Racing to the Red Light’s Editor in Chief spotted this gem yesterday on CNN.
At first, he suspected that he was experiencing a flashback or something:
Turns out, the AC on the right in the image above is actually Univision newsman Jorgo Ramos.
You can check it out for yourself here. Warning: political content behind that link! 😉
Another installment in the “a picture is worth a thousand words” category, taken from Monday night’s game.
Detroit’s Matt Stafford had a rough evening. This picture about sums it up:
Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of the passing of MotoGP motorcycle racer, Marco Simoncelli. He died in a tragic, freak accident during last year’s MotoGP round at the Sepang racetrack in Malaysia. What should have been a routine fall and slide to safety instead turned horrific as his bike’s tires regained traction after he had fallen off and become entangled with part of the bike,drawing him back into the path of riders behind him.
Simoncelli was quite a racer. In his too-brief time on Earth, I viewed him at first as a reckless and dangerous rider, but then began to see him get ahold of his talent, understand that to be a winning rider he has to stay in the bike (i.e. not crash out) and finish races.
He manned up and apologized to other riders that he crashed into. He internalized the criticism and made himself a better rider because of it – unlike what some other riders have historically done – and seemingly was making progress towards a potential championship season, one of these years.
I came to be a fan of Marco’s. He was fast – so fast! – and every race he participated in was guaranteed to have some excitement, #58-style. He was bold, really almost brazenly so, he would pass other riders in parts of the track deemed impossible by the TV commentators. And he did it as a giant among diminutive men, at six feet tall he was easily recognizable even in his leathers and helmet.
Besides his impressive skills with a race bike, the other, main reason I came to like Simoncelli was the praise for him that was echoed from various corners of the motorcycle roadracing world, from fans who all said that no matter when and where they found Marco and asked for a picture or autograph, he was more than happy to oblige, to his competitors who said that while he was a demon on the track, he was one of the nicest people you’d likely ever meet.
He was rarely observed without his big hair and trademark smile:
And in our hyper-politically correct world, and particularly in his weird world of the very top echelon of professional motorcycle racing, Marco was a standout personality – a guy with opinions on things, events and people, unafraid to speak his mind. Sometimes this made certain people upset, and frequently it made for great entertainment – something that is very much lacking these days in world-class professional motorbike racing these days.
Many other, infinitely more qualified people have written some great tributes to Marco over the past year. Guys like world champion Kevin Schwantz, who was friends with Marco and knew him well.
Moto-journalist Julian Ryder had a great article.
And Superbike Planet has many tributes and even some family vacation photos up.
Most of the pictures here are Brian Nelson’s.
MotoGP, and the world overall, is so much the worse off without Marco Simoncelli. Big, bright personalities sometime burn hot and far too quickly.
Ciao Marco “Super Sic” Simoncelli – gone but not forgotten.
This story was recently spotted by our Paris bureau chief. In Myanmar, it is said that in the waning days of the second World War, American army bulldozers buried dozens of brand-new British Spitfire fighter aircraft, packed in grease and wax paper from the factory, in their original shipping containers. This was done to prevent the fighters from falling into the possession if the advancing Japanese forces. The Japanese surrendered before they made their way up into this part of the world, but the British never showed up to reclaim their buried Spitfires. Over the past 20 years, a British farmer and businessman named David Cundall overheard the story from veterans, and went to Myanmar to pursue the buried aircraft. Using magnometers and ground-penetrating radar, he was able to locate the likely positions of several of the containers. Recent political happenings in Myanmar have paved the way for him to receive permission to excavate the airplanes. We will eagerly follow this developing story, and will hopefully have some pictures to share next month, when the digging is set to commence.
This week we’ve got a bit of a grab-bag of images.
In Monday Night Football (i.e. American Hand Egg) this week, our beloved San Diego Chargers blew a most excellent first half performance, where they had run up a 24-0 score against the Denver Broncos. Then, in the second half, Denver went on to score 35 unanswered points – SD didn’t score again.
Which prompted some of these images:
(YOLO = you only live once)
Also some political / topical humor for you:
And finally … what?
Best quote in the following video: “Pinky is a very loving cat.”
Best moment in the following video: a split second after Pinky latches onto the guy’s leg.
True comdedy gold, courtesy out East SGV bureau chief:
Today, we have one last image from last weekend’s trek of the Space Shuttle Endeavour from LAX to central Los Angeles.
We caught up with Endeavour on Friday evening, near Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood:
Following up on our earlier post:
Racing to the Red Light was on-location in Westchester earlier this morning, to bear witness to the orbital vehicle Endeavour sitting in the parking lot behind Bed Bath & Beyond.
(How many times is that likely to happen again?)
Today, the retired Space Shuttle Endeavour begins its two-day trek across western Los Angeles from LAX to the California Science Center near USC in south central L.A.
The scenes in the street were quite surreal. What a treat to see a piece of humankind’s finest scientific and engineering accomplishments in such a pedestrian setting.
The crowd was big and getting a lot bigger while we were there. It will be a madhouse by the time we publish this post. Tons of media onhand as well.
The on-camera talent people stood out in stark contrast to all the other people nerds gathered nearby:
racing to the red light 