Recapping the Summer: Kentucky Derby

As mentioned quite recently, I had quite the summer of stuff and things and other stuff, and I thought it might be fun to share some of the highlights. First up, the Kentucky Derby!

Getting to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky from Chicago, if not flying, necessitates driving through the entirety of Indiana. From the Northwest corner, which includes scenic Gary, to the Southeast corner, which includes nothing, the three members of our car experienced all that Indiana has to offer. And, all three of us came to the same conclusion. Namely, that Indiana is awful. Indiana may be the worst state in the union, and that's including bullshit states like Delaware and North Dakota. Indiana is a desolate wasteland of crushed hopes and dreams, and sadness wafts off the roadways like heat in the August desert. The roadways, it should be mentioned, more often than not get siphoned into one lane in each direction, even on major freeways around Indianapolis. Ostensibly, this is for construction occurring. That we never did see occur.

All these opinions of Indiana had solidified in our brains before we ate at the Taco Bell in Lebanon, or went to the Walmart in the middle of Bumfuck, some hour or two south of Indianapolis. Now, this may seem like hyperbole, but I might rather spend the rest of my life in the actual Lebanon than the one we stopped in for lunch. Bet you don't think about how white trash Indiana can be. But oh, man, can it be. I think that's enough description for that one. But the Walmart. My lord. The Walmart.

Before this trip, I had actually never stepped foot inside a Walmart. I'm sure part of that is the remnants of the "Walmart is evil" stuff that has been pounded into every liberal's head, but now, I have an entirely new reason not to go back to one. The stifling sadness. And not even from the customers, though once you're that far South in Indiana there is something you're going to get a special breed of Walmart customers. No, it's from the people that work at a Walmart in nowhere, Indiana. The checkout girl, pregnant and still a teenager, was staring off into space the whole time I was there, helping no one, and I just got the feeling her single thought was something like, "There had to have been a way to escape this." The older employees seemed more resigned to their fate of living and working at the Walmart in Southern Indiana, but you could tell they weren't particularly happy with it, or perhaps even with the life decisions that had brought them to this juncture.

On the other hand, I bought a really awesome Cookie Monster hat for half what they're charging online.

But finally - FINALLY - we leave Indiana, and get to Kentucky. KenTUCKY!!! We'll skip the uneventful Friday night in the motel, and go straight to Saturday, the big day of the Derby. I had packed my finest white linen pants, pink linen shirt, and horse racing hat, ready for the awesomeness. And then the forecast was rain. Soooo, I realized I wasn't going to be comfortable in my special Churchill Downs gear, put on my jeans and track jacket, and piled in the cab from the motel with my friends. I had also brought a change of clothes in my backpack, in case the rain did get particularly intense, and I needed dry stuff.

The entrance to the infield at Churchill Downs on Derby Day is a clusterfuck of people, many already drunk, bottlenecking through the gates. There are no tickets - it's forty bucks for admission, and they never stop letting people in. After getting in, they have Military Police checking bags for any booze, and, well, really, that's about it. You can bring in coolers, you can bring in bags, women can bring in huge purses, you can bring in rolling suitcases.

You can't bring in backpacks.

The MP checking everyone's stuff looks at my backpack and says, "You can't bring that in here." I look ahead at people already admitted, and see, for example, a woman with a bag bigger than my backpack slung over her shoulder, and ask, "Um, why not?" MP says, "I have no idea. Maybe someone last year tried to strangle someone with a backpack. But you can't bring it in." I ask what I can do with it, he says take it back to the car or throw it away. Seeing as I don't have a car, I have to opt for the latter. Of course, the only things in my backpack were other bags, but those were fine to bring in. Naturally. Makes perfect sense.

But, we get in, and we've brought chairs, so we set up as close to the track as we can, and go get our mint juleps and place our bets. Derby day, by the by, is about 13 races in total, with the Derby itself being something like 11th. We've arrived after four races, so I bet ten bucks a race on races five through eleven. My friends do the same, though bet in substantially higher dollar amounts. And then, we sit back, drink a ton of beer, and wait for the races.

Now, here's the thing. There are a lot of people in the infield during this day. And, there are police on risers between you and the track. And the horses run by really, really fast. All this is to say, you can't really actually see any of the races. You get maybe a blur of the horses as they go by, and then you check the screen to see if you've won or lost. So, really, there's not much to do but sit and drink. And then some people might decide to run across the tops of the porta-potties, but they're mainly idiots.

So basically, being in the infield at the Kentucky Derby is the exact same thing as if someone had said, "Hey, I have an idea? Why don't we all pay forty bucks to sit in a field for eight hours and get plastered? Oh, and as you leave, be sure to throw about two hundred bucks on the ground for all the beer you drank and all the bets you lost. Oh, because you will be betting on a sporting event you can't witness." And, yes, in our entire group of seven people, not a single person won a single bet.

