While I don't have a lot of patience for dudes who validate their manhood via fast cars or jacked-up trucks (nothing turns me on like a guy with a shitty car, seriously), the sport/hobby/total wastes of time that are car racing and other forms of automobile enthusiasm have become less irritating thanks to the likes of Ricky Bobby and, now, a Dallas man named Richard Rawlings.
Two weeks back, Rawlings, the self-proclaimed "Antichrist of the hot-rod world" who runs a hot-rod factory called the Gas Monkey Garage in West Dallas, and Dennis Collins apparently broke a 28-year-old renegade cross-country car racing record, driving from New York City to Los Angeles in 31 hours and 59 minutes.
The Cannonball Run, which I freely admit to never having heard of (outside of this, of course) before I received a press release about it this morning, started back in the '70s as a protest against increasingly strict traffic laws. The race starts on 34th Street in Manhattan and ends in Redondo Beach, California.
The old record, set in a Jaguar XJS (which sounds like a car) in 1979, was broken by Rawlings and buddy Dennis Collins in a Ferrari 550 Maranello (which sounds like a latte). Rawlings' Gas Monkey Garage is a dude-oriented reality TV favorite, featured on Spike TV's Musclecar and TLC's Overhaulin'. Way to go, dudes. --Andrea Grimes
