"The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved"

"Fancy Fillies" by art deco artist Jeff Williams.  

Hunter S. Thompson nailed it. Despite all the fancy hats and chilled Mint Juleps, horse races are decadent and depraved.

On Kentucky Derby day, the crowd I see picnicking in Georgetown, Washington's rich, historic neighborhood, with their elaborate hats and seersucker, covers the decadent part. Now for depraved.

In my favorite pizza joint where I get a slice and a pint for $5, I wouldn't exactly call the young woman wearing a millinery mess two feet in diameter, depraved. More like obnoxious as it clogs up the aisle. However, another Derby Girl, overly dressed and stumbling drunk at 4 in the afternoon, bangs up against the wall on the way back to her barstool. That's more like it.

I wonder if the woman who chose to swathe her head in yards of turquoise netting has a bet in the Derby. Does she know what OTB stands for? Has she ever been to a horse race? Or does she just like hats. Hard to tell. Now I'm being judgmental. I feel I have the right. A strange, inappropriate thing to feel. But when I hear "They're at post!" I'm a little girl again, back at the races, where instead of chiffon dresses and sprigs of herbs, there's old man wool and flat beer. Can't a girl wax nostalgic? Without all the young posers?

Even before my time, my maternal grandfather was the constable at Waterford Park, the local racetrack in West Virginia. My mother and her brothers would hang out just as I would with my brothers. 

My Grandma Katie, Grandpa Steve and Uncle Caiden at The Track. 

In the 1970s when it became our weekend family outing, Waterford was packed with career gamblers, people cashing in their pay checks, illegal doping. Cigar smoke. Character. In those days, if a horse was unlucky enough to break a leg during a race, they shot it in the head on the track. A white doctor's screen shielded spectators but didn't stifle the gun shot. "Mommy, why is that big, white sheet on the track?" BAM!

I loved the race track. I'd spend all day kicking asides cigarette butts to collect the worthless losing tickets that carpeted the floor. Everyone held them with such white-knuckled grips, whapping them against their thighs yelling for that "Goddamned horse to get the fucking lead out!" that they just had to be special.

And sometimes they were.

I was about three years old, when I handed my father a treasured scavenged ticket telling him it was special. The ticket showed a losing 3, 4 perfecta. Gamblers are a superstitious lot. So, of course he bet it. And hit for $500. The 3, 4 perfecta remained his bet, boxed usually, for decades to come. Not the luckiest of gamblers, he studied old racing forms as if trying to crack code. He knew things like which horses to bet on if the track was muddy. And to bet more if your horse just peed because it'd be lighter. Stuff you just can't learn from the horse betting books that lined his shelves.

My mother yelling for he horse coming down the stretch.

My mother's favorite bet was 1, 3, 7 after winning $10,000 on a long shot trifecta. We were escorted, as a family, to the parking lot by security guards that night. Where my father took a mathematical approach to betting, she relied on her Hungarian Gypsy heritage. I would wish and wish for his horse to win. But she was the lucky one. Other gamblers knew it too. Old men and women, gamblers she knew well, asked her as she stood in line at the betting window, "Hey, Kathy. Whodya' like in the 5th?" Word got around quickly when she was hot.

Dougie after winning some money for my mom.

She also bet the birthdays of her children. But with seven kids, the math could get a little dizzying. It became condensed into a system where she only bet the next upcoming birthday. Unless Dougie was riding. Doug Williams was her favorite jockey. Kelly, a pretty blond, was a close second. I grew up thinking all mothers had favorite jockeys. And a bookie named Jimmy the Greek. Of course.

Visiting my parents as an adult, we would still go. But it wasn't the same. Over time, even my parents stopped going. It's now called Mountaineer Park. Gambling machines draw the crowds, not the horses. Sad.

Hunter S. Thompson

I realize things clean up with age. Pole Dancing classes at the gym. Office types using "pimp" as a verb. Even Las Vegas, Sin City, is filled with family fun. Maybe that's why Mr. Thompson shot himself. Instead of Fear and Loathing he'd have to write about Cher and The Lion King.

