R.L. Burnside

Yesterday on Facebook the One Big Loud Guy told me he found a photograph I took of R.L. Burnside in 1998 on someone's blog. It's one of my favorites of the pictures I have taken and I think the blogger found the picture on the Wikipedia entry about R.L. I realized that I hadn't ever scanned the negative of this photograph, only the print. Last night I scanned the negative and it do look better.

Graffiti is Fun

This made me laugh.

Wouldn't wish this upon anyone

I post this because it's not just sinking a shot to win the game that makes sports fascinating, the agony of failure is just as alluring, if not more.

Spring!

Today at lunch I walked to Bojangles for a grilled chicken sammich. Yummy. On the way there I took some pictures of the blossoms. They are pretty but right now the whole town smells like tree spooge.

Never Go Full Retard

We've seen it a hundred times but it never gets not funny.

Tropic Thunder : Film Clip - Nobody Goes Full Retard - watch more funny videos

Scary Weather

Yesterday some big thunderstorms blew through the area and we had a rare tornado watch. Most of the severe action was north of us. We had some heavy rain and some nice thunder but no heavy winds. The video below was posted on the website of our local newspaper. It was shot about fifty miles northeast of Charlotte.

Crazy is as crazy does

There was a Teabagger event this weekend. One of the signs is below. Until this crap stops I will not listen to a thing these whack jobs say. Portraying the president of your country as some kind of cross between the Joker and Hitler? You want to be taken seriously? George W. Bush had to start a war and be personally responsible for thousands of deaths before the most extreme of the left made Hitler comparisons. What does Obama do? Attempt to fix a broken health care system and now he's Hitler? It's insane.

Only in Southpark

Only in Southpark will you see a group of middle aged men gathered around a new Chevrolet supercharged muscle car owned by Rick Flair. Melanie and I rode our bikes to the Harris Teeter today to get some bacon and after we locked our bikes up on a light post (still no bike rack at the Morrocroft Harris Teeter) we saw a beautiful Chevrolet supercharged Camaro being shown off to a group of guys by some guy in his late fifties or early sixties. He turned it over and it made that awesome "woom" noise only an American muscle car makes when it fires up. As it idled that car was humming beautifully and he popped open the hood. We walked over and ooo'ed and ah'ed with the rest of them and he smiled like he was showing off his new baby. I heard a passerby shout out "Nice car, Rick" and I realized this was Rick Flair. Kinda cool, I thought. He closed the hood and shut the car off and Melanie and I walked inside the store and he went to get some coffee at Starbucks. We caught him driving off after we got our bacon. I then remembered I had my camera in my backpack and popped off a few shots of this beautiful car. I'll have to ask Glenn the Car Guy to tell me for sure whether that car is a Camaro. It has to be, I can't think of what else it would be. He'll know. He'll probably poop himself when he sees the pictures.

Some of them Flickr Finds

A ship heading into Suttons Bay




We don't go to races just for wrecks but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy them (some people set their Flckr accounts up so that they block embedding. I don't know why. Don't they post to Flickr in order share their photographs with the world?)

Another ancient place I had never heard of until recently, the Castle of Belogradchik.





Taken, I think at Sherman Park in Sault Ste. Marie, MI.





Managers Miller Huggins, St. Louis NL, and John McGraw, New York NL, with umpire William T. "Bill" Brennan, 1913





The world famous Cedar Tavern in Cedar, MI.

Cars on the track go round and round

Yesterday I went out to the Charlotte Motor Speedway to watch NASCAR test the new spoiler. I was unaware of the test until all the people in my Twitter NASCAR list started talking about it. I got out to the track around three and stayed for an hour.

There was a small crowd so I was able to park in the lot right in front of the track's main entrance. One of my favorite sounds is what you hear when you are outside the Charlotte Motor Speedway and you can hear individual cars going around the track. You can hear the engines rev up and slow down as they leave and enter the corners and there is a reverb to sound unlike any other. It's impossible to not start walking faster as you get closer to the track entrance.

As far as removing that wing and putting the spoiler back on: hooray! The cars look like race cars again, not something a teenager would drive to impress girls. I never did cotton to the wing because of how it looked and because it made the cars more susceptible to going airborne during a spin. So good riddance. Even the drivers prefer the spoiler over the wing.

They will be testing today from 10-3 and the grandstands are open to the public and it's free to get in. No charge to watch cars go 190 mph. You can't beat that.

I took a few pictures while I was there.

Here is why we were all there. A spoiler on the back of a stock car, just as God intended.


Juan Pablo Montoya


Mark Martin. I'm really happy with this picture. It's hard to pan and capture an image this tight when your subject is going 180 mph.


Jeff Gordon. I like the black car.


I'm not sure who this is going into turn 1 but I like it.


I tried this shot about ten times and three were not of an empty track.


Kyle Busch approaching the start/finish line on the front stretch.