Thursday, August 1, 2013

Disa And Data

Not that you care, but July had the highest viewer totals of any month since we started writing The Flying Pie.  And we care.  Not only that, but the July 18 column had the highest total (103) of first day readers ever—and by far.  It’s all those Stuart Bentler fans, of course.  Maybe we should get Stuart to write to us every week.  It’s not like he’s got anything else to do.  Oh, alright, beyond mixing a few drinks and mopping the celestial bar, but all that is practically a hobby.  We’ll take it under advisement.

Meanwhile, we’d like to point out that The Flying Pie is, for some arcane reason, a big hit in Russia.  We have more readers in Russia than any other country (barring the USA, of course), and that includes Germany, where we get help from Ashleigh Ellison and her cronies.  And the numbers are growing.  In the last month alone, there have been 68 of the little Bolsheviks.  Oh, calm down you Russkies, we know you’re not all Bolsheviks.  Naturally, we’d like to hear from somebody over there but you never call, you never write.  First, it was the Danes, then the Chinese, then the English and the French.  Can’t get a word out of any of ‘em.  Maybe the Russians will be different.  Maybe nyet.


Fastest Horse Update

This whole Cosmic Flash affair is beginning to take on the trappings of a soap opera.  Will he make it back or won’t he?  What new and horrifying death-defying trap will he have to extricate himself from this week?  Well, good news!  Temporarily, at least.  The colt went back to the track this morning, replete with his new spider-bar shoe to protect the inside of the back left heel of his front left foot.  Seemed to work great—he went perfectly.  The current plan is to gallop a week or so, work three-eighths late next week and ship to Miami if all goes well.  He’s very playful, if not aggressive and obviously wants to do more.  I explained to him that patience is its own reward.  I have to keep reminding myself of the same.

Elsewhere in horse land, Palace Malice was an easy winner of the Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga and Verrazano came back from the dead with an impressive win in the Haskell at Monmouth.  Palace Malice’s victory was not a big surprise and with two huge races back to back (he won the Belmont Stakes last time out) the horse has a  major chance at the two-year-old championship.  Verrazano, whose light had been dimming, stood that battle on its head with his nine-and-three-quarter length romp on the Jersey shore.  The distance between the winner and the second horse, Power Broker, was a new Haskell record.  Another title contender, Oxbow, finished fourth and came out of the race with a “wrenched ankle,” which could be many things, and is in danger of missing the all-important Travers Stakes on August 24 at Saratoga.  Verrazano was more willing to sit off the pace this time, never gaining the lead until reaching the stretch, then drawing off to be the easiest kind of winner.  If the winner of the Travers is named Orb, Palace Malice or Verrazano, the two-year-old title may be sewn up even before the running of the Breeders’ Cup in November.


Dawn Of The Goats

We have goats now.  Six of them, little ones as goats go, but not tiny in the volume of their bleatings.  Siobhan got them to eat up all the vegetation in our newly fenced-off acre-and-one-half out front.  Seems her fence man had some used goats laying around with nothing to do and was willing to let Siobhan borrow them for a couple months.  Goats, as you know, will eat anything.  No, really—ANYTHING.  Goats will eat a ‘79 Mercury if you’ve got one lying around.  Goats will eat a bucket of nails and laugh about it.  Goats will even eat chitlins’, for God’s sake.  We’ve got some poison ivy out there that would ravage humans.  It’s a delicacy to goats.  The horses aren’t so sure about these goats, especially the noises they make.  Dot has told us it’s unacceptable.  I asked Siobhan how much it would cost to maintain this sordid tribe and she told me “Oh, nothing….they’ll eat the vegetation.”  See, Siobhan always says stuff like this and then she goes out and spends a fortune on goat cookies and the like.  One thing the goats are not crazy about is horse feed.  At $14 a bag, it’s too rich for their blood.  Good thing.  Siobhan bought them goat feed.  If you live around here, you can get feed for anything that walks, crawls or flies.  Pigmy Marmoset?  We’ve got feed for that.  Frill-necked Lizard?  Star-nosed Mole?  Saki Monkey?  No problem.  “Discount this week on Emperor Tamarin feed,” the signs will tell you.  It’s Ocala.  Anyway, I was hoping these goats would get the job done quickly and move on but that would be too easy.  After we’re through with them, our neighbor Scott wants to borrow them to eat up the vegetation on his part of the new property.  So I guess they’ll be around for awhile, bleating and bumming goat cookies and annoying the neighbors who thought they moved to a more genteel suburbia.  Oh, well.  I guess it’s better than alpacas.  Let me tell you a few things about alpacas….


