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“George Washington Carver began to hallucinate eight days before he died”

So begins Tinkers by Paul Harding and boy oh boy. How do I say this?

How do I say a book sucks?

How do I dare say that something someone worked on, putting their heart and soul into for months and maybe years and managed to find an agent and a publisher and got it finally out there and received accolades and a Pulitzer Prize and how dare I say it sucks?

But.

It’s awful.

Or maybe I’m not deep enough or smart enough to plumb the depths of this tiny little white book about a guy dying and dreaming of his dead father. Or maybe, kinda like feeding caviar to a puppy, it was just wasted on me- but I just didn’t get it.

I kept waiting and reading and wanting the story to build, for it to do something other than simply chronicle George’s death. But it didn’t.

It sucked.

Next on the dog pile- Continental Drift by Russell Banks

I was just gettin’ ready to sit down, hoping tonight was the night I’d write that world class stellar post, that somethin’ somethin’ that even my mom and Miss Carol would be proud of and maybe even read.

But then I got to watching Deadliest Catch again.

And my incessantly constant laziness kicked in and I thought, ya know, maybe familial pride and readership is overrated and maybe I’ll just take the easy road, ’cause I’m all about easy, and write about the Alaskan King Crab fishermen again.

Quick sidebar-These guys are, without a doubt, the hardest people I’ve ever seen and, as a guy myself, as much as I might like to think I could throw myself up against that life and somehow prevail, or at least survive, I know in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t.

But. Still and nonetheless, I wanna think I could or should?

So, anyway, I started googling for Deadliest Catch pictures because taking photos of the TV doesn’t work so well anymore and as soon as I googled it?

I found out that Captain Phil Harris died.

And it stopped me and deflated me.

Captain Phil ran the Cornelius Marie and was a hugely colorful character, as they all are. He’d had his share of medical problems in the last year or so but, well, damn. And fuck.

So I sat back and thought, hey, it’s not like I’ve ever met him, or ever would, or for that matter might not even ever want to.

But still.

I found myself strangely saddened by his passing. For reasons I can’t even begin to describe, I was suddenly missing him, even as the show kept spooling out on the TV behind me and-a-still-alive-Captain-Phil hauled his strings and cursed his crew and smoked his endless cigarettes. And I wondered what his sons and crew who work the boat with him would do without him at the helm, even though I have NO connection with him whatsoever except via me watching a TV show.

And then it got worse. I realized that blogging and reading and caring about fellow bloggers is kinda the same kinda shit.

I’m all caught up in the lives of strangers that I’ve become close to, having never met them.

And it’s cool.

‘Cept it makes ya think, ya know?

Sorry about the photographs. They’re not mine. They were scraped with bleeding fingernails from the internet. Maybe it’s just my lack of net-savviness or maybe it’s NASCAR’s lockdown on everything NASCAR but this is what I was stuck with once I found it, given the ten minutes I spent searching.

If I hadn’t been so lazy I would’ve brought my own camera on Saturday. But I was lazy.

So anyway.

Saturday arrived and we arrived at the track not really ready for the onslaught. It was AMAZING. Overnight the crowds had tripled and quadrupled and NASCAR NATION was throbbing and hot and ready for the race.

The sheer numbers of fans was mind numbing, but and yet, kinda comforting?

So anyway.

We went up to the sky suite and ate and drank some more and went down to the Midway which is the most amazing marketing thing I’ve ever seen, complete with the drivers themselves in person signing shit. What other sport has the talent in full access mode? I’m starting to love NASCAR.

After that was the pre-race obligatory pit-row visit. It’s kinda like staring at things that kinda look like cars, but aren’t?

So anyway.

Back to the sky suite where the beer was cold and the food was hot and ever-changing. More munching and chugging, and then finally it was time for the big race.

Ya gotta hand it to NASCAR, they make an event an EVENT. After the blessing and after the national anthem and after the fly-over and after the para-jumpers and after the salutes to God and country the big boys of NASCAR cranked it up and wheeled onto the track.

The excitement was palpable and went up a coupla hitches. As those roaring cars circled the track, warming up, with the flags fluttering and blowing everywhere and NASCAR NATION screaming its want and need and all of it building to a wildly exhilarating crescendo I couldn’t help but get caught up in it.

And then the start.

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(and again, sorry for the shitty photograph and my inbred laziness)

The Start.

Honestly, I think it’s what welds NASCAR fans into a NASCAR NATION and maybe me into a NASCAR maybe-fan. The Start makes you stand and whoop and holler knowing at that instant you’re solving all the problems of the world with your mightyness and the mightyness of all your buds around you. And you’re drunk with the power of it all. It’s that strong.

But then? After that high? The race goes on.

And on. And on. And, um on?

