Cheap Seats
Diesel engine, unleaded gas
From the April issue of Car & Driver magazine, a collection of the best of the worst of Murray Walker, the Formula One commentator for the British Broadcasting Company:
“The car in front is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it, which is identical.”
“He’s obviously gone in for a wheel change. I say obviously because I can’t see it.”
“This is an interesting circuit because it has inclines - and not just up, but down as well.”
“He is shedding buckets of adrenaline in that car.”
“Only a few more laps to go and then the action will begin, unless this is the action, which it is.”
How’s it feel to be Mr. Tonya Harding?
The man who married Tonya Harding 3-1/2 months ago believes the former figure skater married him only for the money she got from selling the wedding story to the tabloids.
“I feel so used, it’s pitiful,” Michael Smith said. “Now that the wedding’s over, she doesn’t need me.”
Harding filed for divorce from her second husband last week, saying she wanted to concentrate on a figure skating comeback.
Smith, 29, who has been married four times, said his friends told him before he married Harding that she would “chew him up and spit him out.”
Doris Smith, Michael’s mother, said Harding told her new husband’s parents that they were the family she’d always wanted.
“Before the wedding, she was sweet and wonderful,” Doris Smith said. “I never saw the anger, the yelling, the manipulation and the put-downs.”
A prenuptial agreement says Harding can keep her pickup truck and skating costumes. Smith, a machinist, gets to keep his tool chest.
“I don’t like everyone looking at me like an idiot,” he said, “but I still love her.”
Maybe because she let him keep his tools.
That’s an endorsement!
We’ve reported here previously that Ilie Nastase, once the clown prince of tennis, is running for mayor of Bucharest, Romania, his birthplace. Ion Tiriac, Nasty’s old doubles partner, has this take on the election:
“If he would run for mayor of New York or Paris, I think he should be put in a cell somewhere. But after the last five years in Bucharest, he just might be the right man.”
When the Shark bites
Outtakes from the ongoing saga of Greg Norman, that great guy we just have to feel sorry for: As Norman walked off the 18th hole of Augusta last Thursday, a television reporter who has covered the Australian for years, asked him what it felt like to shoot a nine-under-par 63 to tie the course record.
Without missing a beat, Norman flashed a smile and shot back: “Jimmy, it’s a feeling you’ll never have.”
Just as he’ll never have the feeling of blowing a sixstroke lead and losing the Masters by five, eh, Greg?
The last word …
“It’s like being convicted of murder. You know how they talk about Charles Manson? Once they stick that on you, you never lose it. You’ll always be a former CBA player.” , Chucky Brown of the Rockets, on his Continental Basketball Association roots
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo