Waiting for Stewart

It turns out that Tony Stewart isn’t nearly as fat in person as he has been appearing to be on recent race day television coverage. Sure he’s gained some pounds over the last couple of seasons but he doesn’t actually tote around that Orson Welles sized girth when out of his driving uniform.

After today’s show Tim Andrews, Kelly Brown and I headed out to The Home Depot for a promised interview with the two-time and reigning Nextel Cup champion. Given the fact that he had just broken a bone in his lower right shoulder blade area I half-expected him to be a no-show. But at the appointed time he strolled up, right arm in a sling- left arm ready to glad hand anyone thrown in front of him by his home improvement team sponsor.

Such is the reality of the economics of racing. A competitive Nascar program now costs upwards of 20-25 million dollars a year and good corporate sponsors, flush with cash are few and far between. So although he won’t be driving this weeks full race (he’ll start in order to be eligible for the points the car will accrue, then turn it over to Ricky Rudd during the first caution flag), he is still willing to fly to Atlanta in order to fulfill a corporate obligation.

We thought we might get lucky and squeeze out an early one-on-one when he first arrived, but the corporate greeters immediately descended, and soon in-store activities got started- so we camped in the parking lot to await our turn. When he reemerged we jumped up to be informed that we would get very little time in between live satellite interviews he would be doing with a number of local TV stations around the country. I’m not bitching, it’s the way these things tend to go and we were participating in a media gangbang to begin with.

After wrapping up an appearance with some Seattle news-folk his people waved us in and Kelly and I made our way onto the makeshift television set with a mini-disc recorder and a long list of questions we didn’t have time for. The whole thing probably lasted for about four and a half minutes but he was in a good mood and the interview went well.

I think most race fans would be genuinely surprised at what a nice and pleasant guy Tony Stewart can be. He has a short fuse, but if it doesn’t get lit he radiates a rather happy go lucky spirit. I asked him about the injury, the plan for Dover, let him get his Powerade plug in and asked him who he was rooting for on the last lap of the Indy 500- then I got the heavy duty wrap sign from his media rep because Tony was due for another live TV shot in some other part of the country. But wait, I hadn’t asked about the monkey.

So I asked about the monkey and I left.

It was a short but enjoyable interview.

On the Lips

Most bands with multi-orgasmic light shows sacrifice spontaneity for the syncopated choreography necessary to pull off the full psychedelic experience. The Flaming Lips don’t suffer this weakness. At Centennial Park a couple of weeks ago they managed to dazzle without any apparent stage direction at all. Unlike the carefully rigged and pre-packaged visual assault of current U2 or latter-day Floyd, the Lips appear to toss all of their goodies on stage and proceed to make their way through the toy box until it’s time to say goodnight.

It was a blast to take in- a bit like lead singer Wayne Coyne had invited the entire audience into his basement so he could put a show on for all of us. In an era where the Stones have become so sharp onstage they risk sterility it’s nice to see a great band that defaults to a looseness that only the best can be trusted with. Only the truly talented can manage poignant lyrical and musical moments while ten or fifteen Santa Claus’ heckle, dance and gesticulate at the ten or fifteen space aliens jumping to and fro on the opposite side of the stage.

I was originally going to leave before they started so that I wouldn’t spoil the memory of seeing Big Star, one of my true favorites- and one of the most elusive groups to catch playing live. I can’t imagine they’ve done more than a handful of shows since 1975 and I got to see one, and I was happy… and all that. But I decided to stick around for The Flaming Lips spectacle and I’m glad I did.

I’m also glad I took off before the encore of Sabbath’s War Pigs complete with the obligatory George W. Bush is evil film clips. What a buzz-kill. I wish these musicians would realize that some of us go out to a show hoping to get away from the war and politics for a little while. I’m happy I got to leave on a psychedelic up note as they serenaded me to my car with a song about a girl who uses Vaseline to cook with, or some such nonsense.

I love Wayne Coyne’s attitude, toys and music. But I honestly don’t give a damn about his personal foreign policy preferences. Why don’t cats like this understand that guys like Rumsfeld and Bush make it possible for them to play around, gaze at their navel and create art? Are we to send the artists and poets to defend us? Are we to stake the future on Michael Stipe or Bono’s ability to placate the enemy?

Alright Mr. Coyne, you don’t like the way Bush is dealing with world events- so what would you do differently… write a song about it!?

Please- stick to your strengths and leave the political statements to people who are supposed to be annoying, like Ann Coulter.

Ah well, I’ll remember the night for the confetti cannons, chest strobe and dry-ice bullhorn.

I missed the War and got to chill with the Mystics.

Not bad.

Pundit Interview

This interview with the pundit from November 2005 courtesy of the folks at fellowshipofreason.com does a pretty good job of going over the battered history of the Mad Pundit project:

Five Questions with Eric Von Haessler

Regular Guy, Mad Pundit

Interview by Dan Barber

Eric Von Haessler is the 41-year-old soft-spoken half of the popular morning radio show The Regular Guys, which airs weekday mornings on Atlanta's 96 Rock. Eric had a tumultuous upbringing, moving from city to city but he claims Rochester, NY as his hometown. He began what he calls his angry phase at age 12, when his gypsy-hearted father abandoned the family. Eric dropped out of high school and worked in the restaurant business for a while.