And then, the Sunday after it's all done, we had to drive back through Indiana. And guess which state doesn't sell alcohol on Sundays? Mutherfucker.

It's been a hazy summer

Hooooly fuck I haven't written in something like five months. Oops. In my defense, it's been a long summer - Kentucky Derby, Indy 500, New York for a week, Boston (twice), California for two and half weeks, Maine, Las Vegas, and probably another place or two I'm forgetting. Not that I'm complaining, mind you; it's a pretty douchey first-world gripe to say, "oh, man, traveling all over the country while I'm on break from grad school is so rough, you know?" That being said, traveling all over the country while I'm on break from grad school is so rough, you know?

What's not exhausting is getting on a plane almost weekly and going somewhere. It's that when I get where I'm going, I'm either going for a) some sort of big event like a wedding or sporting event or what-have-you, or b) seeing people I haven't seen for a while for a very short period of time. That means that either a) the event is alcohol-centric, or b) my friends see me for only two days, and really want to make it count. Which, of course, means going out drinking and carousing. This has led my body to, basically, hate me. I'd be surprised if my liver didn't sneak out in the middle of the night back in July sometime, leaving a note that says, simply, "You're on your own, asshole." And I couldn't really blame it.

All this leads me to actually be excited for school to start up again. One of the other reasons I haven't written anything for so many months is that, when I do have free time, it's usually spent staring off into the middle distance while I play last night's Conan on Hulu. Unless I'm busy, I'm not doing shit. That is to say, when I have a lot to do, I find I get a lot more of the ancillary stuff done. My get-up-and-go gets up and goes when I lack a structure. In fact, aside from a two-week class in June, I'm not entirely sure I've used by brain since the end of April. Here's where you put your own joke in about me not using my brain since much longer than that. Har har.

So in just about a week, school starts again. Counter-intuitively, this means that I'll also be blogging more, reading books more, playing more music, and generally being better at life. Until then, though, you're still more likely to find me at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey than making progress on David Copperfield. Fucker's 900 pages, did you know that? Christ.

Why would anyone give up anything alcohol related for Lent?

First off, a couple weeks ago, I wrote a scathing rant against something Joe Biden said about Russian foreign policy, but as I clicked "publish post," Blogger, and thus Google, decided it would be better if I didn't publish such things. And blew up my internets. I decided not to rewrite it, and Google Help is actually anything but, so the short of it is, we're all out an interesting post, and I'm probably on a Federal no-fly list now. But, we move on to new topics.

I'm not Catholic, but having gone to a Catholic college and being surrounded by a lot of Them, I usually do the whole Lenten sacrifice thing, basically just to see how long I could go on whatever it was I gave up. Usually, about a week, max. Well, except last year, where giving up Taco Bell actually lasted me about two or three months. Before I fell back down to Earth. Hard.

This year, though, I decided I really go for the gusto, especially considering I'm back in grad school, where it's very easy to fall into debauchery, so we might as well swing the other way as far as possible. And, seeing as it's another Catholic school, it seems only fair that I test myself.

I've given up drunkenness within the state I reside. Now, let's get one thing straight before I go any further. Not once did it cross my mind that I'd actually give up alcohol, as a whole. Why set yourself up for something at which you're destined to fail? Seems less than rational. And besides, this is self-sacrifice, not suicide. After 40 days of Lent, it's Jesus that's dead, not me.

As well, the conditional "within the state I reside" is crucial, as I have a trip to Spring Training planned for less than a week from now, and I'll be damned if I leave the snow, go to Arizona, watch baseball with a good friend in the sun for three days, and don't get plastered at least once. I mean, come on!

So, let's do the math. Obviously, this all started on Ash Wednesday, which means we're about...60 hours into Lent. And though, obviously, my Lenten sacrifice allows me to drink some alcohol, I have not done so since Tuesday night. And in those sixty hours, I have been more productive than usual. I've finally, after it being on my shelf for at least a year and a half, gotten 75 pages a night done of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I've been much more on the ball when it comes to writing for the blog site that actually pays me. As far as school work is concerned, I started a paper today that's due the first week of May. Basically, I've been better at life.

And it sucks. I know this is the part where I'm supposed to say, and I'm sooo much happier, and more alert, and get things done, and all that bullshit, but that's not really the case. It's Friday night, the night my Spring Break starts, and instead of wanting to go out and meet friends and watch them get drunk, or even just have a drink and watch TV by myself, I'm just angry with my healthy life choices. There's even an interesting show tonight - one of the dudes from LCD Soundsystem and Hercules and Love Affair are both doing DJ sets three blocks from my apartment, but I'm pretty sure DJ sets blow unless you're drunk. I'm pretty sure that's science.

