– This is kinda old but I had to post these photos (there’s one below too). Vince Vaughn attended the race at Texas to promote 
his new movie “Fred Claus.” He is a hot, hot man and I like him a lot. I don’t like mincing words when it comes to the awesomeness that is Vince Vaughn — he had me at “Swingers.” And ya know it did cross my mind that my name starts with a V and well it’d be really cool if we got married ’cause we’d have the same intials. But anyway… you really didn’t need to know that.
– Even though it’s coming from Kurt Busch, it’s nice to know that one of the drivers agrees with me on the lameness that is only the top 10 chasers getting the royal treatment — and not the top 12 as it should be — in New York this year:
“All the Chase drivers want to finish at least in the top 10 in the points,” Kurt said. “The way they have it this year is that there are 12 drivers in the Chase, but only the top 10 get to drive their show cars around Manhattan and take to the stage at the NASCAR Awards Banquet. It’s a case of team pride and wanting to be able to do all you can for your sponsors. To tell you the truth, as hard as all the teams work toward making the Chase, it’s kind of sad that two teams get left out like that. I really don’t understand that, but I guess you just have to accept it and go on.”
– Are you on Facebook? If you are you should check out the page I made and become a fan of “The Fast and The Fabulous.” I’ll be your best friend.
Everything’s bigger in Texas, except these guys, they really are that tall.
Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki (left) talks with actor Vince Vaughn at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)
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Geoffrey Miller over at AOL Fanhouse doesn’t seem to think that Jeff Gordon will be able to get past Jimmie Johnson for the Championship this weekend at Homestead:
After Johnson’s late-race domination at Phoenix — a race in which he led the final 24 laps — Johnson leads Gordon’s No. 24 team by 86 points. The basic math on that is that Gordon must win and lead the most laps at Homestead and Johnson has to finish 18 or worse.
In other words, it’s not going to happen.
While I could care less if Jimmie or Jeff wins the Championship, I still can’t let go of the hope that Jeff could still pull out the win in the end. I never give up until it’s all said and done. Why? Because I don’t want it to be boring — and if no one else is going to keep it interesting for me I’ll do it myself. Yes, the chances are slim but I’d rather cling to slim ones instead of none at all. It’s already boring as hell to see Jimmie win four-in-a-row. While it’s a very cool thing to accomplish, it doesn’t happen every day, but as a non-Jimmie fan it’s annoying.
Then factor in the fact that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is going into this final race of the season winless and you have a very irked Valli.
In other news…
During the coverage of the race at Phoenix Dr. Jerry Punch noted that at the Championship banquet in New York this year only the top 10 of the 12 drivers will be on stage. Ok. Whose incredibly lame idea was that? If I was one of the two drivers in the bottom I would feel totally gypped. That’s like the Olympics committee saying “oh, wait, we’ve only got room on the podium for the first place winner.”
(Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
After barely sleeping through the night with a slight hangover, I made it to the next day of sessions on Friday. The first session of the day focused on gaining access to the players, coaches & league of your choice. All of the guys on the panel were pro baseball bloggers and the people in the audience were either football or basketball. So in addition to being the only lady in the room I was also the only NASCAR blogger too. I asked a question towards the end of the session and sort of talked about my own experiences with getting access to NASCAR.
This kind of opened things up and from that I met Tyler Bleszinski co-founder of the SB Nation, who also writes the Athletics Nation blog (Go A’s!), and Matt Cerrone of MetsBlog.com. I went to lunch with them and had a great time explaining how I got into NASCAR and getting advice on how I could improve my site.
Mark Cuban gave the final keynote speech of the convention and his opinion on ads really kinda made me think. He thinks that you should do without them, or at least not be so heavy handed with them. He pointed out that his blog has no advertising on it whatsoever, but then again he doesn’t really need to have advertisers because he has more money than like Jesus. But still his talk was interesting and I appreciated his straightforward honest approach.
I cannot say enough about how wonderful everyone was — I knew that this convention was something that I had to do and I think all of this will get me even closer to my goal for next year.
On this trip I realized a few small things…
I flew back from Las Vegas this afternoon and I’m finally at the point where I feel like I can write about my Blog World & New Media Expo experience with some sort of clarity.
First off, I have to say that the registration fee of $175 was well worth the money. The thing that pushed me to actually sign up for the expo was the fact that there was a sports blogging track (sponsored by SB Nation). After I saw that I was like I have to go to this thing or else I’ll totally regret it. And the fact that it was in Vegas was ya know very helpful. Vegas is so much fun.
