Author Archive
Will Arnett and ‘Arrested Development’ Producer Team Up for ‘Running Wilde’
September 3rd, 2010 by Alex Moore
Will Arnett appeared on “Letterman” last night to talk about his new show “Running Wilde.”
Comic hero Will Arnett appeared on “Letterman” last night to discuss the “Oscar buzz” surrounding his new show, “Running Wilde,” which he created with “Arrested Development”‘s Mitch Hurwitz.
Most of the coverage of last night’s appearance focused on what was ostensibly a clip from the show, featuring a “cameo” with Paul Shaffer. Sure, the clip also features the show’s costar Keri Russell—but am I the only one who doesn’t think this is actually a clip from “Running Wilde”?
The clip mostly features Shaffer swearing like a sailor and proclaiming, “You know what there’s no such thing as? An easy ten grand. They took that away when they took away ‘Hollywood Squares.’”
I think it’s possible that Arnett set this up as a dummy clip with his new digital content creation company DumbDumb, which has been cranking out some awesome videos for corporate clients like Eclipse gum.
Either way, Arnett can do no wrong in our book. The clip is funny, and “Running Wilde” is likely to be awesome. Whether it’s possible to be as awesome as “Arrested Development” is dubious, but if anyone can pull it off it’s Arnett.
Panda Bear Announces New Single – Win Tickets To See Him Tomorrow!
September 3rd, 2010 by Alex Moore
Panda Bear, the solo project for Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, announces a new single.
Panda Bear, perhaps our favorite animal in Animal Collective, has announced a new 2-song 7″ called “You Can Count On Me,” to release October 19 on Domino Records. But if you want to see Panda Bear live, you can count on us.
We’re GIVING AWAY TICKETS to FYF Fest in Los Angeles tomorrow, featuring Panda Bear, The Rapture, !!!, Ted Leo, Best Coast, Wavves, and many more.
If you want to go, just follow us on Facebook, and write on the wall to let us know you want to go. We’ll be giving away 2 pairs of tickets by the end of the day today, and notifying winners via Facebook.
You can pre-order “You Can Count On Me” now, or catch Panda Bear live this fall:
09-04 Los Angeles, CA – FYF Fest
09-06 Oakland, CA – Fox Theatre
09-08 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom
09-10 Raleigh, NC – Hopscotch Music Festival
09-11 New York, NY – Governor’s Island
09-12 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar
10-29 Asheville, NC – Moogfest
Ticket Giveaway: FYF Fest
September 2nd, 2010 by Alex Moore
We’re giving away 2 pairs of tickets to the FYF Fest in Los Angeles this Saturday.
Wavves
Want to go to FYF Fest in LA this Saturday? We’re giving away 2 pairs of tickets!
We’re giving away the tickets through Facebook. To win, just follow us on Facebook and write on the wall, letting know you’d like to go. We’ll pick 2 winners at random tomorrow morning and notify you over Facebook. (Note, you must both be following us and write on the wall to let us know you want to go in order to win.)
FYF Fest is the true discerning indie music fan’s festival. This year the lineup includes The Rapture, Panda Bear, Wavves, Best Coast, Ted Leo, !!!, Cold Cave, Man Man, Delorean, and tons more!
Get on over to FB and let us know you want to go!
Is Andy Roddick’s Wrath Why America Is Losing?
September 2nd, 2010 by Alex Moore
Last night Andy Roddick lost in the second round of the U.S. Open to Serbian Janko Tipsarevic. Is the problem with American Mens’ Tennis the problem with America?
It was a beautiful night at the US Open last night, if on the warm side. But even from my nose-bleed seats halfway up the promenade section, it was clear the heat was nothing compared to Andy Roddick‘s meltdown, which came across like an allegory not only for US mens’ Tennis, but for the US itself.
US mens’ tennis, much like the US at large, faces serious challenges right now on the world stage.
When Andy Roddick, the top American player who was ranked at number 9 in the world going into last night’s match, stumbled earlier this summer it was the first time in decades that an American didn’t occupy a spot in the top 10 rankings worldwide. It was as if watching an era of comfortable dominance yield to an era of shaky uncertainty.
Roddick’s indignance last night when an umpire called him for a foot fault was Roddick’s undoing. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This was supposed to be Roddick’s tournament. He wasn’t supposed to be losing to a 44th-seed nobody from Serbia.
