Wednesday, February 04, 2004

The View From Table 57

All right, all RIGHT already.

Here’s the lowdown on the highbrow world of the 33rd Annual Eclipse Awards, which shall be enshrined in fable and song as One of the Best Nights Ever In the History of the All Mankind.

As previously mentioned, the Eclipse Awards are the Oscars of the Thoroughbred racing world, only way, way better. No shrieking fans, no shrieking Joan Rivers, no Julia Roberts pretending to act surprised or Julia Roberts pretending to act, period. You trade your George “Too Bad My Aunt Rosemary Lived Exactly Long Enough To Behold What a Colossal Asshat I Turned Out to Be” Clooney for your Jerry “Seven” Bailey and you like it that way. Less tofu, more whips: That is the Eclipse Awards.

Basically, here’s all you need to know about how the night went down.

1) I met Gary “Can Handle a Pony, Can Handle a Podium” Stevens

2) who kissed me

3) in front of his fiancée.

4) Thank you and good night!

The whole thing was all very professional and chaste; I do some writing in the T-bred world, and some of that writing is on Gary's behalf. It’s an honor to do it and I’m tracking his mounts anyway, but still. That’s twenty, twenty-five hours a week I could otherwise be staring into space, contemplating Wheat Thins. “Kiss her or start paying her,” is probably what Gary Stevens was thinking.

I can't wait for my Kentucky Derby party. Cannot wait. It. Is going to be. So. Awesome. I am going to hold my peace until everybody’s loaded in the gate and in that gentle hush just before the bell I’m gonna sit back with my mint julep, gesture to Gary’s post and announce with royal nonchalance, “Fine jockey. Damn fine kisser.”

Well. On the cheek, anyway.

The kissing, the awarding, the whipping, everything went down at the Westin Diplomat Resort in Hallandale Beach. The Diplomat, which actually employs a person called a “Dock Master”, is the sort of place in which the bathroom stalls alone are larger than most European nations. (The handicapped stalls? Are visible from space.) You walk in the lobby, you’re expecting liveried servants to take you aside all, “Clearly you shop at Target on a regular basis. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

So I was completely in my element when I rolled in with my Corolla and my dollar-fifty hairspray.

The night was revving and wonderful from the second I swept out of the lobby of the Holiday Inn. (Yeah. Because I can afford to stay at a hotel with a Dock Master.) The two naked toddlers and the ninety-seven-year-old with the neon pink Miami Beach sun visor standing around the pay phone-- they were totally impressed with me.

I have to say, as galactically thrilled as I was about attending the Awards, I was not in a good mood as my pewter evening gown and I glided past the ice machine. I did not like the way my hair or my makeup or my thighs turned out that night. Your very first black tie event at which you’re going to be in the same room as the movers and shakers of an industry that you very closely follow, movers and shakers you really admire… well, you’re going to want to get out your glitter and walk away from the bathroom mirror with the ability to alter air traffic patterns in a single glance.

I have had better hair days for oil change appointments, people. I look hotter sitting here typing in my “Ballroom Dance Like a Champion Today” than I did wearing the most expensive article of clothing I’ve ever owned on the biggest night of the Thoroughbred year.

Many of you have asked for a picture—probably because you have not yet truly grasped the fact that there truly is in this world such a color as “pewter”-- and you can find one here, but even bearing in mind how very German, how very pale, and how very unphotogenic I am, I have got to warn you that the in-person effect was worse.

(This photo, by the way, was emailed to a National Guardsman in Iraq with whom I have been conducting an email flirtation. “You look stunning,” he told me, which made me all fluttery until I remembered that this is a person who was dropped off in the middle of a desert some 380 days ago and the closest thing to an actual female form he’s seen since is the business end of an assault rifle. So I’m going to look pretty damn good to him. Helen Thomas is going to look pretty damn good to him.)

If I didn’t know the Eclipse Awards were a Great Big Deal, I figured it out as soon as I approached the cocktail party and saw the backdrop. They actually had one of those Official Awards Ceremony backdrops going on—a huge sheet of the NTRA logo up against a wall with about four thousand lightpoles bearing down on it. Up until that moment, the closest I’ve gotten to one of those things was seeing pictures of various New Kids On the Block crammed up against one after collecting yet another VH1 Cultural Void Award. And now I was seeing one Live! In person! A real, live official awards ceremony backdrop!

I… really need to get out more.

Also I need to stop admitting that I used to look upon New Kids on the Block without immediately thereafter gouging my eyes out.

The attendees were handed a seating booklet listing who was sitting where. This thing reads like The Daily Racing Form. Everybody who is anybody in racing is there. Plus me. There's my name. Right there. For some reason. When I found myself I kept looking for an asterisk ("*Admitted by clerical error. The perpetrators have been fired and beaten.")

