'Until I see God or the checkered flag'
'Until I see God or the checkered flag'
Sometimes, you know genius the moment you hear it.
Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Southern culture/sports/music/food offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. Thanks for reading, and if you’re new around here, why not subscribe? It’s free and all.
One reason I love NASCAR so much is that every so often, cars hurtling around a track at maniacal speeds result in unexpected, pitch-perfect poetry.
Like, for instance, Friday night (really, Saturday morning) at Daytona International Speedway during the waning moments of an ARCA Series race. Night races at Daytona are magical; night races that run past midnight are where the magic busts loose, sorcerer’s apprentice-style.
For the uninitiated: ARCA races aren’t like your sleek elite-level Cup series races. ARCA is a lower-level series — the minor leagues of racing’s minor leagues. ARCA races are basically traveling demolition derbies — as in, the cars travel around to different sections of the night’s track and collide in ever-increasing cascades of damaged sheet metal, ruined chassis and dropped engines. You’ve got to be more than few ticks off true north to drive — or invest — in an ARCA Series car.
Every race, especially the ones held at monstrous, yawning superspeedways like Daytona, you’ll see a few drivers with more balls than skill decide to thunder up and go full Leeroy Jenkins, challenging their abilities, their equipment, and the heavens themselves.
Enter Andy Jankowiak. He’d survived 80-some laps of ARCA racing at Daytona with his car intact, which is a victory in itself. In overtime — a race to the finish that’s somehow even more hellbent and furious than the rest of a damn ARCA race — Jankowiak was in fourth place. Determined to floor it right through to the finish, he came up with brilliance on the fly:
“I’m just going to put my foot on the floor,” he said, “and I’m not lifting ‘til I see God or the checkered flag.”
(Tap the tweet above to hear it.)
It’s only a few hours old, but I feel confident in saying “I’m not lifting ‘til I see God or the checkered flag” is one of the greatest quotes in NASCAR history, right up there with Dale Earnhardt’s “I didn’t mean to wreck him, I was just trying to rattle his cage,” Darrell Waltrip’s “We may have lost a race, but we never lost a party,” and Ricky Bobby’s “I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence.” It was that good.
So how did it end up for ol’ Andy? Well …
Yeah. You don’t need to be a NASCAR expert to know that when your car is facing the opposite direction of all those around you — and you have another car on your hood — things have gone slightly askew.
Anyway, here’s why that quote hit me just right. Just a few hours earlier, I’d been at a raucous book signing/podcast recording/tent revival meeting to commemorate the publication of my Internet-pal Jason Kirk’s debut novel, “Hell Is A World Without You.” Since the book is a coming-of-age story of a kid raised in the evangelical tradition, the festivities were held in an Atlanta brewery, of course. (See the top pic.)
Jason and his three colleagues collectively make up “The Shutdown Fullcast,” an exceptional podcast nominally about college football but really about the joyous absurdity of life in all its messy splendor. All four are scarred veterans of the digital media trenches; all four have had and lost wonderful jobs through no fault of their own. Their podcast, once derided by a particularly cloistered and shortsighted executive as “niche,” draws instant-sellout crowds to their live shows and annually raises in the high six figures for charitable endeavors. For creators, this crew is an inspiration, living proof that you can follow your own weird muse down through the catacombs and someone — maybe a lot of someones — will follow you.
[If you’re not familiar with the Fullcast, start with their occasional “Disasters” episodes, gathering tales of chaotic woe from their readers about holidays, school, cooking, dads and more. Here’s the weddings one, a particular highlight.]
“Hell Is A World Without You” draws on Jason’s own experiences growing up in the evangelical church, a world that’s completely foreign to much of America, myself included. It’s funny, infuriating and tender, all at once. Jason donated all the pre-publication proceeds, which totaled more than $50,000 — “niche” — to The Trevor Project, a charity to help at-risk LGBTQ youth, so maybe go buy a copy now, because he deserves to make some money himself from all this.
Aside: Near the end of the evening, Jason invited a half-dozen of us to stage a dramatic reading of one of the book’s funniest passages, a pizza party where a bunch of boys — all named Caleb — quiz their group leader about how the church expects them to view girls and sex. This required us to play the part of nerdy 14-year-old horny virgins; let’s just say I didn’t have to stretch to get into that headspace. Again.
Here’s what it looked like from my perspective onstage:
I got to say “boobs” several times in front of a loud and appreciative audience, so I can check that one off the bucket list.
What I loved about the whole night was the sheer joy that was in that room. Yeah, the demographic was mainly millennial white dudes, but by no means exclusively — and that’s the whole point of Jason’s book. The doors of both heaven and the church (or mosque, or synagogue) ought to be open to everyone, otherwise what’s the point of it all?
The entire night will be available soon as a podcast. It’s all worth a listen, but particularly the very end, where Jason spoke about the transcendent power of love, community and togetherness. I won’t even try to quote it here. This was a night of celebration, not just for one guy’s impressive achievement, but for the simple fact that we were all in one place, on one night, to enjoy it together.
Sometimes, it’s not a question of whether you’re going to see God or the checkered flag. Sometimes, you see both.
Have a fine week, friends, and we’ll see you back here soon.
—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia
This is issue #114 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:
Our first documentary, on the famous Rama Jama’s diner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama:
What’s the best present you ever got?
The “you” in “All I Want For Christmas Is You” tries to explain himself on Christmas morning
A requiem for one of the truly great chroniclers of Florida Man
History hidden in plain sight in Williamsburg, Virginia
What does “Flashlight & A Biscuit” mean, anyway?
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