fauxklore

The back story on my vacation goes to 2019, when I was browsing through the Road Scholar catalogue and saw a Spring 2020 program involving the Kentucky Derby The itinerary included visits to horse farms and other behind the scenes things before the race, followed by the Derby itself. I signed up for it - and, well, you all know about 2020. Anyway, they decided not to do it later on, so I used the credit from the cancelled program to go to Costa Rica late last year. But I had gotten the idea of going to the Kentucky Derby into my head.

I tend to browse travel-related websites a lot and I had been curious about Mississippi River paddlewheel boat cruises for a while. When I was looking at the website for American Queen Voyages, I saw that they had a Kentucky Derby cruise on the American Countess, which is a former gambling boat converted to a fairly luxurious steamboat for river cruises. I called up and the 2022 cruise was already sold out. But by booking early I got a slightly less outrageous price on the 2023 cruise. I should note that the Derby package is actually an add-on to the cruise, so the whole thing is absurdly expensive. But, hey, big event and an excuse to wear an outrageous hat - well, why not?

( Monday 1 May - pre boarding )

( Tuesday 2 May - Keeneland Excursion and Boarding )

( Wednesday 3 May - Louisville Sightseeing, Great Steamboat Race )

( Thursday 4 May - Madison, Indiana )

( Friday 5 May - Brandenburg, Kentucky )

( Saturday May 6 - Derby Day! I Got the Horse Right Here )

( Sunday May 7 - River Cruising )

( Monday May 8 - Augusta, Kentucky )

( Tuesday May 9 - Cincinnati )

To summarize, the American Countess was comfortable enough and the trip was mostly relaxing. The food wasn’t particularly exciting, but there was a decent variety (e.g. there were always vegetarian options for each course). Alcohol was included, but the bartender was terrible and the couple of times I tried the special drink of the day I was disappointed with excessive doses of simple syrup, so I mostly stuck to a glass of wine with dinner. The included excursions (e.g. the hop-on / hop-off bus tours) were good, with enough time to explore a few cute little towns. The premium excursions, however, were not good value. And, in particular, both the Keeneland tour and (especially) the Derby package were fiascos.

There’s a part of me that would still like to do a paddlewheeler down the Mississippi, but I would probably look into doing so on American Cruse Lines (which is the other company that does similar cruises) instead.

Shameless Self-Promotion: I am part of an on-line storytelling show this coming Saturday (February 25th) from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST. It’s free, with donations requested. The show is titled "Laughter and Humor, in Honor of Rubber Ducky Day” and you can register here.

Tucson Follow-up, Part 1: Because several people commented on the picture of the miniature sculpture done on a pencil point and I had not written down the artist’s name, I did some strategic googling. The artist turns out to be a 50-year-old Russian man named Salivat Fidai. There are many pictures of his work on-line for your viewing pleasure.

Tucson Follow-up, Part 2: I have no idea how I forgot to mention this, but it was late afternoon when I finished up at the eastern part of Saguaro National Park on Sunday. I decided I could check out the Desert Diamond Casino for a little while, I have probably said this before, but my attitude towards gambling is that it is entertainment. I expect to lose, so I just decide how much I am willing to spend on being entertained along the way. I like slot machines with certain types of themes, typically ones oriented towards either space or a movie or television show I like. This casino had few of the ones I like, but I did eventually find a group of Little Shop of Horrors themed ones. I was within about 5 bucks of reaching my allowed losses when I hit a jackpot that paid me $400. So I kept playing for a while. Eventually, the plant fed me to the tune of a little over $700. Which was enough to cover my plane ticket and rental car, but not my hotel.

NSO: Continuing on to what I’ve done since I got back (i.e. over the past week or so), last Friday night, Cindy and I went to see the National Symphony Orchestra. The program included three pieces, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. I had never seen him conduct before and I thought he did a good job. I especially appreciated that he made a point of having each section of the orchestra stand for final bows during the applause at the end of the evening.

The first piece on the program was Krzesany by Wojciech Kilar This was completely new to me and I really enjoyed it. It was very dramatic, especially the percussion section. Apparently, it was inspired by a mix of Polish folk dance and a bullfight Kilar had seen in Spain.

That was followed by a Prokofiev violin concerto, which I found comparatively dull. Francesca Dego is a big name violinist and I could appreciate her virtuosity. But, as a recovering violist, I’m not a huge fan of violins and, overall, the piece lacked the level of drama that the other two in the program had.

