I'm back (sort of)

OK, so the other blog never came about. I've just been too busy with school and writing my novels to deal with it. But I intend to post things on this blog from time to time about a wide variety of subjects.

Today, I have a message for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. QUIT IT! Can you two guys just stop slamming the other and start talking about what you can do to fix this country. We're up to our neck in debt to the Chinese. Former soldiers are losing their homes and can't find work. Senior Citizens are more strapped now by the low Social Secutiry payments and higher costs of Medicare (something you should really think about because your day for those programs is coming). The war in Afghanistan is still taking the lives of young kids (and women and children there, too).

In other words, things are a mess. Obama -- tell me why you want another four years to fix the things you said you'd fix in your first term. Romney -- tell me what you would do different to solve the crisis that is the American Saga now.

In the meantime, stop the slam campaigns. They're pissing people off.

Moving On

Like most things in life, it's time to move on. This is the last post for the No Joking Blog on LiteSports.

Of course, we'll leave this blog linked to the site just as we do our daily editorials dating back to the 1990s.

Take care and be well.

Mike

Movng on

Like most things in life, it's time to move on. This is the last post for the No Joking Blog on LiteSports.

But we're not done writing. Our new blog is here: In The Cheap Seats. Of course, we'll leave this blog linked to the site just as we do our daily editorials dating back to the 1990s.

Take care and be well.

Mike

Whew!

Well, that last bit only took a couple of years.

Finally, however, I managed to start work on LiteSports.com, the first site on the Web to host sports trivia and sports editorials. We started this way back in December 1995 and we're still around today.

You'll notice some things still need work. Please bear with us. It's a very deep site so fixing it all up is going to take some time.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by. Y'all come back, now. Hear?

It's been a long, long time

Well, I finally made it back to college nearly a year after I moved home to Cary, N.C. I'm now taking classes in Web design and development and putting my two books that I had been writing on hold.

This is actually a homework assignment - to create a blog and set up a profile page. Since I've been on the Net for 20 years and working with computers for 30, I thought I'd just update my blog here and hope the instructor likes what he reads.

There's been some changes since I last posted anything on Litesports.com. The most major - outside of selling my pug puppy so he could have a better life with a fenced yard - was the start of the regeneration of my five Web sites. Litesports.com no longer exists - instead it's just a holding page until I decide to redo all of the information that had been there, which is now hiding at www.thesportsdrill.com. I also have www.theladiesofsports.com, www.thesportstriviachallenge.com and www.michaelwemmett.com.

I've also been into FaceBook quite heavily this summer and have built a consortium of about 1,400 friends as of this writing.

My goals are pretty simple - let my books sit for a couple of months before finishing them up and shipping them off to my agent; study hard and pass the classes at Wake Tech with flying colors; and completing my second semester of school before taking a well-deserved vacation next summer. Will I make it? Who knows. But I am sure going to give it the ol' college try.

Staying on Track

There's a good reason my AOL nickname is IrishOnTrack.

There's a good reason I've written hundreds of stories and shot thousands of photos of NASCAR events for newspapers all over the U.S. of A.

And there's another good reason I once ran the biggest NASCAR stringer market in the nation - Folks who were in my stable were at the tracks and peppered me with copy. From there, it would go to clients such as U.P.I., USA TODAY and too many other dailies list here.

The reason, you see was Gerald Martin, a past president of the Motorsports Writers of America and a fine writer himself. Gerald at the time was working on a biorgraphy of Rusty Wallace and covering NASCAR for The News & Observer in Raleigh.

The N&O had hired me from the Rocky Mountain News, one of the ten largest dailies in the nation. Now being a dumbass, wet-nosed kid out of Connecticut, if you don't count Jerry Nadeau, NASCAR in particular and motorsports in general were not well perceived.

I remember talking with Gerald about how on earth a man could enjo 2,000 left-turns on a Sunday afternoon. He laughed. But Gerald then began doing things no one else had tried before - he educated me about the sport. About NASCAR, its drivers, its machines, it's lap lengths and banking radius.

Then when he felt I was ready, he got me some freelance work at Lowe's Motor Speedway (then Charlotte Motor Speedway) and my personal race with this sport grew and grew.

I still cover some events when I can but not as many as I would like. And I also found Gerald's death to be shocking to my sysem (the man was only in his 50s). But go out I will and cover the events I can.

