God's Horse

Two days after the Kentucky Derby, I published an article proclaiming Smarty Jones "God's Horse." Of course he's God's Horse. He is also a Catholic horse.

Look, look, at this article. Smarty's trainer, John Servis, was an altar boy and has a Dominican aunt working on this whole Triple Crown business for him. A Sacred Heart medallion was slipped beneath Smarty's saddle blanket for the Derby and again for the Preakness (The medallion was almost lost in the tumult after the Derby when Stewart Elliott pulled his saddle off. A passer-by in the paddock picked it up and held it out to Servis later in the week: Does this belong to anybody?)

Now comes help from the pastor of Our Lady of Fatima, Father Thomas Homa, who blessed Smarty the other day. "I asked the Lord to give Smarty Jones good health, I asked Him to protect Smarty during the Belmont Stakes, and I asked Him to give Smarty the special gift of the Triple Crown," said Fr. Homa. (Smarty was probably all, "Who the hell are you, and why aren't you feeding me anything?")

Oh, yeah. This is good. This is very, very good. Now we're pulling Mother Mary into this. The FATIMA version. The Fatima version is the one that pulled down Communism, y'all. I think she can handle a ten-horse field.

We'll find out after the Belmont whether or not Smarty is a true American Catholic, of course, if he starts bitching about celibate men telling women what kind of birth control to use and grudgingly looking around for a hoof to hold during the singing of the Our Father.

And Mini Baking M&M's for Dessert

As I drove home from the Evil Horrible Boring Day Job, I couldn't decide whether I was craving scrambled eggs or frozen pizza for dinner. So I had both. Not together, mind you. Just both. It's not like I'm a freak or anything.

P.J. Eats Some Poor Irish Babies

One of my all-time very favorite authors is political commentator P.J. O'Rourke. He is awesome, largely because of all the sacred-cow-taking-on. Peej once compared flying over a war zone in the Middle East to overlooking a gigantic "Clue" gameboard (and bear in mind, I'm paraphrasing wildly here): "Winning answer?" he wrote. "Everybody, in every room, with an AK-47."

I got to meet him, at college, when he cemented himself in my Pantheon of Author Awesomeness after graciously accepting a speaking engagement at Stepan Center, largely notable for possessing the worst acoustics on the face of the Earth. On the outside, it looks exactly like the exterior of a halved whiffle golf ball; but things vastly improve once you step inside, which looks exactly like the interior of a halved whiffle golf ball. And when P.J. took the podium, he said, "Thank you for inviting me to your school, and this very attractive building." Standing O for P.J.! Please do insult our misguided architecture!

I met him afterwards, where he signed one of my books and, when I asked him for some Advice To A Young Writer, he said, "Dental school."

He was a major collegiate point of contention for me, Mr. O'Rourke. I was invited into an extremely prestigious honors seminar as a senior, for which we were all asked to nominate a book for the class to read. The usual overrated tripe was slung into the syllabus: Sylvia Plath, The Kennedy Women, the perennially God-awful Beloved. My suggestion, predictably-- P.J.'s hilarious and touching memoir chronicling his slow transformation from an anti-war demonstrating college student to a libertarian with an income, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut--was the only proposed book not accepted into the curriculum. I sincerely doubt the professor took the trouble to look past the author credit before clutching his pearls and tossing the vile thing out, out! lest his students' pretty little open minds come into contact with 1) an opinion in any way contrary to that which had been shoved down our throats throughout the past three and a half years 2) an extremely well-written examination of a personal journey as well as a unique perspective of a way-too-glorified era that my generation desperately needs to hear, authored by 3) a live white male, which is, clearly, the only thing worse than a dead white male. So I declined the invitation, which was unheard of, and dropped the class, which was a relief.

Well, Peej had the following to say in the Wall Street Journal today, which I actually went out and bought during my lunch hour, on purpose, with real money:

"We will be loved again," P.J. writes. "Imagine a world where American manners and mores set the standard almost everywhere, where American fashions, American ideas and American lifestyles are universally sought out and copied. A world where people avidly listen to American music, eagerly watch American TV and movies, and try to imitate Americans in every way. Imagine a world where the USA is so admired that people by the millions want nothing more than to come to America and rescue themselves from global entanglements."

Imagine, indeed, John Lennon.

One Hell Of a Hind End

Over 8500 people turned out at Philadelphia Park to watch Smarty Jones have a bit of a gallop on Saturday. Almost nine grand at The Pha! That's waaaaaaaaay more than they usually get on an average day with a full card. First-hand accounts report a lot of little kids in tow, complete with parents admonishing, "Now remember this, so that you can tell your grandchildren that you saw this horse with your own eyes." Oh man, does that ever turn on the waterworks here in the swamp. Got to love it when destiny and The Show come to your local piece of shit track. Please God, let this ride and ride.

If Smarty pulls this off on June 5, it will shatter onto the history books just a handful hours before my nephew is baptized, and a few months before my sister's best friend, another horse freak, produces Baby Number 2. Julie hopes it happens so that the babies can boast of a Triple Crown winner in the year they were born. As a child who shares a born-on date with Seattle Slew and Star Wars, then grew up simultaneously adoring ponies and launch propulsion, I think there's a lot to be said for birth year karma. However, if we as a society can't do better than this before December, those babies are in for worlds and worlds of crap.

We racing folk, of course, are absolutely wetting ourselves over this. On one fan forum, one poster who was in attendance at the public gallop extolled for paragraphs the virtues of Smarty's "hell of a hind end."

Yes, well... Triple Crown or no, he ain't got a rack like the one I got.

(I just read back through this, and you know, it totally sounds like I know what I am talking about. This is an illusion. Here is a person who, while watching the Flyers-Lightning hockey game this weekend, watched a puck sail through a goalie's legs and shouted, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, right through the thigh hole!" and Flipper had to lean over and go, "Um. FIVE hole." Whatever. Thigh Hole makes for a better potential name for a horrible disease, and, as we all know, that is the important thing.)

blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Seeds

I've taken to buying watermelon on the shell since I eat it constantly (no way this stuff is an actual fruit, and therefore good for you; it tastes too damn good. Crack, is what it is.) But--and this is only possible, in Florida-- when I went looking, I couldn't find a whole one at the grocery. And whole watermelons, in my experience, are pretty tough to miss.

After circling the produce section a few times, though, I found a display at the end of an aisle. It was full of these wimpy-ass little seedless watermelons, which were all hunkered down and dwarfed by a bunch of cantaloupe. These watermelons were the cantaloupes' bitches.

The sign above these sad little castrated watermelons read: "Personal Watermelon." Well, that's just great. If you don't have a personal Savior, you can at least have a Personal Watermelon.