But Tipsaveric, like the challengers to America’s global dominance, wasn’t taking anything for granted. He wasn’t playing like a single point was owed to him, and he was willing to work, and work, and work, for every shot.
Meanwhile, rather than getting down to the work at hand, Roddick was busy complaining. The crowd, which had been solidly behind him from the start, was quick to turn as his rant continued, raising calls of, “Just play, Andy!”
We’d be wise to heed the call.
In settling into a comfy sense of American entitlement, we make assumptions that may be not only unrealistic for the twenty-first century, but anathema to our competitors, who are willing to work way harder than we are. The belief that we will always be richer than our parents, that we will retire at 55 and receive healthy social security benefits, that our property values will one day send our kids to college—these assumptions may be softening us, slowing our game and distracting our will to just play.
If America is to pull out of the global economic challenges it faces, much like US mens’ tennis, it’s going to have to realize that the rest of the world has caught up. Our American status no longer guarantees us victory. And if we don’t stop thinking about what we’re owed and just play, we may not even find ourselves competing in the finals.
Brandon Spikes Video: Chatroulette Can Still See Your Penis
September 1st, 2010 by Alex Moore
Brandon Spikes is Chatroulette’s first celebrity sex-tape scandal. Is he starting a new trend?
Remember back before the “leaked celebrity sex tape” phenomenon? Neither do I. The flood-pipe opened with the Pamela and Tommy Lee tape, and it hasn’t closed since. Sometimes it almost seems we’ve got more celebrity sex tapes than we’ve got celebrities.
But the Brandon Spikes sex tape, which broke yesterday, is a new animal—the Chatroulette sex tape.
The pitfall that befell Spikes is the opposite of that which usually besets celeb sex-tape victims: The Paris Hiltons of the world ostensibly felt comfortable exposing themselves on camera because of their close relationship to the filmer—they trusted that the camera’s operator wouldn’t expose their indiscretions to the public (or so they said as they cried into their salads in front of an army of paparazzi on the patio of The Ivy).
Spikes, on the other hand, likely viewed the supposed anonymity of the Chatroulette medium as protection in and of itself. What’s the harm in being one nameless person exposing your dick for a second, if it’s just going to get lost in the universe?
The problem, of course, is that celebrities are not nameless. Their names are emblazoned in bold on our cultural scroll. (Coincidentally, Brandon Spikes is a particularly badass name, befitting both a football star and a porn star, of which Spikes is apparently now both.)
Human nature’s unquenchable thirst for new technology seems to be matched only by it’s unquenchable thirst to expose our privates to said technology.
But regardless of the decade or the technological medium at hand, the lesson remains the same—if you want to be an actress, musician, athlete, or politician, do not get naked in front of a camera. If you want to be a generic socialite, well that may be a different story, i.e. Montana Fishburn.
Chatroulette recently announced a software to recognize all lewd images (dicks) and keep them from appearing on the site in real-time. It clearly doesn’t work. So for now, celebs beware: Chatroulette can still see your penis. And so can we.
Apple Announcement: Will The Backlash Continue?
September 1st, 2010 by Alex Moore
Apple will hold a press announcement today at 10am PST. Will it make or break the percolating Apple backlash?
In today’s Apple announcement Steve Jobs faces two stiff challenges, both of which could play into the Apple backlash that came to a boil earlier this spring.
It all started with Gizmodo unveiling the iPhone 4, lost in bar in California and sold to the tech site for $5,000. It was the first time in Apple’s history that the company’s famously secretive operations leaked in advance of an official press announcement. Whether it was causal or coincidental will remain a mystery, but from that moment the public’s long-standing honeymoon with Apple began to sour.
There was the rumor that after having first been offered the phone before it was given to Gizmodo and dismissing it out of hand as a hoax, that Apple’s legal team belligerently demanded the phone from Gizmodo as stolen property. Then California law enforcement smashed down Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s door and seized his computers and a credit card, and searched him on the spot.
It wasn’t a good look, and it got worse when the iPhone 4 was finally released. It was the first technically faulty hardware the company had ever sold, breaking a long record of infallible trustworthiness. The problem, of course, was compounded when Apple first denied complaints about the device had any merit, then admitted there may be some problems but insisted consumers were wrong to complain so vociferously, and only after what had become a painfully deep PR wound offered purchasers free rubber cases to fix the problem.
