FunctionalAmbivalent

My Worst Nightmare: A Kentucky Mall Person With a Gun

Kentucky's Constitution requires the election of a country constable, though the archaic position no longer has duties and pays only $100 a month. Still, the Constitution gives constables certain powers, including the power to arrest people and carry a gun.

The last few constables of Jefferson County, where I live, have run their election campaigns as a kind of beer-powered joke, and once in office have cashed their meager paychecks and not done much else.

Yeah, well, now we've got a duly elected constable who takes the job seriously. He patrols in a tricked-out "police car" and has catalog-shopped a kind of uniform. He's "deputizing" volunteer toughs who, it turns out, are convicted felons. The County Sheriff thinks the county constable ought to be reined in, but there's nothing anyone can do about it without changing the Constitution.

Watch the video here. It's funny, as long as you're safely out of range.

Definitive Derby Day Experience?

While walking through the Kroger parking lot on my way to buy mint, I noted a pair of lacy black panties discarded on the pavement.

Once In Your Life

Tomorrow is the one day a year when I feel sorry for everyone in the world who doesn't live in Louisville, Kentucky. For all of you out there, the Kentucky Derby is a TV show that lasts too long, a two minute race stretched out to hours of sappy coverage.

But here in Louisville, the Derby is the orgasmic ending of a two-week party that is the anchor of our year. When I moved here, I thought it was funny how people related things to Derby. "Let's see," someone would say, trying to remember when something happened, "it was about month after Derby..." I thought that was so quaint and funny. Now, I do it all the time, without thinking. Derby is our solstice, our New Year, the event that marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.

My wife and I are bypassing Derby this year as much as anyone in Louisville can bypass Derby. As my regular reader knows, I'm unemployed and we're living cheap. But without really thinking about it we sampled a bit of the Derby Festival; we went for pork sandwiches at the Chow Wagon and sipped local wines at the WineFest. Tonight we'll attend a private Derby party, as opposed to the big public events that draw the likes of Paris Hilton to town, and tomorrow we'll go to a friend's house for race festivities.

Louisville is, at heart, a small town. There's simply no way for 500 private jets, worldwide media, and about 100,000 tourists to come into town without changing the city's center of gravity. You can try to avoid the event, but unless you go on vacation or board up your windows there's really no way to do it. Derby is, simply, everywhere, and its influence is overwhelmingly positive. Every place in town puts its best foot forward. You'd do the same thing if the whole world came to your neighborhood for a visit.

We've brought friends in for Derby, and no matter how prepared and excited they think they are, they are inevitably blown away by the experience. Last year I watched the race from a VIP suite with a group of roughly 30 business associates who exist in a world of high-cost perks. Every one of them has been everywhere in the world for free, tucking into Wolfgang Puck buffets and touring the backstreets of Mallorca on someone else's dime. No matter that their initial reactions had been ho-hum. "I'm not into horse racing much," one said when we announced the trip. I asked him how he felt as we left the track after the race, and he put his arm around my shoulder and shouted, "Best trip ever. Best fuckin' trip ever."

I know of no one who has ever been to Derby and been disappointed.

Tomorrow, a couple of hundred thousand people will converge on Churchill Downs. Most of them will be dressed beautifully, looking as good as they ever look. The women will wear big hats and springy dresses, and the men will drop their gray flannel plumage in favor of light linen jackets and brightly colored ties. Everyone will be smiling broadly. The horses will be magnificent, the pageantry as timeless as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. People will drink half-million mint juleps and lay down $25 million in bets, most of it $2 at a time. Gentlemen will kiss their ladies a bit more vigorously than they do any other day of the year, at least in public. By the time the starting gates open on the day's 11th race -- the Derby itself -- the entire crowd will be not just on its feet, but on it's toes, screaming with excitement and joy and celebration and the knowledge that for two minutes, Churchill Downs is at the absolute center of the universe.

There is simply nothing like it. Before you die, come here and experience it, even if it's from a blanket spread out in the infield. That moment, that instant when the fastest horses in the world go from motionless confinement to running as hard as they will ever run in their blessed, pampered lives, when the crowd goes from anticipation to ecstasy...that is a moment everyone should experience once.

