INFINITY OVER ZERO, TOP FUEL WORMHOLE GO ELECTRIC, SAVE THE PLANET

 

 

I/0, Top Fuel Wormhole now available on Kindle

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 5, 2010, K-Bomb Centcom, Los Angeles, CA—In what is arguably a drag-strip journalism first, both Cole Coonce’s Top Fuel Wormhole (his collection of drag racing essays), and its predecessor, Infinity Over Zero (an impressionistic history of the Land Speed Record), have both gone electric. Which is to say these may or may not be the first books on the topics to have a presence on Amazon.com’s Kindle store, but, arguably, these are the first essential ones.

With new, paper-less versions of both of Coonce’s rocket-fueled books now specially formatted for e-readers, modern motor-sports esthetes can download these delicious digital documents and enjoy them with the knowledge that the trees spared by the lack of pulp-processing  can now serve as emissions credits for burning rubber and fouling spark plugs.

To that end, K-Bomb Publishing, the imprint that produced both the electric and paper versions of these thick tomes, encourages all consumers to brandish their Kindles at the drag races and, as the next pair of monopropellant-powered Funny Cars blasts by, exclaim to anybody who can hear over the noise that with enough pulp-free purchases of Top Fuel Wormhole, drag racing could ultimately be considered carbon neutral.

HELL’S OWN ROADIES

by Wrenchski

(excerpted from: PULL THE PIN: The KeroseneBomb Reader ; an extract of THE ALCHEMISTS NEGRO: My 30+ Years As A Motorsports Bottomfeeder)

HELL’S OWN ROADIES

I like to think of my kind as populating the pit gates of America’s short tracks in groups of two or three countrywide… I think we once did. Underage-jeans/work boots/denim jackets over sleeveless t-shirts… nervously smoking cigarettes while hoping to appear large enuff to be 21… waiting for tired men in old sedans and borrowed tow trucks to pull in without their regular help…” HEY KID, are ya here to stooge, or just stand around lookin’ tough,” Ol’ Red would say that, and you’d hop in his overheating Caddy, pass the pit steward and for toting tires fuel and pushing his TQ midget up to the track you got free admission and an eagles view of the racing from a first turn area marked CREW ONLY… we were hell’s own roadies…stooges they called us, as in “Who ya stoogin’ for tonight…?” Checking air pressure, occasionally removing the warm-up spark plugs and puttin’ in the colder racing ones if the guy knew ya’ well ‘enuff to let ya TOUCH his engine… and brandishing bruised knuckle fists AFTER somebody objected to YOUR driver putting HIS into the wall or sending him spinning into the infield out of the money… we were HELL’S OWN ROADIES, boys… we changed rear end gears layin’ on towel-covered cinders, hot grease dripping from our elbows and all the girls too young for a driver fell into our waiting arms… the beer and whiskey flowed afterwards and tall tales, verities and balderdash fle… we would live forever, and nothing would replace us. Nothing. It was the sixties, into the seventies, and we never changed. The game did.-30-

Smirnoff Vodka and the Spirit(s) of the Sixties

by Cole Coonce

(excerpted from TOP FUEL WORMHOLE)

I barely remember the days when Smirnoff vodka sponsored a AA/Fuel Dragster, and how gorgeous the car was in its original incarnation. But I do recall the car and that it was at one time shoed by the legendary dragster driver, Larry Dixon. What I really remember most is the stuff of family legend. Back in the day, my Uncle Phil drove a small-block Chevy Junior gas dragster (”Connelly & Coonce”) at various strips in Southern California. In 1967 or “68, at one of Lions Drag Strip”s “Professional Dragster Association” meets, my Uncle was suited up and strapped in the car in the staging lanes, waiting his turn to make a qualifying pass.

As a myriad of dragsters thundered down Lions” 1/4 mile strip, my Uncle”s car was methodically pushed closer and closer to the mechanical rolling “starters.” At that moment, Larry Dixon Sr. (father of Larry Dixon, Jr., the guy who drives Don Prudhomme”s modern Top Fuel car) was feeling no pain and got a little cheeky and pranksterish. He stuck in his mug in my Uncle”s cockpit and foisted a bottle of hootch in his face.

“Hey Phil! Want any vodka?”

Phil responded with a muffled, “No thanks, Larry. Not right now,” his demure words garbled by his protective garb, but punctuated by the car rolling closer to the starting line. Dixon was having none of it however, and leaned in closer and repeated his offer of a pop or two of Smirnoff, a libation of which he was no doubt in ample supply.

“I”m a little busy, Larry.”

The dragster was pushed even closer to the mechanical rollers, but my Uncle”s muted plea for temporary temperance was met by befuddlement and shrugs. Dixon was nonplussed by the immediacy of the situation, and offered the bottle a third time.

“Larry! Leave me alone,” Phil shouted through his asbestos suit. “I”m getting ready to qualify and we”re the next pair up!”

“Hey listen!” Dixon warned, “You”re not going out there alone, are you?” -30-