This was not the Jobs we knew and loved—the Jobs who had single-handedly launched us into the future. This was a new, Evil Jobs, the Jobs of the Gizmodo law-enforcement break-in, who would take our money and sell us buggy products. Who had he become, Bill Gates?
The second current Apple swims against today is its sheer track record of innovation. Having all in the last decade reinvented the way we listen to music, talk on the phone, and—hell, we’re still figuring out what he invented with the iPad—Apple has set the bar almost impossibly high.
Speculation has run rampant over the last months that Apple will again fundamentally change the way we consume music—and with good reason. Apple’s function in consumer culture has been to keep one step ahead of our imaginations on new technology. But in the near decade since it launched iTunes, the technology for cloud computing and streaming services has greatly advanced. Apple is now in the position where its customers’ imaginations for new products are out in front of its technological offerings. And that’s not a good place to be.
One commenter on the music blog Hypebot said, “I am wishfully thinking about an end-to-end solution..artist profile page on the web >> right through to distribution >> streaming >> downloads >> all the way to the consumer’s pocket >> recommendation included.”
If Apple’s announcement today falls short of reinventing the way we consume media by utilizing cloud capabilities that it’s currently not taking advantage of, it will only disappoint consumers, furthering the backlash started this spring and cementing the idea that he company’s heyday has likely passed.
If Apple is to mend its relationship with a once-adoring consumer base, it needs to get back to the business of dreaming up what we want faster than we can conjure it in our own minds.
If they can do that, buyers will forget about the Gizmodo debacle, the iPhone 4 problems, and anything disparaging Jobs might have said along the way.
Piranha 3D Producer Fights James Cameron on Who Makes Better 3D Movies
August 31st, 2010 by Alex Moore
James Cameron and the creators of “Piranha 3D” are fighting over who makes better 3D movies.
There’s a line in Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” where a woman says, “I finally had an orgasm and my doctor told me it was the wrong kind.” Apparently this is how James Cameron feels about the 3D in the surprise summer hit “Piranha 3D”—it’s the wrong kind.
James Cameron gave an interview to Vanity Fair on Friday in which he chastised the creators of “Piranha 3D” for for making a fun movie:
It just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.
This may explain why Cameron’s entire filmography is without a single decent joke, and why he makes such lame, half-assed attempts at humor in real life. The man is humorless. (Remember that creepy “I’m the king of the world” moment in his Oscar acceptance speech?)
In response, the “Piranha 3D”‘s producers issued a statement today to Movieline. There are a lot of great lines (it’s 1,400 words) but this might be the best one:
Jim, are you kidding or what? First of all, let’s start by you accepting the fact that you were the original director of PIRANHA 2 and you were fired.
I have no idea whether this is a fact or spurious claim, and I don’t really care. The point is, it’s fun. It’s choice, grade-A shit-talking.
Clearly “Avatar” was an impressive film. But rather than complaining that the government won’t take his advice on fixing the oil spill and complaining that “Piranha 3D” is the wrong kind of 3D movie, Cameron should probably shut up and let everyone have their fun.
Thanks to [NY Mag] for the tip.
The Blaze: Glenn Beck’s Blaze Of Glory
August 31st, 2010 by Alex Moore
Glenn Beck pours fuel on the raging culture war with his blog The Blaze.
Glenn Beck’s new blog The Blaze launched today. Why? Because, according to Beck, “Too many important stories are overlooked. And too many times we see mainstream media outlets distorting facts to fit rigid agendas.”
With that, let’s take at these “important stories” and “facts” populating the front page of The Blaze.
The top story is called “Explicit Poetry GPS Phones Help Illegals.” As far as I can ascertain, this is a video story about two professors at the University of San Diego who don’t like the United States, and who also have plans to give GPS smartphones to Mexicans to help them cross the border illegally. Reportedly, the phones also have “explicit poetry.” Not quite sure how this is helping the Mexicans. Is there an explicit poetry shortage in Mexico?
Not only does this not seem to qualify as an “important story,” there seems to be nary a “fact” of any import to the broader world contained in the entire piece. In fact, it seems downright bizarre. Explicit poetry? This is what the right wing has been all up in a huff about?