Before you suck your teeth at that one, do know that in addition to the horse track, another common family outing was the shooting range at the Paris Sportsman Club. That's Paris, Pennsylvania. Not France. So, I'm betting that Gun Enthusiast Hunter wouldn't mind the suicide crack.

I understand why some may want to pretend that horse racing is gentile and highbrow. But I prefer Mr. Thompson's lurid version. It's closer to home.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Taking Eleanor Roosevelt's advice literally, I watch 28 Days Later again late one night, feeding my ongoing love/hate relationship with zombie films - or infected films, if you want to have that argument.

Although I don't think she was talking about zombies. And neither am I. I'm talking about film. (Should you click on her name and buy a t-shirt, I don't get a cut. Just so you know.)

"Do You Want To Be A Filmmaker?" the email asked. Well, gee, I haven't thought of that in years. I did have a hoot back in the 90s working on the film Whatever. And as I am exploring new career options and there aren't any "So, You Want To Be Death Midwife?" seminars in the Washington, DC area, (nothing's off the table) I decide to give it a go.

Admittedly, attending a forum on filmmaking does not have a high scare factor. Not like bungee jumping. Or going to an Scientology open house. But it is a departure from the work-life I've created around two decades of Chinese language studies. And departures can be scary.

The day of the forum torrential rains pound most of the Mid-Atlantic and a band of tornados threaten the DC area. Perfect weather to talk about film. And the cost is perfect too. Only $10 for the whole day which includes a panel of noted filmmakers and workshops on camera, lighting and sound. The writer/director of The Blair Witch Project, the movie that made my then-Bangladeshi boyfriend's petite Indian friend puke in a New York City trash can, is on the panel. I hope I get the chance to tell him that his movie made someone I know throw up. But I'm sure he gets that compliment all the time.

The venue is a theater where my son and I often get our musical theater fix, one of which involved a vampire bunny. Not the best $22 I've ever spent. The fact that I'm in a children's theater and that the $10 on-site registration fee requires a student identification (something the on-line process, I swear, didn't mention), should've tipped me off. And in hindsight, most of the adults I see are dropping off kids, throngs of teens and pre-teens who I'm assuming came to see George & Martha: Tons of Fun. George and Martha the elephants. Not the Washingtons.

It isn't until a woman with a clipboard instructing all film seminar attendees to file into the auditorium and we all stand up together do I realize what I've done. I've signed up for a forum intended for students. Not even college students. Junior high and high school students. Things just got a bit more scary.

I consider leaving but I've already paid. Ten dollars. I've also walked nearly a mile to catch the Metro and then walked another quarter mile to the theater. I am doing this, dammit. Student i.d. or no student i.d. At least in an old, torn Ramones t-shirt, black hoodie and sneakers I'm dressed appropriately. Maybe I'll blend.

Excuse me, ma'am, says one of the kids as he heads to his seat.

Name calling, are we? Is that how this going to go down? Well, during the lunch break I'm heading to the cafe down the street for a beer. Enjoy your juice box.

But they seem like nice kids. Nice kids with their own audio/video departments. They talk about their current projects and have coolers phones than mine. I chastise myself for comparing phones. This isn't high school. Well. Today it kind of is.

What the hell. I plunge full-steam into the seminar which is well produced and professional, beginning with screenwriting and ending in post-production. I learn industry secrets about scriptwriting. Follow format! And creative collaborations. Filmmaking is a team sport! Thankfully, the sports references end with that one, something that concerned me as the moderator, the entire discussion panel, all the workshop presenters and most of the attendees are men. And boys. They couldn't find one chick working in film?

Age and gender aside, I learn other secrets. How the right backlighting adds ethereal highlights to an otherwise flat hairdo and can heighten and sculpt your cheekbones, something more restauranteurs should keep in mind when lighting their dining rooms. How a humming beer cooler is actually really loud if you're filming and not just drinking in a bar. How some guys become sound recordists for the gear alone. And how their wives feel about that. So much to learn. We dabblers love hearing years of experience speak.