His life changed when he stumbled into a comedy club, meeting Larry Wachs (the other half of The Regular Guys). Eric credits Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, which he read at the age of 29, for helping him develop productive habits. "Im glad I kicked the anger," he jokes. "Now Im just neurotic."

Eric is married to his first love, and has two boys. His latest project is The Mad Pundit (which is both a radio show and a web log), which allows him to explore his political and social views - including his non-theistic beliefs - in a more personal way. Visit MadPundit.com, or listen every Saturday at 1pm on WGST 640 AM (which is also available live on the internet at WGST.com).

Q: Success is not an accident, so I would like to know what books, movies, or people have inspired you to (as you say in your bio) "think on your own terms." How did that lead to your success?

Eric: I discovered my older brother's albums when I was 10 years old. Because I liked the album cover I sat and listened to Sgt. Pepper's from end to end. Music has been the most important entertainment for me since. I listen to music constantly. I like too many artists to name but The Beatles, R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, Big Star, Talking Heads, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan are a few - and Dylan's Blonde on Blonde is my favorite album.

Ayn Rand, while wrong about many things, has influenced me tremendously with the things that she was right about. To clarify, I think she was right on the bedrock issues of philosophy and the mind, but turned goofy in her ongoing critique of everything in existence. Her opinion, for example, that movies are art but photography isnt is plainly absurd.

My favorite author is Dostoyevsky because I somehow resemble every character in every story he's ever written. My favorite book is his best work: The Brothers Karamazov.

Q: Youve been very successful with The Regular Guys. How does the additional Mad Pundit "project" serve you in this stage of your life? How did you arrive at the idea? Does it serve a particular personal mission?

Eric: Financial success isnt necessarily tied to the things you're most interested in, or the things you're most interested in doing. This is probably true for most people, no matter their job, and it's no different for me. The Regular Guys is a great gig in many ways but its a set thing. The show has a particular attitude and culture that are cemented and will never change - which is good for the show because it remains consistent to the listener, but it doesnt work all that well for me personally because I really like to work on new and different things. In a perfect world I would work on a project by project basis, throwing myself into something for a few months until it's complete, then moving on to the next project. But it's not a perfect world, and so far the marketplace has only seen fit to reward me for the work I do in the rock morning-show format.

To ease the frustration I negotiated a weekly show on sister station WGST-AM into my 96 Rock contract. This means that you can hear the closest thing to a ratings-proof show if you tune into The Mad Pundit Show on Saturdays at 1pm.

The idea for the WGST show grew out of the website, and the idea for the website was to have a place where I could explore some of the more abstract comedy ideas and political thoughts that were rolling around my mind at the time. I began working with Greg Russ, who started as a Regular Guys intern and had since mutated into Dekker on another sister station called The Buzz, and we liked writing together so I began to conceive of the website as a place to present our comedy material and my political commentary in one place. Then I brought in Autumn Pritts, another former intern, to help us get it all done and the three of us took on the project with a passion.

Everything went pretty well until The Regular Guys were tossed off the air [in March 2004, for allegedly violating FCC obscenity regulations, after a mishandled gag playing backward porn] just a month after [The Mad Pundit] went online and the promotional lights pretty much went out. We kept [the Mad Pundit website] alive and kicking for a good long time, then it slowly became a mess when I returned to 96 Rock [in April 2005] and Dekker landed a gig at 99X. But at least we have the little Saturday radio show, and we're actually about to re-ignite the website in a few weeks.

Q: Your latest article is entitled "The Morality of Looting". What are your thoughts about morality - what is it exactly? And why is it (or is it not) a valuable concept?

Eric: Im nothing more than a dime-store philosopher but I think morality is the choice to do things as you know them to be right. The problem is that different types of people are raised to believe different things about what is wrong and what is right. So morality has no value if it isn't grounded in a sound philosophy. But it has to be a sound philosophy sought out by the individual and not just a handed-down set of inter-generational moral values that one parrots for life.

Q: You have positioned yourself to be an opinion leader here in the South, and you have also been quite open about your atheism. How has that admission affected your progress in achieving your personal goals? Has it helped, or hindered?

Eric: I don't even know if I'm an actual atheist. All I know is that I don't believe any story about the origins of creation or the destiny of man that I've ever been told by any scripture I've ever been exposed to. I dont feel qualified to say what is or isn't going to happen when we die, but I suspect it's a lot like before we were born: pure nothing. But I could be wrong.

Being out of the closet about my strong non-belief has helped me immeasurably personally by allowing me to be comfortable with myself and my public image. I'm sure it has hurt my PR on some level but I've never been confronted by a lunatic - and that's all I would worry about from those folks. It's okay for people to hate me, so long as they stay away from me.

Q: What are your thoughts on the future of modern religion? Where do you think we go from here?

Eric: I don't have a very good understanding of modern religion. It really does strike me as anachronistic at this point. It's the mathematicians and scientists that have led us into the modern age, not the shamanistic types. It's all voodoo to me. I have a personal preference toward Toa-ism because it is a philosophy of living and doesn't predict the afterlife. Modern religion has had to make way and moderate their teachings continually since they lost the power to persecute the Einsteins of the world.