Other stories include another video segment pitting Al Sharpton against Glenn Beck, and insinuating that Sharpton and the members of the Million Man March are racists and that Beck is a beacon of tolerance. This is not the first time Beck has called a black man a racist. Beck recently admitted that he regretted calling Barack Obama a racist, so maybe this distasteful video piece (again, bereft of any actual “facts”) will be retracted shortly.
One piece that did seem to cite an actual fact linked a “NY Post” story about a new Quinnipiac University poll showing that 7 in 10 New Yorkers believe the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque” should be relocated by developers.
This story upholds Beck’s commitment to including some facts, but I’m not sure it fits the “no rigid agenda” criterion. With Beck’s increasingly religious invocations and references to religiously-motivated armed militias like The Black Robe Regiment, opposing the Cordoba house and fostering Islamophobia certainly seems part of Beck’s agenda. I’m guessing that agenda airs more on the side of the rigid than the loosey-goosey.
What’s really scary about The Blaze is that it purports to be actual news, rather than opinion. “We decided to hire some actual journalists,” Beck says. And his followers are likely to believe it.
Beck constantly complains about the shortcomings of “mainstream media” in reporting the news. The “Washington Post,” “New York Times,” and “Wall Street Journal” are news. The Blaze is not news any more than The Rachel Maddow Show, Keith Olberman, or the Huffington Post are news.
In the 24 hour news cycle, there is a demand for “newsy” entertainment. But whereas people on the left usually recognize people like Olberman, Maddow, Chris Matthews and Jon Stewart as smart, informed entertainers, the right tends to view people like Glenn Beck—and even scarier, her fellow TV personality Sarah Palin—as real political operatives.
In a time when cultural tensions are pushing extremists on the left and the right toward pyromaniacal tendencies (the right is burning Quaran, the left burning the Confederate flag) Beck’s choice in naming his site does seem apt. The question is what, exactly, will remain standing after the fire.
Computer Technology About to Get Way Smaller
August 31st, 2010 by Alex Moore
In computer technology, the ever-accelerating goal of shrinkage speeds forward.
“The New York Times” today reports that new breakthroughs are about to shrink computer chips yet again, finally making the Will Ferrell SNL skit with the tiny cell phone a reality.
We’ve come a long way since the days when computers that were basically glorified calculators took up the size of your living room. The ever-dwindling size of computer chips and shrinking ratio of required space per unit of information has changed the world, allowing you to listen to your iPod while tracking your location in Google Maps GPS while answering a text message, all at the same time.
I remember when I was a kid I thought that mobile video phone calls represented the end-all, be-all of the future, along with flying cars (and we apparently have those now, too).
So what’s next for personal technology in a world where shrinkage continues at warp speed? I can’t really think of anything I want my iPhone to do that it can’t do, and I don’t really want it to get any smaller—I can barely text on the thing as it is.
One thing is clear—no matter how bad things get in the world economy, our thirst for inexorably shrinking technology will not be stopped.
HP has just announced a major partnership with a semi-conductor company and IBM, Intel and others are pursuing a technology called phase-change memory, which reinvents the standard chip format. Investments in new chip technologies can cost up to $4 billion for each facility dedicated to building the new devices.
I’m sure no one knows what advances like phase-change memory computing will bring, but if history shows us anything, it’s that there will always be a guy like Steve Jobs to employ it in creating new functions we never even knew we wanted, but suddenly can’t live without.
Roger Clemens Clearly Never Saw Some of the Best Commercials of the ’80s
August 30th, 2010 by Alex Moore
Roger Clemens clearly missed the boat on some of the great PSA’s of the ’80s.
Sure, Latter-Day Saints and Jahova’s Wittnesses have always been creepy. But you gotta hand it to them—they dominated the public service announcement market in the ’80s.
Sure, the ’80s saw the onset of a great many world problems, AIDS being the chief disaster of the time. But that was mostly for Africans and homosexuals—these religious groups had a different target problem in mind: liars.
And who knew Latter-Day Saints would have such a penchant for musical theater? The LDS employed a narrative flair and catchy tunes to teach a generation of kids not to lie.
Unfortunately, Roger Clemens was not among this generation. Already a full-grown man in the ’80s, Clemens obviously missed the boat on a childhood filled with wonderfully informative PSAs that encouraged younger kids not to lie (and to be Mormons).
Clemens today pleaded not guilty to charges that he lied under oath before Congress in 2008, likely committing the dreaded “compound lie” so effectively warned against in the Mormon PSA: “When you tell one lie, it leads to another, so you tell two lies to cover each other, then you tell three lies and, oh brother, you’re in trouble up to your ears!”
