Danica Patrick, the Indy 500 driver, almost wins Indy 500

Danica Patrick 

Danica Patrick heard the boos, the criticisms, and the questions, and reminded everyone, including this blogger, that's she's a race car driver who just happens to be a good marketer.

UPDATE: Danica Patrick places fifth at Indy 500.

Back from as much as 23rd down, Patrick skillfully manuevered her Andretti Autosport car, and took advantage of both winner Dario Franchitti's need to save fuel, Helio Castroneves' stall coming out of the pits on the 146th lap, and Mike Conway's airborne crash, to finish fifth.

The performance gives Danica Patrick her third top-five Indy 500 race finish in five years. But this one was special because it was as if Danica said "enough, is enough" and decided she was going to power through the experience - boos last week, hot weather, poor-handling car, and the media - and come out a winner.

In a way, Danica Patrick just gave the World as close to an "f-you" as possible. Perhaps Yahoo's CEO Carol Bartz should have her company sponsor Danica Patrick instead of GoDaddy.com. One thing is certain: Bartz will get a great race car driver, who just happens to be a savvy marketer and Twitter fiend:

Thanks for all the well wishes! Awesome finish for the #7 GoDaddy crew! Thanks for all the support, I have the best fans! Congrats Dario!
about 1 hour ago via UberTwitter

Stay tuned.

Dario Franchitti wins Indy 500, makes Ashley Judd happy

Judd reads; Dario leads at Indy

Dario Franchitti won his first Indianapolis 500 race, making his wife Ashley Judd very happy in the process.

Judd, who was photographed by television news station WISH Indianpolis' Eric Halvorson reading a book (or a script for a movie?) as the Indy 500 progressed, reportedly jumped up and ran barefoot down pit lane to hug Franchitti.

Maybe Judd's getting used to the win; it was Franchitti's second Indy victory in three years; his first was in 2007; it's Dario's first Indy win of the series in 2010.

Judd greets Franchitti

Dario's win also made Chip Ganassi, the owner of Target Chip Ganassi Racing, the first racing company to win both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500.

In fact, one visit to Chip Ganassi's website already tells you his company's Target-sponsored car and driver won.

The driver, Dario Franchitti, put in what's described as a "flawless" race performance, even though he almost ran out of gas.

Dario only had 1.6 gallons of fuel left at the end of the Indy 500 because he was clocking it. Dario's top speed was 224.287, before slowing down to conserve fuel at the constant request of his pit crew. He did, and just enough to stay ahead and salvage the win.

Indianapolis 500 Race: Dario Franchitti and Helio Castroneves battle

This update on the Indianapolis 500 Race: Dario Franchitti, who's married to singer (see De-Lovely) and actress Ashley Judd, is in the lead.

According to the Indy 500's Twitter page @IndyTalk, the leaders are 1. Franchitti 2. Helio 3. Tagliani 4. Matos 5. Briscoe 6. Carpenter 7. Dixon 8. Scheckter 9. Bell 10. Hunter-Reay, at the yellow flag.

While Helio Castroneves won the pole position, he's nowhere near the top 10 as of this writing. For Dario Franchitti, this is his first time leading at the Indianapolis 500 Race since he won in 2007. The 5-9, 155 pound Scottish racer with the Italian name is ranked #5 at Indy.

UPDATE: Castroneves is in the hunt according to Indy500 on Twitter:

Lap 68 running order - 1. Franchitti 2. Castroneves 3. Briscoe 4. Kanaan 5. Carpenter #indy500

Indy has Four Women

A record number of women, four, are driving in today's Indy 500: Danica Patrick, Sarah Fisher and rookies Ana Beatriz and Simona De Silvestro.

Indianapolis 500 Race: is Danica Patrick, the marketer, ready?

Danica Patrick

The Indianapolis 500 Race has started and there's no question that its most famous current star (other than Kim Kardashian, who's a spectator and Jack Nicholson, who's the honorary race flag waver) is Danica Patrick.

The difference is Danica Patrick's in the race, but you'd never know Patrick, the driver of the #7 GoDaddy.com car, was ready for the Indianapolis 500 Race with all of the marketing tie-ins, parties, and events Patrick attends.

