It’s late May, which means it’s time for our annual catch-up with Danica Patrick. Everyone seems to be getting all riled up about how Danica has never won anything, but the “uncensored” GoDaddy commercials where nobody gets naked are the true crime. Do I want domain registrars peddling that sort of smut? Why, yes. Yes I do.

Anyway, Danica was supposedly booed at qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 for comments about her car was the worst she had ever had. Her comments were audible through the public address system at the track, and according to reports, she was booed mightily. Wow, we’re ceding to the judgement of the people of Indianapolis? Wait until they have a auto race in Waco.

And then Danica was invited to ESPN for a press event, only to be held up at the gate with another driver. That sounds like a SportsCenter commercial there. She cannot get through the gate! The gate is narrow!

I’ll be honest. I think those of you whining about Danica’s presence in racing need to get a life. It’s Indy car racing. Why do you even care? Are you distraught that she’s taking away attention from…uh, that guy that was on “Dancing With The Stars?” Oh, what’s his name again? And the only reason we keep hearing about her is because the race is on ABC and we don’t know or care about any of the other drivers. And with your little kvetching, you’re making things worse. Yes, I’m complaining about you complaining about Danica Patrick. Now let’s just call this off before we rip a hole in the space-time continuum.

He very well could be, at least as far as Esquire magazine’s “Sexiest Woman Alive” tournament is concerned.

Heading into Esquire magazine’s so-called “Sexiest Woman Alive Madness” tournament as the Sports bracket’s Number 16 seed, USC head coach Lane Kiffin has shocked the world by making amazingly easy work of the Number 1 seed, Natalie Gulbis, in the first round. By defeating the gorgeous golfer by a whopping margin of 56% to 44%, Kiffin has advanced to the second round and will now face auto racing Danica Patrick in the Round of 32.

According to the mag, “both have broken barriers for women in sports, and Patrick is tough as they come. But the USC coach is just so… sweet.” (note: the “sweet” alluded to is in reference to this tweet by Kiffin, where he informed his Twitter followers that “Bon jovi was awesome last night!!” When aren’t they, Lane? When aren’t they?

Here is how Esquire sees the upcoming battle between Kiffin and Patrick:

LANE KIFFIN, 34
• Such a pretty girl. Sure raises a ruckus.

DANICA PATRICK, 28
• The prettiest thing in racing since Jeff Gordon.

It is sure to be a thrilling battle of epic proportions between the two lovely ladies – as thrilling as a flawed online vote can be where a person is theoretically allowed to vote multiple times, that is. With that said, be sure to vote here for Kiffin as many times as possible. Few things come to mind that would be more entertaining (in a nightmare fuel kind of way) than Kiffin somehow claiming the title as 2010′s Sexiest Woman Alive and the subsequent sultry photo shoot, a la 2009′s winner, Kate Beckinsale. Scary stuff.

Danica Patrick made her NASCAR debut yesterday in Daytona, and things didn’t go as well as she’d hoped.  Not only did she not win, she didn’t even finish.  She tried to work her way out of a 12-car orgy and ended up crashing herself.

Patrick finished sixth in last week’s ARCA event at Daytona, and felt comfortable enough to move her NASCAR debut up a week to the Nationwide opener. The IndyCar star went into Saturday’s start saying her main goals were finishing the race, staying out of trouble and learning as much as she can.–Fox Sports

Danica spent much of the race outside the top 20 and then the top 30, but to be fair, someone has to be last so it may as well be her.  Both Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the race’s winner Tony Stewart came to Patrick’s defense, citing the uniqueness of the Daytona event in general and the fact that she didn’t crap out sooner as reasons she’s legit.

“We’ll go to these other tracks where she’ll literally be driving the car, it’ll be handling good or bad,” Earnhardt said. “Then people can start forming their opinions on what kind of learning curve she has. But I feel pretty confident. She’s been in a tough situation with the media and the pressure and the attention, I couldn’t have done it.”–Fox Sports

All of the hype is certainly good for business.  There are plenty of sadists in this world that will tune in just to see if she fails.  However, she’s hot, young trim behind a powerful machine in a man’s sport–if she starts winning she’s going to be like a unicorn.  As long as she never lets herself go, anyway.  Then she’d be completely useless.

In a move that I assume is only news because it means women are allowed to drive in the Confederacy, Indy Racer Danica Patrick had her first stock car draft practice yesterday.  BEEP BEEP!

She and 59 other drivers did stuff like drive next to each other, drive in front of each other, drive in packs, turn left, turn left again, and probably drink beer and shoot empty oil cans in the pit area with their rifles.

Crew Chief Tony Eury Jr. had this to say about her first day:

She’s doing really good. Drafting is not something that you learn overnight. She has done really good learning how to stay in a pack, learning what the car does in different aero situations. We’re pretty pleased. I think I need a little more speed in the car just in single car runs. Overall, it has been a good successful day. We’ll come back here tomorrow and let her draft a little bit more and I think we will be game on.–Foxsports.com

This morning she gets to drive fast and turn left all by herself, followed by more practice in which they go over things like changing lanes and not running into other cars.  It’s really nice to see that she’s “done really good” in a move to less complicated driving.  She gives me hope for the day when I want to regress to not being able to tie my own shoes and drooling on myself.

Noted bloggerati Unsilent Majority and Sarah Schorno spent a weekend in Vegas to check out the new Lagasse’s Stadium. It’s a new restaurant and bar nestled squarely into the Palazzo hotel lobby, promising entertainment and food and over 100 HDTVs in case you hate everyone at your table. UM and Sarah wrote something up for their trip about the newest venture from famed TV chef Emeril Lagasse; their words are after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Racing sensation and autographer of male breasts Danica Patrick was asked in SI this week if she would have taken any performance-enhancing drugs, provided that they would have helped her win the Indianapolis 500 and she would have avoided detection:

Danica, who finished third at Indy last month, said, “Well, then it’s not cheating, is it? If nobody finds out?

“Yeah,” she added. “It would be like finding a gray area. In motorsports, we work in gray areas a lot. You’re trying to find where the holes are in the rule book.”

That remark got her in trouble with the US Anti-Doping Agency, whose ass it is in your best interest to kiss when they operate with Gestapo-esque tactics with seemingly no oversight or appeal methodology. But none of that matters to columnists like John Smallwood of the Philadelphia Enquirer, who couldn’t play the Think Of The Children card fast enough.

[T]he biggest shame in kids thinking that they have to use illegal drugs to get ahead is that they see repeated examples of it working every day in the world of professional athletics.[...]

Rule books aren’t written in gray. The are written in crystal-clear black and white. Looking for loopholes and gray areas to bend, flex or stretch is called “cheating.”

I feel compelled to point out that Smallwood is African-American, but only because “Smallwood” is a hilarious surname for a black guy. But damn, son. This freaking country was founded on loopholes. And the great fallacy with the steroids witchhunt is that the only players that seem to be getting busted are the ones that piss off all the sportswriters. The testing process IS NOT black-and-white; nobody knows how it works, just as everybody knows that these tests are only catching the people stupid enough to get caught.

And the only reason kids turn to steroids is because kids are irrational and lazy. It’s the Contra Cheat Code for life. Pants down, shoot up, pants down, shoot up, left, right, left, right, B, A. Dirty lives, just like that. Alright, I’m off the soapbox now. Hey, what happened to all the soap that was in here? Read the rest of this entry »