For those that didn’t attend Blog World this year I feel sorry for ya. I met some great people and made invaluable connections — people that I probably couldn’t have met any other way. If you’re a blogger of any kind you should definitely go next year, I’m sure it’ll be even bigger and better next September.
I’m giving you the full rundown because basically this is my blog and I want to. So I arrived on Wednesday evening-ish and I found that my hotel, Renaissance Las Vegas, was just steps away from the convention center. This was perfect, it saved on cab fare and it was nice to be able to just go back to the hotel whenever.
Thursday was the first day and I didn’t spend much time in the exhibition hall which I kinda regret only because I missed out on a bunch of swag. I saw people with t-shirts, stickers, notepads, keychains, etc. There are tons of photos on Flickr.
Like I said before my main reason for going to this thing at all was the sports blogging sessions. I packed my “Who The Hell is Mel Kiper?” t-shirt in hopes of breaking the ice. It’s an NFL reference and if you have no idea what it’s about check out the Mel Kiper page on Wikipedia. Anyway, since I was the only girl in all of the sports blogging sessions I felt it necessary to prove that I knew what I was talking about. Thanks to Mel, well actually Bill Tobin, I met Jamie Mottram. Jamie works for Yahoo! Sports. He was incredibly nice and asked to take a photo of me and my Kiper shirt for his personal sports blog Mr. Irrelevant. Very cool.
Thursday night featured the Opening Night “Pajama” Party at the Hard Rock Hotel in The Joint. Seriously all you had to say to me was “free drinks” and I’m there. But the party organizers went the extra mile and added free food too. It was fun and a great opportunity to meet new people and do a little bit of networking.
>> to be continued <<
Due to the Writers Guild strike in Hollywood Rusty Wallace will not be able to continue his NASCAR race coverage duties… Hold on, someone is handing me a note.
You mean he actually writes that stuff himself? Huh? Oh, he just says whatever comes to mind? Damn. Oh well, I must correct myself, it looks like Rusty will still be on air this weekend. Grr… I won’t get to watch new episodes of “House” but I have to watch Rusty Wallace repeat things that other people just said?? What kind of world are we living in? I mean really.
In other news…
– I’m on my way to Las Vegas for the Blog World & New Media Expo. There’s heavy fog in the San Francisco Bay Area so my flight is late, that still can’t dampen my spirit. I’m sooo excited to be spending three nights in Vegas, and hopefully meeting other cool bloggers.
– I was sent an email alerting me to a video about a guy that races cars in his spare time. It was sent to me by the nice folks at IntoTheBox.tv — they cover the wacky real estate market in New York — check it out below or click this link. My first and lasting thought about this video was “Wow, he’s hot… hmm, is he single? I don’t see a ring!” hehe.
As the NASCAR season winds down I got to thinking about commercials. More specifically, which ones were my favorite and now, without further adieu, I give you my list of the top 5 2007 NASCAR commercials. From fifth to first:
5.) Dale Jr. & The Desert Mutants (Budweiser) — This is by far Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s best commercial acting job to date. He’s funny and I don’t know why he doesn’t give in and host Saturday Night Live, he couldn’t be worse than LeBron James was awhile ago. I’m just sayin’. View video below or click here.
4.) Toyota Pit Pass (Toyota) — It seems like every year NASCAR and those that cover it are trying to figure out more ways to get the fans close to the action. This Toyota commercial seems to take that idea to the extreme by allowing fans to ride along with their favorite drivers, or should I say hover above their favorite drivers, going 180 mph. It’s funny (sad?)because it seems like this could actually happen one day when NASCAR exhausts all other options for fan integration. View the video below or click here.
3.) Dale Jarrett & his dad Ned (UPS) — I like Dale Jarrett in general and the series of “Race The Truck” commercials have been great, but this is my hands down favorite from this year. Dale’s dad Ned makes a cameo in this UPS commercial posing as his son and hilarity ensues. View the video “Imposter” at UPSRacing.com
2.) Michael Waltrip’s Fan Letters (NAPA Auto Parts) — Michael Waltrip is such a character and I love him for it. I love this commercial because they were able to take their lemons and make some seriously funny lemonade! He hasn’t had the best season, that’s a huge understatement, and to have the ability to make fun of yourself in spite of that is awesome. View the video below or click here.
1.) Lauren Wallace (Geico) — My favorite line from this commercial is “I didn’t say I wouldn’t go fishing with the man.” Cracks me up every time. This ad is the best because of so many things but for the most part it’s the direction, which reminds me of a Wes Anderson movie (Check out The Royal Tenenbaums or Rushmore) and of course the star is Lauren himself. This kid should totally get his own show, I mean the Geico cavemen have their own sitcom, why not Lauren? View the video below or click here.