All because of what Gerald taught me. And rght now sports fans, the Ol' Irishman is going to take a Web site he owns (www.litesports.com) and convert it into a tribute to the No. 2. That was Rusty's machine. And Gerald's. Don't go there yet though. I've only put in about 15 minutes on it so far. But you, as well as NASCAR, Miller and Kurt Busch and those tracks I visit, will soon like what you see.

Um, make that 2,400 left-hand turns for the 24th of this year. It's 600 time!

Stimulating the major leagues

With all this talk about the muckey mucks taking big bonuses on Wall Street, you'd think someone - anyone - would come out against how part of your stimulus money is going to support major-league sports.

Don't think so? Name the banks and corporations that are getting tax and funding breaks only to use part of that money on the name of sports arenas and stadiums around the country. There's plenty to go around but it's all so galling.

Here we bail out a bank and then it slaps its name on the Mets' new digs. That's a shame. And we don't even get a break when it comes to ticket prices.

The problem, you see, is Obama's plan involves a tremendous amount of money. I mean a gosh-darn, dang-blasted huge, mother-of-all-infusions in history. And everyone wants their hands in the cookie jar, me included.

I want to go back to school - Wake Tech Community College - to get a certificate in Web Design. But the government doesn't give grants for certificate loans even though I will put in the equivalent of an A.D. in getting one. I also want a small business loan to take litesports.com and convert it into a tribute site for Miller Lite and the sports it promotes (to sell it to Miller someday obviously). I need to hire a FLASH and JavaScript guru to help me but there's no SBA loan available that I can put my hands on.

So where's my stimulus, Mr. Obama. I want to grow the economy, fund education, put someone to work and there's no where for me to go.

If you have any suggestions, email me at michaelwemmett@yahoo.com - until that, I will just watch your fat cats getting fatter.

What happened to 'We Are Marshall?'

I took a great deal of interest in the movie "We Are Marshall because I went there the year after the plane crash.
But my memories of the football program were horrid - I mean drinking way too much vodka the night before and waking up to a flushing toilet. That loud swishing sound I kept hearing, which lasted through the 1980s, was the sound of one of the worst teams in the nation. In fact, for a few years they held the longest losing streak in the NCAA.
But then things slowly - and I mean slowly like the syrup that comes out of Waffle House jar - started changing. First, they entered Division 1-AA, where they found a place they could stand a halfway decent chance of winning every weekend. It was not guaranteed, however, like the bonuses handed out recently by AIG. But they had a chance.
As the years passed, Marshall started to turn around and I stopped mounting my "GO BUCKS!" call since I had attended Graduate School at The Ohio State University in Columbus. But they were still stuck in Division 1-AA, a lowly position to be in if you went to that GO BUCKS! school.
Finally, the town of Huntington, W.Va., shut down Fairfield Stadium and built a new, bigger one on Fifth Avenue near the dorms. It seated 35,000 fans - the minimum required by the NCAA to get in the big league - Division 1A.
Marshall was an instant hit on that circuit, playing well enoogh to win the Motor City Bowl when it was in the MAC. They were producing the likes of Randy Moss, Chad Pennington and Brian Leftwich.
But alas, some fool had to go and make things "better." Marshall moved into Conference USA and has struggled there ever since.
That's only part of the problem, though. They failed to realize that they needed big-time talent at the key quarterback and receiving positions, as well as a defensive line that could hold better than a PB&J in front of Sumo wrestler.
Then the movie comes out and shows the glory they almost had the day of that fateful trip and the challenges the school faced in getting a team on the field. Too bad it didn't continue to today's version of "We Are Marshall."
If it did, then no one would remember the crash because they are seeing self-destruction each season in front of their very own eyes.
Tell you what. Want Marshall to have a better program? Go to all the schools (like Ohio State) with talented players are sitting on the bench because more talented ones are playing. Give then a promise to start and a scholarship. That goes for lawbreakers like Moss, too. So who cares if they have a domestic dispute every now and then? At least they'd be willing.
In the meantime, come next football season, you'll hear me yelling "GO BUCKS!" again. Marshall will be a mediocre team again.
By the way, I hated the movie. It had just as much fiction in it as it did fact. But I do feel sorry for a good friend of mine - Gene Morehouse Jr., the son of the PR man who lost his life in that wreck. Gene Jr. was a journalist and a good friend of mine.