Saturday, October 25, 2003

MARLINS WIN!!!!

But, most importantly, YANKEES LOSE!!!!! Bwa-ha! Ah, sweet, sweet schadenfreude, right, Boomer?

Crap.

Gary "Never Mind" Stevens went 0-for-four today in the Breeders' Cup. And Notre Dame lost. Also my hair is stringy.

I repeat: Crap.

Friday, October 24, 2003

Horseplay

'Tis strange. I haven't found any displays in my local supermarket touting supplies for everybody's big Breeders' Cup parties tomorrow.

The Breeders' Cup is the Super Bowl of racing-- while the Kentucky Derby consists of just one race for three-year-olds, the BC pits horses of all classes, ages, and backgrounds in a potpourri of stakes. Well-adjusted people have never even heard of it; I'll be taping all five hours of coverage on NBC. My own personal BC party will consist of me, my remote, and a faint sense of dread. Will Merv Griffin appear? With or without his horrifying, hurl-green jacket?

Gary "You're In My House Now, Pat Day" Stevens is riding in four races. He's going to completely rock the Santa Anita casbah. Unless of course he doesn't. Whatever he wins, or doesn't win, he's sliding off the back of his last mount and getting immediately on a plane to England to promote Seabiscuit. Oh, those lucky Brits... to have the glories of Tobey McGuire whining "Yeah, this is REEEEEEEEEAAAAALLY different!" and the heroic performance by Gary's fake hair all ahead of them. Good times.

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Is that your fish in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

My office is full of beautiful women. My boss and one of the graphics artists I work with (she's Columbian; I don't think I have to say any more) are stunning. Two of the secretaries could easily be models; one of them, I swear, has like a 10-inch waist. Clearly I was hired on the Cellulite-Ridden, German-Nosed, Large-Pored Woman Affirmative Action Program. Yet another reason to look forward to flipping that office light on in the morning.

The girl I was hired with, Michelle, is also disgustingly pretty. Her mother is Puerto Rican, and she has this long black hair and dark eyes and like .000001% body fat. Of course, she's also shy and kind and funny. I would totally hate her, but she's too damn nice.

The engineers love her. They're always hanging around her office. I can't imagine why they don't hang around mine. Is it the life-size standup of Obi-Wan Kenobi beside my desk? Is it the picture of me bullriding? Is it the way I tote around these large, bulky, word-intensive objects known as "books"? Or the way I look at them with fear and revulsion when they knock on my door and say things like, "Hey, the (incomprehensible engineering term) grant for the (incomprehensible engineering term) is due tomorrow, and the (incomprehensible engineering term) is (incomprehensible engineering term)!" Seriously, what am I doing wrong here?

So far Michelle has been asked out by THREE DIFFERENT GUYS in the company. Gossip has it that she's steadily dating one of them, a completely hot former water-skier out of Iowa. But for some reason nobody here at the Graph Paper Paradise wants a Equibase-trolling English major behind his corn-powered speed boat.

I saw Corn Boy and Michelle leave for a date together after work this week. Ran into them in the dark bowels of the parking garage. As they left, he held the door open for her, sunlight poured over them, angels sang, and I felt bitchy.

I was frowny over all this for a little while, then realized: There are certain people you don't WANT hanging around your office or asking you out. I think it's GREAT that the engineers find me repellant. I find THEM repellant. Pimps and gangsters: Absolutely. Hydrogeologists: No.

This is not to say no one ever hits on me. There was that one murderer guy Flipper and I met while rollerblading (I can't believe I let that one go) and earlier this week-- I don't know if it's the fact that I'm in motion, or caked in sweat-salt, or what--it happened AGAIN. I was zipping around my own personal roller rink (the bus loading circle) and out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy approaching with a dog. He didn't creep me out (yet) so I kept going, but I made sure I was aware of where he was.

I did not, however, keep an eye out for the dog, which was unleashed. It came barking up alongside me and running in circles and all, so I stopped and put my hand out for her to sniff so she could confirm that I am not really all that interesting, and she responded by lunging at me. Hey, I like your dog! She's great.

So the owner came running up, and I'm all, "Oh, no, no, this whole situation is way too Nora Ephron-approved for this to truly function as a way to actually meet a guy," and sure enough, Jumpy Annoying Dog's owner was DOA: somewhat cute from a distance, but Diminishes On Approach.

He apologized for Jumpy Annoying Dog, but did not apologize for training her so crappily (Perhaps I shouldn't say that. If the dog was trained to wipe out glaringly white women on wheels, he did a FANTASTIC JOB.) I smiled and said I didn't mind. (That is correct: I put on my Engineer Greeting Face and lied.)

