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How to Lose Money
I consider myself a fairly decent gambler when it comes to horse races. I learned from my father which horses to pick based on how well they run on turf and tracks, how well-matched the jockey is to the horse, how many races they’ve won, yadda, yadda, yadda. Therefore, every time I go, I end up with more money than I started with. But the problem is horse betting is still technically gambling, which means there is a chance that you will never see your money again. Like Saturday.

I met my parents for their annual trip to Saratoga Springs Race track with my brother. This was my first time to Sartoga and was completely unprepared for how fricking HUGE it would be. I’m typically used to the Finger Lakes track, which is much smaller size and league wise, and I’m pretty convinced some of those horses are only running because someone threatened to turn them into glue. Saratoga is where some of the most popular horses run…the Seabiscuits and Man of Wars of our time….you know, horses that still have quite a while before they are used to shellac macaroni pictures.

There is a preordained string of events when my family embarks to the race tracks. Specifically, my father and I always win because we choose a horse based on past performance and the jockey who is riding it, and my brother and my mom always lose because they choose a horse based on how pretty it is and if it’s named after Beatles songs. We have all agreed on this series of events ahead of time, and were prepared to execute this plan shortly after arrival.

And then it rained.

Rain is normally is not a problem for educated betters, as one would simply look in the program for horses that run well in the rain, or….in a last ditch effort…pick a consistent-running mediocre horse, because faster horses typically do not run in the rain well at all. Unfortunately, this particular rain storm looked like a cross between something from a Cecil B DeMill movie and the intro scene of the movie Clue, so even the consistent mediocre horses said, “Hell with this….I’m fucking trotting” (the horses chat with each other before a big race, much like baseball players do in the locker room. Kills nervous tension, dontcha know.). So none of the favorites or the next-in-line favorites were winning, which meant that the only horses who were winning were the ones diagnosed with ADD (Almost Dead Disorder, for you uninformed in palomino medical terms). And this happened EVERY SINGLE TIME. In one of the races, a horse that had 48/1 odds of winning, WON. Dude, I had 48/1 odds of winning that race, and I wouldn’t even make good glue. (vegetarians never do, by the way. No, if you need to make glue out of a dead person, definitely choose a meat eater. They eat all that collagen and ligaments and sticky stuff. Vegetarians can’t compete. What, you’re going to glue your macaroni picture together with digested watermelon and soybeans?). So the day generally SUCKED for those of us who bet smartly. But it went fricking dandy for those like my brother who won $30 on a horse simply because it was named after a Grateful Dead song.

I did win a whopping $3 on one race, after I bet one horse to come in third place (and he did). He had 60/1 odds to win. I only feel a tad sacrilegious cashing in on the fourth horse of the Apocalypse, but I figured if there was one horse who would not be galloping gingerly through a monsoon, it would be a skeleton horse with a rider named Death.

posted by Jenn @ 12:48 PM  

One of Them Women Things
I had to go to a baby shower last weekend. Generally I don’t like showers of either the bridal or the baby variety because in general I try to avoid events where a large group of women are squealing about crockpots or diaper bags. I am nothing if not a self-preservationist, and high-pitched female vocals are definitely more dangerous to my health than secondhand smoke, trans fats, and a plague of rabid locusts. No, I don’t know if locusts can get rabies. That is why God invented Google.

But the shower was for my friend Jenny who has been trying to have a baby for about 273 fortnights or so. Also, because she chooses to spend the Global Warming Era in the ungodly heat of the Southern states, I don’t get to see her except for the rare times she narrowly misses Rebel capture by making a high-speed escape to the Union territory while the Southerners are loading cannons, drycleaning gray wool suits, and Swiffering the battle fields in preparation to Rise Again. Of course she tells me she’s just leaving to go visit her parents. Bull shit. Has anyone seen Jefferson Davis lately? No….because he’s plotting his triumphant return in his top-secret lair underneath a Stucky’s in Kentucky….that’s why.

How often does one get to say Stucky’s in Kentucky, by the way? Say it outloud. See? It fills you with joy.

