The Unbearable Bobness of Being

Danny vs Roy: Lawnmower Racin'

As American as apple pie and the 12 bar blues.

Some of the rules form the United States Lawnmower Racing Association (USLRA) rulebook:

Mower Requirements
o CUTTING BLADES MUST BE REMOVED COMPLETELY FROM ALL MOWERS.
o Non-stock mowers must be equipped with an automatic throttle closing device.
o All mowers must be equipped with an engine safety cut-off switch.
o Mower brakes must be in good condition, operating on at least 2 wheels.
o Fuel must be pump gas. The only additive allowed is STA-BIL Fuel Stabilizer.

Driver Safety Equipment
o Every driver must wear an automobile racing or motorcycle-type safety helmet.
o Every driver shall wear long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, gloves and shoes on the track.
o It is MANDATORY that all drivers wear an "approved for racing" neck support.

Rider Mower Classification
o Stock Class: As delivered from the factory.
o IMOW Class: (Int'l Mowers Of Weeds) Front engine, highly regulated.
o Prepared Class: Prepared (modified) drive train, engine, etc.
o FX Class: Major modifications allowed.
o JP Class: Class for kids ages 10-15.

So, let's not dick around with this one, Danny and Roy are racing FX Class with major mods. Why is that Bob you might be asking, well, because a couple of old gunslingers like these two aren't gonna be dillydallyin around on no fresh off the Sear's showroom floor Toro or somethin. They've both seen too much, drank too much, smoked too much, guitar'd too much for that.
 
I must digress from my thematic prong of Danny and Roy as a couple of grizzled old badasses blasting around a track on supercharged lawnmowers, to express my disgust that the rules require CUTTING BLADES TO BE REMOVED COMPLETELY. I find that sort of takes the whole "mower' part outta "lawnmower racing" you know? I'm especially dumbfounded by the "REMOVED COMPLETELY" clause as one can only imagine, with bated breath and quivering plastic mugs fulla beer, the excitement of PARTIALLY REMOVED AND/OR REALLY LOOSE CUTTING BLADES on these howling lawn and garden implements of doom. I would seriously fucking pay money to go to a USLRA sanctioned event if it meant cutting blades were zipping off heavily modified lawnmowers racin' around the track and decapitating or amputating the racers. zomg. Or even if they were heavily armored race mower drivers (and you'd think nobody would wanna do it if it meant high probability decapitation) and a shrieking cutting blade just knocked you silly and made you crash your lawnmower racer.

Anyway, back to the pronging of Danny and Roy - Who would win? This is, perhaps, the toughest of all the events in the big contest to call so far. I have no idea who actually was a better yard man of the two or who could drive the best. Sure, Danny had the muscles and look of a yard laborer but Roy had the airs of a sophisticated orchid man, a man who cares deeply about horticulture and the gifts of photosynthesis and aerophagia, a man who made his own soil mix. Tough call.

But hell, I've got to go with Danny on this one. Why you might ask Bob why? Because he fucking killed himself in his garage, that's why. Dudes. He got into a fight with his old lady, stormed out where? where? To a coffeeshop? NO. To a Target store? NO. To the manliest place ever to bite the God bullet. HIS OWN GARAGE. That's a lawnmowing kind of guy suicide.

Danny Gatton, you are the Lawnmower Racing winner. And you are growing a big lead, man.

Lawnmower Racing: Danny Gatton

Total Medal Count:

Danny Gatton (3)
Roy Buchanan (1)

Danny vs Roy: Arm Wrasslin'

Arm wrasslin' is as quintessential American as all get out. It invokes images and smells of smoky, grimy bars stinkin of stale beer and broken dreams, of now fat ex jocks, maybe the star high school quarterback in little Buttpimple, Texas, livin out the string arm blasting drunks on pitted, heavily shellacked bar tables. We've all done it. If you're a man and you haven't arm wrassled somebody then go home to your momma. Get off my blog, man.

