Merv is a big-time horse owner, and is the “celebrity host” for the Breeders' Cup this year, clearly because Kato Kaelin was not available. He totally dressed for the occasion. Gary and Chris looked terrific in the sense that they seemed to have made an attempt to, like, finish cleaning out the garage before appearing on national television. Merv looked like he just rolled out of a barn, or a murdering-hitchhiker spree gone awry, or possibly both. He had on this plaid shirt and a baby-barf green jacket, and... just... no, Merv.
Larry was, for some reason, wearing lipstick.
When I first saw Merv, I became upset, because he's usually the go-to guy for Hollywood Death. Johnny Carson, Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon: Wheel in Merv. I do not know what Larry will do when Merv himself dies. Possibly conduct the interview anyway, only with slightly fewer non sequiters on Merv's part.
At one point everyone were discussing the retirement of the great jock Laffit Pincay (more on this later) and in the middle of the conversation Merv turns to the jockeys and goes, “Do you keep track of how much you’ve won?” and
And Chris somehow manages to not kill him, and to diffuse the situation said, “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 said, “Do you know?” and Gary gave up and said, “Right around two hundred million” and Chris admitted to something like two hundred sixty-something million, and Merv, stunned, hurt, and mumbling, said, “See, your wife doesn’t know. You know” and McCarron simply couldn’t summon the strength for yet another well-deserved Look of Death and laughed politely instead, silently resolving to ride some limping mare over a cliff and into a valley of very sharp knives rather than spend one more nanosecond in the company of this, his Celebrity Host.
One of the commercial bumpers consisted of a few seconds of Gary getting out of that obnoxiously huge car as George Woolf in Seabiscuit, outfitted in that 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 am faaaaaaaaaabulouuuuuuuuuus!” And then there were a few seconds of him giving an interview wearing the highly respectable brown hat that he apparently stole out of Sinatra’s closet. So wardrobe was one-for-two.
But of course Larry had to stomp very hard upon it by coming out of the break and saying to Gary, “How do you like being a staaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh?” whereupon Gary did not, sadly, kick him directly in the spleen.
We now come to Pincay. He was this truly amazing jockey who was forced into retirement by successive injury (“Two percent body fat!” Chris said with deep and quiet reverence of Pincay, because the ability to swallow your own weight in laxitives is a good thing) and Gary mentioned that he and Pincay live near one another (which totally made me happy, to imagine this little jockey subdivision somewhere near Del Mar, with tiny houses and wee little driveways and lawn jockey statues on every square of grass) and he said, “I saw him walking yesterday. He had his shirt off—“
Stop the tape. This raises a number of questions:
1) Where was Laffit going, without his shirt? Was he just wandering around?
2) Did
3) If so, why did no one call me about it?
4) Is this normal behavior in the Little Jockey Subdivision?
I need to know these things. Anyway, go ahead,
“—and, I mean, what a specimen. He looked like he hadn’t missed a single day of riding.”
There was also a point in the program when 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 a Strangely Plaid Man Discussing the Breeders' Cup At Some Point In the Very Recent Past. And
At one point, Merv also completely derailed an actually pertinent conversation about the Breeders' Cup by whirling on Chris and saying, in highly accusatory tones, “Is the story about Ferdinand true?”
Now, I’m a yooge dork of a racing fan, and so I knew what he was talking about, namely, Ferdinand, longshot winner of the ’86 Kentucky Derby. It is rumored that he had been shipped to
Also Larry kept pronouncing “Santa Anita” as “Santer Anita.” He also needs to die.