The Gobbler Goes to the Derby“I took the expressway out to the track,” wrote Hunter Thompson on his way to the Kentucky Derby, “driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns.” The Gobbler thought of the great Bard of Gonzo when he made his own pilgrimage to the Derby last weekend, traveling with Mrs. Gobbler and her box full of hats. Thompson wrote his famous account almost 40 years ago, but in the interim not much appears to have changed. The track, on the outskirts of Louisville, still resembles a “huge outdoor loony bin,” and members of the local gentry are still “guzzling their mint juleps with two hands.” Here is the Gobbler’s dimly recalled, blow-by-blow account.
User’s Guide
Nasty Late-Night Buffets, and the Beauty Hidden Within
We love deli buffets. The chance to cherry-pick a single chicken wing, a tablespoon of angel hair with pesto, three tater tots, and a cube of lime Jell-O always gives us a thrill. But it’s at night, in the buffet’s long limbo — after a good portion of the offerings have become inedible and before they can be thrown out — that you have to wonder: Is it really okay to eat that?
Some items, it turns out, age rather nicely.
