First Post: Sunday, March 17, 2013

Ah, The Irish & Their Storytelling. Those people know how to spin a tale, unwinding it forever, paying it out ever so slowly, and we are none the wiser but to bend an ear toward the teller until the end of the yarn is ours.

We are not Irish, so this will not be one of those fabulous (literally!) times; however, we are in O’Hollywood, so here’s the rough treatment/outline:

Nineteen eighty-eight. Snuffly, glandular, near-sighted literary pedant is working toward a baccalaureate in English literature at a fine (cough, cough) school in the Southern U.S. Spring semester, Saint Patrick’s Day, one of his classes is Modern Irish Literature, taught by the Dean; the Dean’s name might be Kilroy, but Fitzpatrick or O’Malley would do just as well. Chicago Irish, legitimate Papist from the Church in Rome, from the real Old Sod, not one of these oppressed Ulstermen. Real Chicago Irish, big, sturdy, legitimate Irish National, not a subjugated Northern Irish Ulsterman. Jamesons, not Bushmills.

The Dean is in a misty mood on this Saint Patrick’s Day, as all Irish must be. Instead of conducting the class in the academic building, today, Saint Patrick’s Day, calls for the students to meet at his residence. Twenty or so literature scholars (cough, cough) file into his home near the campus, jamming all manner of furniture and corners of the living room. They all look about the same, but the snuffly, glandular, near-sighted boy stands out; black hair, rounder face, eyes not Occidental like the others.

The Dean is in a misty mood on this Saint Patrick’s Day. He is genial and accommodating but there is nothing of the backslapping and glad-handing of his fellow Irishmen on this day. His smiles are warm but the teeth do not show. He takes an easy chair at the head of the room.

He is soft-voiced in his own home. He is having the students read some Yeats aloud from their poetry collections. It’s a solid, sturdy class in Modern Irish Literature. Of course there are Yeats and Joyce and Beckett (!), but there are also O’Casey and Synge and even Friel and Heaney thrown in for good measure. The Dean has authority, but once inside his home on Saint Patrick’s Day there is none of the muscle in his voice or in his heart.

A cute wee lass, an Irish girl whose surname is McGinty or Mulligan, any of those names will do, is selected to read next. She is fair and slight and like all good Irish cruelly endowed with an afterthought of a nose; there is red in her smiling cheek, and the dirty blonde hair frames the freckles on them. The Dean asks her to pick her favorite.

It is none other than An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. She sighs at the end:

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Yeats was no Papist, not of the Church in Rome, but he was touched with the Irish mysticism anyway, the Dean says ruefully. The different, snuffly student ponders this in his head, and it makes sense: the English, too severe, the Protestant Church, too practical; Ireland, down so long by its British Masters, a need to believe beyond this world. The Ulsterman too willing to carry out the Orders of The Empire; Yeats and Parnell not Catholic but ready to fight to preserve the old Irish Ways, to save the Irish and the Celtic from the English.

It is all Irish, all day long. At the end of the evening, the Dean invites the students to drink with him inside his home, but only one brave girl takes him up on it. She opens a can of Budweiser, red and white on the can, and the rest of the students nibble on the soda bread the Dean’s wife has taken pains to prepare.

It is over, and the students are walking back toward campus. The snuffly kid walks alone, as is his wont. He walks past the auditorium. His favourite band are scheduled to play inside. They had been scheduled to play a week earlier, but the singer got sick or something, and the concert was rescheduled for today, Saint Patrick’s Day. Being a college student and having spent most of his money already on hard and consistent drinking, the snuffly, glandular boy cannot afford the ticket, so he shuffles along the front of the auditorium, hands in his pocket, hoping to hear snatches of the band playing inside. It will not be his day.

Out of nowhere, a fine older man tries to sell him a ticket. The two jostle and hassle and bargain, but no deal is coming. The older man walks away. After a few more moments of trying to hear something good from inside in vain, the boy begins to walk away from the auditorium.

Out of nowhere, the fine older man runs back toward the snuffly boy. It is getting close to showtime, and the man shoves a ticket into the boy’s hand, along with a backstage sticker. “Have a good time! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!” he screams as he runs into the auditorium.

The singer that night, he was Liverpudlian by way of Ireland, hopefully, well, McCulloch was his name, and he was in fine form, and there was nothing misty about him. One of the encores saw him dance a jig around the mike stand as his guitarist played a riff from “Irish Washerwoman”. Inside the auditorium, all the eyes were smiling.

Maybe not such a waste of breath after all to remember now twenty-five years on!

Free ones: Rundown…

Aqueduct/Golden Gate unplayable
Gulf 7, 9, 10
Santa Anita 2, 4, 6

Pay-side: Today…

Tampa 3, 5, 8
Fair Grounds 2, 8, 9, 10
Hawthorne 3, 4, 7, 8
Oaklawn 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9
Sunland 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11
Turf Paradise 6, 8

By now, damn near compulsive at Hot Springs! Come on, you Lucky Leprechauns!

Today’s Stakes Pageantry:

Gulf 10, the Grade II Inside Information, on the free page.

It’s the appropriate Irish O’Brien down the green hill at Arcadia today, and #5 Ismene has the skill, if the luck is with him.

And in Sunland’s 10th, the NMSU H., we go for the Quadruple Stumper of #8 Brother Louie, #4 That’s Who, #2 Groushy Apadana, #5 Lesters Secret.

Yesterday’s Activity: Renaissance of Free Ones continued Saturday with a strike at the Gulf in Race 9. Monroe Court, 20-1 on your morning line and bet-down to 17-1 when the bell rang, was tops on the V6 Betting Line and easily within the LifeLiner Speed Column guidelines in a contentious race. Runner-up Nemo Landing was the public’s second-choice in the wagering, 2½-1, and completed the $128 perfecta (for $2). The 8-5 race fave did not register via either the Betting Line nor the LifeLiner. Hmmmm.

Shelly’s Cider was a live-enough firster in the sixth at Tampa. At 12-1 on both the morning line and the toteboard, ’Shelly had the benefit of overbet and unconvincing experienceds (experienceds!) competing against her on the afternoon. This time, success.

Discouragingly mild scores in the Ark-La-Tex region, where the opportunities come thick and fast but the catching is hard to do.

WMF Report:

Early
Hawthorne 6f
Los Alamitos 4½f
Mountain 5½f
Tampa 6f
Turf Paradise 6f, 6½f

Nocturnal Submission: If all the excesses of the day have not gotten to you by 10:20 p.m. EDT (7:20 p.m. PDT), take a gander at Mountain 9, in which #5 K’s Boywonder, #4 Show Me the Cash, #2 Justifier, #10 Im Good At That and #6 Lifeinthetropics have the potential to generate a Quintuple Stumper; as the guys in the Guinness advertisement used to put it, “Brilliant!”

Thank you. Best wishes. Goodbye. Bye-bye, Danny Boy.