There were sixty tables. People like Gary Stevens and Davy Jones and God are at Table Two. I'm at Table Fifty-Seven (and what a rockin' table it is-- simply set aside the cheap-bastard watermark and focus on my breathtaking cleavage instead) with the rest of the media scum. Which begs the question: Who in the hell is sitting at Tables Fifty-Eight through Sixty? The guys who shovel after Zippy Chippy? People who panned Seabiscuit? Merv Griffin?

More later. Kissing Gary Stevens exhausts me.

Monday, February 02, 2004

I was going to wear my break-away bustier to work today

but it was at the cleaner's.

Thanks for the Super Memories, Janet. Listen, my rack is infinitely better than yours and it's the one I was born with to boot. And yet I don't feel the need to invite Justin Timberforest or whatever the hell his name is to display it before one and before all. Borrow some money from your brother's lawyer and buy some class, you Botoxed nightmare. (Also: "Rhythm Nation"? Is fourteen years old. If you're going to nationally humiliate yourself, my dear, at least get some new tunes.)

I couldn't help but contrast Ms. Janet ("Whore-Slut If You're Nasty!"), Jessica "Talent-Free Since Birth And Yet Somehow Still Famous" Simpson, and every writhing dancer on the stage with another woman who stood quietly on the field last night. Oh-- did MTV not highlight Eileen Collins? As a member of the next shuttle mission crew-- the commander, mind you-- Collins was part of the pre-game Columbia tribute. She was wearing plain blue coveralls and only the barest amount of makeup, and she was beautiful.

Guess which of these women I want my baby cousin Kaitlyn to grow up to be like. (Hint: We will likely never have to worry about the effect of zero-g on nipple rings.)

It was lovely to see our Columbia acknowledged at the game. But next time, Houston, can we lose the fake astronaut in the Major Nelson suit? And keep Aerosmith away from the simulators? Thanks.

I'm mentioned in a Florida Today piece about yesterday's Columbia memorial at Kennedy Space Center. Go here and revel in knowing me, She Who Was Quoted At Length.

Sunday, February 01, 2004

Columbia

I attended a memorial service at Kennedy Space Center today. The wind was sharp and the rain came down, but the rose I left at the Space Mirror Memorial remained firmly fixed.

A reporter from Florida Today interviewed me. I told her I was still in shock a year later.

Here is part of what I wrote one year ago to everyone in my address book within an hour of the terrible news:

A lot of you have been attempting to contact me, so I'm going to try to answer some of your questions and clear up some misconceptions the press is spreading.

I was not at work today which was a great blessing. It is difficult enough to hold myself together, let alone trying to stand on a stage attempting to calm and educate the guests. Yesterday was a long day and I was exhausted, so I slept late, confident that sonic boom associated with the landing would waken me. My parents are attending a business convention in Orlando and my mother called me around 10 AM, saying that she thought I might need someone to talk to. I had no idea what she was talking about and immediately feared for the President's safety, or thought perhaps there had been another terrorist attack. Instead I turned on the TV to find that our Columbia had been lost on re-entry....

Now, there are reports that during the liftoff, a chunk of foam from the external tank (the big orange tank) may have broken off and damaged some tiles on the leading edge of the right-hand delta wing. This may have been a contributing factor.

Some eyewitnesses in Texas are reporting that they heard what sounded like an explosion just as Columbia should have exited her thermal phase. This "explosion" was most likely a sonic boom, which occurs when the orbiter goes subsonic, or slower than the speed of sound. Typically this happens over central Florida as the orbiter comes home. But if the descent was uncontrolled, it would have happened sooner.

It does not look as if this was a terrorist event. Over west central Texas, Columbia was traveling at 200,000 feet at 12,500 MPH-- well out of the range of any surface-to-air missiles. Of course there is concern with the presence of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, in the crew, but a terrorist would need an aircraft with some kind of missile launcher to inflict this kind of damage....

About Columbia: She is the oldest member of the fleet, 22 years old. She just completed what is called "orbital modification and maintenance," or a complete overhaul that in some ways made her a brand-new craft. Early in the mission I heard the commander, Rick Husband, say that while Columbia may be high-maintenance on the ground, "she sure loves to be in space."

This mission did not go to the International Space Station. STS-107 (STS stands for "space transportation system" and the number is the numeric assigned to the payload) was dedicated to science. Columbia was stuffed full of all kinds of experiments, some of them vitally important to a cure of osteoporosis....

I have read incessantly about NASA, but all the reading in the world can't prepare you for working side by side with the hardware. I have become emotionally attached to each orbiter as I followed their individual paths through the prep and launching process. In addition to my sorrow at losing the crew, I will also miss the good ship Columbia. I am numb. I haven't even cried yet.

Reports are now coming in from Nacogdoches, Texas; one civilian says, "The space shuttle is everywhere." The last time I saw Columbia, she was launching proudly and beautifully. I just got done decorating my apartment and put a picture of that very launch in a frame on my dresser.

This is a nightmare.

Please call or email me if I can answer any questions. Love to you all.

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