Overall, I liked your piece in TDN. But that dismissal of the Eight Belles discussion on the internet was pretty glib. The one here was pretty sophisticated, to say nothing of my having tried to head the disaster off in advance.
Are you running UB in the BC?
Jerry, I was not including you in the group of morons, believe me.
My partners want to run UB, but I don\'t.
I would change my mind if somebody could give me an instance of a horse that failed to act on Polytrack, then ran well on Pro Ride.
She didn\'t lift a hoof in the Spinster.
I\'m going to be watching SA as close as I can the next couple of weeks trying to figure out whether pure dirt horses handle it (meaning, is it different than Kee). Doing the seminar is going to be a bitch if I can\'t figure that out-- real chance to fall on my face.
Not that I\'m killing them, but this new faster version of the Kee poly at least seems playable. The spreads at the wire seem greater-- less randomness.
Jerry why would you not want randomness (as a bettor)?
To me, random means the payoffs can be HUGE, isn\'t that what we want? Don\'t bettors want the chance of a monster score?
Unless, random means something else and i\'m not following it?
I know the question was directed at JB, but IMALLIN, no serious gambler wants randomness. If you want randomness, play the lottery.
GAmblers want angles that can be uncovered through research and analysis that leads to results that the gambler might find predictable but will look more random to the \"average Joe\".
Randomness is not good and is certainly downright awful for Thorograph, who is selling a premium service of data. Why buy it, if the results are random? Bet the gray horses, or the ones with \"cat\" in their name, like my wife does....
We want predictable volatility. Discuss among yourselves.
Is Mike Myers on the forum? Where is Paul Baldwin, the former host of \"Coffee Chat\" when you need him?
Myers used to hang out at a bar across the street from me. Always came in with his hockey stick. Seriously.
To try to keep this on an equine line, I always thought Mike Meyers was/is a
comedic one trick pony, and that 3 Austin Powers movies was at least 1 too many.
The man who Meyers grew up watching, Benny Hill, also kind of one dimensional
as a comedic genius.
I don\'t claim Myers is any sort of comedic genius, but I can\'t think of another actor in history who starred in three separate movie franchises that made literally billions of dollars in total (Wayne\'s World, Austin Powers, Shrek). So, I imagine wherever he is now, he\'s rolling around in a pile of hundreds.
I didn\'t see any of those except for Shrek, and didn\'t think Myers was a comic genius until I saw him on Inside the Actors Studio. If that comes on again, check it out. Very impressive.
I do have an Austin Powers related Breeders Cup story, but we\'ll save that for another day.
Myers in person (hanging out at the now defunct bar) is about as low key as you can get. Virtually no one who didn\'t already know recognized him. Plaid shirt, jeans, hockey stick.
TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I didn\'t see any of those except for Shrek, and
> didn\'t think Myers was a comic genius until I saw
> him on Inside the Actors Studio. If that comes on
> again, check it out. Very impressive.
>
> I do have an Austin Powers related Breeders Cup
> story, but we\'ll save that for another day.
>
> Myers in person (hanging out at the now defunct
> bar) is about as low key as you can get. Virtually
> no one who didn\'t already know recognized him.
> Plaid shirt, jeans, hockey stick.
JB,
Does it involve Baffert?? I\'ve seen him do that Powers schtick before.
You have to check out the first 2 AP movies. I thought there was no way in hell I would ever like them. Boy was I wrong, laugh out loud funny. The third one did disappoint though.
Danny,
ROTW is a learning tool, it isn\'t meant to pick out the \"best\" race of the week. Several good points made in analysis as to why Criminologist may be a bit vulnerable while also pointing to playable longshots. Your assessment was a bit harsh. Good luck with Storm Mesa.
I consider myself to be a Saturday Night devotee and I can think of no others in the show\'s history outside of Will Farrell, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd that developed more original material on the show among the actors. His movies far and away are in a different league than any of the aforementioned with the exception of Bill Murray. The only one I can think of that was more original than Mike was Martin Short, but he did his best stuff at SCTV before coming over to SNL.
Oh, okay.
