This is not a column about sports. It is about NASCAR and Goldeneye. And no, NASCAR is not a sport. Call it a phenomenon, a game, a hobby, perhaps the new opiate of the masses, but it’s not a sport. And the fact that it’s not a sport makes it so hard for me to understand the fable that I am about to weave for you. Check it:
There’s an ad on TNT for NASCAR. Cars whiz by, flags wave and beer-clutching mullet-men yell loudly. And then the voice-over asks you, “What is Drama?”
The answer, as related by a dozen members of Rusty Wallace’s pit crew, is “27 men with one goal: FOORTEEN SECKIND PEET STAWPS.” That’s drama, my friends.
When I came back from the summer, my roommate had discovered “the drama.” He loved NASCAR.
Who does that?
I guess it was the first Sunday back, when we still got cable for free, that I realized his obsession. He told us all how his friends from the summer had gotten him into the “sport” and how much he loved Bobby Labonte.
My roommate, Nick, sat down on the soiled futon around noon and packed a phatty dip with his trusty Nantucket Nectars bottle as a spit cup. (Side note: My uncle’s friend once drank a spit cup after a Redskins game, then immediately vomited. Try it sometime!)
Then he turned on FOX, and like millions of other Americans?and by “American” I mean from the “Big K,” cutoff jeans and weak chins?he stared at cars going around a track really, really fast for about five hours.
“Did you see Mark Martin take that curve and draft Gordon! Holy Shit!”
“Dude, what’s a draft?”
“My GOD, here comes Bobby!!!”
What happened to football, I thought. The Nick I knew loved Jerry Rice more than anything, and here he was watching sheet metal flying around a big oval. Why do people do this? I thought NASCAR only consisted of stickers with Calvin pissing on some racer’s number.
And who are the fans? Aren’t they are bloated, beer-guzzling rednecks that sit behind a fence and wear earplugs and hold up three fingers when a car with a Miller Genuine Draft sign on the hood speeds by, almost maiming or impaling 13 fans, among them toothless little girls with tattoos. Right? They like Arena football, don’t they? And they come from places like Pensacola, Greensboro and Jacksonville? These are the people that order Girls Gone Wild and scrawl “Tonya and Carl 4Ever” on wooden telephone poles. They name their children “Misty,” “Candi” and “Billy-Ray.” Hardees, not Burger King. KOOLs, not Marlboros. And the defining question?Sleeves or no sleeves??can only be answered by the latter. I thought I knew these NASCAR people.
It was all a cruel trick. My roommate is from upstate New York, majors in Theology and played lacrosse in high school. Like Ray and Egon crossing their lasers, I was watching a deadly collision, a social clash that would yield forever catastrophic results. Can you like Bon Jovi and Ricky Rudd at once? Do Hegel and hot dogs have common ground? In my quest for answers, I turned to my ever-steady saving grace.
His name was Rodney, and he was from Kenya. Yes, there was a Kenyan distance runner named Rodney in my apartment for some amount of time. Has this ever happened to you? Well, neither me, until then. See, Rodney runs track at Towson, and he came down that weekend to visit my other roommate, Shravan, a Kenyan political dissident. Shravan was expelled from the nation a few years ago after Nairobi officials realized he liked playing field hockey. But that’s another story …
So, as constant as Warren Sapp’s cornrows, Rodney was my rock during that stressful time. He sat on the couch for about a week, playing James Bond Goldeneye on N64, a game which tests your skill in, well, murder. Hell, it even makes murder fun! You get to shoot your enemies in the head with sniper rifles and blow them up with remote mines planted neatly on walls and behind doors. The victims scream in pain as blood drools down the screen, followed by the familiar James Bond theme fading into eternity. Until you press restart. Then you get to kill again.
I don’t know why, but Rodney was to Bond what Bonds it to homers, that is, pretty friggin’ good. One of my friends asked him if he was in the Kenyan militia.
“No, man,” he quietly answered. Then he shot me. Egad, this guy was more accurate than Mark Price. He never missed. You’d fly around a corner, eyes locked on that golden gun lying in the center of the room. And as you ran toward it, certain you were about to pick it up, BAM. You die.
And Rodney was there with his sight locked on you, gun still smoking, smiling like Death himself. I can even picture the kid, lanky and dark, moping around Limbo in a cloak with a scythe, or co-starring in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.
Dante couldn’t come up with a scarier guy. Imagine rolling up to the river Lethe, and hopping on the raft to descend into the depths of hell. You look up, expecting a skeletal figure with eyes of fire. Instead, your escort says “Oy mate, welcome to Hades. Want a Parliament?” Wow. Perhaps this isn’t frightening to you, but dear Rodney was a killing machine.
And so I woke up every morning, knowing that Nick, like Wolverine, was doomed to a lifelong psychological conflict known only to Mutants, except without the whole “deadly claws on Adamantium” thing. Was he redneck, or friend? And I woke up, knowing that if Nick ever crossed the threshold and became one of “them,” I would always have someone to kill him.
Yes, Rodney. Rodney would kill him. With a sniper rifle, in the Stack.
Duh-DUH-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh …
