The Breeder's Cup: It's the Best Weekend of the Year

                Yahoo! It’s the best weekend of the year. Like Chanukah and my birthday rolled into one. The only way it could only get better is if I win the Pick Four on Saturday.  And I might. It’s Halloween AND the Breeder’s Cup this weekend.

                

               Halloween is obviously the best official holiday ever. It’s an entire celebration based on getting candy
and hanging out with your friends. No relatives, no fancy dinners. Just fun. The Breeder’s Cup is like that too.

               
              The Breeder’s Cup is like March Madness or the Super Bowl, but better, because it’s horse racing. 13 races. Two days. With the best horses in the world competing for more than $25 million in purse money. Whee!

               
              There were 201 horses pre-entered for this year’s races. There are Milers (minus reigning Horse of the Year Wise Dan, who was recently injured, damn it), there are Sprinters including my personal favorite Big Macher, Turf horses  like Big John B, Fillies and Mares including Stormy Lucy and even tough mares running against the boys, like Reneesgotzip.

               
              These are the races that make gamblers of every stripe tear their hair out.  Professional handicappers start working the numbers weeks in advance and change their picks every time the horses work, breeze or even sneeze. The last is important: Champion Beholder is out of the competition this year after spiking a high fever.  And that changes everything for her race, the Distaff Classic.

               
              Those of us who are amateur two dollar bettors fare even worse. On a normal racing day, you can easily discard a lot of the horses in a race. That doesn’t mean you’ll win of course, but you have to start somewhere.  Not so simple at the Breeder’s Cup. All of these horses had to qualify or pay huge sums of money to enter. They are all really, really good.  Picking the winners of these races is, well, a gamble.

               
              Last week the horses that are competing began to ship in to Santa Anita, the site of this year’s event. They come from tracks around the country and the world.  And every morning it’s free to go to the track and watch them work.

               
              The serious gamblers come out to see how the horses are training and maybe get a tip from someone.  Here’s one: jockeys, jockeys’ agents and trainers always say their horses are going ‘just great’ unless it has just fallen down. And then it’s just regarded as a ‘momentary blip.’

              
               Me? I come for the spectacle. I admit it isn’t easy getting up when it’s dark and cold. The track opens for work at 4:45 am.  My own horses are still fast asleep when I feed them at that hour. (Though they manage to snap to attention pretty quickly when the food arrives…) But it’s worth forcing myself out of bed at an ungodly hour just to see the sun come up over Santa Anita and the mountains in the background.

               
              Even on a non-Breeder’s Cup week, morning works are amazing. The racetrack is filled with horses, both quiet ones and wild ones. Either way, the riders never seem to budge in the saddle or even seem perturbed.  Most of the time riders sitting on the horses that are rearing and leaping around are laughing and grinning. This is fun for them. Personally, I’d be in the dirt. Crying more than likely.  Exercise riders have balls and nerves of steel.

              There are hundreds of horses on the track at a  time, jogging, walking and working. It takes my breath away no matter how many times I see it.

               
              In the week before the Breeder’s Cup, the crowd watching the morning works swells. In addition to the regulars that hang at Clocker’s Corner buying coffee and doughnuts from Rosie, there are hundreds of visitors.

              They include the professional photographers: Barbara Livingston is usually weighed down with three cameras all with enormous telephoto lenses, the Blood-Horse’s Anne Eberhardt is there shooting away, and so are hordes of freelancers.  If you don’t recognize a famous horse as it goes by, the clicks of the automatic shutters are a dead giveaway. The photographers know all of the horses.

               
              That’s not necessarily the case for the rest of us.  Face it, when there are 100 horses on the track, a lot of the bay horses with a blaze look alike. Except for American Pharaoh.  Poor baby; somebody ate his tail when he was a foal and it’s never grown back.  (Even worse this morning he was scratched  from the Juveniles due to a lameness issue. With any luck he’ll be well enough for next year’s Derby trail.)

              The people at the BC have made it easy.  The week of the event, competing horses work in the morning with special saddle cloths that have their name and their race color coded on them. There’s also a handy sheet, provided by Santa Anita identifying the horses, which makes it slightly easier to spot them as the fly by on the track in the morning.

