[Linc:]

Linc: (to Shaun) You know, I was a grom just like you once, always in the water. Totally stoked 24/7. I felt like I was tapping into something bigger. And I'll tell you, a lot of people can paddle out there and get that rush, but to be able to give them a taste of it just by watching, no, that's something different. And I never had that. Not like you...and your dad...and your grandpa. But I could see that people would pay to see those who could do it. And I made some money. And I made some mistakes. Your dad, Butchie, was one of them. I was young, and he was changing the sport. All I could see was that him being a bad boy was good for business. I thought the image was the thing. What I see now, what it's taken me years to see, is the thing itself–that's the thing. And I don't have to show them any more than that.

Mitch: To get them to buy the thing that you want to sell them.

Linc: Well, what if I'm selling them the thing for itself?

[HBO Confirms "Very Preliminary" 'Deadwood' Movie Talks]

HBO Confirms "Very Preliminary" 'Deadwood' Movie Talks

Yesterday, actor Garret Dillahunt tweeted "So uh...I'm hearing credible rumors about a #Deadwood movie." I had the same reaction to that tweet that a lot of other people seemed to have: don't even play around with this. Deadwood is serious business. Canceled in 2006 after three great seasons and a less than satisfying conclusion, there was talk at the time of two Deadwood movies to finish out David Milch's obsessive and idiosyncratic western vision. Those movies never happened.

But now HBO confirms that, yes, there has been some talk about a Deadwood movie. Really early talk, but that's better than nothing.

Here's the tweet that started the conversation.

Garret Dillahunt
@garretdillahunt

So uh....I'm hearing credible rumors about a #Deadwood movie.  #Everybodypray
8:52 PM - 12 Aug 2015

Not long afterward, HBO went on the record to confirm that, yes, there have been some talks. But don't saddle up just yet. The network's official statement is:

    In reference to Garret Dillahunt's tweet regarding the rumored Deadwood movie, there have only been very preliminary conversations.

That can mean a lot of things. Creator David Milch said in 2011 that "I still nourish the hope that we're going to get to do a little more work in that area."

Years earlier, when the plug was abruptly pulled on the show, HBO had offered to give Milch a short 6-episode fourth season to close out the series. He was unwilling to go that route. That's when the plan for a pair of two-hour movies landed on the table. But at that point resurrecting all the elements for the series — which had been a particularly expensive show to make — was evidently too difficult.

The TV landscape has changed so much now that Deadwood's fate might be very different today, and it isn't without a little bitterness that we can imagine Deadwood being more successful now than it was a decade ago. Maybe this will be a chance to see if that is actually how it would work out.

One Deadwood star, Timothy Olyphant, has been busy with another TV series for several years, but now that Justified is finished, his schedule may be more open. And Ian McShane, whose magnificently foul-mouthed character Al Swearengen was Deadwood's most attention-getting aspect, is working for HBO once again with a small but important role on the sixth season of Game of Thrones. So it isn't difficult to guess what led to some conversations. Whether they'll become more than conversations is something else altogether.

from:
http://www.slashfilm.com/deadwood-movie-talks/

[Bill:]

http://youtu.be/xSxd2L8Q8Do

On the ragged outcrop beneath the Elephant Tower we see a figure in a wetsuit  lying face down at the water's edge, with long blond hair covering the shoulders. On a road a white Mazda Miata races toward the scene. Butchie is at the wheel, Mitch is riding shotgun. Perched behind the front seats are Freddy and Bill, who hold onto each other, trying to stay in the car as it speeds over the bumps in the road. The Miata brakes and skids to a stop at a distance from the fence. Bill and Freddy climb down with difficulty and grumbles, and  everyone starts to walk down the path to the Elephant Cage while looking around.

Bill: (rubbing his neck) Yes, he informed me we should search here, at the elephant tower. Fuck if I know the exact spot! It's a bird, for Christ's sake, not a fucking GPS!

Freddy: Yeah, whose place is on a wall, stuffed and mounted! If we follow your prophetic parrot instructions, we'd be wandering around this fucking cage for the next seven years and... and get irradiated! (he looks with suspicion at the buildings in the Elephant Cage.)

