Gallimaufry 4

No Triple Crown winner in 2010

Kentucky Derby winner, Super Saver, did not win the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the US Triple Crown of thoroughbred racing, held yesterday at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.  So the Triple Crown drought will continue for another year.   The winner, Lookin At Lucky, was the American Champion Two-Year-Old Colt in 2009 and had been the favorite to win the Kentucky Derby.  Lookin At Lucky had bad racing luck then, as had been the case for him this year up until the Preakness.  He finished sixth in the Derby.  After the Derby loss, his trainer made a radical change in riders, deciding to use jockey Martin Garcia for the Preakness.  At 25, Garcia was the youngest jockey in the field and had previously only ridden Lookin At Lucky in workouts.  This combination proved to be lucky for Lookin At Lucky,  Above all, it proved to be a winning one.  Video footage of the race can be found here.

This year's attendance at the Preakness was a 23 percent increase over that in 2009.  I, for one am happy to see that because Pimlico has had its share of financial problems, to the extent that there has been concern that the course might be forced to close.  What a shame that would be!  Pimlico is where the famous match race between the legendary Seabiscuit and War Admiral took place in 1938.   HWMBO, then a small boy growing up in Baltimore, remembers hearing the race call on the radio.

"The Wire" used to study sociology, "social science-fiction" 

Continuing with Baltimore, the American TV drama series set in that city, "The Wire," called by many the best series in television history, will be used in the UK by sociology students to study "social science fiction."   Universities in the US that have already been using the series, which ran on the cable network HBO from 2002 to 2008, in similar fashion include Harvard, UC-Berkeley and Middlebury.  The series, a hard-hitting look at urban social issues via themes such as the the illegal drug trade, the port system, the city government and bureaucracy, the school system, and the print news media, is known here as "Sur écoute" and is so popular that it's hard to keep up with demand.  Among others, both HWMBO and #1 Son recommended it to me.  It does a better job of making these issues "real" than do hours of documentaries.  I, for one, wish that someone, somewhere actually would have the courage, resources and political will to "follow the money" in real life and let the chips fall where they may.  An impossible dream?

The Guardian also has a book out featuring a collection of comments from its blog about the series.

On a positive note, the series creator, former journalist David Simon, has a new HBO series called "Treme" where "politics, music and heartbreak collide" in post-Katrina New Orleans that began showing last month.

Ash to ash - and so it goes

Airports are being closed again because of more ash from Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano in Iceland that just keeps on erupting.  Discovery channel footage can be seen here.  The five-day outlook doesn't look good.

In the meantime, I'm just hoping to see the sun again.  Someday.  Preferably someday soon.