I look around and wonder why no one else is taking notes. Quietly I slide my favorite Pilot G-2 gel pen and Wonder Woman notebook back into my bag. Even among teenage, techie gear nerds, I'm a nerd. The Ramones t-shirt has helped not in the least.

But the day proceeds fine. Until the end of the lighting workshop. Then things get a bit shaky. I ask a general question on how Julian Schnabel accomplished that dreamy feel in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a movie about Jean-Dominique Bauby's efforts to write his memoirs when the only remaining corporeal movement left to him was blinking one eye. (Bauby is pictured at right). I loved this film until learning how much Schnabel altered the truth for the sake of adding petty drama.

I say something to that effect to Mr. German Lighting Guru but he's too busy digging in his camera bag for something he calls a Lens, baby. I blush thinking he's coming on to me when he pulls out a Lensbaby. Oh. Well, if we're not going to flirt, can we at least slam Schnabel for being a deceitful bitch without mucking about in the weeds too much?

When on an exploratory career expedition, stay out of the weeds.

(This is my advice. Not Eleanor's.)

As soon as he suggests a lens, my heart starts pounding. Please, don't ask. Please, don't ask. "So, what type of camera are you using?" I hate him. With his $200 denim jeans and bed-head hair, I hate him for asking me this. I can't remember what kind of camera it is. It's a Sony, I think. With some letters and numbers after it. I've never been good at remembering names with alpha-numeric combinations. I feel exposed. Over exposed. All washed out and two-dimensional. Something you want to avoid when filming, by the way.

Didn't I tell him that my "film" project is pulling my son in his Red Flyer wagon around our DC neighborhood to capture his fleeting childhood?

How do I tell him, now that he's mounting his precious Lensbaby onto his camera to show me the great effects I could achieve with this innovative lens, that my 5-year-old will be the one holding the camera? Do I use words like cinema verite and verisimilitude to change the topic? Luckily he has a plane to catch and cuts his demonstration short.

Auf wiedersehen.

I'm sure all of the child-attendees know what type of camera they own. So not only am I one of the only adults at the seminar (some parents stayed), now I feel stupid. Great. Little do I know that a chance to redeem myself waits in post-production, a place where so many mistakes are fixed. If this were a scene, the script would look something like this:

EXT. RAINY AFTERNOON. WASHINGTON, DC SUBURBS.

INT. DARKENED AUDITORIUM.

A woman in her late 30s or early 40s fidgets uncomfortably in her seat. After a day-long filmmaking seminar, she feels out of place, inexperienced. To demonstrate their post-production prowess, a renowned media production company shows off a political advertisement depicting China taking over the United States. It's in Chinese with English subtitles. The woman notices something. She raises her hand with a question.

WOMAN

(tentatively)

Um. I'm just curious. Have any Chinese people called you about this commercial?

ACCOMPLISHED MEDIA MAN

(confused)

Not that I know of. Why?

WOMAN

Well, it's just that it's set in Beijing and you've used an image of Mao Ze Dong and the Chinese Communist flag. But the actor is speaking in a strong Taiwanese accent. That ... wouldn't happen.

ACCOMPLISHED MEDIA MAN

(surprised)

Um. No. I didn't know that.

WOMAN

Just a small detail.

But the Woman knows it's not a small detail. She relaxes back into her chair and smiles.

FADE TO BLACK.

Life Laminated

Virginia Woolf's A Room Of One's Own has become personal.

She was obviously referring to the importance of having a room of one's own to use one's own personal thermal laminator without ridicule by one's own family members.

Okay. She doesn't mention lamination specifically. But in chapter four she writes that "could she have freed her mind from hate and fear and not heaped it with bitterness and resentment, the fire was hot within her."

Fire. Thermal. To me, she might as well have been yelling from the grave "Go forth and thermally laminate!"

My brand-new Scotch TL901 personal thermal laminator is still in it's box when my husband starts.

"Why in the world do we own a laminator?"

