California Angels

Hello World, And so here's another week in the books, with even Cinco de Mayo behind us now, and even the weather showing signs of shaping up around here at long last. A stroll in the yard reveals that the English wood hyacinths have just burst on the scene in subtle hues of white, pale blue and lavender, while the lilacs have popped open in the backyard, lending their intoxicating fragrance to the environs, and much to their improvement, I might add. The wisteria has just started to bloom in our sycamore, which is always a treat outside of the second floor windows, and the azalea is just waiting in the wings now for its own time to shine. Everything is so lovely at this time of year, and we can't help missing our neighbors' exquisite dogwoods along our driveway, which are no more, and across the street, the majestic chestnut that formerly graced our idyllic landscape with its cascades of creamy blossoms at this time of year. Where, oh where, is the late and lamented George Pope Morris, who once famously displayed the courage to utter those immortal words: "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, but only God can make a tree," or words to that effect, I'm pretty sure. It was something about trees anyway, and that's not just a lot of sawdust, believe me. Also behind us now is the fabled "Run for the Roses" at the Kentucky Derby (or "The greatest 2 minutes in sports," according to their PR department) with its storied traditions of mint juleps and "My Old Kentucky Home," where the deer and the antelope play - although it occurs to me that Stephen Foster might have something to say about that, come to think of it. At our house, Bill is our resident horse flesh maven, and he always watches the parade of riders on their way to the gate, and picks what he considers the most impressive horse as his choice to win the race. This time he settled on Dance With Fate, a stunning black horse with a lot of spirit, who finished 6th, but certainly looked good doing it. Out of a crowded field of 19 starters, the 2-1 favorite California Chrome basically ran the 1-1/4 mile track wire-to-wire, and then stoutly pulled away down the homestretch to almost a 5-length lead ahead of the nearest horses behind him. Of course, it's no surprise when the favorite wins, and he certainly lived up to the hype in every way. And taking nothing away from horse and rider, I will say that at the very end, Commanding Curve came flying out of absolutely nowhere from the very back of the pack to cut the front-runner's lead to less than 2 lengths at the wire, and might have actually caught him on a longer track. That bolt out of the blue lent an air of excitement to what might have been a hum-drum foregone conclusion, as well as veteran jockey Calvin Borel aboard Ride On Curlin' who came on late from dead last to 7th place, no mean feat in itself. Besides the media frenzy over the favored colt, the big story was female jockey Rosie Napravnik, who unfortunately finished last on Vicar's In Trouble, rather than breaking new ground for the distaff side of the sport, thanks not. It's always 2 weeks from the Derby to the Preakness, and certainly wishing no ill to California Chrome, but I've long since seen bigger horses and faster horses over the decades trying to unseat Affirmed from the legendary Triple Crown, only to be thwarted in one way or another, so I would tell the owners to hold off on having those commemorative T-shirts and caps printed up just yet On the playoff scene, the scrappy Rangers managed to win a second game (out of 5 so far) in their series against Pittsburgh, so they were spared the embarrassment of being swept by the dratted Penguins, which is way better than even their most die-hard fans might have hoped for, under the circumstances. On the hardwood, the poor Nets have dug themselves into a 0-2 hole in their series with the Miami Heat, and winning even one game might prove to be too lofty an expectation at this point - although I should point out that Brooklyn somehow managed to win all four of their meetings during the regular season. In other sports news, such as it is, the Yankees announced that they are retiring Joe Torre's jersey number, although he never played for the team, in recognition of his successful 12-year career behind the Bombers' bench. I couldn't help but notice in a sidebar in the local Sports section, that the franchise had already retired so many numbers (16 - by far and away the most in the major leagues, compared with all of the other teams) that I said to Bill later that pretty soon they're not going to have enough uniform numbers left to put a team on the field, and they're going to have to assign them letters of the alphabet instead. ("Now playing third base for the Yankees, Schlomo Shoofly, #H on your scorecard.") By golly, this could add a whole new dimension to the old Abbott & Costello comedy routine, "U's on First." And speaking of the alphabet, lately I've been playing an interesting computer game called Word Seek, with a 4x4 tile grid, where you have to find adjacent letters across or diagonally to create as many words as you can in 3 minutes, using standard Scrabble rules of spelling and no proper names. When the time is up, it tosses up a screen that shows your results, and which basically says something like - CONGRATULATIONS (the "you moron" part is implied) You formed 47 words out of a possible 683 combinations for a 6% success rate, in the lowest 95% of all players, and thanks ever so much not, I don't mind saying. Adding insult to injury, it then presents you with a compilation of all the words that could be made from the board, or what they claim are words, including such outrages as on the following list: =============== alloxans amesace asthenies bevors callister camasses caterans coigns dopant eloigned ensilages estrones fleered frasses garred geraniols gleyed liernes mendigo oersteds porniest racemose retrorse sanicles sestertia smaltites splore talars tedding venenose ============== Well, heck, anybody can string together letters to make 683 combinations, if you're going to accept any old rubbish like those whoppers, and even worse, and apparently without a hint of irony. It seems obvious to me that the game is in no way averse to allowing completely made-up words like "ZX#MHH-{/&Y6CCC$W:@\+\QKF?PLE" which I'm pretty sure means "I fleered my oersteds and sanicles at the sestertia before we left the retrorse, but I should have gleyed my asthenies and ensilages while the coigns were still in the mendigo" on the planet Remulak. At our house, this is what we call the Mad Libs version of word games, and I for one, will not be swayed by their feeble attempts to foist this vagabond verbiage on an unsuspecting public, as if they were to be considered regular acceptable words in the slightest crevice of the galaxy. Or in the almost immortal words of Stephen Foster, "Splore, splore on the liernes, where the frasses and the camasses play, where dopant is heard, a venenose word, and the amesace is not porniest all day!" Elle