Did I bring this upon myself? Yes. Are you supposed to feel sorry for me because I haven't been drinking for three whole days? No. Should I even be complaining because I'm getting shit done that I usually put off? No. Will I continue doing so until Lent is over, or give in to getting hammered some night for no good reason? Yes. Will it annoy you more than a string of rhetorical questions? Absolutely. And, unfortunately for you, will it mean I spend more time writing on this site? Definitely.

So enjoy. You're in this with me now.

Detox

So this weekend I destroyed my liver, again. The real issue, though, is that because I'm in school again, and nearing the end of the semester, this weekend would have been much better served studying, and not, you know, breaking my brain.

I have a Macallan tasting this Friday. Other than that, we're going to try a fun experiment. It's called "Not Drinking Until Thanksgiving Break." That's over two weeks away. Ready...GO!

A Chili's without alcohol is more useless than, oh, anything ever

I'm in Van Buren, Arkansas at the moment, and went to Chili's for dinner. Well, that's not quite true. I went to Chili's to get some drinks and maybe order an appetizer. No one goes to Chili's to eat and not to drink. Why? Because Chili's is Chili's, and you don't go there unless you plan on drinking through it.

So we get there (the "we" is my mom and me, which is another reason to drink), and my mom says, "Are you going to have a beer?" Before I can finish replying with the obvious choice, the waitress chimes, "Oh, we don't have alcohol here." Almost as if we should have known better.

What. The. Fuck. Why would anyone, ever, EVER go to a Chili's that doesn't serve alcohol? A Chili's without alcohol is like a male porn star without a dick. It's like an episode of Baywatch without bouncing breasts. It's literally absolutely, completely useless. I just did some quick research (aka a Google search of "van buren arkansas dry"), and it looks like all of ONE PLACE in the county here has a liquor license. Really, Arkansas? You're really so holy that when you're not, you know, burning crosses and/or insisting the Confederate flag is totally cool to put everywhere, you won't let me have a goddamn beer with my sizzlin' fajitas or whatever the fuck it is I'm ordering?

Fuck you, the South. The truth of the matter is, I honestly can't imagine that you guys aren't drunk all the time by the way you act down here.

I'm sorry. That was rude. But seriously. If you can't sell me a beer, you don't even deserve a Chili's, and that's just sad.

Dos and Don'ts of Heavy Drinking

Allow me to walk you through my last night's evening as a series of what to do, and now not to do, when engaging in what we in the industry like to call "getting really really drunk".

DO: Think of something fun to do while drinking. While, yes, it is incredibly entertaining to sit on your couch and drink until pass-out while watching whatever shit Fox thinks you should watch (I don't have cable), sometimes it's also fun to actually go out and experience something while hammered. Last night was the Art Brut/Hold Steady show.

DO: Get a designated driver. A good choice is your girlfriend's co-worker, Chris. Thanks, Chris!

DO: Buy drinks for your friends. It's just nice.

DON'T: Buy way too many drinks for your friends. Your tab will end up being over $100, and that's just not necessary.

DON'T: Think it's a good idea to order a beer and a mixed drink at the same time, and then chug the beer and sip the mixed drink. It probably should go the other way around, even if you do really impress the bartender with your retardedness.

DO: Congratulate the band on a great show, if you happen to see one of the members after the set.

DON'T: Buy a shot of Jaeger for you and who you assume is the drummer for Art Brut after many, many drinks. Though it probably is the drummer from Art Brut, you've had enough to drink, mister.

DO: Enjoy the ocean view after the show, if the venue is right on the beach. It's a nice way to relax after some rock and roll.

DON'T: Decide to actually go in the ocean, fully clothed, at midnight for no particular reason. The water is cold and you're an idiot for thinking that's a good idea.

DO: Give your wallet and electronic devices to someone smart enough not to go into the water so they are not ruined.

DON'T: Leave your wallet and electronic devices with said smart person after he drops you off at your apartment. You probably were going to need those things the next day.

DO: Thank your driver again. He was very nice to stay sober and drive your ridiculous ass around.

DON'T: Keep trying to insist that the driver sleep over at your place. He's not drunk and can drive home just fine. Besides, that's really really awkward.

DON'T: Try to have sex with your girlfriend if you've had over half a bottle of wine, slammed three beers, and had somewhere in the vicinity of a half dozen hard drinks. It's just not gonna work that well.

Hopefully this gives you some guidelines to work with. Basically, have fun, be safe out there, and don't do what I like to call "be a complete dipshit". As you can see, I followed most of those rules last night. Most.