Mad Kings, Religious Fanatics, and the Brave New World

Well, the first race in the United Factions of American Open-Wheel has been completed. The results are either awesome, decent, mixed, sad, contemptible or unimportant, depending on who you ask. Since this is my blog, I'll say all of the above.

Greetings to whomever reads this, in days and/or years to come.

I am called either
1) Firefox, deranged, sociopathic advocate of universal freedom of speech on all fronts (be it either hate speech, love speech, mad speech or a blank stare);
2) Wraith, young whippersnapper who claims to know entirely too much about motorsports for the meager number of years I have attained (24), or
3)...Chris, one-time semi-temporary columnist for the great, lamented ("shut down by its owners for God knows why") motorsports website racingnewsonline.com of yesteryear, the one who wrote the weird piece "The Way You Move to the Killer Groove," among others.

You can call me any of the three you wish when commenting, or nothing at all and ignore me; I don't really care. I have created this blog for the primary purpose, straight up, of commenting upon the world of American Open-Wheel Racing (AOWR)...IndyCars, for those not yet enlightened as to the particularities of the style, or those having the...unfortunate...notion of such subject having anything to do with the world of NAStyCAR and its Barnum&Bailey circus bullshit. Far too many people have the idea that NAS is synonymous with racing in America, just as the term Wrestling has all too often been considered as completely co-opted by a man who sees it as synonymous with chairs flying all over the room and heavy metal rock blasting at 30,000 decibals, all surrounding men who enter a ring without knowing the rules of real wrestling if it came up and busted their face with a two-by-four and shouted "Here's you; here's a clue! Get a clue!"

Sorry; my tangents can get out of hand sometimes. Open-Wheel of all types, be it AOWR, Formula One, sprints, midgets, classical open-wheel machines of decades past, whatever; sports car racing also catches my interest, as does racing that has nothing at all to do with automotive prowess: thoroughbred horses, especially the neverending search for that most glorious of crowns...Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes in a single year. In a word, what I love is RACING...which precludes, immediately, any reference to NASCAR that does not involve contempt of some form. You simply will not find it here, so if that is what you are looking for, here is pleading with you to go elsewhere.

Anyway. Later today, I will begin commenting about the race that was held down in Miami last night, the meaning of everything that American open-wheel racing in general is going through...and the meaning of open-wheel itself, on the larger scale of the 20th and 21st centuries. Here's hoping I can attract one or two listeners, through it all, and make a few people think some things they may have never thought before.

Hurrah for the men of the cast-iron chariots.