First, this is quite the reversal. Usually he's the one making fun of my hesitance toward accepting new technologies. It was two years ... TWO YEARS ... before I learned he had something called a Facebook page. He was sure I wouldn't be interested. Then, last year, I got on Facebook.

"Hey! Look! I'm Friending you!" I yell across the room from my computer to his. "Look, we're Friends. Now ... I ... am ... wait for it ... Married! Hey, wait a minute. Why doesn't your status say Married? Why aren't you Married? ... Oh. Look. Now you're Married. Never mind. You were right. This is going to be fun!"

But now he questions my most recent foray into a high-tech life. My response to him is simple.

What can't I laminate? The possibilities are endless.

Well. That's not true. The possibilities end at a thickness of exactly 3 millimeters. Then things jam up almost immediately. They also end at 8.5 inches by 11 inches. Which is why I still plan to keep a lot of packing tape around. For bigger jobs.

Actually, I'm late coming to the personal lamination party. I've been preserving things in clear packing tape for years. Give me a sturdy shoe box and I can turn it into a personalized storage container with images of my last trip abroad. But inevitably, no matter how careful you are, creases and air bubbles mar the surface. Strands of hair poke out. The postcards and posters I've taped to my kitchen cabinets don't look very ... slick.

Now with my personal thermal laminator I can decorate like a true professional. Nothing can stop my idea of transforming a collage of family photos into a back splash. Except perhaps heat from the oven. That could stop me. Maybe I'll make my personalized coasters first. That's easy. Just wipe that ring of Pinot Noir off my son's face. Guests appreciate these little touches.

And luckily my personal thermal laminator is compact and travels easily. This is important because I plan to bring it on my next trip to see my family in West Virginia.

While my father, a retired steelworker-turned-poet-and-artist, ruined me forever on long division, he did instill a deep love of reading. And Woolf holds RockStar status.

But now he needs me. He needs a lamination intervention. His prolific sketches are taped, stapled, tacked and nailed to the walls throughout their house. All throughout the house. (My father is also a wee bit eccentric. This is a picture I took of him winning at the racetrack.)

On my next visit I will come armed with my portable personal thermal laminator, to not only protect but organize his vast collection of sketches into binders. My father will become a laminate convert. And together will we laminate. Because according to Woolf "we have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years" millions and millions of people.

For this we need lamination.

Because that can get really messy.

Book Club? Just who do you think you are?

I'm going to a book club, I say to my husband. He looks at me as if I've grown a third eye. I rub my forehead and explain that this happens when a group of people all read the same book for the purpose of talking about it. Together.

He knows this but didn't fancy me the book club type. Neither did I. But during a late-night public television binge, I learn that talking to strangers and trying new things keeps your brain elastic, a good thing evidently, and wards off memory loss and Alzheimer's. (So does getting a good night's sleep. I'm shooting for two out of three.) The way I see it, if I'm talking to new people about books, I double the benefits. But that's my own math.

Late-night television can change your life.

Of course, I don't share this with my husband. That's not what marriage is about. And I ignore him when he gives me The Look, which tonight means it's-the-national-league-playoffs-and-I-just-bought-a-six-pack-but-you're-going-out-to-talk-about-a book-with-a-group-of-strangers-you-silly-woman-you. He doesn't understand that I need to get my brain functioning at full, make that half capacity again after spending a handful of years home with my son. And as PBS's Dr. BrainMan didn't mention anything about beer and baseball, Book Club it is.

The selection is John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany. I like John Irving and have read several of his books. Just not this one. At least I don't think so. I owned a copy once. But the only thing I can recall is the actress Ashley Judd getting knocked upside the head with a baseball, and I believe that's from Simon Birch, the movie adaption which I also didn't finish.

By Book Club standards, I'm guessing this is the same as not having read it.

I wonder aloud if I have time to Wikipedia the book. My husband, on the couch with beer in hand, rolls his eyes, loudly. I remind myself to keep inner dialogues ... in. Don't your Phillies have a baseball game to lose? I want to say this but decide on something more marriage-friendly. Go Phillies!

I'll have to fake it. I've faked it before.

