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Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t. Almond Joy has nuts. Mounds don’t.

I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream.

Apparently I am going into my dotage. Or my anecdotage. Last weekend I watched the races on the “roval.” I don’t think it’s in the dictionary yet. Half road course. Half oval. Roval. As Goober Pyle would have said, “Get it?”

In the short run, I enjoyed the heck out of the races, particularly the Monster Cup one on Sunday. I like everyone who was in position to win. Kyle Larson is Kyle Busch with good taste. He’s sort of Charlie the Tuna. For some reason, Larson doesn’t win that often, or not often enough to suit me because I think he’s got so much talent, he ought to have 10 wins this year. Kyle Busch seems to win most of those races because, as you know if you’re as old as I, Starkist doesn’t want tuna with good taste. Starkist wants tuna that taste good.

Brad Keselowski has the full package, too. His is the best combination of driving verve and a head on his shoulders. When he and Larson roared off the oval part into the road-course part, there had to be oil on the track. No way they screwed up that badly.

Then it looked as if the race was coming down to the reigning champion, Martin Truex Jr., and the mega-champion, Jimmie Johnson, battling it out in the final handful of laps, having coolly watched attrition wage war. I had thought Johnson might get his last hurrah on the roval because he might keep his wits about him while others were losing theirs. He would have been Rudyard Kipling’s choice.

In a span of six paragraphs, I have looked at this race through the eyes of Goober Pyle, Charlie the Tuna and Rudyard Kipling. What a smooth combination.

Johnson, as sensible a man as has ever tried something as stupid as driving a car wide-ass open in flawed circles and on circuits, busted his Chevrolet’s ass in the final chicane of the final lap, at a place not heretofore noted for chicanes. He took Truex’s Toyota with him, leading Casey Stengel to bark from the hereafter, “Ain’t there anybody what can play this here game?”

Goober. The Tuna. Kipling. Stengel. A jingle of coconut candy bars. Three nights later, and I’ve still not come to coherent grips with this brave new stock car racing innovation.

Ryan Blaney won the the dadgum race. Good for him. He’s talented and, last I noticed, still a mite impulsive. Not no more. He showed the patience of Job.

Who’d’uh thunk it?

The last race I saw plotted like this one had Dom de Luise and Buddy Hackett in it. It was a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World.i

The young people hadn’t seen nothing like none of this. Grammar be damned. The first thing Marcus Smith and His Band of Merry Pranksters eliminated was the Rules of

Grammar. Then all the other rules.

About 30 years ago, people wore caps with what would one day become my analysis of the first race on the “roval.”

Damifino.