               
               The contingent of European shippers always stands out. Usually they wear matching half blankets and they walk on and off the track precisely in a line.  More often than not, their tails are banged, or cut evenly. It’s a European thing. Gambling hint: in the turf races, don’t bet against the European horses – it’s their specialty and they didn’t travel 5000 miles to lose.

               
              I don’t have any deep preferences for this year’s races.  While I am a big fan of the aforementioned Big Macher, I like both Shared Belief and California Chrome in the big race, the Breeder’s Cup Classic.  But since Zenyatta retired, I haven’t given my heart to any horse that isn’t mine.

                Which makes the two days pure fun for me. I bring just enough money that I can lose  without crying, I meet up with good friends from out of town, and best of all – I get to watch amazing racehorses do their thing in a beautiful setting.

              Then I can come home and eat leftover Halloween candy. I can’t think of a better way to spend a holiday.

Lessons I've Learned from "Peanuts"

      I have always been a huge fan of the  Peanut’s comic strip. But while everyone in the world seems to be enthralled by Snoopy, my favorite character is Lucy. She is referred to as crabby, but that is just code: Lucy is a bitch. And she embraces her “crabbiness.” I can relate.

             
              As early as I can remember, I too was a ‘crabby’ kid. I’ve grown into a crabby adult. Which doesn’t mean that  I don’t know that I am lucky – really lucky - I do. I have a fantastic  urban family, pretty cool actual relatives and I don’t live in Sierra Leone or Syria.

             
             But still I complain. All the time.  Poor, poor me.  Cue the violins. My property taxes are due. (Which means I own a home.) I can’t afford to upgrade my Iphone. (I  have a phone.) My vet bills are exorbitant. (But the dog and the cat got better.) My car needs work. (I have a car.) On and on I go. Sometimes I even disgust myself.

            
           For a little while there was something going around the internet called five days of gratitude.  If you were tagged, for five days you were supposed to list three things you were grateful for.  Unlike the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS, it didn’t catch on. It just wasn’t as entertaining as watching people you know freeze their tushies off.

            
          Obviously, I’m not a Pollyanna, and I don’t want to be the kind of smarmy person that always goes around saying ‘count your blessings.’ I hate that person and want to smack them in the nose. Hard.

             
         However, I think those of us who are lucky enough to get hysterical about Ebola even though the likelihood of catching it is nearly nill, need to get a grip.  Get a flu shot instead—52,000 Americans die of that. And stop watching CNN.  And Fox “News.” Never, ever, watch Fox.

            
          I personally had a wake up call last week. I was having a bad day – I can’t even remember what I thought was so important, but it seemed critical at the time. Maybe Trader Joe’s was out of Smores or something. It doesn’t matter.

             
         Then I got a phone call. Actually, I missed a call from one of my sisters-from-another-mother. She’s going through a particularly bad time right now.  Naturally I panicked, since I come from a crazy family that always assumes the worst. So I immediately called her back just slightly hysterically.

            
         This time my overreaction was on sadly on target. Her sister – who is a sustaining member of my urban family –  had a biopsy come back badly. Now, we all had known about the possibility, but my friend and I – and her sister – are of the school of thought that,  a) there’s no point in worrying until you have to and,  b) the biopsy couldn’t possibly come positive. But it had.  We were broadsided.

             
         When stuff like this happens to people you love, there are a couple of options for how you react.  You can wail and carry on about how the bad stuff only happens to you. Or you can dig in and support your friends.

        I lied. That’s the only answer. You take a deep breath, cry if that’s your way, and carry on. You can allow yourself a limited – very limited – time to feel sorry for yourself.  Then you say, “what can I do to help,” and then listen to the answer. Most of the time all you can do is listen. And that’s important.

          You also keep on doing whatever it is you’re doing, and help your friends do the same. Curling into a fetal ball doesn’t really help anyone. Because it isn’t about you.  That’s really important to remember.

             
           None of the little annoyances are about you either. It’s just freaking life.

             
         Sometimes things seem to go all your way. It’s sure easy to look at other people and think they lead charmed lives. But nobody’s life is perfect. Some people just fake it better than others.

