I went once for a look at the Race for the Pole at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Whatever it is I was supposed to see I saw. Whatever I expected the experience to be like turned out to be true.
The pig barn at the county fair stinks. The top fuel dragsters in Fremont smoked their slicks, shot flames out their exhaust pipes, and roared down the quarter-mile long asphalt raceway in the blink of an eye only to pop a parachute at the other end of the strip to bring them to a controlled halt.
Now comes this thing called the oldest trophy in sport, the America’s Cup. I thought the racing off Perth looked pretty darn exciting. I watched some of the racing from the comfort of a stool in a bar with a big screen. Nice….
My background is in entertainment, live entertainment, for audiences at festivals, street fairs, and such. My life has been dedicated to a low tech, high touch, get in close with an audience and make the interactivity of the experience the point of the matter. What I’m doing is not as important as what the mutual experience is doing for all of us.
So, from thirty rows up in the grandstands at turn four in Indianapolis I felt bonded to Roberto Guerrero’s pedal to the metal 200 miles per hour plus life threatening romp where he set a track record on that day back in 1992. They’ve intentionally depowered the vehicles and have walked the cars back from this mortal abyss. Still, I was there. I got it. Saw it with my own eyes.
The organizing concept of having the experience itself trump all else is a first principle in my book. The America’s Cup full sized high tech catamarans that will hit the San Francisco Bay next summer will be something to see. The real question, the real challenge for the America’s cup will be creating a venue that allows its fans the opportunity to be eye witnesses, to see it for themselves. Even with the race being held in the bay with fans lining the shores of Marin County, San Francisco, and Angel Island we might well remain mere distant witnesses.
One of my favorite forms of dance happens in the country and western honky tonks. It’s the two step. Get the girl of your dreams in your arms and you can pretty much count of things going your way. Squeeze that dream in a little tighter might even, turns out, you get lucky later that same night. And but for a price of a beer and the courage to ask a lady for a dance why a man can find more to life doing the two step than most anything else he might dream up doing. My recommendation to the America’s Cup committee is to get out of the city head on up to Placerville, Auburn, Sonora and get out on the floor and figure out how you can take that race you are planning and put it right into the arms of some desperate ready to go fans. If you can figure that one out they’ll love you with the whole of their heart for the rest of their lives. Good luck…
BANKRUPT HEART
He’d gotten up and gone to work frustrated with the rate at which he was able to accomplish anything. His frustrations had given way to ruminations. The miracle of this woman’s fine bottom— appreciated, with discretion, from a distance, in silence, out of respect— had fixed Ry’s mind upon the divine mystery of the force a woman’s anatomy could have over a man. It is a mighty force. His lower extremes became a chattering class. The power of her bottom had calved the main portion of Ry’s thinking into a boiling sea of urgency. Ry had lost his mate, and didn’t know how to go about finding someone just for sex. Ry lifted his eyes up and looked at her bottom from a distance. He wanted to confirm how big an impression it had made. It kind of made him feel like he didn’t know what to do. There he stood, a desperate man, caught in his coveralls. Where’s a man find someone he’s not in love with as a person, but who would allow him to have strong feelings toward her bottom?
Bankrupt Heart Copyright © 2011 by Dana Smith
THE SECOND NOVEL
