Training Report
Wilson and his friend (photo, right) semi-worked another half-mile Tuesday, going head-and-head and running the last quarter in a little over 25 seconds. Wilson (aka Super Chief, for you future bettors) will probably have one more work in Ocala before shipping down to Calder in a couple of weeks. Cosmic Crown, who used to be Juno, worked a quarter in 24 and change in her first work at Calder Saturday. This weekend, she’ll work a quarter and gallop out three eighths. Cosmic Song, won her first time out for her new owners in a dominating performance, earning Bill a nice breeder’s award. We’re celebrating by taking Allen and Norm to the Hippodrome tonight to see Suds, the theater’s annual Summer musical comedy. Speaking of Summer entertainment:
An Important Public Service Announcement
The other night we went to Gainesville to see the heralded new movie, Tree of Life. When the ticket-seller accidentally sold us ducats to Bridesmaids, he was probably trying to tell us something. Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and also including Sean Penn, called by Roger Ebert “the highlight film of the decade!” and by others “on a par with 2001,” was a crashing disappointment. They could have made this one in the Silent Film Era, as there was no dialogue except for an occasional maddeningly difficult-to-hear whisper giving some clue as to what was going on. After beginning with a spectacular series of shots depicting the origin of the universe and then the Earth, itself (which Morgan Freeman has already shown us on TV’s Through The Wormhole), the movie follows the life of a Waco, Texas family of five (three boys) starting in the sixties. Brad Pitt plays the authoritarian father and Jessica Chastain the ethereal and perfect mother and they both do as fine a job as one can do in a situation like this. We watch as the family navigates through life, experiencing the high and low points all families experience and reminding us of our own lives growing up and the hot and cold relationships with our parents. The story is artistically rendered but not much happens. You could sit out on the Johnsons’ lawn next door and watch them proceed through life and it wouldn’t be much different. It might even be more exciting.
There is a point early in some movies when you realize you have made a horrible mistake and you will be taking the gas pipe for the rest of the evening, but for some reason you never leave. An extreme example would be Koyaanisqatsi, a film Betsy Harper and I attended years ago without realizing it could only be tolerated after the ingestion of massive amounts of recreational drugs. But for some reason—reluctance to give up on an investment, hope of a happy turnaround—we never seem to leave (well, we did leave Koyaanisqatsi). Siobhan, Allen and I even sat through M. Night Shyamalan’s dreadful Lady In The Water, one of the great stinkers of all time. And we sat through this one, too, although constantly on the verge of gouging our eyes out.
I guess we’re just Philistines. The critics all loved this movie. I recall, however, that they all loved Ingmar Bergman’s films, too, and I left the theater choking and wheezing. Critics are suckers for any film made in another country—except, maybe, Bolivia—or with any pretensions to art or symbolism. I can remember departing theaters in New York, especially, and listening to filmgoers imagining nuances that were not there, sometimes completely misunderstanding and exalting some unworthy effort. If any of you decide to attend Tree of Life and like it, let me know why.
Okay, so we’re fifty-fifty on the Summer movies. We sent you to Midnight In Paris and we trashed Tree of Life. This week brings Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Larry Crowne. We’re optimistic.
Whither The Casey Anthony Trial
If you live in Florida and turn on your television, you’ll be watching a lot of the Casey Anthony trial. There’s no avoiding it, it’s everywhere. If you have been living on another planet and have somehow missed out on this little jewel, Casey Anthony is a young mother whose 3-year-old daughter “disappeared” one day and Casey didn’t bother to mention it to anybody for a month, at which time her mother deigned to ask her, “By the way….”.
Fifty people a day are allowed in to watch the proceedings and imbeciles from all over the universe are flying in to wait in overnight lines to scarf up those valuable seats. Naturally, in situations like this, emotions occasionally get a little bit raw and people even come to blows. The other day, we had some nice TV shots of a sweet homemaker from the Midwest who was whacking with her purse a gentleman who had her husband in a headlock. Something about cutting in line. I know, I know, the common sense thing to do would probably be to disallow visitors into the trial, but we just can’t have that. So now they’re giving out coupons at 4 P.M. so everybody’s not congregating throughout the night, jabbing one another with hatpins and kicking their neighbors in the shins.
This whole episode is one of the looniest events we’ve had in Florida in some time and Florida, as you well know, is the Home of Loony Events. And it’s been going on for something like three years now. Remember good old Leonard Padilla, the mustachioed bounty hunter from California who showed up in a cowboy hat with a half-million dollars to bail Casey out of jail? And then, when Casey wasn’t as helpful to the investigation as Leonard had hoped, he changed his mind three times as to whether his company would revoke the bail.
Casey Anthony, meanwhile, has displayed no emotion….unless it be that of a sociopath. For a month after her daughter had “vanished,” she carried on as if nothing untoward had ever happened, cavorting with boyfriends, yukking it up at parties and the like. Her own parents, a doddering pair at best, have stumbled around denying accusations and making outrageous claims of their own. It’s Florida, it must be the heat.
