Kentucky Derby Day
Video not loading like it used to. Sorry about that. Here it is, as should be:
It is getting harder to properly embed videos from You Tube. Just imagine how bad a worthless prick like Musk can make the internet.
Okay, let’s rip it up a bit. There is nothing like Derby Day. The hats are as insane as they look. And, yet. it is one of the greatest pieces of Americana ever. I have not been in a long time, but, jeebus, it was everything as advertised. And surely is still.
This is also the weekend of the Miami Grand Prix. The course looks like painted garbage with not enough racing surface to me, but maybe it will be better racing than expected.
Draw up a mint julep and enjoy.
This is a Trash Talk thread, have at it.
Go Dubs.
Hey now, you have to root for the Suns too if we are to have the be all to end all Western Conference Finals. You might even have to come here for a game!
Also, Hit The Road Jack!
That’s the match-up we want for sure!
(left you a “Jack” themed song in the last thread)
Yeargh, too many threads, and I do not even know how to sew.
on the bias, of course.
Mail, what is it?
chain link!
Hoping for a Giants win for a change and that the Dubs can overcome the excellent shooting of Ja Morant and their own penchant for throwing the ball away
Right? Giants haven’t won in a week. Skidsville.
Ja is uncontainable, just too good. He can basically fly. Brooks’ foul hit job on GP II changes a lot. Still, Golden State grabbed home court advantage, and Chase will be rocking tonight. Amen to reeling in the bonehead turnovers.
Hitting the June Swoon a little early this year, are they?
Yes. Yes, they are.
No they didn’t !! 13- 7 over the Cards !!!
Baffert is out of the Kentucky Derby, right?
Depends on what you count as “out”.
Happy Jack at 30-1 is my favorite pony.
As good as the $7.2 million purchase made in 1867.
This Troll likes Mo Donegal.
Grew up in Evansville IN. Ellis Racetrack was adjacent to the city. We walked to the racetrack. Got in for next to nothing. Learned so very much about which horse to pick. Can read the race forms. Pick the jockey if the horses don’t jump out at you.
Sister picked 7 winners on the nose in a row one day. People were coming up to her and asking for her pick.
Trick was to watch the horses and jockeys as they leave the paddock. They have to look really healthy. They have to walk correctly. They cannot be skittish.
I look at the horses, the jockeys and the racing form. What kind of track is it? What was the competition in the last few races by that horse? What was the time and the length of the previous races as compared to this one.
And most importantly, I don’t bet over $10/race.
Haven’t seen these horses or the forms yet. But, I am eyeing my bourbon. And those hats are…ahem…over the top!
And a gigantic tip of my hat to those that do the wonderful work on this site. Thank you!
unclear on concept:
I decided to take a job in Louisville (loo-vil) back in the early 80s knowing nothing about the state, the city, the culture. Yup – young and stoopid.
I drove from Denver to KY and arrive on May 5. Didn’t know that the Derby was being held that day. Didn’t even know what the Derby was. Needles to say my attempts to get across town to my new digs was an incredible experience.
Still can’t figure out the allure. Been to Saratoga and Belmont since. Never been a betting guy and don’t really like the types that find this fun. Bah, humbug.
Amen. Used to live in Clifton Park, NY, between Saratoga & Albany. Track season was a nightmare for us locals, who were besieged by rich tourists and horse trailers.
Kinda like any big annual festival/event — only folks happy about it are the local business owners.
I could do without “My Old Kentucky Home”, but the odds on that being eliminated are longer than the longest longshot in the race.
There’s a new book out that was reviewed in the NYT this past week, that is on my birthday list. The book is My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song by Emily Bingham, and the review began like this:
Fortunately for these poor folks who can’t find the words, Tom Lehrer found them and put them into a different song that captures the spirit quite well.
when i was a wee lass, my neighborhood pal introduced my bestie and me to her dad’s secret stash of: Tom Lehrer records.
we were definitely the only 7-year olds on the block who knew every word to “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”.
Ditto for me and “Be Prepared”.
I also used Tom Lehrer’s lyrics for a poetry paper in a high school honors English course. Got an A, along with some interesting comments from the teacher.
I just love Tom Leherer. One year my choir did a talent show, and my friend and I did The Element Song, all the elements sung to the Major General Song,
these are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvahd
and there may be many others but they haven’t been discahvahed.
I hear you. IIRC, The Kid sang it to his high school chemistry class.
Oh my gosh, yes, all of these. And the Vatican Rag, Clementine, Wernher von Braun. Or Bright College Days:
“Hearts full of youth, hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth.”
Today even sixty to one is old school — one hundred to zero seems to be the current standard. Doesn’t matter. His genius is ageless.
You can’t take three from two
Two is less than three
So you look at the one in the ten’s place
Now that’s really ten ones
So you take away three
That’s nine
— Why, yes, I did get new math in school. With base 7, where all the fractions are weird.
“. . . the idea is the important thing.”
