Look out, below! No, really, look out below. Credit: CIA Stock Photo

We wonder ...

All-Star weekend left us with some all-star questions

... was Trent Cherry hurt when fans let him crash to the ground?

He's the crewmember from the No. 12 team that stagedove into the frontstretch Saturday night during pre-race introductions.

	Mark Spoor
	DO YOU WONDER? Tell Mark what has you shaking your head

I have to admit that I broke the rule about waiting to see if someone is hurt before you laugh at his fall. However, I can safely say that I was not alone in the media center at Lowe's Motor Speedway on Saturday. You'd have thought Gallagher had just walked in and smashed a watermelon with a hammer bigger than his head.

The pimp suits the crew wore on stage Saturday night for its introduction would have been enough, but that dive was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Not for the dive itself, but for the way the crowd parted like Alfalfa's hair and let the poor guy crash to the unforgiving pavement with a thud.

It was like when you played volleyball in school and the ball came between two people that would have rather been dissecting a frog and the ball falls to the floor.

Except this was a human being -- who I can bet won't be stagediving again.

... which is more important -- the show or the race?

After the first segment ended Saturday night, the Red Hot Chili Peppers took to the stage. As I watched them and wondered if I had suddenly been zoomed back to 1992, I questioned why NASCAR would tell the Peppers to perform, as scheduled even though the evening's racing had already been delayed twice by rain and the radar didn't look promising.

Wouldn't the prudent move had been to delay the Peppers performance until after the race to give the drivers and teams every chance of finishing the race on the day it was scheduled, to say nothing of the fact that it was nearly 11:30 p.m. on the east coast when the performance began and FX was likely losing viewers by the minute?

Jarrod Breeze, one of the editors of this site, crystalized it beautifully when we had lunch together Sunday afternoon. He asked theoretically if a single ticketholder at Lowe's or a single viewer at home had made their plans for the evening because the Chili Peppers were going to be there.

My guess would be no.

... did Jamie McMurray and Mark Martin get together for brunch Sunday?

You'd think not. How bizarre was it to see Martin -- the man many drivers point to as an example of respectful driving -- involved in two high-profile incidents Saturday night? The thing with Kasey Kahne later in the race didn't appear to be of Martin's making at all, but how would you explain the McMurray crash early in the first segment?

Martin said McMurray was in the wrong.

"I made a couple of runs at him and he didn't give it up, and I made another run at him down there and got real close to him and he wiggled and I got into him," said Martin.

"Stuff like that happens when you don't yield to a faster car I guess. That's why I usually get out of the way if somebody is all over me."

McMurray's retort was curious to say the least.

"Yeah, he said, 'I'll take the blame for that.'," McMurray said. "It's the All-Star race and I know Mark's side of that. He was racing me pretty hard. You want to let guys go, but I didn't ever really feel like he was far enough underneath me to let him go and then I got spun out.

"It's very unfortunate to have one of your teammates do that, but Mark and me, even when I wasn't with Roush Racing, always had a good relationship and it'll stop here."

So, Martin took the blame when talking to McMurray, then threw McMurray under the bus when talking to the media?

You get the feeling that something's up here, don't ya?

... when was Ben Franklin president?

Just before pre-race introductions, Jeff Hammond said to the crowd at Lowe's, "we know what tonight's about -- the presidents! Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson. It's about the money."

Uh... yeah. OK.

For the benefit of everyone who watched Saturday's race, here's a bit about Ben Franklin, courtesy of wikipedia.com:

He became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. A diplomatic genius, Franklin was almost universally admired among the French as American minister to Paris, and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to his death in 1790 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania.

Maybe that was the presidency Hammond was talking about.

... is Kyle Busch a breath of fresh air?

Say what you want about Busch, and people have said plenty, but when he struck that pose on the stage Saturday night and cupped his hand to his ear like Paul Orndorff after he pile-drove Hulk Hogan and earned the title "the Benedict Arnold of professional wrestling," Busch really did make a statement.

In this era of NASCAR where everyone tries to make everyone happy and say the right things and do the right things, Busch said to the NASCAR world, "this is who I am, for better or worse. Like me if you want to, but I don't care if you hate me. In fact, I get a bit of joy from it."

That's a guy secure in his own skin, something all sports have been without for quite some time.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.