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Grand Prix Day 3

Pit crews stand at the ready along Almaden Boulevard during the 2006 San Jose Grand Prix.

A driver skids around a turn during a drifting competition.

Smoke pours from the tires of a battered drifting car.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

“Just as I suspected — they’re speeding.”

Lucky: Finding a place to sit within the general admission area. Luckier: Finding a place to sit in the shade.

Formula BMW driver Frankie Muniz speaks to a fan after a race.

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Malcolm in the race car

This one from today deserved its own special entry. For those of you unacquainted with teen heartthrobs of the past decade, the 20-year-old man pictured below has been a TV star for at least 6 years, most notably on a show called “Malcolm in the Middle.” For the rest of you, did you know Frankie Muniz raced formula cars? And more important, Jealous???

Actor/race car driver Frankie Muniz waits for the start of a Formula BMW race during the San Jose Grand Prix Saturday.

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Without a doubt, the grandest prix I’ve ever attended

It might be summer, and the Spartan Daily might not be publishing right now, but that’s no excuse to avoid covering the San Jose Grand Prix, a three-day weekend of open-wheel racing on downtown streets. Hot sun, fearsome noise, and all the exhaust you can breathe.

They make photographers sign a waiver in order to shoot trackside. At the photo hole on turn 3, this begins to make a lot of sense.

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Car goes fast

Go, car, go.

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Heat wave

106 degrees in the shade. (It was a more dramatic 123° in direct sun, but the heat made the LCD nearly impossible to read.)

As the kids might say, OMFG it’s hot. Thank the good Lord for tubeless internet so I can post this from outdoors, where the heat is slightly less oppressive than in the oven that my house has become.

I slept in as long as I could this morning, but nature dictated that I rise no later than 1 p.m., at which point I promptly began sweating. Dripping sweat. Rivers of it.

Setting sail on a pool of my own perspiration toward the thermostat to check the indoor temp — lately around 95 or 96 degrees — I found the two-digit display unable to cope with the current temperature. The LCD showed “OL,” which I took to mean “Oh, Lordy, it’s hot.”

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Summer programming: The outtake reel

This one is really from last April, but it never made it up here for some reason.

Hit-and-run damage to cars parked in university garages is a costly problem for some students. Photo illustration by Joe Momma.

I was asked to illustrate a story about damage to cars in school garages and was encouraged to be creative. The illustration I came up with, a composite of two photographs, was deemed too realistic, and therefore a potential misrepresentation of reality — even with the words “photo illustration” underneath. What ran instead was an undoctored photo of the car door, minus the words.

Might a reader believe that the words from the parking payment machine were really emblazoned across the flank of someone’s car in a particularly ironic location? Perhaps. Might they also believe that Jesus makes appearances on tortillas? Of course. Is catering to that level of reader a good thing? I doubt it.