Like that time back in 1993 when I sang in front of an audience while playing the guitar even though I don't play the guitar, a small detail that escaped my overly elastic 20-something brain. Or maybe it wasn't because of my brain at all but rather the fact that I was one of only a handful of Westerners living in that remote city in the middle of China.

It's like my BFF Julia Child likes to say, "Who's going to know?"

So, meeting a group of strangers for the purpose of examining a book about which I know squat, sounds fun. A mental challenge. Also Book Club is meeting near my Washington, DC apartment on a street named, ironically, Irving. Maybe I'll use that as I introduce myself around the room. Open with a joke.

I prepare some snacks, choose a bottle of wine and tie a scarf around my neck, which is odd because just as I'm not a book club person, I'm also not a scarf person until hearing recently that knowing how to tie a scarf separates the girls from the women, a tidbit I did not pick up from public television.

I blow mom and wife kisses out the door and prepare myself for greater brain elasticity.

I walk. And walk. And walk down Irving Street, which encircles the entire back side of my neighborhood, curls up a wooded street bordered by a zoo and then winds uphill. I walk a long, looping semi-circle when Irving runs out. There's not enough street to make it to the address. I call the host.

Oh, it's not on Irving. It's on another street, the street I wrote on an index card and placed in the pocket of my blazer. I look at my own handwriting and wonder how I could have possibly written one thing and read something completely different. I feel my aging Mother Brain hardening by the minute. The situation is critical. Must. Reach. Book Club ...

But that's not all. Just as I feel my brain hardening, I also feel my feet swelling. My sexy-in-a-graduate-student-kind-of-way, high-heeled espresso boots were a perfect choice had I not taken the circuitous scenic route around the entire neighborhood. Now with each step I'm pushing my luck, not to mention the whole heel height/walking distance continuum, which is precisely why I've never been a math person.

(This picture, a visualization of a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measurement of a human brain that I found on Wikipedia, is how I imagine my new-and-improved elastic brain will look, a mohawk in cool Winter colors.)

I'm late and breathy as I walk into Book Club. With a little sleight of hand, I distract the two other Book Clubbers with snacks and wine as my friend gives me a quick tour of the funky first floor of her house that could've been torn from an issue of Dwell magazine with it's modern, mid-century stylings. We talk furniture, home decor and how to incorporate Ikea items even if you're not an Ikea person.

I'm hoping that if we keep this up, we won't have time to actually talk about the book, a technique that got me through years of piano lessons.

But I need to sit and get rid of the annoying scarf that has done nothing but irritate my chin, something the chic French woman in that YouTube video demonstrating how to tie it properly did not warn against. As I decide that I'm not a scarf person and that I'll need to distinguish myself from The Girls in some other way (arm wrestling, might work), I notice something adorning all the other women. A book. They all brought a copy of the book. Of course. Blast, my poor accessorizing!

In fact, the host has an original first edition copy. This seems significant because she was hesitant to open it, let alone read it. The others comment on its beautiful spine. These people are serious. I think of my own dog-eared, water-stained, taped up books as I scan the host's gorgeous built-in book shelves. For what? A prop? I'll feel better if I have a book in my hands. Any book. Did I bring my day planner?

I have to think quickly. But I can't. That's the problem. That's why I'm here.

I was expecting to hide in the background where my occasional "hmm" and "that's a good point" wouldn't draw too much attention. Instead, I'm the fourth in a tightly knit square. No where to hide. I'll have to hold my corner. But this is good. My mind stirs, stiff from a five-year deep freeze as I psyche myself up. Speak in complete sentences. Be quick. Agile. Well, as agile as one can be while sitting, drinking wine and wearing high heel boots. T

hankfully, I remember to keep this inner dialogue where it belongs. See. Book Club is working already.

After we all share a bit about ourselves, the woman to my left, a lawyer, with book in lap and wine glass in hand, leans forward with an obvious air of Okay Let's Get Things Started and asks, "So, did anyone read the book this time?"

Well now. How very civil.

Even if it turns out that I'm not a Book Club person, these are my kind of Book Club people.