers are only giving you a taste, trust me.
For those that don’t want to walk into the theatre completely blind, I provided some background on the world and the characters in a prior post that I will repeat here.
“Firefly is the working man’s SciFi. This isn’t about intrepid explorers in uniforms “going where no man has gone before”, this is about a bunch of truck drivers/smugglers/thieves just trying to get by around the gritty edges of a future that is not so clean and positive. No aliens, no esoteric space phenomena. Just trying to keep their ship, Serenity, fueled and food on the table.
The “World” is all human, most of the stories happening on or around the outer colonies (all of which environmentally resemble Southern California *chuckle*), after a future in which the the human culture has melded into an expression of the two strongest: American and Chinese. It is ten years after a civil war much like our own in which the colony worlds attempted to secede from “The Alliance”. (This effect is felt strongly as the Captain of the vessel was a Captain in the Colonial infantry and the second officer was his sergeant.)
As with Buffy, the real pillars of strength of this series ia A. The characters, three dimensional beings with sense of humor and secrets that even the most obnoxious you come to enjoy. B. The dialogue, very witty and probably the most quotable of any show ever. And C. The story lines that run through all the shows, the most powerful of which is River, a genius child from a wealthy family who was kidnapped and experimented on by the Alliance who is, as the Captain Mal puts it “Not quite right…”, who is on the lamb with her high strung, preoccupied and recovering snob brother Simon, who serves as the ships doctor in exchange for their passage. As he becomes more comforatble with the surroundings his quiet, whip like sarcasm begins to surface. River is highly intelligent, precocious and very random. Sometimes lucid, something completely disconnected with what is going on aroudn her. Occasionally with fits of violence.
Then there’s, Zoe, the cool, deadly, disciplined second officer who is married to the wise cracking, goofy and lighthearted Wash, the ships pilot, in probably the most realistic portrayal of a married couple seen in film or TV science fiction. Coziness, arguments and all.
Kaylee, the ship’s engineer has earthy wisdom, yet retains an air of innocence and sweetness that everyone is protective of her. Think of her as the country mouse to Simon’s city mouse.
Book, who originally signed on as a passenger and stuck around, is a monk on sabbatical, yet several clues have come out that he may have held a position in Alliance military of intelligence. He knows way too much about weapons for one thing.
Jayne is the most amoral character of the bunch. Jayne is a mercenary hired to track down Mal and Zoe who jumped ship when they gave him a better offer. He has tried to sell out Simon and River before but ended up saving them when it became obvious the Alliance was not only going kill him, but deny him payment. To people seeing this movie, Jayne may appear the epitome of the block headed brute, but he regularly sends money back home to his mom and his sister, is a rock under stress and occasionally shows flashes of intelligence that seem beyond him. In short, he’s a survivor.
Inara, who is the ship’s main source of steady income. Innara is a courtesan in the old sense of the word as prostitution is not only legal, but regulated by a guild which trains and looks after it’s members. Inara has stepped outside the normal realm of Companions by renting out a shuttle on Serenity and “freelancing” at each of the planets they stop at. She is elegant, refined, cosmopolitian, delicate and tough as nails.
She and Mal, the surly, down to earth yet humorous captain, have an attraction that was becoming problematic just as the show was drop-kicked off the air. Having lost his faith in the War, Mal can be embittered and cynical, but he also has an almost whismcal wit sometimes. Mal’s entire life is this ship and her crew is his family, though you'll never hear him say it.
*Mal as River and Kaylee run around laughing and shrieking in the cargo hold below him.*: “Ah, the pitter patter of little feet in combat boots. SHU-UT UP! One of you is going to fall and die and I am not going to clean it up.”
The story focuses on wrapping up the River storyline river storyline, which makes sense since the series began when Simon and River came on board. It’s a complex and action packed adventure. Lots of fun. Check it out!
The Cup race at Talladega Super Speedway this weekend was very, very aggravating for me as all three of my drivers got taken out in lap 18 by a bonehead.
