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 Jerry Wilson a.k.a. “The Diecast Dude” has become a main stay for trollers of racing blogs. He has been referred to as “a cracked genius” (although I question the “genius” part). Although he recently called “Closing Time” (you gotta love the reference) on the “diecast-dude.com” blog, he has two other blogs that he continues to post on, and also has a new book coming out in the near future. His current blogs- “Restrictor Plate This” and “Goldfish and Clowns” are very different in style and content, each with their own personality, showing his ability to be versatile without being repetitive. The “Restrictor Plate This” blog is a reporting style fact based blog about racing, while the “Goldfish and Clowns” blog is more personal and brings out his beliefs and interests. His faith is apparent, coming throughas opinion without making readers feel they are being “preached” to.
This page will feature an extra for fans- a question and answer section where you will get to know Jerry a little better. If you have any questions for Jerry you can submit them here and I will put the questions to Jerry. Questions that are chosen will be featured here. To join the crew or submit questions contact us.Note: When I asked if I could post his photo, his reply was- "Yes, you can use my mug shot to scare away little children. And Jayski and Tall Glass of Milk:)" My favorite entry and one that I believe says a lot about who Jerry is (and who more of us should be): (From much, much earlier this morning...)
Dude! Wake up!
Snglpluflabawa... zzz...
C'mon Dude! Wake up!
Bflqueeslanglefufu... whoever you are, unless you're here to hand me my Pulitzer Prize you're in serious trouble for waking me at that time of the night.
What time?
The time when I'm sleeping. Who are you, anyway?
C'mon, you know me! I'm the spirit of the blogosphere!
I'd rather hear from the three ghosts of Christmas. What do you want, anyway? It's not like you haven't bugged me enough.
I want you to get off the schnide! There's work to be done!
And what do you call what I'm doing on the blogs I have? Playing Yahtzee?
You know how many bloggers are out there right now outworking you?
I imagine a lot.
You're right a lot! They've got more posts every day, they're doing more research...
They probably have better hair too. So what? They do their thing, I do mine. The sun rising and setting is not dependent on whether or not I'm being '"out-blogged." This isn't a competition.
But don't you want the most readers?
Sure. But you know as well as I do what it would take to go there. More snark, more snipe, more gossip, more self-glorification, and a certain amount of profanity plus girlie pics. Not my style.
What? You think everyone who reads blogs is stuck in perpetual adolescence?
Of course not. Only those who read what I just described. And there seems to be a lot of them. But that's hardly something I need to concern myself with. And neither are the good blogs out there.
But don't you want to be one of them?
That's not for me to decide, now is it. Look, there are some fantastic NASCAR blogs out there written by people who know their stuff. I'm not trying to compete with them, because I can't. All I can do is what I do. Some information, some entertainment, some commentary, some philosophizing, some spiritual openness. 'One person, one voice, one opinion; consider it as you will' isn't a buzz phrase for me. It's what I do. I put out whatever it is for that particular post, and the reader decides how to react. Should they like it, great. Should they dislike it, eh. They have literally millions of other blogs from which to choose. If I tried to do something else it wouldn't work.
Okay, Mr. Modesty. How do you tell which NASCAR blogs are worth reading?
The ones whose authors don't claim to be the be-all and end-all fountainhead of racing wisdom. They don't act like "reporting" who won a race is a case of their doing the reader a favor. They don't insult the reader's intelligence by stating the obvious. They entertain as well as inform; they offer commentary based on something other than which driver and/or team they love or hate. Some have genuine knowledge of the sport's inner workings, and some are strictly coming from a fan's view. In either case they're written from the heart.
Care to name names?
Check my blogroll.
Care to name names of the bad blogs?
Check who's not on my blogroll.
Anything else to say about yesterday's race?