The final piece, which is why we had gone in the first place, was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This has been a favorite of mine since I was in high school. The rawness and the emotional tension was radical at its time, but is still powerful for those of us to whom it isn’t quite as revolutionary. I have, by the way, also seen film footage of the original choreography. It’s all very weird. At any rate, the orchestra handled the mixture of frenzy and pagan energy very well.

All in all, it was a good evening.

Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: The next day, Cindy and I went to see a play titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner at Woolly Mammoth. This is the American premiere of this work by Jasmine Lee-Jones and I admit we knew nothing about it, but the title was intriguing. I did warn Cindy that everything I had ever seen at Woolly Mammoth was weird. Anyway, we had lunch at Teaism (one of my favorite informal restaurants - and the only place in the area I know of to get okonimayaki) beforehand. Before the play, we read the Zine that they had available, which discussed Jenner having had lip augmentation, selected vocabulary from “the Internet & Black British Slang” (yes, the play is British), and (most interesting to me) Sara Baartman, an enslaved South African woman who was displayed in London and Paris, where she became known as “the Hottentot Venus.” There are a number of different threads here, leading to a general theme about appropriating blackness.

I am hesitant to write too much about the play because the playwright has said she doesn’t want reviews by white people. So this is a short synopsis and not a review. The gist of it is a series of conversations between two women, Cleo and Kara. Cleo tweets criticisms of white women who co-opt and profit from Black culture, but some of the things she says spill out into real life, including her getting death threats. Also, Kara can’t forgive her for some anti-gay things she has also tweeted. There is a lot of slang used and, while it may all be defined in the zine they gave out, it wasn’t as if I could reference that during the play, so I would say I understood maybe 2/3 of it. Overall, it was interesting, but I am clearly not the target demographic. Younger people might be able to make more sense of it.

Crones and Tomes: I joined a second book club, specifically for older women to read books about women. We started this past Monday night (i.e. the 13th) with Heartburn by Nora Ephron and had a good, wide-ranging discussion of it. I only knew two of the women before (they are puzzle people) and I’m looking forward to getting to know the others better.

Book Club 2 My long-standing book club met on Wednesday night to discuss French Braid by Anne Tyler. I will write more in my quarterly book wrap-up, but the short version is that the book is 241 pages long and I spent 240 of them waiting for something to happen. One person did like the book.

Dinner at Clyde’s: I went to dinner with a couple of visiting Flyertalkers at Clyde’s at Gallery Place last night. It’s not the most exciting menu in D.C. but it’s fine for typical American cuisine. The conversation was about various Flyertalk events we’d been to and upcoming travel plans and things to do in different places (including here.)

By the way, I find it very amusing that the beer menu includes brewery locations for all of the beers they sell. Which makes sense for the Port City Monumental American-Style IPA I got (Alexandria, VA) and other craft brewery offerings. But does anybody really care that their Budweiser and Michelob Ultra are from Williamsburg, VA?

Duolingo: I’m at the 111 day mark on studying Spanish. I think I’ve learned a lot, as evidenced by my ability to read ads in Spanish at various places. But I still have a long ways to go. I’m also sloppy with writing, since they let you get away with using an English language keyboard, lacking accent marks. I’ve also had a couple of times when I think a daily quest has changed after I’ve done it, e.g. something like “find Oscar 7 times” has changed to “find Lily 7 times.” They also added another achievement to work on - Nocturnal, which requires doing lessons after 10 p.m. and I have a few more levels to go on that one. At any rate, it’s still fun, although I don’t know how many occasions are likely to come up where I need to talk about an evil sheep who the lions are all afraid of. This is, however, marginally less ridiculous than my Russian vocabulary, which includes the phrase "talking cockroaches live in Asia."

UNLV Volksmarch: As I mentioned before, the primary excuse for the Las Vegas trip was getting in a Volksmarch event towards the baseball special events program. That meant doing the UNLV year round event. The route started out past a not very exciting stretch of restaurants and businesses, before turning onto Paradise Road and passing the Hard Rock Hotel. I stopped there briefly to use the restroom (and to gamble a little, coming out a few dollars ahead). The walk continued on to the UNLV campus. I should mention that I ran into three other walkers (local women) on the way and chatted briefly with them.

