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I was trolling around on the Deadspin site and ...

You read Deadspin, right? It's by far the best daily read in a pretty bad category of blogs. (Sample entry at most sports blogs: Your Teem droolz ... MY Team RUUUUULZ. And here's 5,000 words on why that is.)

Anyway. I was clicking around the leather-obsessed (don't ask) Deadspin and found this 2005 interview with Jeff MacGregor of "Sunday Money" fame. It's an insightful take on NASCAR except for the bit when he describes the general tone of mainstream NASCAR blogs this way:

Earnest. Or "Ernest Goes to Pocono."

Ouch, brother, that hurts. Ernest? Pocono?! Kick me when I'm down, why doncha.

I'll admit that my best satire usually won't make someone on laughing gas crack a smile. Funny is hard, and I don't write it well, at least not on purpose.

But the last Earnest movie was made 8 years ago, and Jim Varney died in 2000. Besides, if we're going to deal in redneck caricatures, I think this place compares better to Larry the Cable Guy. Don't you? At least those references are from the 21st century. But, hey, a Ricky Bobby blast wouldn't have worked there. You know - earnest, Ernest. Ha ha.

Oh, before I forget: Sunday Money is out in paperback. I read it a while back. Although the season MacGregor writes about was three years ago, some of his driver descriptions and profiles and set-piece encounters with NASCAR fans are laugh-out-loud funny, and he makes a half-hearted attempt to check NASCAR's math. (Of course the math is off. These guys are all promoters at heart, and the only numbers that matter are the ones that favor them.)

A lot of the book is sort of like a long green flag run - it's racing, and that's good, but doggone it won't something happen already?

That said, "Sunday Money," in case you need a last-minute Father's Day present, is the best book I've read on NASCAR. That's like saying it's the best sports blog out there.