Then it started. Hey, do you live around here? What do you do? Are you okay with engaging in sexual relations with utter losers such as myself? I told him I was a writer (this is what I tell everybody, including my alumnae newsletter, as there is no occupational box to check for "Professional Disgruntled Employee" on the change-of-address form) and he launched into some sort of epic tale concerning his community college, his family of (his word) "rednecks" ("They had to shoot deer to eat," he confided. Oh, thank GOD you told me, because now I totally want to bear your children) a dead deer, him shooting said dead deer, him writing about it, and subsequent dead-deer essay being published in some sort of community college pamphlet.

But Wait There's More: "I have other pets besides the dog."

Oh please let it be a stage-performing white tiger. "Really," I said.

"I have a beta fish." Pause. "Guess what I named hi-"

I started talking in the middle of the pause, probably saying something about the fact that I needed to get going because I had to wash my hair since I had to call my mother due to the fact that my apartment was on fire, and he returned to the topic, so you know it was really important. "Guess what I named my fish."

"What?" Oh, he was so proud of himself.

"Master Beta."

I do not photograph well, but I really, really wish somebody had a camera trained on my face right then, because I would dearly, dearly love to see how I received this. It was probably a fairly close approximation of the Chris McCarron Look of Death, only taller, more venomous, and way, WAY less amused.

This was only slightly better than the stockbroker I was set up with and upon whom I cancelled when he told me to meet him at a bowling alley. "You'll know me by my purple bowling bag!" he said.

I don't understand it. I invest a good forty minutes of weekday mornings into fruitlessly putting myself together to look as non-pasty as possible (Do I wear the gauzy skirt with the Nudity Top, or the gauzy skirt with the "Forget the Bull, Ride a Cowboy" T-shirt?) so that I may meet non-assy people downtown, but give me some ratty hair, unshorn underarms and a layer of sweat, and assy guys fall out of the woodwork. There's a parallel, or a philosophical statement, or at the very least a Celestial Seasonings box saying here.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Hooking for Taufling

I needed a frame or eight for all the posters I don't have wall space for, so I went to the craft store, which was dangerous, because I love and adore crafting, and yet suck very badly at it, so a trip to JoAnn's Fabrics more often than not results in lumpy skirts or badly painted Christmas ornaments that I or some unfortunate person I love must endure.

There was a sale on stitchery kits. I clapped my hands, for I enjoy nothing so much as starting a cross-stitch project, becoming discouraged one-sixteenth of the way through because I have f'd it up yet again, and stuffing the whole botched project in a Rubbermaid box as tiny little trails of embroidery floss dot the floor and mock me in a multicolored chorus. A time-honored tradition, this; I was taught to stitch yarn through a plastic canvas as a kindergartener because the state of Ohio, in all its wisdom, foresaw the low, low math SAT scores to come and told my mother to give me something to work on to improve my fine motor control so that I could print my name, color in the lines, and cut a piece of construction paper into non-wiggly strips like any sane person. Anybody who has seen my handwriting knows what a spectacular failure this was, but the upside is my mother is now the proud owner of a lump of yarn vaugely resembling a bookmark and a set of curtains that defy the laws of physics. When in doubt, macrame.

Perhaps fortunately for Taufling, then, all the stitchery kits in the baby section were frankly offensive in their uncuteness and highly unworthy for such a fine fetus as s/he. So I turned to go, and THERE at the end of the aisle was a Woodstock latch-hook kit. Just one. On sale. For me. And Taufling.

I haven't latch hooked since I was a young Jedi, and lacked even the hooking tool, so I bought one of those too, if only to give me an excuse to wander around my apartment saying "Has anyone seen my hooker?"

Taufling's nursery will be decorated with a Woodstock and Snoopy theme, in honor of the huge stuffed Snoopy my father won for my sister after spending approximately $48,702 at St. Jude's Festival ring-toss booth when she was three. And latch hook is difficult for even me to f' up, so I hugged Woodstock to me and ran to the register, and told the checkout lady, who had one finger on the security call light, all about Taufling and the handwriting and the 18,752 too-large ponytail holders I have wrought.

Woodstock and I went home to the Blonde Bachelorette Pad, where I spread out the kit and admired the bright colors and contemplated the greatness of yarn.