And even though it’s brutally loud and the smell is a thick soup of burnt jet fuel and burning rubber the circling and brutally loudness is trumped with the all day drinking and eating and all the sudden? You’re asleep.

And you wake up and you realize the race is over and the guy that had been leading, like forever, somehow lost on the final lap or something which has gotta just suck.

(and again with the crappy photo)

So you clear the thunder from your ears, suck down another beer or two and head out.

Would I do it again?

HELL YES.

On Sunday driving home I was thinking maybe that’s enough NASCAR for me, but ya know what? after a week to think about it, I think maybe I need it?

A quick aside before I get into Saturday’s race.

Yep, this is just gonna keep goin’ on and on. Kinda just like a NASCAR race.

And ya know what? Maybe it should. A NASCAR race is a marathon. And granted, my NASCAR marathon was one of eating and drinking and hanging out and watching cars hurl themselves around a circular track, but, hey, it’s a marathon nonetheless.

So back to the quick aside.

NASCAR fans are amazingly and beautifully rabid. Holy shit. They’re the warmest, most genuine and friendliest tattooed and pierced folks you’ll ever meet.

I’m thinkin’ that maybe because of the frenzied love of their sport, they manage to somehow get along and share a communal experience on a weekend basis with hundreds of thousands of their closest buds?

I’ve never, ever, seen anything like it.

That you can cram a whole bunch of possibly, probably, volatile folks into a hopped up, high octane fueled, super-charged, environment armed with coolers full of cold beer and force them sit all day waiting for a night time race in the hot sun on aluminum bleachers is amazing enough.

But that around six-pack number two, the fights don’t break out was way surprising to me. That tattooed beer bellied nipple pierced Bubba doesn’t get really tired of tattooed beer bellied nipple pierced Bobba staring at his chick’s halter top and starts whaling on him in the hot humidness was (is?), I think, truly amazing.

But they don’t.

They all hang out. They drink and yell and scream and mostly just take their numbered, speedy-looking, NASCAR tee-shirts off and wave ’em around like the flags that’re flying everywere.

The NASCAR Nation clumps together, becoming a huge ONE-ness, an entity bigger than it’s parts, something cool to watch. And the best part?

Nobody gets pissed off- everybody hangs and has fun.

Maybe the rest of the world should be takin’ a lesson from these people.

Just sayin’.

So we got up there on Friday afternoon. There being Richmond International Raceway and Miss Carol’s and me’s first ever NASCAR experience.

Our friends, the ones paying for all of this, were chomping at the bit to get to the track and I was, as usual, running late and, as usual, pissing everyone off.

But we got there.

I don’t know what I was expecting.

It was actually pretty deserted and we all drank and ate in the sky box and watched qualifying which our friends who were paying for all of this assured us was important but from what I could tell, it seemed like everybody that got on the track and went roaring around qualified for the race.

But maybe that’s just me, maybe I was missing something. Hey, it’s not like that’d be anything new.

So anyway. We drank and ate the day away and before I knew it, it was time for the Nationwide race which, according to our friends is kinda like a warm up band, a lead-in, a teaser, to the main event.

And it was way cool.

It was loud and racy and we ate and drank and watched and went back to the hotel and drank some more.

But ya know what? In the cold hard light of Saturday morning I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the hotel window, wondering about this NASCAR stuff. I wasn’t quite sure it it was something that I needed in my life.

continued….

Just a little short teeny tiny post as we hurl ourselves out the door and into a REAL LIVE NASCAR RACE.

I’m lookin’ forward to it but its not like I’m a big fan, but then again maybe I WILL be after this.

The only time I usta watch NASCAR was on the odd, rainy, stay-at-home-positively-nothing-else-to-do-weekend. The weekends when you’re sippin’ beer and staring out the window at nothing and you’re brain’s idling in neutral and you’re wondering if maybe breathing’s gonna become something you might need to think seriously about.

One of THOSE lazy ass weekends.

But most times, Miss Carol and me would go to lunch at one of the bars down here on the island on weekends and they’d have the race on.

And I was like, whatever, dude. NASCAR’s everywhere. Lots and lots of high speed left hand turns. Yawner.

Except maybe this time it was different. It was the first race that the FOX network did and something about the way they punched it up or the way they made it interesting hooked me. We got home and Miss Carol took a nap and I watched the whole race for like, the first time ever. Including the wreck at the end that killed Dale Earnhart.

Since then I’ve followed NASCAR kinda, sorta. It’s not a big thing in my life. I’ll turn it on, if I remember, and let it roll while we go to the beach or whatever. Keeps Cutter and Tug company.

But.

When we were offered a sky suite at the Richmond race we were all like, oh, HELL YA.

So that’s where we’re headed.

I’ll let ya know if it’s worth it.