In all likelihood Clemens is lying, and would have done well to heed the advice of the Latter-Day Saints (or anyone with any common sense). Maybe he’ll get to redeem himself by appearing in his own PSA as a cautionary tale on of these days.
But if he’s going to do that, he’s apparently going to have to learn to sing:
Glenn Beck Rally Draws Fewer Attendees Than Actual Civil Rights Rallies
August 30th, 2010 by Alex Moore
Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally fell short of its 100,000 attendance goal. Does that mean it didn’t work? Did honor not get restored this weekend?
Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally drew an estimated 87,000 attendees with a margin of error of plus or minus 9,000 people, which means it fell below Beck’s prediction that at least 100,000 people would show up.
This may be because there was no actual “cause” to rally behind. Beck is that consummate rebel without a cause whose rally was so vague in its purpose that it devolved in perception into simply a gathering of predominantly white people insisting that the top tax bracket for those earning over $250,000 be lowered just a few notches.
Glenn Beck as a conservative entertainer employs the same confusing self-loathing rhetorical device that his counterparts in politics like Sarah Palin like to employ—Beck is a media entertainer who hates “the media,” just as Palin is (or was, rather) a government official who hates “the government.” Taking the stage, mocking what he considered to be the media’s undercutting of his rally’s significance, Beck said, “I have just gotten word from the media that there is over 1,000 people here today.”
In a more nonsensical jab at “the media,” Beck addressed the broad criticism of his choosing the same date and location as Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech for his rally: “I had no idea August 28th was the day of the MLK speech when we booked it… I’m sorry, media, that I forgot the, oh, so important detail of the date.”
I’ve never understood the logic of politicians on the campaign trail railing about how government can not solve our problems. Why run for office if government can not solve our problems—andy why be so impassioned about the post?
Defending his ignorance of King’s speech is embarrassing in and of itself, but why be involved in media at all if he’s so convinced the medium is evil? Does he honestly believe that of the entire cross-section of media professionals reporting the news, that his is the only voice that’s valid?
This confusing mixed-message may be part of why Beck’s rally drew far fewer attendees than the 1963 civil rights protest (held on the same date) at which King delivered his seminal speech. “Black people should be allowed to vote” is a way easier message to rally behind than “restoring honor.” Whose honor? How do we define honor? And why should we trust a media-hating media mogul who calls our first black president a “racist” to define it for us?
As the “Washington Post” points out, Beck’s rally drew less than a quarter of 1995′s “Million Man March,” which was launched without Beck’s considerable funding prowess in the pre-internet era of 1995 to protest a Republican majority in Congress.
If Glenn Beck were truly galvanizing a populist movement in this country, with the benefits of communication afforded modern-day media mavens, he should have been able to draw way more than 87,000 people.
As it turns out, broad-scale xenophobia and lower taxes for the super-rich might not be quite the values of “honor” Americans are looking to restore right now.
Peter Lenz Crash Raises Questions Over Youth Racing
August 30th, 2010 by Alex Moore
Youth racing is a vital, sprawling culture. For aspiring young pros too young to have a regular license, ambitions run high and speeds even higher.
The control tower at New Jersey’s Raceway Park perches directly over the eighth-mile drag strip, its plate-glass windows looking down over twin lanes. The pavement, blackened in the foreground from where spinning wheels fuse with the traction glue sprayed at the line before each race, stretches exactly six hundred sixty feet, to where giant digital billboards announce speed and time readouts at the end of each lane.
The atmosphere in the tower room is tense as two drag cars cross the finish line in unison. “We got a paper jam on that readout,” yells a tower official into a walkie-talkie. “God, I hope we didn’t lose the results of that round,” mutters another official as she tries to un-jam the printer. “Tell Joanna she has to get to the line. Tell her it’s gonna be a bye-round.” The walkie barks back, “There are no bye-rounds in Juniors C!” Though you’d never know it from the tower, the drivers of the race below are both thirteen years old. And they are some of the older drivers who will race here today—seasoned vets, comparatively.