My only sister is growing a baby. It's not the earth-changing thing she's engaged in, but every now and then I like to make something too.

awwwwwwww at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Priorities

Schools in West Virginia have signed on to something called a "humane education" curriculum, which emphasizes, among other things, "human oppression", "animal exploitation", and, I expect, Goat-Petting. Isn't West Virginia like 287th of all 50 states in education? Is Fuzzy Fruit Gnat preservation really what we need to be focusing on, West Virginia?

WARNING: MUST READ FOLLOWING SENTENCE WHILE WEARING A UNITARD AND MANY HEALING CRYSTALS: "Humane educators," one hu-ed site singsongs, "inspire people to live examined, intentional lives so that what they do today helps the planet, animals and all people tomorrow." As opposed to living an unintentional life? Honey, if all our lives began intentionally, I daresay a solid fifty percent of us wouldn't be here at all.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Gary and Larry and Chris and Merv

Gary "Back For the Breeders' Cup, Baby" Stevens was on The Evil Network last night. He was helping to preview the BC on Larry King Live, The Show That No One Actually Watches Anymore Yet Still Manages To Book People Due To Ted Turner's Pact With Satan. Sitting in with him was fellow jockey Chris McCarron-- now retired, general manager of Santa Anita, and race designer of Seabiscuit-- and that one name everyone on planet Earth immediately associates with Thoroughbreds the second they hear the call to post: Merv Griffin.

Merv totally dressed for the occasion. Gary and Chris looked fantastic, in the sense that they seemed to have made an attempt to clean up a bit before appearing on national television with The Empty Suspenders. Merv looked like he just rolled out of a bale of hay or a murdering-hitchhiker spree gone awry or possibly both. He had on this plaid shirt and a baby-barf green jacket, and as he sat there next to Chris and Gary in their suitcoats you could practically hear America furrowing its brow, all: "And to think-- he gave the world Wheel of Fortune."

Larry, for some reason, was wearing lipstick.

Merv is a big-time horse owner, and is the “celebrity host” for the Breeders' Cup this year, and is totally BF’s with Larry, all of which for some reason permits him to appear on camera with and even in the same solar system as the likes of Chris and Gary.

You have to love Merv, a one-man production of Non-Sequitur Theatre. At one point everyone was discussing the retirement of Laffit Pincay (more on this later) and Merv quite logically turned to the jockeys and said, “Do you keep track of how much you’ve won?” Gary snorted—he snorted—and McCarron was giving him this total Look of Death. Seriously, why didn’t he just say, “So, how many bowel movements do you have a day?” You just don’t ask these things. And Chris smothered what I would certainly experience--a sharp, furious homicidal moment-- and said jovially, “Well, my wife does,” which left poor Gary alone with Merv and Larry, both of whom need to be shot out of the International Space Station at top speed, and Larry turned to Gary and gave him the Index Finger Point of Inquisition and was all, “You're in the range of what! Purses!” and Gary first tried to hedge politely and then gave up and said, “Right around two hundred million.” Chris admitted to two hundred sixty-something million, and Merv, stunned, hurt, and mumbling, said, “See, your wife doesn’t know. You know.” And Chris simply couldn’t summon the strength for yet another well-deserved Look of Death and laughed politely instead, silently resolving to ride some limping claimer over a cliff into a valley of very sharp knives rather than spend one more nanosecond in the company of this, his Celebrity Host.

(Seriously? Chris? In this, the Year of Seabiscuit, we couldn’t do any better than Merv? Was Gary Busey not available?)

I have just downloaded the Official Transcript, and here's a sample of the dazzling wordplay the magical combination of Larry and Merv showered down upon us last night (bear in mind, I am not making any of this up):

GRIFFIN: I can make a statement here that none of these guys can make. I saw Seabiscuit ride. (And what was Seabiscuit riding, Merv? A trolley? Space Mountain?)

MCCARRON: Wow, did you really?

KING: Really.

MCCARRON: You're not that old, are you?

GRIFFIN: Pardon?

MCCARRON: Huh?

GRIFFIN: Larry told me to say that.

No, it gets better. We heard the words "impregnates" AND "concieved" within a two-second interval:

KING: Seabiscuit rode over 50 times, I think.

MCCARRON: (cannot take it anymore) Ran, yeah.

GRIFFIN: See, that doesn't happen anymore. When a horse becomes a big hit, then the owner says, "Well, I'll syndicate him and give him a nice life," and he goes, you know, and impregnates mares for the rest of his life. (Please, God, let him be talking about the horse and not the owner.)

KING: Brilliantly conceived movie.

GRIFFIN: I don't know if that's great for racing, though.

MCCARRON: What is?

GRIFFIN: When they win a couple of races.