Another One Bites The Dust

Last weekend, we lost our 88-year-old neighbor, Allen Morgan, who succumbed to renal disease, breathing difficulties, a sudden disdain for food and, well, being 88 years old.  It’s hard to break the Ninety Barrier and I’m not sure many people actually want to once they get near it.  Body parts fail, appetites diminish, memories disintegrate.  All you’ve got left is ice-cream, whiskey and television and none of them are very good for you either.  Allen was doing pretty good until this Winter, when things started going downhill rapidly.  He postponed dialysis way too long and finally opted for doing the deed at home three times a day.  His legs got weak and he gradually abandoned his trips to UF to watch his beloved women’s softball team.  He kept up with things on television for several months but eventually lost interest in everything, even going out to dinner, which had previously been a big deal for Allen.  In final surrender, he shut off the TV for good a couple weeks back, a sure sign the end was near.  Last weekend, his daughter called and said she and her husband wanted to discuss our recent land co-purchase.  When we saw her coming down the driveway carrying Allen’s treasured yellow softball, signed by a major UF home run hitter, we knew it was over.  The softball baton has been passed to us and I hope to keep it until I’m 88, a mere 16 years in the distance.  As they say in high school, always remember the good times we had at softball, Allen.

Allen Morgan was a little guy, maybe 5-4 on a good day, but that didn’t stop the Army from accepting him into their ranks during the Big One.  Allen was dispatched on a slowboat to Burma, where he helped to build the Burma Road.  What did you think of Burma?, I once asked the man.  His answer was typically Morganesque: “Eminently forgettable,” said he.

Allen was twice married, each time for 25 years, leading him to comment that he had “a 25 year shelf life.”  From the first marriage, he had four children, three girls and a boy, one of which—Barbara—he lived next to until his death.  He actually used to live with Barbara until she came home one day unexpectedly with a friend and found Allen walking around naked in her house, emptying out the fridge.  After that, Allen got his own trailer.  Whenever we went over there, Siobhan made me go in first, hoping to avoid another naked event.  Allen kept a robe available at all times for emergencies.

A proud graduate of Georgia Tech, Allen somehow wound up a salesman, trooping around the South for years peddling his wares.  He ended up in real estate in Martin County and he would eagerly expound on the many virtues of Martin County at every opportunity.  “Never would have got kidney disease if I hadn’t left Martin County,” he told us recently.  Allen thought it was too cold here, unlike Martin County, which was, of course, “perfect”.  He was an observant fan of many sports, a little tough on coaches.  Whenever his team had a problem, the coach was an idiot.  This did not extend to his favorite, UF volleyball coach, Mary Wise, who once telephoned Allen during a hospital stay.  His worst criticism of Mary was something on the order of, “I can’t understand why Mary does some of the things she does,” virtual praise in Morganese.

Anyway, we’ll miss the old guy, but he was certainly ready to take on new adventures elsewhere.  He’ll be a good bar companion for Stuart Bentler, a Hillsborough County advocate.  They can squabble over the relative merits of their old neighborhoods.  And Allen—next year in the playoffs, how about a little help when Lauren Hager belts one out near the fence?  A little outgoing flutter from the wind would certainly help.  I know you’re on permanent break but the rest of us are down here battling on.  See what you can do.  We’ve got that softball propped up in the corner in our living room and every time we look at it, we think of you.  But never naked.




Go West, Old Man

Next week is vacation time for Siobhan and Bill.  We’re going to Rocky Mountain National Park, staying in Estes Park, Colorado from August 3rd to the 11th.  Siobhan’s brother, Stuart, will be minding the ranch so don’t get any funny ideas.  What this means, of course, is that we’ll be sending you a blog from 2010 and I’m sure you’ll just love it.  Unless you are Irana, who has read them all and constantly wants new ones, no excuses accepted.  If we don’t go off on new adventures, however, how can we bring you exciting future episodes like last year’s Glacier Park Special, one of our favorites?  We can’t just make this stuff up, you know.  We’ll be back again on August 15 with all kinds of merriment and mirth.  Unless, of course, we meet a horrible fate in our travels and are slain by deviant Colorado bikers or captured by forest pygmies or burned up in one of those famous western forest fires.  We’ll have pictures and everything.  You can hardly wait.  See you soon!


That’s all, folks….