All of this, once a standard part of Danicamainia, now comes into question after Patrick threw her race crew under the bus when she said "it's not my fault" in the wake of an awful qualifying car run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Later, Danica revealed her frustration:



Danica the Marketer

Danica Patrick has become more marketer than race car driver. Just today, her Twitter page @DanicaPatrick has a Saturday tweeted push for screening for chronic bronchitis and emphysema..

Drive4copd.com banner in the sky! Take the 5 question screener!
about 23 hours ago via web

And before that Danica Patrick was in New York City at about the same time as this blogger and at an event with Indianapolis 500 Race legend Mario Andretti, where Danika reports her phone failed to send a copy of this photo:



Fortunately for the phone maker, she didn't tweet what brand it was.

Danica's Twitter tweets are a happy trip from events to product mentions like the iPad or this lovely watch by another sponsor Tissot, which Patrick said was designed in 1913 (ish):



Then, Danica Patrick's part of a group of celebs interviewed by Honda as part of its "Dream The Impossible" documentary series.

With all of this, and sponsors are a necessary part of the business of road racing, how much time does Danica have to think about and do racing? It's one thing to practice, but another to hone and refine her driving. There's a break-even point between the number of sponsors needed to build a race business, the time it takes to deal with them which includes events and parties, and the time needed to become a better driver.

There's no question Patrick's in great physical shape; it's the mental part of racing that's at issue. Is Danica doing too much away from racing? Should she increase her sponsor and appearance fee and cut back on engagements?

If Danica Patrick wins or even performs well at today's Indianapolis 500 Race, these questions will not matter.

If.

Mike Bloomberg "Off-Shore Mayor" Brooklyn Bridge Park & Govs Island to Cayman post by Suzannah B. Troy

http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-gift-horse-in-mouth-examination_24.html Above link, part 1, Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth?


An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development Monday, May 24, 2010 Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth? An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development, Part II http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-gift-horse-in-mouth-examination.html Monday, May 24, 2010 Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth? An Examination of Brooklyn Bridge Park in Terms of the Politics of Development, Part III http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-gift-horse-in-mouth-examination_21.html by Michael D. D. White. You will learn why Michael calls Bloomberg the off-shore mayor from Governors Island to the Cayman Island and his links in his blog are extremely revealing or as much as they can be when it gets to the mayor's finances and other tidbits.




Please take the time to read Michael's expose, watch my YouTube interview. For me the way Mike Bloomberg has handled real estate and this ruthless tsunami of community crushing development as reckless and stupid as what brought the implosion of Wall Street is about the mayor wanting to do what he wants unchecked. Steve Rattner thought he could do what he wanted to do unchecked and he has been busted.  


Here is an excerpt from Noticing New York and it takes patience and time to get to the really, really juicy bits including the Cayman Islands.


"This three-part article, which is principally about the new Brooklyn Bridge Park currently under development, wends a long, more serpentine path through the politics of New York City development than perhaps any other we have written. As you would expect, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's appearance is much more than a cameo. We don’t offer him praise. Inevitably the metaphor of looking a gift horse in the mouth comes to mind when we contemplate the spectacular change to the city’s waterfront that will one day be Brooklyn Bridge Park. Whatever our government agencies ultimately do, the park will provide desirable benefits that will be extremely hard to complain about. But not conscientiously examining “gifts” that government officials deliver just doesn’t work in the political environment of New York. Besides Brooklyn Bridge Park is not truly a gift; it is something that community activists worked for years to obtain. Our elected representatives are, after all, supposed to be working for us. It is their job to properly administer our available public resources. Whether they are doing so requires a conscientious examination. We hope you will find that conscientious examination takes us on an interesting and worthwhile trip. Now, let our wending look at the politics of development begin. The Shuffling of Dates for the Opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park  On March 22, an initial part of Brooklyn Bridge Park opened, the Pier One portion in the north near Fulton Ferry. An actual opening is imbued with a faintly amazing aspect given that dates announced for opening the park have been shuffled around by innumerable postponements. The shuffling has occurred in truly big picture terms and it also occurred recently on a more micro level. In big picture terms; the park, which involved decades of planning (funding for which was approved in 2000) was originally supposed to start construction in 2003/2004 and be fully open and complete in 2011 (an eight year construction period). By the end of 2004 the public was being told 2008 would be shovel-in-the-ground year and that the construction would take three or four years to complete (i.e. completion would be pushed out one more year to 2012). Such big picture delay is something that press coverage of the opening necessarily alluded to. The rest of the media did not, however point out the shuffling of the opening date that has been transpiring recently on a more micro level,but we did. In late August, just around back-to-school time, the public was told that two sections of the park would open just four months later in December. (We were quite skeptical.) Then, in November, with three of those four months elapsed, the public was told that it would still be waiting another four months for an opening of just one section of park rather than the two promised in August. Let us restate this in terms of what prompted our own skepticism: At the tail end of the two four year terms served by the Bloomberg administration, just as Bloomberg was running for an unprecedented third term by having overturned the city charter to repel term limits,it was being announced that part of a project funded and approved evenbefore Bloomberg took office, the whole of which was supposed to have been largely completed within those two terms, was finally, finally being started! Not only that; the public was being told that it was going to be opened just a mere days after the election. What do you think happened? A scant 22 days after Bloomberg squeaked by (spending more than a hundred million dollars) to win re-election, it was revealed that the schedule of a four month countdown to completion announced before the election was, as we initially hypothesized, quite fanciful." You will have to go to the blog links above to read all the installments and also don't forget my piece on Mike Bloomberg's techno-dream is the tax payer's Titanic as in CityTime.

