As we reach the halfway point of the NASCAR season, a surprise winner emerges in the Windy City (well, near the windy city to be more precise) MWR’s David Reutimann. It was a very emotional win for Reuti-Tooty and the Legend Buzzy Reutimann was there to experience the celebration. While this was Reutimann’s second career win, nobody but the announcers seem to really count the first one – a victory in Charlotte when the race was ended by rain and Reutimann didn’t pit with the leaders. Congrats to Reutimann and Michael Waltrip Racing.
In other NASCAR news Baby Girl Johnson arrived Wednesday July 7th. She still doesn’t have a name. Jimmie says he and Chani are taking their time – and they’re both very slow at making decisions. They call her Baby J for now. His night started out good – he led a large chunk of the race – the daylight portion – and then he missed pit road, spun around, and rolled 
across the finish line in 25th place. The only bright spot was that Kevin Harvick had more trouble than him and took his car to the garage early. Its a bright spot because Happy was mouthing off about how consistent he’s been this season, finishing in the top 10 in all of the races, not finishing 35th or 36th (referring to Jimmie’s several DNFs during the first half of the season).
Another bright spot on the NASCAR front – this was the LAST RACE ON TNT!!! The coverage has been horrific overall. The announcers astoundingly boring. The cameras always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lindsay Czarniak was thoroughly inappropriate in almost every situation. Larry McReynolds was more overbearing than usual (which I didn’t suspect was actually possible). The lack of televised post-race coverage (for the majority of the six races) left me feeling a bit cheated with regard to the coverage. All of the races they aired were easily the most boring broadcasts of the year. Kyle Petty has another job simply because of his last name. NO ONE who stammers as badly as he should be a professional broadcaster – it’s ridiculous. I will admit, his on-air presence has improved drastically over the past couple years. He no longer sounds like a bitter has-been/wanna-be, but he also doesn’t sound like someone who should be on television. Adam Alexander, one of my favorite radio broadcasters, should stick with radio. He distinctive voice is great on radio, but highly irritating on television. He seemed to be trying entirely too hard. His lack of confidence in his position combined with Kyle and Wally’s antics results a thoroughly amateurish and hard to watch/tolerate broadcast.
Pooh, the artist formerly known as LiverPooh, jumped and cheered this evening when I alerted her to the fact that this was the last TNT race. She’s looking forward to the Brickyard – it’s her favorite race of the season – and was dreading the thought of suffering through TNT coverage.
There was an announcement earlier in the week that Brian France has indicated NASCAR is looking toward making changes to the Sprint Cup Series in 2011, including changes to The Chase. I would like to see a change in the broadcast schedule; a removal of TNT from the line-up. I was looking at the television schedule for the remaining races. Typically ABC has all 10 of The Chase races, and ESPN has had the majority of the remaining races in the season. ABC typically airs one or two of them. It appears that schedule has changed. I wonder why – if its ratings related or what. The rumours are the changes will most likely include track(s) changes. There are a couple of tracks which have requested additional dates – Bruton Smith tracks; of course.
An aside, completely off topic, I’m sitting here watching Melanie Griffith in an episode of Miami Vice. I don’t know if this was in her coke days and that’s why she looks like she’s had to remember a lot of dialogue and is s busy trying to remember it that she doesn’t have time to act, or if that’s just another example of how badly she can act at times.
Other than that, I was offered a bit of a promotion at work which I turned down for various and sundry reasons. I’ve finished reading a few books LiverPooh brought back from Liverpool – none I’d recommend. And I’m on a health kick – reassessing and making decisions.