Ekaterina is Quite a Step Down from Dame Kiri; Jockeys are Hot
So it was a big day in Britain today, what with the Royal Wedding (and I'm not talkin' about Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, darlings) and the big horse race "The Grand National" in the afternoon. The Royal Wedding drove home the point, once again, that I do not understand the mentality of this country on a very profound level. I mean, really, honestly... there is NO EARTHLY REASON why these people should be famous. Really. Any of them. They have done NOTHING in their entire lives that actually matters, except get born. And yet, everyone seems to care so much. What if everyone just decided to stop paying attention to them? Just stop. Really.
On the upside: (1) Camilla's dresses get a big ol' A+ from me, especially that unidentifiable object on her head that bore a resemblance to a crown of stalks of wheat wheat—lovely. (2) The odd moment of Russian Orthodox liturgical music dropped into the procedings was really lovely, at least musically speaking. As GF astutely pointed out to me, however, the young contralto who sang it, Ekaterina Semenchuk was indeed a step down from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, whose contribution to Charles's first attempt at the whole marriage thing lingers in the memory. We were informed that the Old Church Slavonic interlude was "a wedding present from the Mariinsky Theater, of which Prince Charles in a patron"—but it did raise certain questions. I mean, if they can incorporate a musical moment from a tradition so radically outside the Anglican tradition, why didn't they incorporate a song or reading which referenced non-Anglican traditions within the UK? You could really imagine it: A song in Gaelic, a reading in Welsh, a snippit of Qur'anic chant, a Sikh devotional song, a Methodist hymn, a gospel choir. The symbolism could have been really nice. It would have looked... um... a lot like my baccalaureate service at Williams. Oh well.
The Grand National is way cooler than the Kentucky Derby (sorry, my dear Kentuckian friend). This is because it is four and a half miles, so the horses are visibly exhausted at the finish, and because the horses have to jump over these huge-ass hurdles, the largest of which are close to seven feel tall. Thus horses falling down and jockeys getting nearly trampled are an intergral part of the whole event. Thrilling! This year, 21 of the 40 horses who started actually made it across the finish line, and we were informed that this was actually really good compared to years past. Go fig. I was reminded of something I had realized some time ago (perhaps at that Kentucky Derby party BQ would take me to)—that is, that male jockeys, in general, are really hot. They're both short and elfin, and simultaneously mean and rough-trade-lookin'. There was a moment when the BBC coverage cut to an interview inside the locker room, and I just about fainted.
On the upside: (1) Camilla's dresses get a big ol' A+ from me, especially that unidentifiable object on her head that bore a resemblance to a crown of stalks of wheat wheat—lovely. (2) The odd moment of Russian Orthodox liturgical music dropped into the procedings was really lovely, at least musically speaking. As GF astutely pointed out to me, however, the young contralto who sang it, Ekaterina Semenchuk was indeed a step down from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, whose contribution to Charles's first attempt at the whole marriage thing lingers in the memory. We were informed that the Old Church Slavonic interlude was "a wedding present from the Mariinsky Theater, of which Prince Charles in a patron"—but it did raise certain questions. I mean, if they can incorporate a musical moment from a tradition so radically outside the Anglican tradition, why didn't they incorporate a song or reading which referenced non-Anglican traditions within the UK? You could really imagine it: A song in Gaelic, a reading in Welsh, a snippit of Qur'anic chant, a Sikh devotional song, a Methodist hymn, a gospel choir. The symbolism could have been really nice. It would have looked... um... a lot like my baccalaureate service at Williams. Oh well.
The Grand National is way cooler than the Kentucky Derby (sorry, my dear Kentuckian friend). This is because it is four and a half miles, so the horses are visibly exhausted at the finish, and because the horses have to jump over these huge-ass hurdles, the largest of which are close to seven feel tall. Thus horses falling down and jockeys getting nearly trampled are an intergral part of the whole event. Thrilling! This year, 21 of the 40 horses who started actually made it across the finish line, and we were informed that this was actually really good compared to years past. Go fig. I was reminded of something I had realized some time ago (perhaps at that Kentucky Derby party BQ would take me to)—that is, that male jockeys, in general, are really hot. They're both short and elfin, and simultaneously mean and rough-trade-lookin'. There was a moment when the BBC coverage cut to an interview inside the locker room, and I just about fainted.
posted by Grrg at 5:17 PM
2 Comments:
E in J says:
Hey, I'm sure you noticed that those jockeys are available for corporate "hospitality" but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Think of the possibilities G!
Yeah, just ignore me.
Who chose some of those jockey pictures? Poor Franky MacDonald and Ted Durcan... they deserve better headshots I'm sure.
It's probably just because I know they work with horses, but, to me, these guys look like horses! Oscar Urbing, Simon Witworth, and Terry Lucas are each more horsey that Julia Roberts! Maybe it's because they spend so much time with horses... like dog owners who start resembling their dogs?
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