Super Speedway racing is very much it’s own animal. Daytona and Talladega are both long track, 2 miles + with such steep banking that a driver never has to take his foot off the gas. They can go flat out, using the brake lightly to help steer or slow the car if necessary. Originally, it was a “Who has the most powerful drive train” situation, but with the advent of “restrictor plates” which limits the amount of air coming into the engine, all the cars pack up together on the track. The only way they could make in progress (and I believe it was Dale Earnhardt Sr. that really perfected this) was to team up with people and “use the draft.” When you are going 190 mph, aerodynamics matters. One car punching a hole through the air can be fast, but not as fast as two cars, nose to tail. The car behind is sucked up into the vacuum of the car in front and he can “bump draft” by hitting the car in front of him to make it go even faster (CC’s will build the cars which extra steel bars in the bumpers for this reason alone). (I wonder if the actual length of the line, how far back from the nose to the final vacuum at the tail end of the line also has significant effect.) Two cars are not as fast as three cars and so on. The more cars in a line, the faster a line goes, depending on how good the car in front is.
Trying to pass is difficult because if you step out of line, you lose the draft and are instantly sliding back down the track. If you are going to pass you have to find someone to step out of line with you, someone who will not “hang you out to dry” by just stepping back into line leaving you all by your lonesome watching the race go by. So the day is spent making deals, either through intuition, hand signals or by CC and spotters running messages. Ideally, teammates work together and help each other out but while all cars may look alike, not all cars are alike. One car may have an aerodynamic package that your car may run better with than you teammate so guess who you new best pal is? So super speedway races are thinking races, lots of strategy, lots of deal making.
Bump drafting on the straightaway is fine and dandy, bump drafting a car the is not directly in front of yours, say a car that is making a turn, usually results in turning that car around. And because everyone is bunched up what would be an accident involving a couple cars will involve a dozen or more commonly referred to as “The Big One”. Announcers speak of the “The Big One” as an inevitability. Some drivers prefer to run up front and hope it happens behind them. Some drivers prefer to run in the back for most of the race and hope it happens far enough in front of them they can avoid it.
Well.
The race started yesterday with the Robert Yates drivers Elliott Sadler on the pole and Dale Jarrett on the outside. Mark and Dale Jr. both qualified back in the pack, but by lap 20 they had moved up into the top ten. Elliott’s car was strong, I mean REALLY strong. He could maintain his lead even without someone behind him. It was looking like a damn good day for my guys. Elliott would cement is 11th place in the standings, Mark would get up there to 2nd or 3rd place in the Chase poised to make a run for the Cup and Dale had a shot to place well, if not win, bolstering team confidence and get things ready for 2006.
When Jimmie Johnson decided he wanted to bump draft going into the turn, either that or he was trying to run Elliott over. He got up too far under the #38 taking the air off Elliott's spoiler, lightening the amount of downforce his rear wheels had on the track, and then bumped him, turning him completely around so that his drivers window was looking right at Dale Jr.’s drivers window and it just got worse from there. Dale had nowhere to go and Mark got into the back of him and then bounced off the wall. The chain reaction sent Michael Waltrip into a barrel roll down the track that ripped off his rear axle.
Same thing happened later on lap 65 when Ryan Newman also tried to bump draft through the tri-oval starting another chain reaction that ended up with Scott Riggs car flipping and spinning end over end casting of sheet metal like the Dance of the Seven Veils. I believe it was Jeff Burton’s in-car camera who was right there as Riggs turned those nasty pirouettes 20 feet from him, looking for the entire world like some postindustrial apocalypse.
First of all, all the drivers walked away from their respective wrecks. Testament to the safety features in these cars and thank you Gods. Now, after the race the camera cornered Ryan Newman and while he waffled and hemmed and hawed, So and so and thus and such and racin’ deal and...“Yeah, I might be responsible for that…”. Jimmie however outright, before he even got out of the car "The #8 got into me”
Uhm…Jimmie, the #8 was two to three car lengths behind you.
