Sleep Over

Hello World, Feliz Cinco de Mayo! I hope that your Tuesday festivities, if any, were appropriately muy caliente y mas, amigo - and please don't spare the tequila, por favor. Apart from our Mexican brothers and sisters, the average person has not the faintest clue what May 5 actually celebrates south of the border, but hey, here in New York, our motto is "any excuse for a party," si? (And with special thanks to Facebook friends who posted pictures of a Hellman's mayonnaise jar in a kitchen sink with the caption "Cinco de Mayo," for adding just the pico de gallo to the occasion, carumba!) This has already been an eventful month, with May Day on Friday, being celebrated in vastly different ways, for wildly different reasons, by greatly different cultures, all over the wide world, and probably far distant galaxies as well, I shouldn't wonder. May 7 was the National Day of Prayer, and if there's one thing there's a crying need for these days, it's certainly prayer, that's for sure. Of course, Mother's Day is Sunday (sorry, spoiler alert!) and not even a third of the month gone by already, by golly. At this rate, we're going to have to drag out the "month stretcher" just to squeeze in Memorial Day and Decoration Day before all is said and done - and not to mention, International Tuba Day (1), Lost Sock Memorial Day (9 - although personally, I think this should have its own month), Limerick Day (12 - don't you dare!), Leprechaun Day (13 - I'm warning you!), Dance Like A Chicken Day (14 - oh, I give up!), and wrapping up with National Macaroon Day on the 31st. Whew! And we can't close out our collection of notable dates without even more special thanks to the Jedi wags who have claimed 5/4 as Star Wars Day (according to their "Wookiepedia" - ya gotta love it!) in order to launch the pun "May the Fourth be with you" (get it?!) into the cosmos and back again. Take that, Darth Vader! Getting deeper into May around the old homestead, we are daily confronted with a veritable explosion of more and more spring flowers cropping up everywhere - and not just the desirable ones like our sunny yellow lamium and creamy pastel English wood hyacinths, but also the rampaging undesirables like garlic mustard and chickweed, thanks not. Our backyard is choking under a carpet of low ground cover with tiny purple flowers, and even a cursory online search reveals it as Glechoma hederacea, which Wikipedia describes as "an aromatic, perennial, evergreen creeper of the mint family Lamiaceae. It is commonly known as ground-ivy, gill-over-the-ground, creeping charlie, alehoof, tunhoof, catsfoot, field balm, and run-away-robin." It is universally decried as an invasive interloper of the worst order, and all references to it are limited to ways of exterminating it, with not even the most diffident tree-huggers leaping to its beleaguered defense. Of course, it's perfectly safe in our yard from any efforts to eradicate it, in fact, I'm thinking of replanting it in with our rampant alien mutant poison ivy, and see who's really the toughest of the tough. On a happier note, our delightful azaleas have just started to pop open, while the lovely lilacs are perfuming the air with their exquisite fragrance, which may be copied, but never equaled, try as they might. Where I'm working now as a temp, they have a tremendous wisteria growing along a chain-link fence in the parking lot, and I noticed that it was awash in cascades of lavender blossoms last week, which seemed reasonable because it bakes in the sun all day long. But when I came home, I saw that our wisteria is also blooming, and since it has long since climbed up our sycamore, with blooms hanging all over outside of the upstairs windows, it is always a welcome sight indeed, and the heavenly aroma even more so, I don't mind saying. Not to ignore other significant events of the month, last Saturday was the 141st running of the Kentucky Derby, the first jewel in any potential Triple Crown, media circus, bookies' delight, and the darling of hat-makers everywhere, I dare say. The venerable Run for the Roses was already making headlines before it even started, when it was announced that the now ubiquitous "selfie sticks" would be banned from Churchill Downs for safety reasons, to the anguish of attention-seeking narcissists on all sides. This year seemed a very subdued one to kick off the heart of the racing season, and out of 20 horses in the field, didn't seem to have any real standout ponies, extravagant hype, human interest stories (think California Chrome's owners last year) or even controversies, as there usually are, at least one or another, if not all of them. The Derby just seemed to sneak up on us this time around, with none of the usual fanfare, and a bunch of no-name hopefuls that nobody seemed to care about. As for myself, I figured it was too mundane for even the evil spirit of Affirmed to get worked up about, and while not wishing to jinx anyone, I was firmly behind Upstart, a scrappy thoroughbred born and trained at Sunnyfield Farm in Bedford, New York, of all places. He was at the 19th post position, at about 34-1 odds, but he's the great-great-grandson of Seattle Slew (Triple Crown winner in 1977) and was actually picked to win by the Washington Post, believe it or not. Unfortunately, he didn't have much of a race and finished last, and so it is that Funny Cide (2003) remains the only New York-bred horse to ever win the Kentucky Derby. (Hmmmm ..... 12 years isn't exactly "The Curse of Affirmed," still going strong almost 4 decades later, but it makes me wonder if there weren't Funny Cide's diabolical hoofprints at work all over poor Upstart's lousy performance after all.) We watched the race, and I thought it was slow and boring, with the favorite, American Pharoah outrunning Firing Line and Dortmund at the end, but nothing at all exciting about what they like to bill as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports." Heck, the ladies hats were more exciting than the race, and that's not just the mint juleps talking, believe me. Speaking of boring, I was coming home from work last week and stopped at a traffic light, when I spotted absolutely the most boring car I have ever seen in my entire life, just about blending into the background, and practically disappearing from sight right before my very eyes. It was the plainest 4-door sedan with no distinguishing features of any kind, in a dull dishwater tan that had no shine at all, and could not make itself noticeable if it tried. Honestly, calling it a doorstop would be an insult to doorstops everywhere. I don't mind saying that I drove away from it shaking my head, and wondering how something like that ever left the factory in the first place, and only wanted fugitives or people in the Federal Witness Protection Program would buy it. Now I'm thinking the only explanation is that it must have been some sort of safety innovation at the time, because after all, it couldn't possibly get into an accident - all of the other drivers would fall asleep at the sight of it, long before they would come close to running into it. By golly, if they had taken that car to the Kentucky Derby last week, there would have been 170,513 spectators and 20 horses knee-deep in snooze-land way before the finish line, I can tell you that. Meanwhile in the wide world of entertainment, which should have been interesting, but instead took the boring way out, I happened to catch a snippet of a documentary by Ken Burns on PBS, called "The Roosevelts, An Intimate History," which features exhaustive biographies of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt over the course of several hours. I'm sure it was all very accurate, informative, and scrupulously researched, but as far as I'm concerned, it failed the first test of a documentary about the famous Rough Rider, because it left out what I consider the best part of his robust mythology, which isn't even apocryphal. Political mastermind Mark Hanna was a U.S. Senator, and chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1900, who stormed out of the convention where Teddy Roosevelt was nominated as William McKinley's running mate, with this classic parting salvo: "What is the matter with all of you? Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between that madman and the Presidency?" Ya gotta love it! Well, unless you're Ken Burns, I guess, who must have decided that it was just too indiscreet in these politically correct times, a far cry from the free-wheeling "speak softly and carry a big stick" days of yesteryear. Of course, with them being renowned public figures on the New York historical landscape, I suppose we can't rule out the possibility of Funny Cide's diabolical hoofprints at work behind the scenes, protecting his own interests, and keeping Ken Burns at bay through whatever means necessary. I tell you, if this "gutsy gelding" ever teams up with the evil spirit of Affirmed, it could very well be the end of civilization as we know it, and nothing to stand in their way. Fortunately, I know one thing that can stop them in their tracks, and if anybody is looking for me, I'll be hiding behind our rampant alien mutant poison ivy. Elle