A tedious death by tedium - tediously.

The twittisphere is buzzing (well one tweet so far) about the latest on Danica's latest potential stock car deal. She is in the 'final' stages of an agreement with JR Motorsports. That truly is a match made on Madison Avenue and could bring together America's most over hyped and nauseatingly visible drivers. Maybe they can pool resources and learn to string a coherent sentence together pre or post race?

Anyhow, it reminded me of a piece from Marshall Pruett's excellent 'Triple Stint' column which appears weekly over at www.speedtv.com.

'Rant of the week' this week was as follows:

Hello Triplestint,

After reading about the pending launch of your Danica News Network, I'm confused and I think you may be the only entity that can help.

As I follow Danica Patrick's ongoing and unfaltering tedious flirtation with stock car racing, I have noticed that, amongst her many superpowers, she has the ability to re-invent the mundane as the radical and the fundamentally basic as the intriguingly complex. This would be quite a talent in itself if it were not for the fact that she seems to be able to transfer this gift to those around her. Take her recent visit to Michael Waltrip Racing for example.

After she spoke with Michael with regards to running some Nationwide Series races in 2010 he said the following in something I read on ESPN.com: "The thing I liked about her, and appreciated, was it was intense -- it was just about racing a car. Her people have studied the industry and they've chosen a path for her to get experience in a car. That includes Nationwide."

Notice how a discussion about racing for a stock car team is 'intense' because 'it was just about racing a car'. Straight off the bat she has nailed it, she has made a potential employer believe that the very act of giving her a job has a special quality and intensity because she will, at some point in the future, want to do that actual job she has been hired to do. Genius!

In the world of us mere mortals, the path to Sprint Cup goes through an apprenticeship of Camping World Trucks and Nationwide Series and possibly some early ARCA events on Superspeedways like Daytona or Talladega. But team Danica have turned basic logic into the sort of intense and detailed study that only an expensive agency/consultant can truly deliver. Who am I to question their abilities and it would be simply wrong of me to suggest that 10 minutes on Wikipedia would have delivered all the information they needed on the career path of Juan Pablo Montoya, AJ Allmendinger, Sam Hornish Junior, Scott Speed and Michael McDowell.

"She got me right off the bat, just with talking about her history in open wheel and what she's accomplished, and the way she progressed to where she is now, and wanting to do the same thing in stock cars, telling the story with passion and conviction and desire. I left the meeting wanting to go race a car. It was that infectious."

If her 'passion' and 'conviction' were all it took to get MW hooked I would suggest she must be using something similar to Wonder Woman's 'lasso of truth'…

The arts and entertainment business has proved that once you have a reputation you can pass any old rubbish off as a work of art/genius. 'Mr. Bean' is a perfect example. The character that Rowan Atkinson has created has made him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams despite being a basic homage to the work of silent movie legend, Buster Keaton and that of the French physical comic genius, Jacques Tati.

Danica Patrick seems to be stock car racing's 'Mr. Bean', keeping her unsuspecting public entertained by passing off an old act as something new and original, convincing them that what she is doing is a fresh and radical approach to success in NASCAR.

So I need to know if it is just me or is she becoming a trail blazing pioneer who has thrown away the rule book only to replace it with the same rule book with a different cover?

You can read the whole column at -

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/pruett-triple-stint-1031