In Louisville, we get to experience it every year.

A Gift From the Bush Administration to the Kentucky Derby

Last Spring, the Bush Administration changed federal regulations, requiring public bus companies to drop out of bidding for large transportation contracts against private companies.

The Kentucky Derby draws a couple of hundred thousand people to Churchill Downs, and a lot of those people park at distant lots and take buses to the track. For as long as anyone can remember, the city bus company, TARC, has provided shuttle service to and from the track. This year, a private company has taken over. The result: there will be fewer buses, the buses will be of lower quality, and the cost to riders will be nearly double what it was one year ago. It's expected that lines to board the buses will be longer, since the private company is using less than half as many buses on the busiest routes. The problem is expected to be particularly acute after the race, when everyone leaves at the same time.

Yet another triumph of conservative ideology...

Derby Betting Update

In the Celebrity Most Likely To Have An Embarrassing Outburst pool, we have a late entry: Star Jones.

Get your bets down fast. She may not make it as far as the starting gate before she clinches victory.

It's That Time of Year Again: Derby Freeloaders Arriving Today

It's Derby Week in Louisville!

Well, actually, it's Derby Week everywhere, but Louisville is the only place that pays any attention.

Still, it's exciting around town, made more-so by the arrival of the nice-to-meechoo-where's-the-buffet B-List celebrities that use Derby as a kind of last stand before hustling off to the hell that is shopping mall openings and state fair appearances.

Last week, deep-pockets party bookers announced that Paris Hilton would be appearing momentarily at both the legendarily awful Barnstable-Brown Party and at a downtown nightclub opening. The over/under on her total time as a stye in Louisville's public eye: 18 minutes, just enough to pose for pictures, surely to include one with Louisville's soon-to-be-scandal-ridden mayor, Jerry Abramson. It has not been revealed how much Ms. Hilton will be paid for her appearances, but we're guessing: a lot. And it would be just like Louisville celeb wranglers to pay top dollar for someone like Hilton, who is just sooooo three years ago.

This weekend brought the revelation that the galaxy of stars (Meat Loaf!) visiting our fair city will include -- where's the drum roll when you need it? -- Valerie Bertinelli. That's the same Valerie Bertinelli  who fueled adolescent fantasies back in the 1970s while starring in...oh, whatever that sitcom was. She later married Eddie Van Halen (before he turned into a screeching old woman), reproduced and put on a buttload (literally) of weight. Her recent comeback is a model of the Celebrity Three Step: trim down, sign a weight loss endorsement, and make a camera-hungry trip to the B-List mother lode, the Derby Festival.

There are lots of A-Listers here, too, but they arrive on private jets and don't allow themselves to be paraded around for cover-charge-paying rubes. I ran smack into Morgan Freeman a couple of years ago, and he excused himself politely and disappeared behind closed doors as quickly as possible without so much as a tantrum about my clumsiness. But the B-List: you can't avoid them if you try. They're everywhere. Make one wrong move and there's one of them demanding that you hoist their luggage off the airport carousel or insisting that you're sitting at their table. The only way to get away from them is to give them what they want and ask them to please pose for a picture. That brings a smile to their faces, and most of them are drunk enough they don't even notice that the camera your'e holding is really a wadded up napkin.

Anyway, the B-List contingent this year includes ostensible comedian Joe Piscopo and Raymond's mom, Doris Roberts. Piscopo has already threatened to do his Frank Sinatra impersonation, which has never, ever been funny.

For those of you who like to bet on celebrities, here are the early lines:

Celebrity most likely to have some kind of embarrassing outburst. Socially retarded professional poker player Phil Hellmuth is an early favorite, but as you know you never get rich betting on the favorite. I'm putting my money on perpetual also-ran Kid Rock, whose outstanding antics have traditionally taken place so late that local photographers are already tucked away in their beds. The question with kid Rock is not whether he will act-up, but whether there will be sufficient documentation of whatever embarrassing thing he does to sway the judges.

