The Paddock Pulse: December 7 Edition

I was going to go on and on about today being Pearl Harbor Day, and how appropriate the phrase "A day which will live in infamy..." was to describe another issue of the Paddock Pulse.

Then I remembered that Pearl Harbor happened 70 years ago and that the 18-34 demographic that SBN so desperately covets considers that to be in the same time period as, say, Napoleon or Quetzalcoatl, so I decided to bag it.

Anyway, it's December now and racing is entering the one month of the year where there's really not too much going on except for drivers downloading new apps to their smartphones and unwittingly spam-Tweeting thanks to a little-understood line in the app's privacy policy.

But the blogosphere NEVER SLEEPS (seriously, are you guys all hopped up on Tantrum or something?), so the Pulse nobly goes forth into the off-season abyss.

• The Off Season as it Stands Today [anotherindycarblog]
  Gotta hand it to Eric - he makes it sound like there is something more to say about the off-season than THERE IS NO FRIGGING RACING. Glass half empty, it's like describing the texture and flavor of cigar smoke while knowing IT WILL TOTALLY KILL YOU SOMEDAY, but hey - props for the effort, my man!

• If IndyCar Personalities Ghostwrote Dickens [IndyCar Advocate]
  A tip to all of you aspiring Pulse guest-stars - when you try to be CLEVER and SMART instead of snarky and smartassed, you will almost certainly get mentioned in the Pulse. In other words, do as I say, not as I do.

• An IndyCar/Christmas Vacation Holiday Extravaganza [New Track Record]
  Mixing genres is always a funny exercise, but National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is something of a special case. This is largely because the movie's signature line, "MERRY CHRISTMAS! SHITTER'S FULL!" is so universally applicable that it may end up being its own language someday.

• Jim Rathmann: The True Racer [Oilpressure]
  The obvious joke here is that George's exceptional piece on Jim Rathmann is so good because George was one of Jim's contemporaries (i.e. HE'S OLD! RIMSHOT, DAMMIT!). I'm not going to make that joke, though, because I've got class. Also? George may use his mummy magic to make beetles crawl out of my ears.

• Bernard Moves to Get His People in Place [pressdog.com]
  Just when you think Bill is going to be satisfied with posting links to press releases and podcasts while POUNDING THE SHINER BOCK, he says, "Don't piss me off, rookie," and lays the everloving journalistic smackdown on us all again. (By the way, when he tweets "BAM!" he's actually shooting medium-sized animals that dared to encroach on his property. It's science.)

• INDYCAR: Driver Market Heating Up [SPEED/Miller]
  The thing I love about Robin Miller is that he possesses an inner pajama-clad, basement-dwelling blogger that allows him to write stuff so pulled-out-of-ass that you need Preparation H Eyedrops to read it. It's endearing and helps us remember that he puts his pants on one leg at a time like us - right after he rushes to scoop big news commando-style.

• Ten Questions with the Left Lobe of Motorsport [WideOpenWheel]
  Now, "The Left Lobe of Motorsport" is no "Great Bird of the Galaxy" as far as monikers go, but it's still heady enough that Daniel Incandela might want to remember to keep his wits about him. After all, Gene Roddenberry - the aforementioned "Great Bird" - eventually came to believe he was a visionary of humanity's future and that we would all evolve into sentient marshmallow people or something. That's why he was cremated - you don't want to reanimate a brain like that.

Driver Tweet of the Week

@paultracy3: i still cant believe battle of the supercars got suspended on speed for shows like pumped , my car rules and dumbest stuff on wheels

Last But Not Least

My arse let's go. They're filming midgets.