            
          Everybody makes concessions. That stay-at-home wife with the big house the sports car and the diamonds: Could you put up with her husband? Or the guy with the trophy wife, the dream job and the yacht? He never has time or energy to enjoy the boat and his wife is as dumb as a rock. Etc.

           
          Being aware that you’re lucky doesn’t mean that you can’t want more. That’s just human nature. You just can’t freaking bitch about it all the time. Me included.

        Which doesn’t mean I’m giving up complaining for Halloween. I’m just going to try to temper my inner Lucy with a little Linus.

             

       

Emmy Awards and Golden Retrievers: Yup, I'm at UCLA

I started school last week and have already learned a bunch. For one thing, UCLA is a whole different universe from Skidmore, where I got my undergraduate degree.   And not just because Skidmore is in upstate New York, and UCLA is in Southern California. For one thing, UCLA is a lot bigger. When I started school last week I was pretty proud of myself for finding  the parking lot near my classrooms with ease. Of course, because this is Los Angeles and they knew we’d be driving, the school sent directions to the lot, which was extremely well marked.

               

Which is a good thing, because Lot 3 is split into permit spots and pay-per-spots. To get a permit you have to show up at the parking department in person between the hours of 9am and 5pm. Assuming, for a moment that one did have the time for that, you then have to wait in line for another hour before forking over a small fortune for the permit.  That wasn’t going to happen.

Since I am cheap as well as lazy, I headed for pay spots. Finding one was no problem, but locating the meter was a little tricky. Then I had to return to the car with the receipt to prove I had paid. The extra window of time I had allotted for getting lost on campus was starting to disappear and I was still in the parking lot.

I did have a school map. Those haven’t changed a bit since the last time I was looking for a classroom. In fact, except that it had more items on it, it could have been the exact same one I’d used at Skidmore. It was covered with dark smugey unreadable lumps that were purported to be classrooms and  had no relation to the real brick and mortal buildings in front of me. On top of that the map was minuscule and the campus is lush and dark. Even with the help of my cell phone flashlight, I had no idea where I was.

I did manage to find a cafeteria, two theaters, a library a lovely sculpture garden and a few dorms. What I couldn’t locate, was the building housing my first class. Eventually I flagged down a man walking two Golden Retrievers - unlike my college mutt, all the dogs at UCLA seem to carry pedigrees - who pointed me in the right direction. I had walked past the building numerous times, and didn’t see the sign. Oops.

Whatever hopes I’d had of sliding into the background vanished as I tore into the workshop 15 minutes late. Since there are only eight of us and everyone else was on time, I made quite an entrance. The teacher, let’s call him Professor Multiple Emmy Winner, was extremely nice about it.  I, however, was mortified.

                

The workshop is an interesting assortment of people. Not surprisingly, all of them, including Professor Multiple Emmy Winner, are younger than I am. By several decades. Two are just out of college. One traveled from Finland specifically to attend this program.  They all seem very nice, and surprisingly supportive.

                

That seems to be one of the goals of the program and was a theme of the first lecture: they want people to succeed. Which is a far cry from J-school, where they made it clear that their failure rate was something to be proud of. I never have figured out the point of that.

                

The lecture class is interesting. It’s led by an extremely enthusiastic teacher, let’s call him Professor Mentor-to-the-Stars, who knows his stuff inside out. He’s written several books on screenwriting, and could easily be a character in any number of college-based films. I liked him even better after he used a Tom Waits song to illustrate a point. I was the only one in the class who knew the song.  Which probably says a lot more about me than I should share. The tune was “Christmas Card from A Hooker in Minneapolis.” It’s great: go listen to it.

                

The lecture is the only time the entire class meets together. There are about 50 of us and as in the workshop, we’re a pretty diverse group. The majority of the class is younger than I am, but most aren’t fresh out of college.  There are a few codgers even older than me. Which is refreshing.

                

About ten of my classmates are from other parts of the world. One is an Iranian woman in her 20’s. I’m not so sure she’s going to stick around; yesterday I overheard her complaining about how much she hated Los Angeles. She told someone she should have just stayed in Paris. I’m sure that  can be arranged.

                

I must admit though, that, I was a little shaken when the professor announced homework. Not the assignment – that was fun. It was the actual phrase that grabbed me: Homework.

