GOLDEN GLIMPSES #618
March 28, 2006
By ED GOLDEN
BROTHER DEREK, BALANCE MAKE WEST BEST, EAST LEAST
Woody Allen put it best in his hit film, "Manhattan." Describing the definitive contribution made to the nation's culture by Los Angeles, he said, "You can make a right turn on red."
Los Angeles has not added much in the way of refinement since. Its vocabulary still consists of a limited nucleus: dude, like, you know, basically, totally, um, cool and the ever-popular F-word, which now is used commonly in public by male and female alike with unchallenged impunity.
Then there are the movies of Hollywood, whose sordid mores promote toilet humor in so-called comedies, and gory slice and dice special effects that leave nothing to the imagination in offerings that would make Simon and Schuster turn over in their graves.
Also believed indigenous to La La Land is Upspeak, a language and tonal inflection whereby declarative sentences are spoken as though interrogative (questions), and always end in a voice higher than at the start. "I am going to the mall," thus comes out, "I am going to the MALL?,"making the uncertain speaker sound like the idiot he or she is.
Yet another well-intentioned but ill-conceived California conundrum is the diamond lane. Engineers who designed it should be made to drive the main body of the freeway in Ford Escorts, braking only to allow multi-passenger Hummers from the diamond lane into the regular flow of traffic, thereby backing up the freeway even more. Another detriment to freeway flow are electric signs warning of strong winds in the Grapevine to drivers hundreds of miles from that area. Of course, the curious drivers slow down to read the sign, creating a freeway crawl.
The latest extension of a demented society can be viewed on the corner of almost any LA strip mall, where stands a human being, or a facsimile thereof, moving helter-skelter like while holding a sign hawking the business of said strip mall occupant, in an attempt to gain attention. A live advertisement, if you will.
Personally, I prefer the Yellow Pages.
Used to be California's thoroughbreds were caught in the same social free fall. A few decades ago, the east was the embodiment of the equine world, while the west was regarded a cowboy refuge, a rodeo for speed freaks.
Times have changed.
Fast forward to 2006. California has the favorites to win America's preeminent races for 3-year-olds, Brother Derek in the Kentucky Derby on May 6 and Balance in the Kentucky Oaks a day earlier.
Not only are both horses based in Southern California, Brother Derek with Dan Hendricks at Santa Anita and Balance with David Hofmans at Hollywood Park, but Brother Derek was bred in California, as were the two trainers.
Hendricks and Hofmans were born in Los Angeles. Understandably, each is proud of the Golden State's contribution to racing, from Seabiscuit to Swaps to Sunday Silence, and would puff up even more should their horses go on to victory at Churchill Downs five weeks hence.
"I've never given it too much thought, but when California horses are running, I'm always pulling for them and I'm always excited about it," said the 63-year-old Hofmans. "It's not so much that the horses are Cal-breds, but that they're based here. There's a little extra pride in that. I'm always pulling for California horses, whether I train them or not."
Hendricks expressed a similar sentiment.
"It's always nice to have the top horses coming out of California," the 47-year-old trainer said. "If the horse was bred in California, to me that makes it that much better. I think we just have better horses (than on the East Coast) and have won more races. Their horses don't come out here and dominate like our horses do when they run back there."
Yeah, and they can't make a right on red, either.
Ed
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