This just in: The Jeepers Creepers Where'd You Get Those Weepers 500 finally ended 15 minutes ago at the Cali racing emporium known as Brian's Folly - Carl Edwards nosing out Jimmie Johnson by four umbrellas and a squeegie.

Grand marshal Al Roker pre sented Edwards with the winner's trophy - a gold-plated pair of galoshes - after which Edwards performed his traditional somersaulting splashdown from the roof of his Ford.

"I couldn't have done it without those silicone wiper blades," Edwards said. "I also can't say enough about my snorkel and flotation device. The guys in the dive shop really came through for me in a major way."

Think "Waterworld" was the biggest Hollywood clunker of all time? Fifty miles or so from Sunday night's Academy Awards, NASCAR staged its own soggy mess at Fontana - the France family track that killed the Southern 500, helped kill Rockingham and now needs a Heimlich-maneuver rescue or a good wringing out at least.

The weekend's show was all wet from the beginning and all farce thereafter. A steady Southern California rain - who knew? - pelted the track Friday and barely let up. Qualifying, prelim races and Brian France's garden party were scratched. The main event itself all but drowned.

By the time Sunday's race was aborted and postponed to a Monday completion, seven hours of rain delays had thinned an already sparse crowd and mangled some of the zoomier cars in the field.

It was 2:02 a.m. in the East, in fact, - a good two hours after the Coen brothers clutched the last Oscars of the night - when NASCAR pulled the plug on this disaster. Weepers at the Kodak Theater were also-rans in the Best Off-the-Shoulder Evening Gown competition. Weepers at Fontana referred to water that seeped from under the track's surface and made ludicrous NASCAR's attempts to squeeze in 125 laps so it could brand the event official and call it a wrap.

Such foolishness made an early victim of Chesterfield's Denny Hamlin, who skidded into the wall on the 16th lap.

"There's 42 other drivers that agree we should not be racing on that track," Hamlin said after canoeing back to the garage area. "I hit a slick spot. You can see it on TV."

Nothing screams major league more than maintenance workers trying to saw drainage grooves into an asphalt surface. But that ad-hoc remodeling effort didn't fly, either. Four laps after Hamlin was doomed to heavy repairs, Casey Mears took out Dale Earnhardt Jr. after slip-sliding on weepers exiting Turn 1 and then got flipped on his side by oncoming Sam Hornish Jr.

Mears and Hornish were toast. Earnhardt and his patched-up Chevy eventually made it back to racin' but wound up 40th.

"The track ain't ready," summed up Little E. "It was dirty. Bad move."

Fontana has been no venue for old (or young) leadfoots ever since it opened - but that hasn't stopped Brian France from trying to shove two dates per year down everyone's throat. That means, for one thing, any momentum NASCAR gets from its Daytona opener is dulled by a 3,000-mile trek for a lackluster race in front of a lot of empty seats. Some fun.

Meanwhile, the Labor Day slot that once belonged to Darlington was paired with blast-furnace heat at Fontana last September - and another tepid response from blasé California consumers.

And now - on a day when it was 51 and cloudy at Rockingham - we have the Davy Jones' Locker 500.

How fitting this fiasco concluded Monday under caution when Dale Jarrett spun out on the last lap.

Word is, he skidded on Little Joe's and Fireball's tears from heaven.