Bill: Oh, this bird's got more brains then you, pal. If you'd just taken off your glasses, you would see what's under your feet, you're shuffling ... like a zombie.

Freddy: (indignantly) These are prescription glasses, for reading. They are not tinted, don't you notice?

Bill: (nods) Which proves my fucking point!

Butchie: You see anything Dad? I gotta tell you, driving a Miata without a stick is like Surfline saying the waves are double overhead and you fucking get there, it's only chest high and backed the fuck off!

Mitch: There certainly was no need for speeding. Freddy and Bill were clinging on for dear life. (Butchie chuckles) If your mother sees that the tank is almost empty, you know... Better fill it up on the way back. (after a pause) You think we should be here in the first place?

Butchie: C'mon, Dad, after all the shit that happened, Bill's parrot gets my vote. Hundred percent!

Mitch: I think Bill, as a serious aviculturist, might consider Zippy a nanday conure, a parakeet, that is a species of parrot...

Butchie: (taking a sideways glance at Mitch) Huh? A Monday parakeet? Shit, Dad, whatever, thanks for the fucking pointers!

Back on the road roars a motorcycle, raising a cloud of dust. Moana and Palaka dismount and run to the group.

Palaka: Boss, boss, only two minutes behind, here I am! Nothing to worry about, made it here in one piece!

Freddy: No, you should be dead from fucking stupidity. Look at this jackass, he got there! You think anybody's safe?

The sound of squealing car brakes followed by a loud scream "Motherfucker!" is heard from the road.

Mitch: That must be Cissy.

Butchie: That must be Tina.

Moana: (folding his arms and smiling) Haole ohana get-together. Small world.

On the road Cissy and Tina open the doors of the El Camino.



Translation: "Haole" to Hawaiians is anyone who is not an islander. "Ohana" is family, although in a wider meaning - a community of people.

My deep gratitude to SpiritontheWater for the wonderful ideas about the Further Days of JFC. These scenes should bear his signature, as the story lines are his creation. Mine is the flawed execution, changed directions and  the grammar mistakes.

--svengali2

--------------------------------------------------



Cissy and Tina, not looking at each other, join the group.

Cissy: (to no one in particular) I've learned how to downshift at fifteen.

Tina: I've learned a few things, Cissy!

Cissy: Oh, what? So now you can say "fuck me" in French?

Tina: What if I can?

From above we see a car with the roof of blue solar panels stop next to the Miata.  Dwayne jumps out of the car leaving the door open. He is wearing a t-shirt with LUDDITES printed  on the front. On his head are massive goggles with a wide black band.


Dwayne: We should go down to the water! There is someone there, I see it!

Bill: Through those things on your head? Do they also take your fucking pulse and blood pressure?

Dwayne: Uhh, why? Yes, sure.

(Bill shakes his head in disgust.)

Cissy: (looking at Mitch) Are you going to tell me what the fuck we are doing here?

Butchie: Dad?

Mitch: I didn't tell her. (to himself) What could I possibly say - a bird issued an order? I really have no idea myself why...

Tina: (suddenly proclaims very loudly) Va te faire foutre! (leaving everyone and, most of all herself, dumbfounded)

.
translation: va te faire fourtre - fuck off

----------------------------------------------------


Inside the fenced area of the Elephant Cage the military is conducting a training exercise. The silent loudspeakers fixed on lampposts around the field suddenly emit a high pitched noise, then transmit the conversation:

"We should go down to the water! There is someone there, I see it!"
"Through those things on your head? Do they also take your fucking pulse and blood pressure?"
"Uhh, why? Yes, sure.
"Are you going to tell me what the fuck we are doing here?"

Special Ops trainees lift their heads in surprise.

Outside the fence Dwayne cries in pain. He grabs and pulls off the goggles and begins to turn them in his hands, examining them.

Dwayne: I don't know how it could... Have they... are they testing an upgrade? ...We went live!



-----------------------------------------------

Somewhere in Southern California in a house overlooking the ocean, Linc is staring at the pounding surf through a big window in his room. It is sparsely furnished and looks unlived in as a hotel room. Turning away from the window, Linc sees John in a black wetsuit.

Linc: Fuck me! Tell me I'm not dreaming, John. Tell me you are not a garbled transmission, all pixelated, floating like a genie from a bottle!