He kept singing the same song when he got out of the car too. “It's a little tough when you've got somebody tucked under your butt pushing you as hard as that."
“Tucked up” from two car lengths back? Wow! Must be super secret P-sycic powers. “You will move forward!” *zap* That’s what all those hand signals are: They’re casting curses out there! “By the name of the all powerful Yarborough I smite thee! Wreck damn you! Wreck!”
I dinnae buy it Jimmie Lad.
As has been pointed out Jimmie caused a Big One this last spring and also last fall as well I believe. His record at Talladega is crap. 2of2/Mini-Me gets nervous in Super Speedway traffic and nervous means twitchy and twitchy at 190 mph means wrecks.
That aside, of course after every Talladega race the question comes up of how do they keep The Big One from happening. The first suggestion that always surfaces is to pop off the restrictor plates and let the cars go so that the field is more strung out. Last year Rusty Wallace was testing there and for kicks he popped off the restrictor plate and made a run. 228 mph. We’ve lost drivers at 150 mph. Granted the safety measures are better now than they were 5 years ago, but I do not want to think of the impact of a 228 mph wreck on the human frame. I just don’t. And that’s not counting when cars go airborne which is why they started putting the restrictor plates on in the first place. In 1987, Bobby Allison got turned in the corner and was going so fast the car went airborne into the stands. If it hadn’t been for the chain link fence….very, very bad.
Another suggestion has been smaller engines. But from what I understand that would pretty much have the same result. A smaller engine trying to push a 3400 lb car is still going to have a hard time accelerating and passing. Not to mention it would be far more prone to burning out. Pulling the banking down was suggested but then you’re looking at a 2.5 mile Fontana which would be better for the drivers but jeez, people are complaining about “cookie cutter tracks” as it is.
Could the gears be played with to limit speed while stringing the field out?
In the end, it’s all just racing. These guys know what they are getting into every time they strap in. That’s why they get the big money and why it’s such thrill ride for us to watch. I just feel like crap for Dale, Elliott and Mark. Karma at least made sure JJ lost a tire blowing out his left rear quarter panel. He finished 31st.
But the day was made when Dale Jarrett, the veteran who had been hanging around in the back sprinted up the field during the last 20 laps of the race to challenge Tony Stewart, who had been battling on overheating car all day, for the win. A late caution bunched the filed back up for a green-white-checker/2 lap dash for the finish line and it was some good clean, awesome racing to watch those two dogs fight it out with Dale Jarrett in the lead when the caution flag dropped once and for all when Kyle Petty wrecked on the last lap. Jarrett showed what a class act he was by holding off the victory lap and the burn out while Kyle limped his car across the start finish line.
I love it when the Young Guns get their butt whopped by Veterans. :D Great race all the same.
Serenity
Yes, some of the Geek Posse and I ran out to see Serenity opening night.
First of all, even if you have never seen the show it is still a great ride. The story is good, characters are good, the dialogue is great, fights are awesome and the effects are just bitchin’. Especially the space battle, that is some seriously hot stuff and Firefly’s camera style is very unique. They will actually do zooms and the camera will shake slightly sometimes as if you’re watching a documentary. It’s pretty cool.
Whedon does set it up so that audience members unfamiliar with the show Firefly will get enough of the background to keep up with the story and the story is a real ride, very fast moving because they were trying to wrap up most of the major story lines and very dire, moments when you believe that nobody is going to make it out alive. (And in fact some of the characters don’t.) Characters and dialogue is what Whedon is famous for, he never works in archetypes but created full human beings each distinct and multilayered with they’re own brand of humor. No one writes snappy patter anymore, Whedon provides it by the bucket load with a flow and spontaneity that feels completely natural, as if you are sitting in on a old friends of a family. The humor buoys a storyline that becomes pretty dark. The darkness of the story sometimes limits the full range of the characters that people familiar with the show are used to. Mal for example is pretty dark in this film, thought we do get to see some lively interchanges when Inara walks back on the scene, but given the circumstances the crew is in it’s understandable. Simon’s quiet but deadly sarcasm isn’t given full flight, but there is definitely enough humor to keep the story from getting operatic. The trailers are only giving you a taste, trust me.
