Live from the Seneca Lodge Bar

There was a time when I hated Tony Stewart with the fire of a thousand suns. When I say hate, I literally got disgusted whenever he was on TV or whenever I saw him in the garage because of how arrogant he was and that he treated everyone like crap. After the spring Talladega race in 2005, I literally ran into him and stared him down with the dirtiest look I could muster. The funny part was that his eyes got rather big and he looked surprised that I wasn't kissing the ground he walked on.

I've made my peace with Smoke and I gotta say, I love the guy. I think perhaps he was just misunderstood and didn't want to deal with the peripheral bullshit of this sport. By all accounts, he's a much nicer person now that he's living back in Indiana. But I'm keeping my "Tony Please Don't Hit Me" shirt, just in case.

The history between Smoke and I goes back to the Glen, and I have to wonder if he remembers what I did to him.

When: August 2004
Where: Nextel Cup Garage, Watkins Glen NY

We're a superstitious bunch here at the home office. Frankly I'm convinced that my co-hort has some kind of super power to hex drivers and make them wreck their cars (but that's a story for another time!). Given my aforementioned hatred of this man, I decided it was time to try and hex him myself. After we made the rounds and I wished my drivers good luck, I came across the #20 Home Depot Chevy in line for inspection. It was now or never... I laid my hands on the back deck and said, right out loud, in front of the crew (who looked totally mystified) "I CURSE YOU TONY STEWART! I CURSE YOU TO DNF!" Surely, this would cause a flat or something. As long as he was out of the top 10 I was OK with it.

The green dropped and they were off. During the race, we heard through the grapevine that Tony wasn't feeling well, and had Boris Said (who failed to qualify after following us around all weekend... yes, yet ANOTHER story) standing by to take his place should his condition deteriorate. Although I was pleased that Tony's tummy was upset, I found that every driver I said good luck to had wrecked. Every freakin' one. And Smoke was in the lead. Smoke must feed on hatred, and I had plenty to spare.

The checkers flew and wouldn't you know it, the 20 was across the line first. We were bummed because our buddy was working with Ron Fellows and the 1 team from DEI, which came in second, and it would have been a hell of a thing to see him in victory lane. But alas, it was not to be. Smoke was there... or was he?

Turns out, he decided to go back to his motorcoach before coming back to celebrate. When I saw that son of a bitch coming back on the golf cart I yelled at him "thanks a lot for ruining my weekend, asshole!" to which I just got a look like "WTF?" then he headed on down to the celebration.

I found out later that apparently my weekend wasn't totally ruined. Smoke HAD to go back to his motorcoach to change. Apparently he had an "accident" in his firesuit.

And that was the time I scared the shit out of Tony Stewart.