I used to be a helluva arm wrassler using, what I just found out by reading a Wiki, the "Top Roll" technique of rolling the opponents wrist over and takin him down. I used to arm wrassle football jocks in my dorm at WSU for beers top rollin these behemoths down. They could never figure out how a hippie like me could bust em. But this isn't about me so much, this is about Roy vs Danny arm wrestling in a dive bar somewhere for the next medal of the Danny Gatton vs Roy Buchanan TUBOB Carnival of Made Up Stuff  Extravaganza.

This one ain't even close. It wouldn't a been pretty. It wouldn't a been fair. Danny Gatton woulda smoked Roy's arm like he was pullin a chicken wing off a rotisserie'd Cornish game hen. Danny was built like a brick shithouse, like a damn dockworker throwin container crates full of Honda Elements off a ship with his bare hands. It ain't all about strength, sure, I think I used to prove that, but ole Roy, who was prolly the fastest guitarslinger ever, and prolly coulda fingerwrassled any of us into shrieking submission, wasn't what one would call a particularly athletic looking guy. Gotta give this one to Danny.

Arm Wrestling: Danny Gatton

Total Medal Count:

Danny Gatton (2)
Roy Buchanan (1)

Danny vs Roy: Impersonating a Liberal Arts College Professor

The jaunty beret. The mug of frosty beer in what is possibly a college town pub. He's unstoppable. Roy wins. Danny Gatton, who looks like a dockworker, had no chance in this contest.  Perhaps if it had been an auto shop or metal shop community college instructor impersonation Danny coulda been a contender. But not philosophy and humanities and mythology. I bet Roy got leather patches on the elbows of that nice suede leather jacket after he'd worn it a lot.

So far:

Impersonating a College Professor Champion: Roy Buchanan
Haiku: Danny Gatton

Total: Danny (1) Roy (1)

DECISION CONTESTED

Faithful and intelligent reader and commenter The Fool is contesting my decision here. He sent me a photo of Danny Gatton that he believes may move Gatton into at least a tie for Impersonating a Liberal Arts College Professor. You be the judge. Then read my final decision.

 

FINAL DECISION:

Roy maintains the win. Although the sport coat and tie-less dress shirt on Danny presents the casual ease and air of a Liberal Arts College Professor, the Elvis Rockabilly sideburns blows it all straight to hell. Roy's jaunty beret and full beard is perfect. Danny's burns are not.

The decision can not be appealed.

Danny vs Roy: Haiku

Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan. Two unbelievable guitarists, both specialists of the Fender Telecaster, both from the Washington DC area, both nearly unheard of by the general public yet considered influential Gods by those "in the know" e.g., fellow Guitar Gods Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Both dead by their own hands at nearly the same age (Roy = 48, Danny = 49) They were known to rip each other off and be intensely jealous of the other's talent.

You could go into just about any random AOL chatroom in the late 90s and start a blistering flamewar arguing about who was better. People seemed to be either Danny fans or Roy fans. I'll confess I'm a Roy fan because I never even heard of Mr. Gatton until the late 90s when he was already dead.

Roy Buchanan hung himself with his own shirt in a drunk tank in some crappy jail after being busted for public intoxication. Danny Gatton stormed out to his garage after a domestic dispute and ate a bullet. They died right outta the music of the blues and the honkytonks they were so immersed in. Hangin and shootin. Drunk and angry.

Well, I'm not going to reopen the whole who is the better guitarist argument here, I'm more intrigued by imagining and evaluating contests between Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan in areas not typically associated with them. I'll do this as a reoccurring series, probably quite a few until all but one or two of my readers have fled out of boredom or disgust with my tangential trajectories.

Anyhow, the first contest between Roy and Danny is who coulda wrote better haiku. To my almost nonexistent knowledge, neither published haiku, perhaps Roy wrote haikus on bar napkins damply ringed from ever present mugs of frosty beer, and perhaps he did not.

Although both could play slop and overfat with way too many notes, Danny seemed to possess a certain economy of style that Roy didn't. If this was a stream of consciousness poetry contest I'd give it to Roy. But since Haiku is a very structured and sparse poetry (5-7-5 syllables structure), I'm giving it to Danny.

Danny vs. Roy Haiku Champion: Danny Gatton