Welcome, gay NASCAR fans! Our wonderful Ryan Newman took his 6th 2003 Winston Cup victory on Saturday under the lights at Richmond! Congratulations, you hot, terrific Ryan! You read it here first, folks: Ryan Newman may not win the championship this year, but he is totally winning America's heart. A lady I know in business watched her first Winston Cup race Saturday night, and she enjoyed it and thought Ryan was a dreamboat. "I love it that he sounds intelligent," she commented. Well, the engineering degree from Purdue helps, I'm sure, I said! Look for Ryan Newman to be THE MAN in NASCAR. He's coming, y'all!

My sometimes-fellow Atlantan Elton John once rocked us with "Saturday's Night's All Right for Fighting," and for a minute it looked like that might be the sign-off music Saturday. Furious at Ricky Rudd for wrecking him from the 2nd spot back to a 16th place finish, Kevin Harvick rubbed his car onto Rudd's on pit lane, then jumped up on the car hollering at him, and Kevin's boys all swarmed all over Ricky's car to keep Kevin from hitting Ricky and maybe getting suspended. No punches were thrown, but on TV it looked a lot like one of those baseball fights.

NASCAR called everybody down to the trailer and gave them up the country, and just before my press time, they fined Kevin $35,000 and put him on probation for the remainder of the season. Also fined were four crewmen from the #29 team and Pat Tryson, crew chief for Rudd's #21 Ford. They were all fined for cussing, and some for throwing stuff. I have to say Kevin looked really, really hot throughout this confrontation (in that bad-news way my New York boy DJ Tennessee calls "cute but crazy.")

But really, you have to think that NASCAR is crying all the way to the bank about this, don't you? It came right after the end of the race, when you've got to figure the most people are watching. Plus, the Drudge Report had a photo-item about the "fight" up for two days! If you know your NASCAR history, you know that a post-race fight really helped make our sport a national phenomenon. The CBS broadcast of the 1979 Daytona 500 drew a huge audience of 15 million -- many of whom were snowed under in a huge blizzard; think of how sweet Daytona Beach must have looked to them! -- and after a big finish with a last-lap crash, there was a crazy wild country fight between Bobby and Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough, and everybody saw it! So the whole thing will probably just make Kevin all the more famous, and fabulous too.

TO THE CONFESSIONAL TRAILER FOR ME

Now friends, I did watch the race on Saturday, but I have to confess I watched it during a big poker game, and at times I was most mightily distracted. I wasn't making notes because I was videoptaping -- but as it turned out, the videotape I had going wasn't recording anything! (Damn that Dish!) So in the space I would normally fill with vivid race recappery, I'll tell you about the card game everybody's playing, Texas Hold 'Em!

This is the kind of poker they play in the World Series of Poker that was recently on ESPN and that is featured in that gross new book people are reading, "Positively 5th Street." Everybody gets two cards in their hand, then the share five cards on the table, and there's betting, of course. Well, this kind of poker is really fun -- but I have bad luck with it because I enjoyed playing the hands so much I'd pretty much spend money on anything, just to keep going! Once everyone figured that out, I was done for!

Our hosts were Kat Kelly and Bud, and our fellow players were Janet and Suepie. It was a super fun night. The big event was that I finally got into Bud's shorts! Yes, after all these years and no, I'm not kidding! Well actually, Kat tumped her Courvoiser glass over and gave my shorts a good baptizin'. As I was driving that evening and taking all kinds of trouble to avoid anything resembling the appearance of someone having undergone an endrunkening, I asked for a fresh pair of Bud's house shorts to cover up in (we're the same size, don't you know!) What a crazy night!

Anyway, it's a fun kind of poker, and you should try it if you enjoy cards!

GOT WOOD?

The racing weekend got off to a good start when we caught the end of Thursday night's truck race -- Tony Stewart won, and finishing in 4th was that woofy Jon Wood, who drives the #50 Ford truck sponsored by Bob Graham for President! Jon was really cute when he said it was a great night for him, "and a great night for Bob Graham!"

As we've mentioned before, we're backing Dr. Dean, but we like Sen. Graham too, and it's great to see the Democrats working to bring the NASCAR fans back into the party! Come on, folks, join up! Bush and these Republicans are destroying America!

HEY, 19!

The very gorgeous Brian Vickers is just a lad of 19, but he's won two Busch races this year and will race his rookie season in Nextel Cup next year! He'll be driving the #25 Chevrolet formerly driven by Joe Nemechek. Meantime, we'll be following Brian in the Busch league and looking for him at the Busch race in the ATL in October.

Thanks for stopping by the trailer this week, NASCAR buds and babes! Let's all get together at the Track Bar and watch the New Hampshire 300 this Sunday!