Dennis Hopper - Rest in Peace by: Nikky Raney

Dennis Hopper died today (Saturday, May 29, 2010) from complications with prostate cancer.

Hopper was 74 years old.

In March, TMZ reported that he was very ill from cancer and that he would not recover from this.

Hopper was very talented. He is best known for starring in and producing the 1969 film "Easy Rider." He also acted alongside James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant."

"We'd gone through the whole '60s and nobody had made a film about anybody smoking grass without going out and killing a bunch of nurses," Hopper told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. "I wanted 'Easy Rider' to be a time capsule for people about that period."

Hopper's life has always been one that interested the public. From his friendship with Peter Fonda to his bitter divorce battle.

This is really sad. Yesterday Gary Coleman died, and today Dennis Hopper. They say "everything comes in threes," but I truly hope that there will not be another celebrity death anytime soon.

Rest in Peace Dennis Hopper

(1936 - 2010)

My heart goes out to his four children, and those that was fortunate enough to have him as apart of their lives.

(photo taken from nydailynews)

EDIT: When I said everything comes in 3, I forgot that Art Linkletter died the day before Coleman. I wish the best to everyone who has been affected.

Posted by Nikky Raney

The Future of Journalism

Gary Coleman Dead of intercranial hemorrage - sad life ends

"Gary Coleman Dead of intercranial hemorrage - child actor dies" happened Friday after the famous child star passed away after a severe head injury he sustained at his home in Utah caused bleeding in his brain and described as an intercranial hemorrage and a epidural hematoma.

Gary Coleman

Gary Coleman, who was so funny in the TV show sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986), became something of a sideshow later in life. In part, his small stature, his parents, and his anger issues, and Coleman's celebrity mixed together to produce what from a distance looked like a terrible life. The Lord called Gary Coleman away from that mess on Friday.

Gary Coleman has openly said his parents did not treat him correctly. Edmonia Sue and W.G. Coleman adopted Coleman and from all accounts they did not care about him at all. Gary sued them for "misappropriation of funds" and they counter-sued for defamation and breach of contract. Consider that there's no record that Coleman knew who his real parents were and the people who took him in as his adopted parents, took his money from his work.

Coleman sued them, won, and was awarded $1.3 million. But nothing could recover the emotional damage Coleman sustained from four years of battling with his parents. The reason why Gary Coleman had the problems the public has been exposed to was because he had no solid family base around him. No real parents, brothers or sisters, cousins, or aunts and uncles. No one who cared.

Gary's marriage to Shannon Price was probably the best thing that could have happened to Coleman, but his anger problems threatened to destroy it too. In an effort to save their marriage Coleman and Price went on the show Divorce Court, where Coleman said this:

"I don't have any friends and don't have any intention of making any. People will stab you in the back, mistreat you, talk about me behind your back, steal from you. And they're not really your friends. (They're) only there because you're a celebrity or because they want to get something from you."

And this statement from the NY Daily News explains why the Lord took him on Friday:

"It's not her fault," he says. "I always feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders every day I get up. ... There are days I don't even want to get up."

On Friday, Gary Coleman got his wish.