My point?
The shower was fun. My Mom, Grammy, and I chipped in the get her one of those five-in-one playpen/bassinette/crib/jungle gym contraptions (I think it eventually forms into a Go-bot, which should offer interesting bedtime dialogue. “Mooooooom! Optimus Prime is in my bedroom!”). So it was all good. I just have no idea how she’s planning on getting all that stuff back to her house, especially with Jefferson Davis on the loose. Perhaps she’ll have to pawn her husband to the Rebel Army in exchange for free passage. It’s a fair trade…he’s a Yankees fan.

Oh relax
I don’t really want to see him pawned off to the Rebel Army. After all, what will I do on Wednesdays?

(yes, that is an inside joke….move along, now).

And, yes, I know
Optimus Prime is a Transformer, not a Go-bot. But much like Stucky’s in Kentucky, the word Go-Bot also fills me with joy.

posted by Jenn @ 12:23 AM  

The Return of Flying Monkeys
So I saw M Night Sha-na-na-na’s latest flick, Lady in the Water. The movie was kind of...eh...but important to note as it contained flying monkeys, which as you may recall haven’t had much work opportunities since The Wizard of Oz. Now, I normally would be amused by this if there was any reason whatsoever for the flying monkeys to be in the picture. It was almost as if M Night was looking a his final print saying, “You know, I think it’s missing just a little something, but I can’t QUITE put my finger on it….fuck it, I’m putting in flying monkeys.”

What the movie really needed was a better script and perhaps a re-editing, but, hey, at least we got flying monkeys.

$225,000 Tequila
When one buys this, would one also have to buy a high-end margarita mix? ‘Cause I’m thinking the economy sized yellow box that says No-Name Margarita Mix on the side might be a bit tacky.

And that might be a Buffalo thing
Did you guys have No-Name brand products here? They usually sold them in independent grocery stores in a simple bright yellow box with no pictures on it except big black letters that say “CORN FLAKES.” It always looked like you were eating out of a Biohazard container.

Kevin Smith grows up, but thankfully only a little bit
You know what the weird thing about Clerks 2 is? People who didn’t like the original are liking it as well as people who were huge fans of the original. That NEVER happens. And it’s completely justified, really. The acting is better, the dialogue is still hilarious, and I will never be able to look at a donkey ever again.

posted by Jenn @ 2:55 PM  

Well, I feel better
My friend and I have started doing these uphill walks to prepare for dogsledding season (see, because the dogs will not drag your ass up a hill. You have to get off the sled and walk/run uphill with them. I could make the argument that snowmobiles wouldn't sell very well if you had to push them uphill, but the kennel people don't listen to me). We walk up this very steep, tall hill by me as part of our aerobic walk. Last year, I doubt I could have made it up the hill without either stopping or gasping for air. I made it up at a brisk pace with no stops, breathing heavily, but breathing regularly (no shortness of breath). Which means, I am in much better shape than last year for those of you keeping score at home.

Pirates
This "cliffhanger" ending everyone is pissed off about? First of all, it was not a cliff-hanger....a cliffhanger would have ended with Jack on the boat and "the thing" behind him (I'm being ambiguous for those who haven't seen it yet). Cliffhangers have no post-climax. This movie did, it was just that everything wasn't resolved. Kind of like Harry Potter. And seriously, it was the smartest thing Disney could have done. Because while the film wasn't nearly as good as the original, it entertaining enough that you WANT to know what happens and will go see the third. If this was just a stand-alone movie, I think people would realize it was a significant drop-off from the first, and not bother with the third. But because they did it this way, I expect the third film to make as much as this one will.

Also, Johnny Depp.....still wildly entertaining, bit did anyone notice the character wasn't quite as likeable this time? Not Depp's fault, it was kind of how he was written. And that's fine because of the story they were telling, but my point is that maybe you shouldn't write a story that your most beloved character becomes less likeable.

But the guy's head that turned into a crab and followed him home was pretty cool, which I assume is yet another symptom of my Severed Head Fetish diagnosed by Doctor Doucette.

posted by Jenn @ 12:30 PM  

Training for Dogsledding Season
Well, it’s that time of year again where I start staring down the barrel of mid-summer potlucks, pig roasts, and luaus and realize that I am starting to look a wee bit too much like the Pilsbury Dough Boy (except I don’t currently wear a chef’s hat when naked. That particular request has not yet been filtered through my personal Suggestions Box). So, once again, my weight training routine graduates to, Every Other Day From Now Until the Groundhog Wiggles His Ass Out of His Pissant Hole, which is significantly more effective than my current Groceries, Laundry, and Drums of Margarita Mix Strength Training Program.