In 1988, Vinny Napp, owner of this track in Englishtown, New Jersey, began building a half-scale drag car for his son David to pilot. After submitting his designs to the National Hot Rod Association (the official governing body of professional drag racing) the first-ever official Junior Drag Race was held in July 1992 at the twenty-third annual Mopar Parts Nationals, with David Napp at the wheel. It was an instant phenomenon, and today the NHRA hosts four age brackets of Junior Dragsters nationwide—A through D—with drivers in the A bracket starting at just eight years old.
It’s a cloudless fifth of July in Englishtown and a long procession of junior drag racers is lined up, waiting to be called to the line. The youngest drivers are in front by the staging area—the dedicated space by the starting line where drivers perform burnouts, spinning their wheels on the pavement to warm them for better traction. Even at this age the roar from their miniature drag cars rattles your chest, although the driving is clumsier, and one of the next drivers up to the line runs over his mother’s toe as she accompanies him in for staging.
Farther back in line are the older racers, aged ten to sixteen, some of who have been racing half their lives. Nikki Robertson, sixteen, has been coming here from upstate New York to race since she was twelve. She consults with her parents and cajoles her peers with the easy camaraderie and fierce competitiveness of a dedicated athlete.
Today Robertson is sporting a nasty cut on the bridge of her nose and two alarming black eyes. “You believe that?” asks her mother Lynn. “She’s been driving a drag car ninety miles an hour for years and never a scratch. But her first softball game she gets a ball right in the face and breaks her nose. We have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to see if they need to set it.” Robertson is cavalier about her broken nose, but despite turning sixteen recently she has yet to apply for her driver’s permit—she was in a car that got into a minor accident last year, which left her spooked. “Out here I feel safe,” she explains. “In a regular car, I don’t know…”
The style of racing practiced in Junior Dragsters is called bracket racing, in which drivers “dial in” an estimated time to cross the finish line, and points are awarded for adhering precisely to the dial-in number, without going faster than predicted. This puts the focus on precision and reaction time off the line rather than sheer speed. Eight-year old drivers in the A bracket usually top out around fifty miles per hour, crossing the finish line in about twelve seconds, whereas drivers thirteen and older typically clock in around ninety, making it down the strip in about five seconds.
Many professionals practice outlaw, or heads-up racing, which prioritizes pure speed. Cars in the Top Fuel division can reach three hundred thirty miles per hour—and back to zero—in a quarter mile, making them the fastest-accelerating vehicles ever made—including space shuttles and the catapult-assisted jets that take off from aircraft carriers. The intense G-force experienced at these rates can cause retinas to detach—an affliction that forced Don Garlits, a pioneer of the sport, to retire.
Robertson’s car races across the finish line, easily beating her opponent, and without going faster than her dial-in time. Her reaction time off the line was better than her opponent’s by a little less than a quarter of a second, which made all the difference. “Oh yeah, this is what she wants to do,” Lynn says of her daughter’s professional aspirations. Two years ago, at age fourteen, she advanced through her division to earn a spot at the Eastern Conference national finals in Bristol, Tennessee. “Every year this track sends about four drivers to nationals,” Lynn explains, and Nikki has been driving well enough to qualify again.
The stakes are high, and so are the costs. Nikki’s car cost about thirteen thousand dollars. “The engine alone cost five thousand,” explains Lynn. Nikki’s father Ed, who works in sheet metal and who used to race drag cars, does all the maintenance on Nikki’s car himself. The car must be refueled after each race of the day, and the oil changed after each race day. And most families own elaborate trailers to house and transport their drag cars.
“We’re going after Dunkin’ Donuts to sponsor her,” Lynn continues. “Right now we’re paying for everything ourselves. And, you know, things are tight this year. I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it to nationals.”
Across the parking lot, the Payone family relaxes under a canopy next to their large trailer. The Payones have been a drag racing family since the father, John, who also races, introduced his three boys to the sport. Brandon, eleven, who races in the A bracket, lost his race today by “going red”—crossing the starting line before the light turned green. Julian, thirteen, races in the C bracket, and the eldest John, has just graduated from juniors to a full-sized drag car. Their trailer, easily twenty-five feet long, houses a golf cart for getting around the track grounds and three drag cars, all emblazoned with the Hooters logo.
“Right now it’s the Hooters at the Tropicana in Atlantic City that sponsors us,” explains Julian, “but we’re going after corporate.” “We have a brochure that lists all the stuff we do—going to nationals and everything,” says Brandon of how his father acquired their sponsorship deal. “He just walked in and talked to them, and they gave in.” All three Payone boys are intending to go pro when they’re old enough.
