No Such Luck

[TGJB]

Very good. Someone should make sure this info gets to the Times and other major publications.

[richiebee]

I thought the show was getting better each week.

I especially liked how Nick Nolte \"turned the lights out\" (as they say in the NHL)
on his much younger rival in last weeks episode. To me Milch\'s/Dennis Franz\'s Andy
Sipowicz was one of the great characters ever on TV, and when
Kevin Dunn muttered \"the handicapped broad is sending me emails telling me what
she\'s wearing\", I almost lost it. Pure Sipowicz.

In the end, if PETA played their cards right, HBO would have ended up losing
subscribers. And speaking of PETA, would love to know where they have been during
the winter while NYRA was running a slaughterhouse in Ozone Park. How big of a slots
fueled donation might NYRA have made to PETA?

All practicing vets, whether employed by the state or otherwise, are culpable here.

Memo to PJ Campo: Bottom claimers run at FG and OP. Why haven\'t they had the same
incomprehensible number of catastrophic breakdowns seen this winter at Aqueduct?

No accounting for what makes good TV. I mean, if Leon and Rosie were vampires or
werewolves, the show would have been wildly popular.

[TGJB]

Re the bottom claimers breaking down-- big purses for cheap claimers is a recipe for disaster. If a horse is in for 7.5k and a win is a worth lot more than that, trainers will drop and tap for every race, treating horses like short term commodities. As I\'m sure Sight will attest,lots of  tapping (let alone other things) takes its toll.

[MO]

Favorite line by an actor:

\"Joey\" (Richard Kind) - \"Peter Piper picked a peck of peppers\".

\"Ronny Jenkins\" (Gary Stevens) - pickled peppers, a$$hole.

made me laugh so hard I almost forgave Gary for past indescretions on the race track......

[moosepalm]

Any show that has Dustin Hoffman facing off with Michael Gambon is going to have some redeeming qualities.  Actually, I thought there were quite a few, and I\'m seriously p.o.\'ed that I\'ll never know how some of these story lines get resolved.  Also, I had Escalante in the fourth episode of the second season, in the \"Escalante/Marcus:  Who Smiles First Future Pool\", so there\'s one more torn up ticket.

It seemed like HBO, Milch and Mann rolled over pretty quickly on this one.  I sense a back story.  I know it\'s Hollywood and they can\'t afford the publicity of looking like animal killers, but there was a defense that could have been thrown up there.  Neither Milch nor Mann strike me as the kind of guys who go gently into the night.

Or couldn\'t they just contract with Spielberg or somebody to develop a simulated race production?  If they can get me to believe that Tom Cruise was dangling from that building in Dubai, I can probably buy just about anything.

[Kasept]

Milch & Mann in New York Magazine.. Not to be missed:
http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/michael-mann-david-milch-interview-luck-horses-cancellation.html

A stoic Milch, in few words, demolishes PETA: \"I was embarrassed for them...\"

[moosepalm]

Kasept Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Milch & Mann in New York Magazine.. Not to be
> missed:
> http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/michael-mann-david-
> milch-interview-luck-horses-cancellation.html
>
> A stoic Milch, in few words, demolishes PETA: \"I
> was embarrassed for them...\"

Thanks for the link.  I really enjoyed this quote from Milch:


\"This is what's kind of a tragic paradox about what's gone on, [Bernstein] wanted to bring back horse racing, to show it in its purity. The purity and exaltation of the experience of witnessing, and to some extent participating in, the thoroughbred's moment of victory and defeat.\"


I know we\'ve gone back and forth, here, about the portrayal of horse players on this show, but I found the scene of Hoffman spending the night with the horse very moving.  The juxtaposition of Hoffman, an enormously rich ex-bookie to Nolte, the grizzled old trainer, hanging on to one last dream, to the track degenerates, all united by their love of the game, and the animals they owned, was strangely uplifting, for me.  I felt that Milch was on to something here.

[sighthound]

PETA is a domestic terrorist organization.  PETA has zero to do with animal welfare.  Zero.  They don\'t deserve to be involved in the discussion.  That they were listened to is appalling.  Listening to PETA on animal welfare is like listening to the KKK regarding race relations.

[sighthound]

Yes to what TGJB said.

In addition: some barns, some tracks, some trainers, some vets, not all:   trainers tell the vets what to do, and the vets unquestioningly do it, if they want an income.  (\"Come do the knee on this horse\" and the vet has never seen the horse before, or any rads, or any history, and does the knee).  No real exam, no diagnosis, just get the horse sound to run.  It\'s not done with complete disregard to the horse, people are not callous, but the practical matter is this is how you make money, and that is the culture you are forced into.   What I hate about the race track.  

No, I do not do that.  Working with health problems, or shopping for horses with me, isn\'t very exciting - you\'ll get what\'s best for the horse, and not flash-pushed-to-the-edge-of-soundness-ego-feeding-speed at sales.  But I sleep very, very well at night.

[BB]

Gentle. And he didn\'t finish Deadwood, either, did he? Hope we get to flail away with JB at the Spa this summer.

[miff]

\"No, I do not do that. Working with health problems, or shopping for horses with me, isn\'t very exciting - you\'ll get what\'s best for the horse, and not flash-pushed-to-the-edge-of-soundness-ego-feeding-speed at sales\"

Sight,

Kinda puts you in the minority. Don\'t recall a vet ever refusing a request for a tap or whatever, much less even question a request.Up close and personal have seen vets \"advise\" that they could maintain/handle certain problems when vetting one for a prospective buyer. Some very big owners/outfits never leave home without their vets,like an American Express Card.

Mike

[sighthound]

If you are familiar with the animals, and the trainer, and have a working relationship, that\'s great.  If a certain person tells me, \"I need a knee tapped\", the horse needs a knee tapped.  But, on the other hand, I suspect something more is going on, they\'d let me pursue it.

Lots of people in horses are as smart as vets about what\'s going on with the horse.  Lots are dumber than rocks.  Both train.  Both vet.  So it goes.

Race horses are intensive athletes managed to the very edge.  The best run on the very edge of \"breaking\" - like elite human athletes do.  They are pampered and their every ache and swelling attended to.  But of course they have injuries, and strains, and sprains, and those are managed, just like human athletes, to keep them in the game.

The bad people don\'t care about the difference between what can be managed, and what can, or should, not.

We have to be careful not to lump those two opposites together.  Huge difference between a trainer claiming a lower class horse, giving it steroid to get it\'s appetite back, injecting it\'s sore joints, and running it appropriately, and the previous stable that did none of that, or did so haphazardly without plan.

[richiebee]

Could HRTV and/or TVG have adopted/bankrolled \"Luck\" in some form or another?

[shanahan]

Forgive me, but I am unclear on term \"tap\".  Can you explain?

[hooper]

From an equine site.

There are two main reasons to \"tap\" a horse\'s joint: anesthesia or \"blocking\" for lameness diagnosis, and medicating the joint. To localize a lameness to a specific area or joint, nerve and joint blocks can be performed. A joint block involves injecting the joint with a local anesthetic like lidocaine to for desensitization. If the lameness resolves after injection, it is likely that the joint that was injected is the source of the horse\'s pain. Joint injections can also be used to administer certain drugs to help the horse. Typically, a steroid can be administered into a joint to help combat inflammation that may be occurring there. Hyaluronic acid, a substance to help lubricate the joint, can also be given simultaneously with steroids.