Of course I could stop this pulsating fat mass if I just decided to weight lift through the whole year.

And speaking of dogsledding
Eight Below? Best dogsled movie ever. How they trained these dogs to tell the story with no human accompaniment was absolutely incredible. They were more convincing actors than the humans, seriously.

Farce of the Penguins
This looks hysterical

And hey….at the Comedy Studio Friday
So stop by, damnit.

posted by Jenn @ 12:59 PM  

Oops
Yeah, I don’t know what happened yesterday either. It involved a malfunctiong air-conditioner and my narcolepsy in severe heat.

Um, it was nice yesterday
In my little Cracker Jax box apartment, anything over 0 degrees Kelvin is “severe heat.”

And PIRATES!
Yeppers…Pirates of the Caribbean comes out today. I didn’t even think the first one was that good, but Johnny Depp was wildly entertaining, so I foresee a weekend showing.

Pray say, what would be the worst case scenario?
Hearse driver fined for speeding

posted by Jenn @ 1:57 PM  

Back
Sorry, dear reader. My Internet connection was screwed up. It shant happen again.

An announcement to those of you with ovaries
This entire post is going to be about superheroes. So stick through it and I promise tomorrow I’ll be back to talk about crotchless panties or Tupperware or something.

So, um….seen any good movies lately?
Hey, thanks for asking….I have. Specifically.

Superman Returns
As most of you are aware, I am a comic book fiend. Most of you are also aware that I hate Superman, and not in a “I don’t care for tofu and therefore will go with the black bean bisque” type way. I mean in the same way that I hate what the hell Jason did to the American slasher movie. Generally speaking, I’ve always found Superman a half-baked concept (why is he super? He’s an alien…that’s why), a paper-thin character, and there are much better conceived superheroes out there, so it’s about time he went the way of Underdog and Plastic Man. But the movie? Pretty damn cool. Granted a huge portion of this was because Kevin Spacey played Lex Luthor. KEVIN SPACEY…..LEX LUTHOR. Really, William Shatner could have played Superman and I’d still be as happy as a pig in shit.

And even if you don’t agree with me that the Superman concept is weak at best, you have to agree that it is one of the more ridiculously outlandish concepts for a superhero. The reason many superhero concepts work is because there is at least a small potential of truth in them. It is at least remotely conceivable that people could be born with gene mutations that cause people to have one or two “altered” abilities. We know that other senses are somewhat heightened to compensate when someone becomes blind. And while it’s clearly fictitious that someone exposed to potent spider venom, or gets exposed to high doses of gamma rays, or falls in some radioactive goo gets extraordinary powers….it can at least be concluded that these events would cause SOME biological changes (granted undesirable changes) that wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t exposed to these things. So the leap of faith isn’t as great as, say, Superman in which you are forced to believe there are in fact aliens, they have a huge fortress of solitude in the Arctic, and they wear blue and red spandex and save little elderly grandmothers from being hit by cars.

But Superman Returns took this silly, silly concept and made it as believable as it could. I actually liked Clark Kent, they made Superman a bit more tortured by his true identity (therefore making him more relatable to those of us not from Krypton), and KEVIN SPACEY WAS LEX LUTHOR. Also James Marsden who played Cyclops from X-men is in it, and there are worse people to look at. So really? Go. If only because there is nothing else remotely viewable playing right now.

Speaking of Cyclops from X-men
I saw X-men 3 over the weekend for the second time because Dad wanted to go see it. Here’s my question Marvel people…must Scott Summers be such a whiny bitch all the time? And that goes for movies, those cartoons, and the comic books. Because really…he reminds me of Lina Lamont from Singin in the Rain.


And for Spiderman 3, it looks like he’s battling…
Venom. Oy vey. As long as the Green Goblin is still there to throw pumpkin bombs, I’ll be happy.

posted by Jenn @ 12:56 PM