Anyway, the campus is not particularly attractive. In particular, most of the buildings are blocky and labeled with three letter codes, rather than names. However, there are a couple of interesting bits of modern art here and there, with the most prominent being a huge sculpture of a flashlight. There is also a little xeriscape garden. But, while it is not impressive overall, the campus served its purpose since UNLV is the alma mater of a few major leaguers.

The walk returned past the Atomic Testing Museum, which I contemplated but decided that it would be worth more time than I could give it. The rest of the route was fairly uninteresting, going past a corporate area.

All in all, this wasn’t the most interesting walk ever, but the exercise was pleasant, the weather was perfect, and, again, it served its purpose.

Ka: Looking over which Cirque du Soleil shows I had not yet seen, I chose Ka, partly because it sounded interesting and partly because, being at the MGM Grand (where I was staying) made it convenient. It was a good choice. The show is a bit different from most of theirs in having more of a narrative element. It tells the story of boy and girl twins, who are separated by war and their journey to reunite and bring peace to their people. And, oh yeah, each of the twins finds love along the way.

There’s still plenty of acrobatics and special effects and all the other stuff that Cirque is known for. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe the acrobatic parts I was most impressed with. But I can note the performer who played the mother of the twins, who did an excellent job of conveying her emotions and who brought a nicely humorous touch to the whole show. I also really enjoyed the music, which was of the fusion world beat sort. By the way, I googled it and learned that the lyrics (and bits of conversation) are in a made-up language called Cirquish.

As a final note, since a performer died when a rope broke last year, the final scene is done with video. I did find that a bit of a let-down, especially as it was a bit blurry, but not a huge issue. I’m more interested in theatre than in circus acts per se, so the whole show worked well for me.

People Watching: One of the main things I like in Vegas is people watching. Are such short miniskirts really in fashion? Back in the early 1970’s, the rule for respectability was fingertip-length and I saw an awful lot of girls wearing shorter ones than that. I was tempted to ask a few "are you a hooker or do you just dress like one?" but decided that would be rude. And, oy, the shoes. The most amusing (and frightening) example was the woman on crutches who was wearing 6 inch heels.

Food: Vegas has great restaurants. This trip involved a critical mistake, however. I ate a plate of pancakes (at the Avenue Café at the MGM Grand) on Saturday morning – and was too full to manage more than a slice of pizza for supper. But did I learn? I did the buffet on Sunday morning – and, of course, ate too much to really want to eat anything the rest of the day. It was a good reminder of why I don’t normally go for buffets.

So, alas, no food pornography this trip.

Gambling: I understand that I am not exempt from the laws of probability, so I look at gambling as entertainment. I am going to spend X amount of money on it and it’s a question of how much time that money will get me.

That said, I do have some quirks that create issues. I know these things are not true, but I still believe that there is such a thing as gambling feng shui and one should not, for example, ever play a machine that is next to a trash can. Someone coming by cleaning nearby can disrupt the flow of luck. And there is the whole issue of smokers (who also create auras of disruptive luck). A few years ago, there were more non-smoking areas, but I didn’t find a single one this time.

I stick to machine gambling because I prefer to lose my money in smaller increments. I always bet the minimum amount to play the full number of lines. If I play video poker, I look carefully at the payoffs, because there are some that cheat you by only repaying your bet on a two pair hand, instead of paying twice your bet. For slot machines, I like ones with graphics that are not the classic fruit machine types. I like certain other features, too – e.g. interactive bonuses.

Anyway, the problem is that I am a bit weird about numbers. It’s one of those borderline OCD things. I don’t like to end up with odd amounts of change, so I will tend to keep playing until I have a dollar amount that is, ideally, an even dollar, though amounts that end in quarters are acceptable. This would be less of a problem if there were more machines that let you select lines, since I don’t mind playing less than the maximum number of lines if it is to even out the payout. The trend now is towards alleged penny slots that really have a 40 or 50 cent minimum bet, however.

You can imagine how it made me crazy when I ended up playing a machine that had a minimum bet of 89 cents. The problem was that I kept winning on it. In the end, I came out about a hundred bucks ahead, but it made me very anxious.

What I Needed to Do More: The lack of external cues about what time it is leaves me sleep deprived. In theory, I could have slept late (well, except Monday morning when I had to get to the airport). But, in practice, it doesn’t happen. Vegas is not the place for sleep.

On a final note, there is an observation wheel (called Linq, for reasons that are beyond me) being constructed in the center strip. It should be worth checking out when it’s open.