Grading the Winternationals
B-, C+
All Kidding ASIDE,
For The Most Part,
El Blando By The
El Merandero
Coming into the year-opening NHRA Winternationals, I was a little more jacked than I usually am. Normally, the race is more of an I-gotta rather than I-wanna. However, after a month of rejuvenation of sorts, I felt like Blind Willie Johnson, my lamp was trimmed and burnin’. I was more than curious in seeing what my blue oval 57-year-old girlfriend looked like after nearly suffering a terminal facelift from the HD Partners corporate stegosaurus.
During the off season, the beast appeared to be on the verge of ingesting her. The monster hemmed and hawed as she lay prone on the Glendora desert floor, the ghostly wail of Wally Parks bouncing off the walls of the Sierra Madres. And then suddenly it turned away with Tom Compton’s $6-7 million dollar briefs dangling from one of its horns. The ghostly shrail transmogrified into raucous laughter that sounded like a cross between the chords of Eddy Hartenstein and O. (Oliver or Olivia?) Bruton Smith.
(Aside 1) I hope that the rumored new NHRA boss doesn’t go by his first initial. I instinctively distrust someone who does that. For one thing, it sounds snobby as hell and second, it tells me the cat’s embarrassed by his first name. So, if you’re cut throat corporate competitive, as he is, why would you leave yourself open to a figurative kick to the chops? If not Olivia, is it Orenthal, Omar, or Osama? What, what, what, McHale?
Anyway…
(Aside 2) My poor buddy Tom. Many’s the night we’d cruise South Central jockin’ the bitches and slappin’ the whores, arm wrestling “Shug” Knight and the Mob Pirus at Chester’s Grind House on Imperial Highway. And now he returns to Pomona wiping the lemon meringue from his brow, slipping furtively in and out of the pressroom like a leper. Humming to himself what sounded to some like “Take Me Back” by Little Anthony and the Imperials. Seeking relief he looks skyward, he hallucinates a stiff celestial middle finger from Mr. Parks. Bah, humbug or whatever…
Okay, for the moment, so much for the non-opening Golden Parachute that puts him through the roof of the El Merandero and into the taco broiler.
He’s still a young man. Don’t worry. There WILL be blood. Daniel Day Lewis be damned. Someday you bastards will pay for those smirks.
[Note to NHRA PR types: Lest you once again get upset with something Martin has written and think it is a threat of some sort, let us explain to you that this is his sense of humor. He is exaggerating for comic effect. Chris is not saying that Tom and he were actually cruising South Central L.A. nor that Tom landed in a taco broiler at El Merandero. -Ed.]