KENTUCKY DERBY DAY!

FLASH! Winner is BARBARO by 7 lengths!!

i grew up with horses. my Dad was a thoroughbred trainer ("trotters?...va fongul!"). my summer jobs were mucking out the stables at Thisledown and Northfield Park in Clevo, and keeping the tack clean. my peers had paper routes - i knew how to shoe a horse. he would have much happier with me if i had stopped growing at 5 feet/90 pounds and thus had a shot at being a jockey. best times were when he'd pull me out of school for a week and we'd go down to Kentucky for the horse sales. he had a side business supplying vets with horse meds: if i'd get sick, i was more likely to chew on bucha leaves vs. going to a human doctor.

from horses, i learned about sex - seeing a coked-up stud horse mount a willing mare is quite an education for an eleven-year-old. from horses, i learned about drugs - i'd come home from college, all beatexhausted, and he'd steer me towards a huge bottle of Black Beauties...help yourself, he'd offer. from horses, i learned about corruption - Ohio didn't test for butadiene, so a doped horse was the rule rather than the exception. from horses, i learned about alternative lifestyles vs. the whitebreadsuburbanmainstream my folks were trying to struggle into - horsefolk where drifters, grifters, homos (this was the pre-'gay' era remember), drug addicts, whores, noble/rebel/nomads doing what they loved from track to track.

haven't been on a horse in 25 years...but i can still smell the hay, manure, sweat, oats & molassas.

NP: Juvenal/"Back That Ass Up"

PEEVE DE JOUR: when my Dad died, all those horse meds got tossed.

N.B.A.T.W.P.:

Life In A Blender plays tonight at 10 pm at Barbes
in Brooklyn (9th St. and Sixth Ave, One block from
the 7th Ave. F Stop).

The show is FREE.  The full string section will be
on hand and Josh Neretin will add that extra-groove
with his cajon-playing.

Also: Sea of Scarves will be playing a tribute set
to Nikki Sudden immediately following our set--featuring
the amply talented Henry Tenney.