On another note, thanks for the e-mails concerning and concerned about Tug. He’s finally fine as frog’s hair. By Monday he was keeping food down and by Tuesday his poops were more Tug-like. (like ya need to know THAT)

Who know’s what goes on with these guys and why they have to make me crazy, but he’s good again.

Fag.

I used to read everything John Irving wrote, loved his storytelling, his quirky characters and the back-to-front, future-to-present timeline he uses in his stories.

But then I stopped. Reading him, I mean, and I don’t know why.

I recently picked up Last Night in Twisted River maybe mostly because I liked the cover or maybe mostly because it had been so long since I’d read anything by him.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad I did.

Last Night in Twisted River is John Irving’s twelfth novel and, I think, one of his best. Ranks right up there with A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules if you ask me.

The novel opens in 1954 in a Coos County logging camp. Following an unfortunate and accidental murder the logging camp cook and his 12 year old son are forced to flee Coos County and become lifelong fugitives. They are protected (shielded?) from the implacable constable who doggedly pursues father and son across the decades by the cook’s oldest and best friend, Ketchum, a larger-than-life logger who had previously sworn to the cook’s late wife to always take care of them even though he’d been unable to save the life of a young newbie logger whose name and wallet lead the cook and his son to the first of their new lives.

Always quirky, Mr. Irving is.

The story continues, following father and son throughout their years on the run as they move and change their identities and try to live normal lives in the aftermath of that unfortunate and accidental murder, staunchly protected by the ever vigilant Ketchum who stays behind in Coos County to keep an eye on the implacable constable.

Last Night in Twisted River is the darkly tragic story of lifelong friendship and love between the logger, the cook, and his son. It’s a great read even if, towards the end, John Irving injects a bit too much of his politics and even if the ending itself is a little, perhaps a tad, a touch, maybe a trifle, implausible?, it’s still one of those books that you don’t want to ever end, one of those books that you’d like to move into the pages of and live with the characters.

Next on oceandoggy’s reading list- Dog On It by Spencer Quinn

Tug’s sick.

And that makes me sick.

It was on Friday that I first started noticing that Tug’s poops weren’t quite right (I’ll leave that at that) and then on Saturday he threw up once and Sunday not only were his poops not quite right but he was throwing up everything he ate.

His eyes are clear, his nose is cool and damp, and it (whatever IT is) hasn’t slowed him down at all, he just can’t seem to keep anything down. Since both Cutter and Tug are normally so robustly healthy it’s always a shocker and a concern when one of them gets the least bit sick.

For me anyway.

Not so much for Miss Carol.

While I worry and feel helpless and imagine all of the sorts of terrible diseases that Tug might be fighting, Miss Carol just kinda takes it all in stride, happily telling Tug that his stomach just isn’t feeling very good right now and that he won’t be getting any carrots at TreatTime tonight.

I know I’m probably just being a little girlygirl and she’s probably right, it’s probably nothing, and he’ll probably be fine tomorrow, still, I just can’t help but wonder what Cutter would ever do without his lifelong littermate.

It’s gotta be nothin’, right?

We were walking the dogs on the beach, where walking equals screaming after them hoping they’ll at least listen enough to occasionally saunter back and get a biscuit from Miss Carol.

It was a nice morning for Cutter and Tug to be running away, sunny, warm, the ocean an emerald green with just a little swell running. Maybe I wouldn’t even miss them.

So I started watching the fishing boats while thinking about a life with cats. Or maybe hamsters.

There’s a longing, a pull, a yankin’ that makes ya wanna head out to sea and work on a fishing boat. It looks idyllic, free of encumbrances and runaway dogs, lofty even, especially when the weather’s nice like it was.

But I know the reality.

I helped pull a gill net once and I have friends who’ve worked the boats. It’s brutally hard, usually cold, always wet labor that mostly seems to happen late at night or the early morning when the tides change.

It’s a tough way to make a livin’.

But it’s sure pretty to look at and yearn over while wonderin’ if Miss Carol will chase the fool dogs this time or if she’ll wait for me to do it again.

I don’t get it.

I really don’t understand why women, especially really good-looking women take all the time to get made up, get their hair done, and dress really smokin’ hot, and then cover up their faces with huge welder style goggles.

Call me stupid, call me out a tune with fashion, call me dickhead.

But.

Honestly? The gigantic total tint face obscuring windshields are like beach-chic burqas if you ask me and I don’t know if the pretty women and girls are hiding or maybe just craving anonymity in a world where no one knows them to begin with or what.

But maybe I’m being too harsh, too misunderstanding, too loser-like, too not-in-touch. Hey, it’s not like I haven’t been accused of that before in the past, trust me.

So.

Whatever. Like I’m some kinda fount of fashion?

But, while we’re on the subject, check this- Why is it black guys ALWAYS look cool in their shades?

I think Miss Carol would have his child.