Smoke lingers ’round your fingers
Train, heave on to Euston
Do you think you’ve made
The right decision this time?
–The Smiths, “London”

Announcement:

I’m moving to London in September and will be enrolling at University College London to study international public policy.

It was a hot, sticky night — as all are in July in Daytona Beach — and fans in unison held up three fingers on the third lap. One-hundred and fifty-seven laps later, Lou was delighted to see Earnhardt’s son Dale Jr. take the checkered flag. It was the last race she would attend in person. She died a few years back, never getting to see the Daytona 500 in person.

Even growing up in Daytona, I never really understood the allure of NASCAR (even though I love “Days of Thunder”), but I went to all of the races with my dad and brother and people from our church. I pulled for Dale Jarrett, but it didn’t creep into my soul at that young age like University of Florida football did. And after that 2001 race, I stopped going. But I wanted to go back this year — to smell the warming rubber of the tires as the cars pulled off pit row, to hear the engines, to watch the people. Oh, the people.

We had passes to go onto the infield and onto pit row before Saturday’s Nationwide Series race, which was nearly historic as a woman, Danica Patrick, was starting from the pole for just the second time in the history of the series. When we came back the next day for the 500, rain had soaked the track and postponed the race until Monday night, when probably one of the most bizarre races ever occurred. In between, I got to see a guy wearing cowboy boots and shorts walking his pet goat, plenty of Confederate flags and a strange race in itself, when the dude in 11th place going into the last turn ended up winning as the 10 drivers in front of him got tangled up in a crash. Boogity boogity boogity.

Danica Patrick’s car on the pole.

Fans near the start-finish line.

Fans left Patrick messages of encouragement.

The Intimidator in bronze.

A real headline: Disney Is Selling a Joy Division Mickey Mouse Shirt.

R.I.P. Walt and Ian.

A Dale Jr.-endorsed cheeseburger, going for $2.75 in the paper’s vending machine, reminded me of home. I’ll be there Thursday, and I can’t wait to drive down ISB, three fingers in the air for the elder Dale, and speed down A1A like I’m Cole Trickle.

Boogity.

I was talking with a Notre Dame alumnus the other day about the prospects for the Irish in the upcoming season. He told me there was an over/under bet on 8.5 wins for Notre Dame, and I felt pretty comfortable that his team will go over. I have no idea what to think about my own alma mater.

We’ve got a coach who has never been at the helm and a quarterback who, though he has played in the wrong system, has had a career that has fallen short of his — and fans’ — expectations. The wide receivers coach/recruiting coordinator is entangled in the scandal that is about to swallow the program down in Coral Gables.

There’s plenty of talent, sure, but who really knows what’s going to happen? Practices have been closed. Even if they were open, how much would we really know?

We’ll find out at 7 p.m. tonight.

Those outside of Gainesville are giving the Gators little chance of even winning the SEC East, let alone the league. And that drought (if three years is a drought) might yet continue. But Muschamp can’t let happen what Texas, his then employer, went through last season: a 5-7 record and a last-place finish in the Big 12 South.

I’m still not sure what the “Florida way” is, but I know that ain’t it.

2011 schedule
Games I will be attending are in bold.

Sept. 3 – Florida Atlantic – Gainesville, Fla.
Sept. 10 – Alabama at Birmingham – Gainesville, Fla.
Sept. 17 – Tennessee – Gainesville, Fla.
Sept. 24 – Kentucky – Lexington, Ky.
Oct. 1 – Alabama – Gainesville, Fla.
Oct. 8 – Louisiana State – Baton Rouge, La.
Oct. 15 – Auburn – Auburn, Ala.
Oct. 29 – Georgia – Jacksonville, Fla.
Nov. 5 – Vanderbilt – Gainesville, Fla
Nov. 12 – South Carolina – Columbia, S.C.
Nov. 19 – Furman – Gainesville, Fla.
Nov. 26 – Florida State – Gainesville, Fla.

A) Comparing the murdered teenagers to the Hitler Youth

B) Comparing the slaughter to what fast-food restaurants do ever day to animals

The first statement was made by right-wing commentator Glenn Beck on his radio program.

“There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth, or whatever,” Beck said. “I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.” (Glad you asked.)

The second was made by none other than Steven Patrick Morrissey during a concert in Warsaw.

“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead,” Moz reportedly said. “Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried shit every day.”

It’s hard to imagine Beck and Morrissey on the same side of any controversy — not that they are here. But both were criticized — Beck by Jewish groups and others and Morrissey by (former?) fans and one music blogger who called him “a miserable hateful man” — for their statements on the same topic.

It’s hard not to be at least a little off-put by Beck’s statement, made on nationally syndicated radio, likening dead teenagers to members of the Hitler-Jugend because they were at a political camp and seemed to be engaged in, like, politics. Novel concept. And it’s hard not to be at least a little suspicious that Beck made the comment because the camp was for members of a center-left party.

Like Beck, Morrissey has never held his tongue — in lyrics (“her very lowness with her head in a sling — I’m truly sorry, but it sounds like a wonderful thing“) or anywhere else — though I question whether Moz and Beck are both following the Ann Coulter playbook or the former genuinely doesn’t care.

