Zugenia's Procrastination Salon

You know, in case the whole academe thing doesn't work out. The NYTimes is just now getting its paws on a story to which o_jenny alerted me months ago: the Harlequin-Nascar Romance:

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Feb. 16 — After a year of courtship, Harlequin, the leading publisher of romance novels, has entered into not a marriage, exactly, but what a Harlequin heroine would call a meaningful relationship with Nascar, the stock-car racing association.

Last year, with Nascar’s approval, Harlequin successfully published three Nascar-theme books, including one in which the heroine, an ex-kindergarten teacher, falls in love with a Nascar driver after first being hit by his car and then driving his enormous motor coach from race to race. The company is now embarking on a 16-book paperback series, all of which will have Nascar settings, and the first and last will feature cameo appearances by Carl Edwards, a real-life Nascar driver who has consulted with the author, Nancy Warren, to help create a suitable fictional representation of himself. [Mr. Edwards finished 23rd in the Daytona 500 on Sunday.]

And check out the clever promo staged in Daytona a few days ago—a speed dating session:

Some 50 men and women, roughly divided between Harlequin fans and diehards who belong to the Nascar Members Club, sat at a big U-shape table and, waved on by a checkered flag, moved over every few minutes to talk to someone else. They ranged in age from 20-somethings to people who had possibly begun dating back in the dirt-track era. Most of the men wore caps, and many of them had on racing jackets as well.

It was not clear whether any of these participants experienced the same life-changing emotions felt by Kendall Clarke, the mousy-seeming heroine of the first novel in the new series, perhaps not coincidentally called “Speed Dating.” Clad only in a demi-bra, high-cut panties and a slip, she finds herself sitting in a sports car next to the fictional Nascar driver Dylan Hargreave on the night when she is supposed to receive the Sharpened Pencil Award given to Actuary of the Year. “She’d never done anything this wild in her life,” she thinks. “Oh, it felt good.”

Well done—the punny title; the vision of the first Nascar Romance as an episode of Actuaries Gone Wild. This is exactly the kind of innovative thinking the supermarket-aisle publishing industry (not to mention the academic one) needs. Mainly because modern women—actuaries, academics, you name it—are complicated. As "Michelle Renaud, a public relations manager for Harlequin, said of the matchup between racing and romance, 'We know it’s working, for sure,' and added, 'Harlequin has a book for every woman’s mood.'"

I'm not giving away the concept of my own future contribution to the genre, but I will drop these hints: a junior professor sexually frustrated in the Ivy League 18th-century studies circuit; a seemingly tragic but ultimately fortuitous move to a southern state university; an international scandal surrounding the Asian invasion of American stockcar racing; and steamy cameos by Tony Stewart and Clint Bowyer (who, incidentally, tore his number 07 Jack Daniels Chevrolet across the finish line at Daytona yesterday on its roof, which was totally hot).

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Git out yer party hats, people, cuz it's the YEAR OF THE HAWG!



(It's also Daytona 500 day, so you know how Lady Z is celebrating...)

So I'm sitting in the waiting room of a local diagnostic clinic the other day (no worries—my health is fine; just a routine screening), reading a book to pass the excessive amounts of time that are passing beyond my appointment, when a friendly-looking guy approaches me, sits down, and asks, "Excuse me, but are you a big NASCAR fan?"

Now that threw me for a loop.

I made the face that I make when I have no idea what is going on but I'm trying not to let it show while I buy myself a moment to figure it out. I've never been on the other side of that face, so I don't know if it looks placid (as I intend), or stony, or utterly baffled, or what. But while I was making it, I ran through all the possible physical manifestations of my new obsession: Was I wearing any NASCAR-themed clothing? (No; I don't even own any. Yet.) Was I reading NASCAR-themed fiction? (No; I was reading Umberto Eco, who is as far as I know is not generally associated with stock car racing.) Is it possible I just had a NASCAR-loving glow about me? Was I exuding the unique pheromones of the NASCAR enthusiast?

I must have looked as confused as I felt, because the gentleman then added, "I'm sorry—do you have a LiveJournal?"

It turns out my inquisitor was none other than local Honored Guest banjopwhistle, who recognized yours truly from across the waiting room (presumably from the occasional image posted in these virtual pages, but perhaps from the nebula of newly hatched NASCAR fanaticism—both are possible). For those of you who have never had the pleasure of meeting him is person, I assure you he is quite charming.

I promise that the final installment of the NASCAR Chronicles is on the way, but right now I'm doing the End Of Semester thing, so I'm a bit preoccupied. In the meantime, I suggest you rent Talledega Nights, recently released on DVD for your viewing pleasure. Shake & Bake!

If you slap one of those "I [HEART] OIL WAR" bumper stickers¹ on your Jeep Grand Cherokee, you are being:

A. Ironic.
B. Stupid.
C. An asshole.
D. All of the above.

¹I actually kind of love those bumper stickers, but it occurs to me now that Americans might not be allowed to make that joke. Especially the ones with bumpers.

---

In other news, thebiblioholic has alerted me that NASCAR champ Jimmie Johnson broke his wrist falling off a golf cart at a celebrity tournament. I'm sorry, but that's just sad. If Tony Stewart turned up with any broken bones, you know it would be from, say, kicking someone's ass. Now that's NASCAR.

ETA: I just read to the end of the story, and discovered that Tony Stewart has indeed made news with his broken bones: "Tony Stewart broke his wrist and bruised his ribs last January when he flipped a car during a qualifying race for the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals." See? NASCAR.

What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally ... upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment. —Virginia Woolf

My dad recently reminded me, after I told him my NASCAR adventures, that years ago he tracked down a collection of writings for me called Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women Writers on Cars and the Road. I imagine he thought to buy it for me because I was obsessed with Matchbox cars as a kid, and my adolescence was fueled by visions of Jack Kerouac and cross-country drives—I wrote a poem when I was sixteen, right after my high school graduation, about escaping in a life-sized Tonka truck—but my romance with cars had cooled over the past decade, the victim, perhaps, of my college love affair with the sidewalks of New York City, and the untimely demise, in my second year of grad school, of my little red Toyota Tercel in an encounter with a Volvo station wagon on I-95 during Hurricane Lloyd. This morning I took the book off the shelf for the first time in years, and rediscovered the above epigraph by Virginia Woolf. Though not a scene unfolding through the window of a passing car, my NASCAR weekend was undoubtedly a chance glimpse into something already in motion, with its own life that is indifferent to my own, and letting it unfold before me was very much like staring into the fiercely beating heart of a venerable creature.

( The adventure continues... )

They say that Everything's Bigger in Texas. They also say, Texas: It's Like a Whole Nother Country. It turns out that both of these things are true. The sky is certainly bigger in Texas than anywhere else I've been, and Texas Motor Speedway, which contains a 1.5-mile track and holds over 200,000 people, is so big that it hurts your brain to look at it.

( Think you can handle this? Then keep reading... )