Not really. Kenseth hit the setup, others were close but not close enough. As a Gordon/Johnson fan, good to see Jeff and Jimmie do well, especially seeing the latter shake off the championship hangover that dogged him throughout Daytona. Don't know what the deal is at DEI, but everyone and their grandmother is going on at length about it so I'll pass. Stewart doing well at the beginning of a season? Scary. If he's doing that now, should he pick it up a notch later on the year like he normally does he'll be absolutely unstoppable. Harvick's hot, but for whatever reason I'm not sold yet he's a legitimate title contender. Definitely interested in how the COYT tests at Bristol this week go. That pretty much covers it. Now I'm going back to sleep. Good night and good luck... zzz...
| The current sites: The Pod Cast: The Die Cast Crew: Crew Cheif: The Spirit of Kenny Irwin Jr. The Crew: kcjsmoket20 Some Questions: When did you start blogging about NASCAR? "August of 2003." What inspired you to get going? "I'm not sure I'd say "inspired" as much as motivated. I had endured more than a few nasty sessions on assorted NASCAR and die cast bulletin boards over the preceeding years, mostly due to my not being an Earnhardt worshipper when most boards were decidedly slanted in that direction. (At least the ones I knew about were that way.) Basically, I wanted a forum where I could speak my peace about NASCAR without it turning into a flame war. When AOL, which I loved at the time, first introduced a free blogging feature called "AOL Journals", I decided, "Why not?" So I jumped in." What was your initial impression of the "blogging" forum? "It was fun, being able to rant away at whatever without impunity. At the time, a single entry on AOL Journals had a max of 2500 characters, including HTML mark up, whether you added any or not. This made for some, shall we say, "creative" editing-especially for someone like me who likes to ramble on and on." Really, you rambling, I hadn't noticed. "Yeah, in a way it was good, because it forced me to be concise in order to avoid too many "to be continued in the next post" posts." What was your style in the beginning? "When I first started, I was very vitriolic and bitter. I don't remember if I was conscious of it or not, but I was using the forum as a means for symbolic revenge against the people who had hassled me on the boards I mentioned. Here I could lash out at them and whatever they held dear, and they couldn't talk back. I even had the comments feature turned off for the longest time. If iremember correctly, it was off for well over a year after I started. Gradually I started to mellow out. At that time, AOL was still using the business model of the community promoting its own, and some nice people who oversaw different boards and chat areas, and the like, took notice of what I was doing. They were kind enough to promote the blog in different ways, either in specific areas of AOL, or at least once on a rotating main sign on screen. These generated a lot of visibility for the blog, which was nice. Publicity is always good. Well, unless it's a sex tape. Am I to assume then that you weren't in the Paris tape? (Or is that a part of your past that you regret?) more to come.... | Jerry makes it very clear that one of his goals is to keep the memory of Kenny Irwin Jr. alive. In an effort to help him with this, I am dedicating this corner to Kenny.  
The first phot is from the "Kenny Irwin Jr. Foundation" site and the second is from "Rachel's Kenny Irwin Page". If credit needs to be given, please contact me and I will add it. Kenny Irwin Jr. (August 5, 1969- July 7, 2000) Kenny began racing when he was only in 2nd grade. He went on to race in IMSA, USAC, the Craftsman Truck Series, the Busch Series, and the Winston Cup Series. He earned "Rookie of the Year" honors in the USAC Sprint Series (1993), the Silver Crown Series (1994), the Craftsman Tuck Series (1997), and the Winston Cup Series (1998). He was also the 1996 USAC National Midget Series Champion. His life was ended tragically during practice at the New Hampshire International Speedway, which, ironically, is also where Adam Petty lost his life. Kenny's car hit the wall and flipped, killing him instantly. Kenny's parents started a charitable foundation- "The Kenny Irwin Jr. Memorial Foundation" which includes the "Dare To Dream Camp" and supports many other charities. The camp is a faith based venture with a focus on giving children confidence and teaching them team work and leadership skills for now and the future. For more info on the foundation and camp visit the site: www.kennyirwinjrfoundation.org The Kenny Irwin Jr Memorial Campground is located at:
75 West County Road 500 South
New Castle, IN 47362
Call Toll Free: 1-877-987-2267 To learn more about Kenny: Wikipedia- Kenny Irwin Jr. JAYSKI's SILLY SEASON SITE
Kenny Irwin News and Tribute Page
Rachel's Kenny Irwin Page
NASCAR.com
racing-reference.info Frontstretch.com Books about Kenny: Kenny Irwin Jr. by Ann Gaines
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