Derby day


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It's one of the few sporting events I make a point of watching. I don't follow racing so I never know anything about the horses that will be running. I always get a kick out of the theme song, though it's understandable that they bowdlerize the lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v34ofzcNR6A

If I'm reading this right, Union Rags is the favorite at 9 to 2. But I like the name Bodemeister better, so he's my pick at 7 to 1.

http://www.kentuckyderby.com/

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My pick is I'll Have Another..12 to 1

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My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night (1853)

Words & music by Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864)

1.

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,

'Tis summer, the darkies are gay,

The corn top's ripe and the meadows in the bloom,

While the birds make music all the day.

The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,

All merry, all happy and bright:

By'n by Hard Times comes a knocking at the door,

Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!

CHORUS

Weep no more, my lady,

Oh! weep no more to-day!

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky Home,

For the old Kentucky Home far away.

2.

They hunt no more for possum and the coon

On the meadow, the hill, and the shore,

They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,

On the bench by the old cabin door.

The day goes by like a shadow o're the heart,

With sorrow where all was delight:

The time has come when the darkies have to part,

Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night!

(CHORUS)

3.

The head must bow and the back will have to bend,

Wherever the darkey may go:

A few more days, and the trouble all will end

In the field where the sugar-canes grow.

A few more days for to tote the weary load,

No matter, 'twill never be light,

A few more days till we totter on the road,

Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night!

(CHORUS)

Sad story...he died at 37 in an alcoholic haze...

American Experience on KET profiles "My Old Kentucky Home" author, Stephen Foster

For Release: April 9, 2001

On July 4, 1826, America celebrated its 50th birthday, and a great songwriter was born. The boy, Stephen Foster, who began his life on that auspicious day, would leave an imprint on the cultural landscape of the emerging nation that would never be forgotten.

Set to a lively score of 19th-century popular music, American Experience "Stephen Foster," airing on KET Monday, April 23 at 9/8 p.m. CT, tells the tragic story of America's first great songwriter, the man who wrote "Camptown Races," "Beautiful Dreamer," "Oh! Susanna," "My Old Kentucky Home" and scores of other American favorites. The one-hour program charts his meteoric rise and his sad, lonely decline; outlines the prolific output of his 20s and his difficulties writing in his 30s; and celebrates the impact his music had on American popular culture. Joe Morton narrates.

Stephen Collins Foster showed remarkable talents from early childhood. By age 10, he was performing popular comic songs with a group of local boys. When he was 18, he began composing blackface minstrel songs--the melodies that would make him famous. Sung in coarse black dialect, blackface music was rowdy, raunchy and racist, dehumanizing the African Americans whom the songs were supposedly about.

Gradually, Foster grew more concerned with his lyrics. In years when debate about slavery was intensifying, he became increasingly sensitive to the suffering of African Americans. Although he continued to use dialect, he began to show black Americans greater respect in his lyrics. During this period of songwriting, Frederick Douglass claimed that Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" awakened "the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish."

In 1855, the death of both his parents and one of his brothers in quick succession depressed Foster, who was already drinking too much. In 1857, desperately short of cash, he sold the rights to all his songs for a pittance; some of them he priced at a dollar apiece. The washed-up songwriter spent his last years in an alcoholic haze. He died at age 37, leaving little behind save a worn leather purse containing 38 cents and a scrap of paper on which he'd scribbled a lyric fragment: "dear friends and gentle hearts," it said.

American Experience: "Stephen Foster," produced by WITF/Harrisburg, is closed-captioned for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Viewers can find out more about programming on KET by visiting the KET Web site at http://www.ket.org, a Kentucky.com affiliate.

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What kind of name is Union Rags anyway? I'll tell you what it makes me think of, in the Old Testament there's rule somewhere about how after the wedding night the newlyweds are supposed to publicly display the bed sheets to confirm that the little minx was in fact a virgin. If they were to give said sheets a proper name, what could be a better choice than Union Rags? Ick.

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My pick is I'll Have Another..12 to 1

Pretty good call by me!!

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My pick is I'll Have Another..12 to 1

Pretty good call by me!!

Indeed. My guy came in second, but led for most of the race. Yeah yeah, I know what counts is which one crosses the finish line first...damn we're pretty good, we picked the top two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxAX74gM8DY

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Yep...couple big players we are lol...

I remember in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress that Heinlein explains through one of the "loonies" that you bet the leading apprentice jockey to show and you will make money at the track.

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I'll Have Another is a Canadian horse! And I couldn't have named him better myself.

Hey you guys gotta win at something - law of large numbers! Ya know even a blind squirrel can find a nut...10044046.jpg

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I read that the name "I'll have another" did not have anything to do with a "drink" of any kind.

Rather the owner of the horse would respond with that phrase when his wife would ask him if he wanted another cookie after dinner.

'I'll have another'

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Fun fact: the Canadian owner of the Derby winner , like someone else I have heard of, is a longtime Californian now, who was an undergrad in a Canadian university, aiming for a doctorate in phiosophy. He took his degree in the US and became a professor. Tiring of the academic life, he went into business and got filthy rich.

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  • 1 month later...

What kind of name is Union Rags anyway?

Neither Bodemeister nor I'll Have Another made it to the post, and the original Derby favorite took the Belmont.

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