One commenter on the NME wrote: “No-one else in the music industry or any other industry would dare be this outrageous, he mightn’t look like it but he’s the last remnants of punk, he says what he wants, he doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.”

Indeed, Morrissey backed up his comments in a statement on True To You.

“The comment I made onstage at Warsaw could be further explained this way: Millions of beings are routinely murdered every single day in order to fund profits for McDonalds and KFCruelty, but because these murders are protected by laws, we are asked to feel indifferent about the killings, and to not even dare question them,” he wrote. “If you quite rightly feel horrified at the Norway killings, then it surely naturally follows that you feel horror at the murder of ANY innocent being. You cannot ignore animal suffering simply because animals ‘are not us.’”

Comparing a massacre and a bombing to killing animals is hard for many people to accept. That’s logical enough. Most people aren’t vegetarian or vegan. They (me included) eat meat. But for an animal activist, particularly one with a microphone and a penchant for letting everyone from Margaret Thatcher to animal researchers have it, it’s almost expected.

Then again, it’s expected from Beck too.

A or B? Viva hate?

It can be a miserable existence, and luckily I wasn’t around in the 1970s. Then again, there were few expectations in those days — at least compared to now.

I guess being a fan — which, according to Ken Burn’s “Baseball” series I’m watching now, originated from references to baseball fanciers or fanatics — is about managing expectations. Really, life, I’m finding, is about that.

My expectations ran high this spring and summer for the various teams I follow, either through birth (UF and U.S. Soccer) or an unexplainable feeling of kinship (Manchester United). But none of the seven that had a shot at the ultimate prize was able to lift a trophy or hang a banner this year.

With three minutes left in Sunday’s World Cup final, I thought the U.S. women’s national team would come through. It was a goal up, and the players could almost feel the elusive (in the last 12 years) cup in their hands.

But Sawa, the Japanese star whose first name escapes me, was able to get a bouncing ball in front of net and tied the match. The rest — and the U.S. team — is history.

While there will be more games and more championships, that heartache does linger, as melodramatic as that might sound, for a time.

But, I suppose, you manage the pain, too, and move on to the next season. That sounds familiar.

Earlier this month, I went to Washington, D.C., for the Fourth of July, and there’s something about the capital — particularly around Independence Day — that elicits faith in the country.

It reminds of the myriad reasons America is good — democracy (even though Washington’s license plates scream in protest “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”), freedom and The Washington Post.

Soccer doesn’t always make the list.

Just ask Abdul.

Abdul was a household name across his country, wowing Afghani crowds with his soccer skill. That was a lifetime ago. Earlier this month, he was waiting tables during the breakfast shift at a hotel restaurant in Arlington, Va.

It’s not clear how much of what Abdul told us was true: whether “everyone knew” him in his homeland when he was a young man. There’s only so much you can discern from chit-chat with a waiter. But it was clear that he had no interest in D.C. United, the professional club in his new hometown.

The skill just isn’t good enough here, he said.

I’m not a savvy enough soccer observer to know how truly poor (relatively speaking) the play is in the American top flight. But I was impressed with some of the shots and passing when we took in United’s 2-2 draw with Mid-Atlantic rivals Philadelphia Union on July 2.

What was obvious to anyone at the half-empty, aging, made-for-baseball-and/or-American-football RFK Stadium that night was that soccer is not an American institution.

But here comes the U.S. women’s national team, which is about to take the pitch in Germany to face Japan looking to win its third World Cup title (which would be a record).

If that happens, the team will be on the front of every major newspaper in the country in the morning and will provide plenty of fodder for sports journalists — and would even outside of the doldrums of summer.

Why? America doesn’t like the game.

Not really, but America does like winning. See: American Revolution.

Cue the Greewood. Go Yanks.

Despite the relative lackluster stature of both the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the Panamanian side the Americans were playing, I couldn’t wait. At 2 a.m. the day of the match, Danny Klein and I went to Walmart to get an American flag. At the stadium, we draped it over the wall, which we pounded when Landon Donovan came to our corner to take a kick.

Naturally, the U.S. lost, 2-1, its first-ever loss in the group stage of the Gold Cup.

But it was an incredible scene, even for a Gold Cup group stage match against Panama in Tampa. Panama had thousands of fans, chanting, waving flags and blowing whistles. The American supporters club was throwing flares onto the pitch. There were a few near-fights in our section, instigated largely by Americans who didn’t appear to be true soccer fans — more like guys who wanted to go to a stadium and drink beer, regardless of who was playing or the sport.

After going down 2-0, we were deflated, losing hope with every missed chance. Then, when Clarence Goodson connected on a header in the middle of the second half, the place went wild. In my celebration I accidentally hit my friend Mike McCall in the head. There was hope again.

And though the game ended with more talk about Bob Bradley losing his job, the team has rallied, beating Panama to get to the final against Mexico tonight. What I wouldn’t give to be at the Rose Bowl for that game, win or lose.