That's An Outrage

Gary "No, Seriously, I'm Still A Jockey" Stevens does this to me all the time. He'll make spooky-spooky comments about setting off for the White Pants Only Retirement Home For Jockeys, vanish from the entry cards for a few weeks, then spring right back into the saddle just as I'm dumping his career into Rubbermaid to save it in the fridge. He'll be riding a colt named That's An Outrage on December 20th in the Hollywood Futurity, then Buddy Gil in the Malibu Stakes on the day after Christmas. (What's an outrage? Foals are usually named with a nod to their parents. His mommy's name is Cable News, which, granted, is a constant outrage, but seriously, my shoulders are just in the air on this one, because how do you pick just one cable news outrage? Is the owner referring to CNN as a whole, or just Larry King? Geraldo with or without MSNBC? What do his grooms call him for short? "Ragey"? Why all the ambiguity? Why not just name the damn thing "Fox and Friends Is An Insult to the Intelligence of My Coffee Table" and be done with it? I need to hire myself out as a professional thoroughbred namer.)

All this, and the DVD release date for Seabiscuit draws nigh (not "neigh", as the evil horrible punning elf on my shoulder keeps stabbing at me to type. I hate that guy.) Since I do all my partying at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Monday nights, I'll be sure to see Gary there at a DVD to-do.

The webmaster at the racing site I write for has been biting her fingernails over Gary's "maaaaaaaaaybe I'm retiring, maaaaaaaaaybe not," but I took these most recent rustlings with approximately 47,000 grains of salt. Here's a guy who tends to make decisions and statements based upon the emotion of the nanosecond, and is the type of person who is a jockey not only by trade, but by blood cells. It would be like me crying off writing just because I have no discernible writing career at the moment. Won't happen. Can't. (pause for crying jag in bathroom of large, decidedly unliterary engineering firm, returns to keyboard)

Email an outrage at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com