It’s been useful. Computers. Even the base-7 bit: got a conversion problem involving it in college, on a day when the calculator charge died, so I had to do it on paper, the way I learned in 7th grade (7ths, 49ths, 343rds, 2401ths).
Lol. I ain’t no mathematician, but can count on you!
(hey they are song lyrics!)
“The book wants you to do it in base 7”.
And I use it to explain base 8. “Base 8 is just like base 10, if you’re missing two fingers”.
I don’t think I understand any of this. What was the point of Base 7 (why was/is it a good idea) (helpful/useful)?
Good exercise for the brain?
Tom Lehrer was the resident song writer for “That Was The Week That Was”, my favorite show as a child !
I know, weird taste for a kid. I used to listen to Ira Blue broadcasting Jazz from the Purple Onion in San Francisco, under the covers on a transistor my Aunt gave me for my 7th birthday.
TW3 was family entertainment at our house. WFMT in Chicago. I can still hear Lehrer’s Harvard song every time The Game gets played here in New Haven.
I’d stand just inside my bedroom door so I could see it without being seen. (It was after I was supposed to be in bed. But since I wasn’t going to get to sleep until well after it was over…)
PSA
I may have already posted this on another thread here, but Lehrer has put his complete catalog into the public domain. Available here:
https://tomlehrersongs.com/
Thanks for this!
only one time, standing in the infield with several thousand of my closest friends. Secretariat, paid 2.03, I think. great day, drove all night from upstate ny and all night back next day, with some remembrance of what happened.
#10 Zandon!
I wondered why F1 hasn’t embraced EVs, so I looked it up, and the reasoning seems incredibly specious.
The argument seems to boil down to:
A — engine noise is good and
B — refueling has been banned, so battery swaps must be banned too.
https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/37321/heres-why-formula-1-cant-go-electric-yet-explained-with-simple-science
https://www.autoweek.com/racing/more-racing/a36968213/formula-e-underscores-challenges-of-ev-racing-and-series-own-sustainability/
A sound engineer could come up with solution to the noise issue in about six hours. They could read the inputs of a series of variables and produce meaningful outputs. It’s just not that hard.
As far as “refueling” EVs could get through an F1 race with one battery swap. It’s true batteries are much heavier than petrochemicals, but electric motors are much lighter than old school motors. The net weight change isn’t nearly that significant if you allow a battery swap.
Fuel pit stops were allowed until a dozen years ago. There is simply no serious reason why pit crews that can replace tires in the blink of an eye couldn’t pull and replace a battery pack in a similar time. The engineering and training issues would take year to implement, tops.
I don’t want to pretend this is simply an issue of throwing some Nissan Leafs on the track. But I’m struggling to see how companies couldn’t be given a three year deadline to switch with some basic rules changes and make it work.
At least it’s not June or July. The track pretty much fits in with the rest of the state. Fake beach, boats in a fake lagoon, you know, tacky. Drive down the space coast and look at the architecture, you’ll get what I mean. At least it looks like Merc is getting a handle on things and Lewis at least is starting near the front. I was going to make a bathtub joke, but you’ve probably heard them all by now.
There’s a horse race this weekend? They should give them all lances, it would make it more interesting.
In his late-career social media and other reflections, Tom Brady is like so many serial killers who drip out sidelights (“Her hair was a glossy raspberry …”), holding court as the sun sets while all wait, rapt, to hear if he’ll ever reveal where their loved ones’ bodies are buried (“…But I never met her.”).
# tuck rule tiktok
Someone likens Tom Brady to a serial killer and the moderators and the stalwarts don’t say anything in opposition? Just wow.
Look, we all know a simile when we see one. It’s not even a metaphor.
I’m waiting to see what Brady kills in reality when he becomes an NFL analyst at Fox Sports.
Joe Buck?
Epicurus – We’ve known Eureka forever, and she gets slack. Also, is a Philly fan and so long suffering. Philly would never have even won a Super Bowl without a kid from University of Arizona. You have also been around a while and would get similar slack.
I have never gotten slack.
Lol, have you seen what the Miami Heat are currently doing to her 76ers? It is really brutal.
You have a strange source of laughter.
Maybe. But Miami clocked the 76ers by 35 points. In a playoff game. That is just brutal.
Good deflection.
Oh, that is no deflection, it is the truth.
Yes the truth, but irrelevant.
Very Good Day, Giants win 13-7, Warriors win by 30, 142-112, and Rich Strike, an 80-1 last minute replacement wins the Derby !! What a day !!
After spoiling NBC’s endless preview show by rocketing past a valiant Epicenter (whom none of their prognosticators chose) and Zandon (on-air talent’s consensus pick), Rich Strike proceeded to spoil the friendly interview-on-horseback after his win by “savaging” the outrider’s pony. (I think he was just trying to grab onto the rein; the image of the colt as equicidal maniac seemed to come from pundit frustration.)
So much for the nice (“kind”) racehorse America always wants to see. But all that energy suggests he can get the Belmont distance. You go, Bad Boy!
Stupendous performance in the Derby. Like freaking Devin Hester. Glad I got to see it.