We're all winners...

Five-thirty came far too early this morning, after Foolish Pleasure forced me(shamed me actually) to stay up and watch the Makybe Diva Stakes last night. It was definitely worth my wretched state this morning, as the race was a brilliant display of fitness and acceleration. She was kind enough to hold my hand through incessant questions and remedial schooling in Australian racing. Thanks.

My dogs, disinterested in my poor planning, demanded that I uphold my end of our bargain and escort them during their unending ritual of showing our neighbors exactly who owns their lawn. I've tried just letting them go off on their own to do this and while they do come back, the neighbors are less than understanding.

Weekend Hussler, off at even money I think, was racing for the third time in three weeks and for the second time in the same span against Light Fantastic, who beat him in their first tilt. Proving, yet again to our woefully timid establishment here, that horses really are born to run.

A good friend of mine, although a zoomie (see def. 3)not an altogether bad chap, was recently elected as the president of his condo board. He has been telling me some pretty amusing stories about the state of affairs at Del Boca Vista and the plain idiocy of the board when it comes to matters of action. Layers of beurocracy and tedium just to hire an inspector and then nobody wants to assume responsibility for anything. And this is just a bloody condo board!

Makes me less sanguine about the prospects of our Napoleons cooperating on anything.

Fairplex Park will soon announce that they are changing their name to Pedroza Downs after Martin won 7 of the 13 races yesterday. Would have had the record setting eighth in the night cap but he was shut off at the rail in the stretch. Damn fine effort anyway!

Your intrepid reporter, 'Scoop' Winston, was at it again yesterday. The Self Appointed Fan Committee has their contest going and I thought I would take a leave of absence from the Society of Harbingers of Invective and Turpitude, and actually pull on the rope instead of pointing out the mechanical inefficiencies in the effort.

I called the marketing department of a certain track and after identifying myself as a blogger in search of information I found the other end of the line curiously dead. Since phone service can be spotty, I called back and encountered the same break in transmission at a similar point in conversation. Comcast must have been johnny on the spot with their repair crews because after calling a third time and identifying myself as a local businessman looking to buy some ad space at the track, I was immediately transferred to the VP of marketing. Who knew?

Since I made it through by other than honest means, I thought I would take a flanking approach to the questions and won't identify the track or the exec(call him VP); he was actually quite willing to talk and answer questions.

I tried to get a breakdown on On track handle vs. ADW receipts but apparently that needs to go through the legal department, since it is not publicly disclosed. Management is unwilling to spend the money required to make a genuine thrust into the market and seems dysfunctional in the meager attempts they do make. VP ruefully admitted that they were unable to accomplish even the seemingly simple task of taking down the highway billboards promoting the big race that ended three weeks ago. Every track is wary of every other track and trying to scratch away what they can from each other so in the end you have the dysfunctional and squishy mess we are sitting in.

I asked about the possibility of making entry into the track free but that was apparently tried and discarded after such an attempt did not produce a marked increase in attendance. When I asked how it was tried, VP stated that Labor Day 2006 and Labor Day 2007 showed no significant change in the number of fans. Since management is unwilling to spend money on the promotional side, I wonder how many people were aware that attendance was in fact free and the fact that it was on Labor Day is not a good indicator of impact since those people are coming to the track anyway. I did not mention this to VP, he after all, I assume, has a degree in marketing and should know this-he did not have a background in horse racing and was unfamiliar with the sport before he started his current assignment.

The one thing that I found glaringly objectionable is that he had no knowledge of the TBA or the Self Appointed Fan Committee or blogs in general; not to mention this putative wonder. They were not sending a representative to NTRA marketing summit in Vegas either.

In what I find a hysterical milestone to my bloviating and general lexical diarrhea, this marks my 100th post. What is tragic is that I have been at this slightly less than War Pass or Big Brown and nobody is offering me a stud deal.

Where's the love?