As some of you know, I wrote a screenplay about racing, and for a while Michael Imperioli was attached as director, until it became clear we couldn\'t raise the necessary 10 million or so. But he\'s a good guy, much different than the characters he plays, he loves racing, and we became friends.
So we go out to the 2003 BC at Santa Anita together, and stay at the Sunset Marquee, a supercool hotel near Hollywood Boulevard where all the rock bands stay. We get out on Thursday, the BC party is that night at the Universal lot, we drink a fair amount. The next day we go to the track, the forest fires are raging, ashes are coming down like snow. After the track we go out, the Sopranos are super hot, we can get in anywhere, he knows some of the Irish exercise riders and they come with us, they can really drink, and we try to keep up.
Next comes Saturday, BC day, afterwards EVERYBODY goes out, so do we. Michael is younger than me, now I\'m trying to keep up with him.
We\'re leaving the next morning, so we check out like 8:00, on about 4 hours sleep (again, and 8:00 is like the middle of the night to me anyway. No matter what time zone). We get to the airport and they are not letting planes out because of the fires. So we go back and check in, but we\'re awake now, and it\'s around 11:00 Sunday, so of course we go to a bar (with a mechanical bull, and the answer is no), and watch the East coast football games, then the local one.
So after 4 days of this I\'m about toast. But there\'s nothing to do on Sunday night except hang out at the hotel bar, which has a pretty good scene going on. Sort of Casablanca, with some good looking L.A. types, Brits stuck here after the BC like us, etc..
Now, the way the bar at the Sunset Marquee is layed out, you come in off the street through a small outdoor sort of garden, where people drink, and into a living room/lounge kind of deal, very dark. Michael and I are at the bar, he\'s still in decent shape, talking to these high end Brits, owners. I\'m sort of staring out into the room, trying to stay awake. I pick up some movement-- in from the garden, around a sofa into the room, comes this thing the size of a large housecat. Literally the height of my knee. And gradually I realize it looks like a person, except they don\'t make them that small.
So I\'m staring at this guy, trying to figure out whether I\'m hallucinating, and he stares straight back at me, and gives me a military salute, which really freaks me out. So I grab Michael\'s arm, and point to the guy, who is now looking around the room for somebody. And Michael says, \"Oh, it\'s Mini-Me\". (Keep in mind that I had not seen the movie).
So now we\'re both staring at this guy. Who goes straight over to what turns out to be his girlfriend-- all about 6 foot of blonde of her. She\'s sitting talking to this rock and roll MTV grundgy looking guy with a ski cap on. Mini-Me goes over, winds up, and jumps onto her lap like a cat. Then he lies back, puts his head on her breast, and closes his eyes. And she starts stroking him all over-- and I mean all over-- with the whole room watching.
And I say to Michael, \"That\'s it. Good night. Enough L.A. for me,\" and head upstairs to try and get 5-6 hours sleep before our flight out.
The next morning, as we met to get in the car, Michael looked a lot the worse for wear, with shades on to cover seriously bloodshot eyes. \"After you left it got REALLY weird,\" he said. \"The guy with the ski cap started stroking him too\".
We\'re headed out to Hollywood in a week for 10 days of recreation and the BC. Since we go there twice a year, we see some odd things...
In that L.A./Hollywood venue, those wealthy, oddball types are called eccentric.
Where I come from, we call them %^%^%^% nuts....
I think you are neglecting to mention one SNL product who created a genre-- the
violent crime/ comedy/ interracial/ intercultural buddy movie -- with his roles
in \"48 Hours\" and \"Beverly Hills Cop\", which for better or worse made way
for \"Lethal Weapon\" and \"Rush Hour\", etc
I think that Eddie Murphy\'s collaboration with Dan Aykroyd in \"Trading Places\"
produced one of the better movies involving SNL grads. The worst may have been
\"Neighbors\" where Belushi was cast against type as a straight man, with Aykroyd
as his antagonist. This same ploy somehow worked brilliantly in \"King of
Comedy\", where DeNiro was cast as a buffoon with Jerry Lewis playing the dour
straight man.