Our trip to Louisville last weekend / Breeders Cup Picks

As has been mentioned throughout the week, the Dolberry clan went to Louisville over last weekend to see Sweet Mo. We had a great time & came away feeling really blessed to have just a great family ... one that just keeps getting better w/ each addition. (The earlier setups were a tease to increase blog traffic through the week. DCV readership lags toward the weekend. Hey, this blog isn't free. Ok, it is free. But still.)

Maybe we'll make Fridays be request night at the DCV.

CSue from Alaska wanted to know more about Tootsie Rolls. OK, I read thru their recently released quarterly earnings report, they seem to be doing well. Certainly, better than some junk food dealers. (Speaking of which, "Junk Food Junkie" may be my favorite novelty song of all time. DYN: It made it to the Top 10 in 1976. But I only gave this like 5 seconds thought, so feel free to suggest others I'm forgetting.) Back on topic, Tootsie Corp sold $186 million dollars of the stuff last quarter alone. Up 7% from same quarter, last year. Not all is sugar & chocolate, though, Tootsie is concerned about rising costs of Canadian products and costs due to increased labeling requirements by the FDA. I agree that it would be hard to label those tiny little suckers. What is that 1 pt font. Give 'em a break FDA, sheesh, it's a Tootsie, how bad can it be? And if you own 10 shares of Tootsie stock, congratulations my friend, that a cool $5.40 in your pocket.

C-Lo writes ... "Dolberry, your racing picks are an invaluable means of identifying the sure losers in any race. Quit holding out on your Breeders Cup picks, jerk!" Thank you C-Lo. Here they are. Caution: I spent less time on these than on the best novelty song decision. Working backwards from the big race, down to the lesser races.

Classic: Perfect Drift is one of my all time favorite horses (others include: Bombay Duck, Gato del Sol, Cryptoclearance, Badger Land, Unbridled, Thunder Gulch, Smarty Jones, Afleet Alex, Barbaro). He doesn't win that often, but he's always around. He's had success at CD. But mostly for sentimental reasons, I'm looking for the Ted Williams career finish with a two length win in the Classic. In second, I like Invasor, I'll bet the horses in Uruguay were glad to see the last of his 8-wins-in-9-starts butt when he shipped over here. In third, it'll be Flower Alley. This horse has been pathetic his last two outings, but Pletcher screamed a fit when he almost was left out of the field. He must know something. Plus we've got the principle at play here how that last team in March Madness, the one that everyone complains about, always seems to win a game or two. I'd say Bernardini (aka "possibly the next Secretariat" #46) gets 5th.

Turf: 1. Cacique 2. Hurricane Run 3. Red Rocks. (An all Irish trifecta.)
Distaff: 1. Pine Island 2. Balletto 3. Fleet Indian
Mile: 1. Aragorn 2. Echo of Light 3. Rob Roy
Sprint: 1. Henny Hughes 2. Thor's Echo 3. Pomeroy
Filly/Mare Turf: 1. Satwa Queen 2. Dancing Edie 3. Film Maker
Juvenile: 1. Circular Quay 2. Great Hunter 3. Street Sense
Juvenile Fillies: 1. Gatorize 2. Dreaming of Anna 3. Appealing Zophie

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Dolberry!

World Series ratings (& why they don't matter)

I will blog about our trip north to see Mojo tomorrow. Rest assured, my grievances re: the trip will be fully aired. Until then ... some miscellaneous thoughts. OK, one picture.

If it's late October, the only things more prevalent than ridiculous halloween costumes, are the scores of articles documenting how poor this particular year's World Series ratings were (e.g., this one). Most of the articles written lamenting the dropoff in viewership are written by diehard baseball fans who try to use the poor ratings in an attempt to shame baseball into making it more like it was in the 1950s (e.g. afternoon games, fewer rounds of playoffs, fewer commercials, fewer pitching changes, starting in early October, etc.) I'm in favor of all these things as well, but it's tilting at windmills to think any of 'em are coming back. Of course, the ratings do not matter. Unlike during the classic 1975 Red Sox - Reds world series (why is there a DVD in his pants is my question), there are a just-short-of-infinite number of entertainment choices these days. There are more than three television networks, (though only one really matters). You can customize your own radio stations (here's mine). You can watch promotional videos from New Zealand's travel bureau. It's different then when I was young, then you had to hope the things you liked were popular, or you would never see them on TV, radio, etc. Now everything is available. And accordingly, everything has a smaller piece of the pie. America is way more diverse than it was in the 70's. Some people prefer Bollywood films, Brazilian soccer, or TV personalities learning to dance. I wonder if given all this individual variety whether we have enough in common any more to come together as has happen in our past. But to get back on track, low World Series ratings are ok by me. Low ratings yields less TV money which could yield a multitude of good things (e.g., less TV influence, less extravagant salaries, no more sites like this, fewer happenings upon Pete Rose hawking stuff on QVC, etc.) As it is, I get 4 different ESPNs as it is. It'll be a long time before the games aren't available to those of us who still like it just fine, even if it's not perfect.

Nice to have "c-lo" added to the growing list of DCV readers. He requested a You Tube link to each of the Top 30 songs in the countdown. In place of that, as a solid downpayment upon when I get more proficient at this, I will provide a single You Tube link to a video for a song that's not even on the countdown. It is a different song from Jars of Clay who holds our current #1 spot w/ a different song. The song is "Work" and it's even better than "Dead Man (Carry Me)". The video's pretty cool. I've been meaning for a while to write a review for "Good Monsters" but am still cautious dating back to the last time I wrote an album review ... in the finest high school newspaper in central St. Matthews. I was writing a review of the album Worlds Apart by the progressive Canadian rock band (& Rush wannabes), Saga. I had rented the album from the library. Enjoyed it thoroughly & wrote a glowing review. And in the only piece of feedback I ever got from an Echo article was from some kid in the cafeteria, "You like Saga? You're a fag." So, I'm sorry. No more reviews. I'm still healing. Until then, here's a review of Good Monsters that I liked and hereby endorse. Line of the album: "Not all monsters are bad but that ones that are good never do what they could."