The Speedway Experience (International Midget* Series USA vs. NZ)

BY LYDIA CHAI

If you visited my home city, Kuala Lumpur, you would probably be struck by the comparative lack of hoons on the roads. Less roars of souped up cars, more drones of the likes of reliable Volvos, Beemers and Toyota Harriers.

Malaysians. We just don't have a need for speed. Wildly out of character, then, that I spent my Saturday evening at the Speedway, Western Springs!

Robert Crumb once described Harvey Pekar's life as being so ordinary as to verging on the exotic. In this vein, out of curiosity and fascination, I invited my Aussie ex-pat friend E. to check out the rubber-meets-dirt subculture with me.

The hoi polloi did not disappoint. Can we say full marks for ambiance? Consider this: a glorious afternoon with a lingering lilac sunset. Well-prepared oldies with their deck chairs, munching peanut-butter-on-celery-sticks. The smells of hot, fatty foods. Even the burnt petrol smelled sweeter than usual.

I scanned the terraces of heads for an audience demographic (though, this is pure guesswork):
Male/Female ratio: 50/50.
Old/Young ratio: 20/80.
Kids: Mostly boys.
Asians: 5.

If you ask me, the sprint cars stole the thunder from the midget cars. These are larger cars with Z-shaped wings on their tops so as to create downforce round the bends. They grunt more deeply and sound great, but someone needs to improve the aesthetic of those adhoc-looking wings.

The event culminated in a 50-lap midget car race with New Zealander Michael Pickens finishing first, but getting bumped to 3rd place for driving on the in-field a couple of times. 1st place thus fell on the cheeky American Brad Kuhn who had spent all 50 laps hot on Pickens' heels. The boos of nationalistic protest went past our Aussie and Malaysian heads.

I am no petrolhead, but if there ever will be a demolition derby, I am so there. I'll plant a tree today.

*referring to the cars, not drivers. I made that mistake, too.


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Research and Development

BY TAHI MOORE

EUROPE
It's been a while. I've been fixing the computer and trying to perfect Gin and Tonic at the same time. I learned that people know a lot about computers because they've destroyed about eight already. I made a cocktail with gin, cointreau, lemon tonic water. Great, but I thought gin and just enough tonic to take the edge off best by far. So yeah the perfect watch I found what I thought was the ideal thing also the plainest thing I ever saw there goes my theory on ugly but it still goes for clothes, most of the time.

BORING IS BESTISH
So what's the ideal jean cut? wore wide jeans around the house. It was great I felt good then they got boring. But they were better than when I sewed them straight and the knees came out saggy it was a fucking mess truly. But I think if you can wear straight thin pants without the shape going funny that's about as good as anything. I was watching a band and they had stoves and the seam at the knees goes forwards in this funny curve. It's off, but I remember cuts from twenty years ago you think they're just recycling but I think the cuts have gotten a lot better. But there's still inherent problems in them that will never go away I think. I think jeans are inherently ugly except by blind luck hence trying on a hundred and eighty seven pairs a year for the average person.

DON'T GO TOO BAGGY ON THE THIGHS THOUGH
The other option apart from fitting thighs and slightly loose calves with no knee bulge was fitting calves and loose around the thighs, jodpured. So I did that. It's great. It looks like the knees are meant to bulge out and they're supposed to be ugly as shit.



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