Get Your Tickets Now
Silly us. A few years ago, after watching what a hash male politicians had made of the government, we started thinking maybe a few women could get in there and do a better job. Yeah, right. So now we’ve got Sarah Palin, the Alaska Disasta, and bigmouth Tea Party favorite, Michelle Bachman, both in the running for President, for God’s sake. And that’s after all those crazy ladies from Delaware, Nevada and Arizona that we had to deal with last year.
Instead of wasting a lot of money on Republican Primaries, maybe we could just let Palin (the “Mama Grizzly”) and Bachman duke it out in a closed cage match for all the marbles. Last one with any hair left wins.
WHAT? Good Republicans?
Well, we’re not going that far. But we would like to mention that the Republicans in the House of Representatives have voted not to continue the ethanol boondoggle. And that John Huntsman, previously the U.S. Ambassador to China and now a Republican candidate for President, seems like a civil, intelligent man. Which means, I guess, that he has no chance at all of getting a spot on the Republican ticket. Anyway, Alice, don’t say we never said anything nice about those bastard Republicans.
A Blast From The Past
We mentioned the other day that we had picked up a viewer in Seal Rock, Oregon, an obviously made up name for a town. Then we got this G-mail:
I’ve been enjoying your Flying Pie blogs and wanted to say hello. I met you at the Subterranean Circus during the summer of 1968. It was in the era when Gunny, Danny Levine, Jagger, Nancy Crawford and Jarret Renshaw worked there. Actually, I enjoyed hanging out there much more than I enjoyed most of my classes. You introduced me to my favorite group at the time, the Incredible String Band. I remember you playing songs from “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter.” And “Alligator Man,” by the Greenbriar Boys. It was always fun being around you and the others and those were magical days. You were actually the most inspirational person I met during my time in Gainesville….and Gainesville was an amazing place....
Deb Peterson
We love to get letters like this from the old crew. Now that we’ve discovered who was out there in Seal Rock, we’ll get back to work on Tunkhannock, Pa., and Southern Pines, N.C.
Hey Bill, What About The Rosicrucians?
The other day we got a letter from a reader who reminded us of these guys and wondered what they were all about. When we were kids, the Rosicrucians seemed a little scary. They ran all these ads in magazines—and even comic books—in which a mysterious guy in a hood with goddam laser beams coming out of his eyes was uttering some kind of warning. And we never even heard of laser beams back then.
Turns out Rosicrucians were—and still are—members of an esoteric society or group of societies who claim that their order has been in existence since the days of ancient Egypt and has, over the course of time, included many of the world’s sages. Answers.com tells us:
Their secret learning deals with occult symbols—notably the rose and the cross, the swastika and the pyramid—and with mystic writings containing kabbalistic, Hermetic and other doctrines. The first mention of a Rosicrucian group appeared in Fama Fraternitas (1614), possibly written by Johan Valentin Andrea (1586-1654), and the Confessio rosae crucis (1615), probably authored by the same person.
If you look at the current Rosicrucian website, it tells you everything you want to know about the order, which, in our case, is nothing. Actually, we’re very disappointed. It seems like people who can come up with ads featuring hooded guys with laser-beam eyes could create a much more interesting religion. Hmmph and double-hmmph.
Bet You Never Heard Of Tibetan Dream Yoga
See, once you start checking into all these fringe sects and religions, it never ends. But think of it this way: if you digest all this valuable information we keep throwing at you, next time you go to a serious social event (party), you can come out with something like “Despite my complete antipathy for marginal religions in general, my interest was recently piqued by an article I read concerning Tibetan Dream Yoga.”
From an article in Matrixbookstore.biz:
While most people believe the afterlife would involve one’s spirit, many seemingly believe their spirit will take on some spiritual shape, perhaps as an ‘angel’….except spirits, being immaterial, could not have a shape. Yet, we’ve all heard apparitions have shapes. Since this would be physically impossible suggests such images are manifested. Either the spirit world has the ability to manifest itself in a variety of ways or else it is humans who do the manifesting. Since there seems some evidence the spirit world is passive, it points to our incredible powers. We may be more in control over spiritual matters than we’ve ever realized.
Another thought….while Tibetan Dream Yoga advocates the exploitation of lucid dreaming (to practice being aware one is dreaming while dreaming), and while this may have immediate benefits, it would seem spiritually counterproductive. One would learn more by following the dream machine, not by leading it. This would be especially true for mortals trying to analyze the ‘natural state’ of dreaming.
While being aware one is dreaming would seem to give one some control over their dreams, we’re not sure if knowing you’re dreaming would be a good idea in the afterlife. After all, it would spoil the whole idea.
No shit, Sherlock. If you Fringe Religionists can’t come up with any better cosmic baloney than this, we’re going back to the jokes.
That’s all, folks….