While a few families have secured sponsorship deals for junior racers, others invent team names and boast elaborate logo branding robust enough to rival anything sported by corporate-sponsored drivers. Elyse Climes, another top competitor in her division, races under the name “Hottie Girl.” Surprisingly reticent for a sixteen-year-old speed driver, Climes wears a pink tank top with the Hottie Girl logo, as does her mother Maryanne. The intricate “Hottie Girl” paint job on Climes’s car gleams with sparkle sheen, and their trailer bears a matching insignia.
Climes started racing at age nine. Her father, Kurt, who has never raced, brought Elyse to Raceway Park to watch the races as a spectator and she was hooked instantly. Now on her second drag car, she intends to go pro. “I want to be like Ashley Force someday,” Climes explains. Last year she qualified near the top of her division and raced at nationals in Bristol.
Like any sport competitive at a national level, drag racing requires serious commitment on the part of the drivers and their families. “None of my friends at school do anything like this,” Climes explains. “But they all go crazy when they find out what I do on the weekends.” Kurt maintains Elyse’s car between heats, but hires a mechanic to do the heavy lifting. “We had to have the engine fixed,” says Maryanne, a public school special-needs teacher, “and I had the engine in the back of my car. I’m trying to drop it off to the mechanic on the way to school, and I couldn’t get the thing out of the back seat.”
“It’s nice that the whole family comes out here together,” explains Lynn Robertson, at her trailer. Every junior driver at the track indeed seems to have two parents in tow, and every family appears to be working as a team, both as pit crew and managers. As if on cue, Nikki appears, interrupting, “Excuse me, but Mom, should I dial a five or a six this round?” Lynn is pensive—“Well, I’d maybe dial a six,” Lynn offers slowly, “but it’s your decision, honey.” Unsatisfied, Nikki leaves to consult her father.
Ed, with a no-nonsense good humor and a prized Golden Retriever named Randy The Race Dog, has been racing drag cars casually since the eighties, when his sister’s boyfriend introduced him to the sport. Nikki is his only child, and he expresses gratitude that she shares his passion for racing. “She has the dance, the softball—she’s done some of that stuff, but this is really nice, that we can share this together. It’s like, Hey, there’s something in it for me, too!”
The families who race at Englishtown travel from hundreds of miles in all directions, and many have developed friendships at the track. Next to the Robertsons’ trailer is Ed’s friend Dan Widtke and his daughter Tiffany. Tiffany is working with her father, patching a puncture in the tire of her car.
“A lot of the families that come out here have two cars,” Dan explains, “one for outlaw and one for bracket racing. But I can’t afford to have two cars. So I’ve got this car set to switch between different clutch and gear ratios, so it can do both outlaw or bracket.”
Dan is a die-hard drag car enthusiast, and he built the ornately painted car from the ground up for his daughter Tiffany, fifteen, who began racing at eight. He has two other daughters—one twenty-five and the other in college—who have also been racing since they were young. Tiffany has been driving exceptionally well—she’s been the subject of various newspaper articles, one of which hangs, laminated, inside their trailer—and she will likely qualify for nationals this year. But with the current economy, Dan doubts they’ll be able to make the trip to Bristol this year. “This year it’s a struggle. Just getting here is half the challenge. But hey, some people go fishing, some people golf—this is what we do. We race.”
Of the drivers competing here today, the Payone brothers are the only family I spoke to with plans to go to nationals. “Yep, we’re packing up and heading down tomorrow,” says Julian. For other young drivers, many of who are competing at the top of their division, getting to nationals is more than half the challenge. “It’s great going to nationals,” explains Lynn Robertson, “but when I think about how many thousands of dollars we spent for each second she’s actually out there on the track racing… I think this year it’s probably just a little much.”
But the challenges don’t seem to dampen the ambitions of the drivers, or their passion for the sport. Nikki has already started talking about racing her father’s Camaro, and she’s unwavering in her goal of driving professionally. “This is her thing,” explains her father. “Sure, she’s got other things, but this is what she wants to do. It’s like she always says—just don’t take away her engine.”
Editors’ note: There has never been a single injury sustained by a Junior Dragster, or any incident resulting in harm, during the entire history of racing at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park. D+T would like to thank Nick Goldman and the entire Raceway Park staff for making this story possible.
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