For those that don’t want to walk into the theatre completely blind, I provided some background on the world and the characters in a prior post that I will repeat here.
“Firefly is the working man’s SciFi. This isn’t about intrepid explorers in uniforms “going where no man has gone before”, this is about a bunch of truck drivers/smugglers/thieves just trying to get by around the gritty edges of a future that is not so clean and positive. No aliens, no esoteric space phenomena. Just trying to keep their ship, Serenity, fueled and food on the table.
The “World” is all human, most of the stories happening on or around the outer colonies (all of which environmentally resemble Southern California *chuckle*), after a future in which the the human culture has melded into an expression of the two strongest: American and Chinese. It is ten years after a civil war much like our own in which the colony worlds attempted to secede from “The Alliance”. (This effect is felt strongly as the Captain of the vessel was a Captain in the Colonial infantry and the second officer was his sergeant.)
As with Buffy, the real pillars of strength of this series ia A. The characters, three dimensional beings with sense of humor and secrets that even the most obnoxious you come to enjoy. B. The dialogue, very witty and probably the most quotable of any show ever. And C. The story lines that run through all the shows, the most powerful of which is River, a genius child from a wealthy family who was kidnapped and experimented on by the Alliance who is, as the Captain Mal puts it “Not quite right…”, who is on the lamb with her high strung, preoccupied and recovering snob brother Simon, who serves as the ships doctor in exchange for their passage. As he becomes more comforatble with the surroundings his quiet, whip like sarcasm begins to surface. River is highly intelligent, precocious and very random. Sometimes lucid, something completely disconnected with what is going on aroudn her. Occasionally with fits of violence.
Then there’s, Zoe, the cool, deadly, disciplined second officer who is married to the wise cracking, goofy and lighthearted Wash, the ships pilot, in probably the most realistic portrayal of a married couple seen in film or TV science fiction. Coziness, arguments and all.
Kaylee, the ship’s engineer has earthy wisdom, yet retains an air of innocence and sweetness that everyone is protective of her. Think of her as the country mouse to Simon’s city mouse.
Book, who originally signed on as a passenger and stuck around, is a monk on sabbatical, yet several clues have come out that he may have held a position in Alliance military of intelligence. He knows way too much about weapons for one thing.
Jayne is the most amoral character of the bunch. Jayne is a mercenary hired to track down Mal and Zoe who jumped ship when they gave him a better offer. He has tried to sell out Simon and River before but ended up saving them when it became obvious the Alliance was not only going kill him, but deny him payment. To people seeing this movie, Jayne may appear the epitome of the block headed brute, but he regularly sends money back home to his mom and his sister, is a rock under stress and occasionally shows flashes of intelligence that seem beyond him. In short, he’s a survivor.
Inara, who is the ship’s main source of steady income. Innara is a courtesan in the old sense of the word as prostitution is not only legal, but regulated by a guild which trains and looks after it’s members. Inara has stepped outside the normal realm of Companions by renting out a shuttle on Serenity and “freelancing” at each of the planets they stop at. She is elegant, refined, cosmopolitian, delicate and tough as nails.
She and Mal, the surly, down to earth yet humorous captain, have an attraction that was becoming problematic just as the show was drop-kicked off the air. Having lost his faith in the War, Mal can be embittered and cynical, but he also has an almost whismcal wit sometimes. Mal’s entire life is this ship and her crew is his family, though you'll never hear him say it.
*Mal as River and Kaylee run around laughing and shrieking in the cargo hold below him.*: “Ah, the pitter patter of little feet in combat boots. SHU-UT UP! One of you is going to fall and die and I am not going to clean it up.”
The story focuses on wrapping up the River storyline river storyline, which makes sense since the series began when Simon and River came on board. It’s a complex and action packed adventure. Lots of fun. Check it out!
posted by KiplingKat | 12:35 AM
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