highlifer

After attending my first NASCAR race this spring, I was overwhelmed with the desire to learn more about the economics of it. Despite quite a few years of watching the races on TV, I was unprepared for the sheer scale of it. So many truckloads of merchandise. Each team has several truckloads, and all are busy. The race gets pretty relentless in the middle, and everyone wanders around and goes shopping. Oh, and did I mention that you can bring in your own beer? Coolers that could fit small toddlers are wheeled into the stadium with just a cursory inspection. After getting searched to get into football games, this was a real culture shock to me, but an altogether pleasant experience. So when I stumbled upon the book Sunday Money I thought that with a title like that it would surely shed some light on the inner workins of the sport and the tour.

Sadly this is The. Worst. Book. Ever. The premise is, Macgregor and his wife buy a motor home and do the entire 2002 NASCAR season. I sensed I was in trouble when the entire first chapter was about the buying of the motor home. (Who cares?) Essentially, Macgregor doesn't like NASCAR, he has preconceived notions of what is going to happen (the fans will be rednecks) and so he reports when fans act like rednecks, and when he goes to California, and they aren't as rednecky, he mocks them for being "Califorian." He shares no knowledge about what team members do, about what drivers do, though he does digress tell us what people in the pressbox do. Again, I say, Who Cares? He mocks Darrell Waltrip's Beloved catchphrase, "Boogity Boogity Boogity."He claims that the people who attend NASCAR events spend "money they don't have on things they don't need", as if he took time to talk to any of them about how much money they made, or it is any of his business how people spend their own money. Jeff Macgregor is an elitist asshole, who has written a book about NASCAR for NPR listeners who don't like the sport and have no intention of becoming fans. Fuck him.

posted by jamie @ 10:10 PM