                

No matter how old you are, or how much you like what you’re doing, homework is a little like a knife to the heart. I immediately panicked : I was back in seventh grade algebra and staring at the board in slack-jawed confusion. But I took a deep breath, reminded myself that the one thing I have confidence about is my ability to write, and I tried to relax.

              

 Luckily, when I got my assignment back, the teacher – or his two overworked TAs - agreed.  Phew.  Because I was worried.  I know I have a lot to learn.

That Sound You Hear? It's My Head Hitting the Wall

When I was younger I spent a lot of time desperately trying to gain credibility in what was primarily a man’s game: music journalism. Thanks to women like the infamous Pamela Des Barres, Tawny Kitaen and the legions of girls who followed in their dubious footsteps, almost any female involved in rock and roll in any way was and is, suspected of having less then honorable motives. 

                

The truth be told, I often was the only girl backstage that wasn’t there for the express purpose of getting into someone’s pants.  It complicated matters that I actually made and maintained good friendships with number of bandmembers.  (That’s also true of most male music journalists.  But as far as I know, no one questions their motives.)

There were a few of us girls successfully writing about pop music, but it wasn’t easy. Even our (male) bosses at the newspapers and magazines would occasionally give us a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. It was frustrating but most of us did our jobs, wrote about the music we loved, and kept our sex lives separate from work. Just like the professionals we were.

Eventually I switched sides, and went into publicity, though a few of my contemporaries – Melinda Newman, Edna Gunderson and Ann Powers - soldiered on. They have solid, well-deserved reputations for being among the best critics/journalists in the business – regardless of gender.

               

When I started to go back into writing, I ran headfirst  into another ‘ism.’ This time it was my age. 

I was told, in no uncertain terms, by two different male editors that they could not hire me because I was too old.  Apparently female ears age faster and more completely than those of males. Who knew? Someone should study this. I bet they could get a grant.

               

I guess I was naïve, because when I decided to reinvent myself for the umpteenth time, I completely forgot the lessons I’d learned.  Oops. She who does not remember the past is destined to bump headlong into it.

Now I'm primarily writing screenplays. It’s not that I didn’t know that there is no business more sexist and ageist than the film business. I did and I do. But I didn’t think that as a writer this double standard would apply to me. I mean, have you seen some of the men that go to the podium to accept non-acting Academy Awards?  It’s not pretty.

Even many of the male actors get a pass. Take a good look at Dustin Hoffman, or Robert DuVall. Clint Eastwood is considered a craggy treasure. You can bet no female actor could rock that look and still get work and be revered.

Still, while I was concerned about my age, I didn’t think it would get in the way. After all, the message that was presented throughout my screenwriting class was that relationships are the basis for this business.  I still believe that.  

But it’s getting harder. I recently applied for a master class at that same school. It was going to be a pretty nifty course. We were going to work with actors and directors and shoot an actual scene. Cool. I thought hard about applying, because I was starting UCLA soon, but I figured there was no down side to learning as much as possible.

I interviewed, and it went swimmingly.  At the end of the meeting I was told I was in. Not only did they know and like my work, but former students were being given priority.  There was an approval process, but it was simply a formality. I was asked to clear my schedule for the next 10 weeks. Which I did.

Then I didn’t get accepted. No one actually let me know – I learned from a friend. Ouch. Oh, and except for my friend and another guy, all of the writers were young women. Really young.  Even more galling, at least one of the ladies has somewhat, um, questionable qualifications. Double ow. And these are writers. God knows how they picked the actors.

I spent the next weekend pretty much curled up in a fetal position.  I don’t mind fighting battles. I’ll put my work up against anybody’s. I do the best I can, which is sometimes pretty okay. Unfortunately, I can’t change my age. Even if I could afford it, I’m not going the Joan River’s route

Thankfully, the people at UCLA don’t seem to care that I am verging on codgerhood. Most of the professors are already there.  As far as the female thing goes, that’s looking good too. The guest speaker next week is Shondra Rimes. I can’t wait to meet her. She’s built an empire and she’s not only older than 30 and female: she’s black. She’s my new hero. Rock on Shondra!