MCCARRON: Oh, not it's not good for racing. It's hard to get a story going, you know.

STEVENS: (prays for an immediate and cataclysmic earthquake)

My GOD, it was great television. By the way, if Merv Griffin uses the phrase "impregnates mares" ever, ever again, please let me know so I can climb a clock tower with a set of lawn darts.

There was a little bonus for me and everyone else salivating over the DVD release of Seabiscuit: One of the commercial bumpers consisted of a few seconds of Gary getting out of that, like, pimp roller, outfitted in the enormous hat that deserved its own mention in the credits and those clothes that made him look like he just fell out of an episode of Queer Eye For the Straight Jockey and that slightly self-conscious smile that says, “I have never looked so faaaaaabulous.” And then there were a few seconds of him giving an interview wearing the highly respectable brown hat he stole out of Sinatra’s closet. So wardrobe was one-for-two in the little clip package. But of course Larry had to destroy it all by coming out of the break and saying to Gary, “How do you like being a staaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh?”

Let's all have a big hand for Gary for suppressing what must have been an overwhelming urge to holler “STOP TALKING! STOP TALKING STOP TALKING STOP TALKING YOU ANNOYING, GRATINGLY ACCENTED, SUSPENDER-WEARING FREAK.”

Larry then looked directly at Gary Stevens and decided that the best use of his national TV time with a Hall of Fame jockey who had just delivered a blowout performance in the greatest racing film ever made was to ask him whether or not the weather was nice in California.

See, this is why I got out of journalism. I cannot hope to compete with brass-knuckle interviewing tactics like that.

Anyway. Pincay. He was this truly amazing jockey who was forced into retirement by successive injuries (“Two percent body fat! Two percent body fat on Pincay!” Chris said with deep and quiet reverence) and Gary mentioned that he and Pincay live near one another (which totally made me happy, to imagine this lovely jockey subdivision right next to Del Mar with lawn jockeys on every porch and Equicizers in every driveway) and he said, “I saw him walking yesterday. He had his shirt off—“

Waaaaaaaaaait, wait wait wait wait wait. Wait a minute.

1) Where was Laffit going, without his shirt? Was he just, like, wandering around?

2) Did Gary have his shirt off?

3) If so, why was a photographer from Vanity Fair not summoned?

4) Is this normal behavior in the Happy Jockey Subdivision?

I need to know these things.

Okay, Gary, move along:

“—and, I mean, what a specimen. He looked like he hadn’t missed a single day of riding.”

Is this what I need to do to succeed in the racing world? Because I’m there, baby. I’m there walking around outside Gary Stevens' house with no shirt on, if this is what it takes. Laffit can join me if he so desires.

There was also a point in the program at which Chris accidentally let it slip that they had taped the show, so it was not in fact Larry King Live but Larry King, Two Jockeys, and The Man Responsible For Pat Sajak Discuss the Breeders' Cup At Some Point In the Very Recent Past. And so Gary turned to Chris and smacked him upside the head, which was all kinds of awesome. You don’t smack just anyone. You need to be in That Place. But you could see a sense of wistfulness flash over McCarron’s face: “O, that we could fully bitch-slap the rest of this illustrious panel, my friend.”

At one point, Merv completely derailed an actually pertinent discussion about the Breeders' Cup by whirling on Chris and saying, in highly accusatory tones, “Is the story about Ferdinand true?”

Now, as a racing fan, I knew what the hell he was talking about, namely, Ferdinand, longshot winner of the ’86 Kentucky Derby. It is rumored that he had been shipped to Japan and sent to a meatpacking plant there. And yet even knowing this, I got conversational whiplash so fast that I displaced two vertebrae and maybe a hip. So I can’t even imagine what the average normal person was thinking: “Hey, they're actually having a coherent convers--WHAT?! Ferdi—WHAT?” But Chris, who had been in the middle of a sentence with a subject and a verb and an adjective and everything, something Merv had not yet accomplished, said, basically, “WHAT?!” before collecting himself with an “I'm not a hundred percent sure,” and you could see him thinking, “Well, Merv, let me just reach into my ASSCRACK for my eight volumes of The Complete History of Ferdinand" and Gary, perhaps after subtly reaching for his poison blow-dart, nodded. “Yes,” he said solemnly, and Merv was all distraught and even Larry was kind of speechless.

Also, Larry kept pronouncing “Santa Anita” as “Santer Anita.” Clearly he also needs to die.

The whole segment was only twenty minutes long, but it had everything: Violence, death, nudity, comedy, bad accents. That's life, baby. Life.

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