Celebrity most likely to take a local lover. For years, the winner has been a former sitcom star who adopted as her boytoy a local, hair-aware sportscaster. This year, I don't think she's attending, so we're going to have to go with someone new. I say: Marg Hellgenberger of CSI, an actress getting to that "certain age" that usually implies imminent career death. I like Marg; she doesn't seem the type to go all Norma Desmond on us. So: romance with a wealthy fan outside the Hollywood circle who can, when the time is right, provide her the trappings of insulated retirement and a People magazine spread that implies gentility rather than pathos. Someone in the horse business would fit the bill nicely; I can just see the pictures of Marg looking out through the two story plate glass window at the rolling bluegrass hills. That I'm picturing her in jodhpurs wielding a riding crop is none of your affair.

Bar or restaurant most likely to make the news. A couple of years ago, local beefatorium Jeff Ruby's Steak House made news when Jeff Ruby himself refused to serve O.J. Simpson. Simpson played the race card, which Ruby countered by playing the murderer card. The restaurant errupted in cheers, and has been standing room only ever since. I'm thinking this year it's time for something untoward to happen at Proof On Main, the stylishly artsy restaurant downtown where one of the waiters -- the little fat one who needs a shave -- insists on calling me "my good man" whenever he inquires if I want more water. Of course I need more water, you twit. Do you think my glass is empty because I'm not thirsty? Anyway, maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm guessing one of the washed-up pro football players in town to suck up the last photons of fame's spotlight is going to blast that guy right in the face.

On Sale Now: Kentucky Derby Barbie

Flowery summer dress, floppy hat and at five o'clock she vomits into her handbag. No word on Kentucky Derby Ken, who was last seen heading for the infield, to catch some chicks flashing for beer. Here.

Jim Bunning Inches Closer to Explosion

On a conference call to reporters, Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, uh, objected to Louisville Courier-Journal reports that he had threatened to resign.

In the middle of a tirade about what the C-J would write about his relationship with McConnell, Bunning said "the Courier-Journal doesn't need anything, no facts, no figures. So go ahead and write it. Three sources, my ass. Pardon me if there's ladies on."

Bunning is a loose canon right now. Withing earshot of microphones, he also took a few shots at Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a former ally who's now actively recruiting someone to run against Bunning in the primary.

McConnell is lot's of things, but stupid isn't one of them. He knows Bunning is a loose canon who'll more than likely lose the next election, and he's trying to escort the fireballin' lefty quietly offstage. Bunning, to the entertainment of most of us, doesn't seem to consider "quietly" an option.

Alternative Scoring Method

Coincident with the NCAA Tournament, we have the obligatory look at participant graduation rates. Number one seed University of Louisville comes in, among the top four, at number three; 42% of Louisville's basketball players graduate within six years. I'd have bet lower than that, since only 40% of Louisville's students overall graduate in six years. (Louisville is primarily a commuter school with a large population of part-time students with no family history of higher education.) Also, my opinion is skewed by the academic enthusiasm of my son, a student at UL majoring in ultimate Frisbee. His outstanding academic achievement to date: the Wendy's Dollar Menu Challenge, in which he ate all 10 items on Wendy's dollar menu within 15 minutes.

The statistic that impresses, though, is the overall student-athlete graduation rate, which at almost all schools is substantially higher than the rate of graduation at the school as a whole. (The exceptions tend to be schools with student-athlete graduation rates over 90%.) At Louisville, 75% of the student athletes graduate in six years, almost double the rate of the student population as a whole.

Also a shoutout to Western Kentucky University, which graduates 100% of it's basketball players. Western Kentucky's men's basketball team plays in Diddle Arena, named for the most popular student activity during the basketball off season. Go 'Toppers!

Bunning In a Nutshell -- Which, Come to Think of It, Is Where He Belongs

Patrick Ruffini:

(Kentucky Senator Jim) Bunning's errors are not ones of principle or ethics -- but of something even more basic and easily understood: buffoonery.

Six years ago, Bunning persevered (barely) by insinuating that his  Democratic challenger was gay.