There were costumes (with cleavage), themes (with horse dung), beer (some good, some poured all over people's racecars) and there were also some $500 cars. I think I saw maybe two of them.
For those cars that weren't legitimate $500 beaters there were four hot and thirsty judges waiting to hand out some stiff penalties. And if the judges were of the opinion that there were some sort of extreme rule interpretation shenanigans going on (some use the word cheating) then the car came to me, The Professor of Cheat. Nothing good came from that.
A few lessons learned from Reno-Farnley B.S. Inspections:
1. Bribes do in fact work. Hooch was handed out a plenty and penalties were appropriately lowered. There was lots of alcohol to go around, some Absinthe, a wine and cheese platter, and strangely some fetish porn.
2. It pays to bring good beer. Just in case you don't know what good beer is, I can tell you it definitely isn't Coors Light. A 30 pack was poured over an entire car.
3. BMW E30s and Nissan Sentra SE-Rs = penalty laps.
4. And last but not least tech early. It turns out that Judges Loverman and Murilee get cranky after being in the sun all day, although the wine and cheese break— courtesy of some Alfa-driving gentlemen— did help.