John approaches Linc with an outstretched hand.
   
John: Give me a pound! (they bump their fists) We are coming...

Linc: 9-11-14, I know. Time forward... or ... are you counting backward John? Crosswise? Right to left? What's your system? Who's been teaching you math, John?

John: (agreeable) Backward and forward! Who's been teaching YOU math, Linc? (smiling) Tina learned a few things. Cissy learned how to downshift at fifteen!

Linc: Downshifting, I've heard of it, my brother. Slow down and green up, is that what you're talking about? (He motions his hand around the room) Couldn't find me a yurt with creature comforts, don't like to shit in the woods, but you won't see me eating foie gras, John.  Never developed the taste.


--------------------------------------------------
http://youtu.be/WQ-sKXuauTY


While the first minutes of the music are playing, a wide panoramic view of the ocean, endless and powerful, ever moving and changing fills the screen.

We see a marine research vessel, its masts with radars and antenna arrays and a towing platform on the aft. Cass is positioned on the deck, she's filming a pair of humpback whales.  Suddenly, the whales she sees in the viewfinder are replaced by a streaming video feed from around the Elephant Cage. Cass lowers her camera and stands quiet, looking out to the ocean.

Cass: If you are anywhere, you are everywhere.


--------------------------------------------------------

Down on the shore at the water Butchie and Moana are the first to reach a still figure in a black wetsuit. They gently turn the body. The long blond hair falls to the side uncovering the face of an unconscious young man with a scraggly, unkempt beard.

Butchie: (slipping on the wet sand and landing on his knees.) Jesus fucking Christ! (incredulously) Shaunie?

---------------------------------------------------------


Paddling out to the swell, Kai drops into the wave and sees it start to barrel above. Stalling, she drags her arm in the water to the wave's face. Then she is inside the curving liquid wall, with the foam ball running behind. A slim figure in a black wetsuit appears next to her, so close that she can almost touch it. John turns his head and smiles. Together they are riding in the arching green tunnel of the roaring water, propelled by the wild power of the ocean. The tunnel seems endless. The sunlit opening  is approaching in the distance.

--------------------------------------------------------

Beneath the Elephant Cage, down at the water.

Bill, Freddy, Mitch, Palaka and Dwayne run down the slope and surround unconscious Shaun. They stand aside to let Cissy and Tina through. Cissy, out of breath, unceremoniously pushes Moana away. She slides down to the sand and pulls Shaun up into her lap, cradling his head in her arms.

Butchie: What the fuck! He's surfing in Indonesia!

Cissy and Mitch:( together) In Hawaii!

Bill, Palaka and Freddy: In Australia!

Dwayne: (whispers) M-m-mexico.

Confused, they look at each other.

Shaun opens his eyes, sees his father's clean shaven face few inches from his own and giggles.

Shaun: Dad, you look like a... captain!

Butchie: Yeah, buddy, it's me, a fucking space ship commander!

Cissy: (scoffs) Yeah, sitting on your ass on the ground.

(Shaun's eyes close, as he again loses consciousness) Tina  is standing at Shaun's feet silent, with tears in her eyes.

----------------------------------------------------

Linc  and John walk out of the house at the ocean.

Linc: So, a bringer of news, is push coming to shove...  ahead of schedule?

John: I don't know Butchie instead!

Linc: You know, John, eight times out of ten when I jump in the pool, there is water in it!  (to himself) Shouldn't ask why, or what, or when, that will end in another mind fuck...  What the fuck am I supposed to do?

A few yards away from the house a black helicopter is slowly descending to the ground, the wind from the rotor blades is whipping up the sand. John spins around, full circle, his outstretched arm is pointing to the helicopter.

John: (smiling) Get in the fucking thing and drive Linc!

Linc: Fucking Uber now sends helos on request? Who's your friend John - Camp or Kalanick? I'm guessing it's both.

John: (tilting his head) Uber doesn't ring a bell, Butchie! Camp and Kalanick are not part of the story!


"Eight times out of ten when I jump in the pool there's water in it" and "Get in the fucking thing and drive" are direct quotes from David Milch presentations,  - a commentary to the Ep.10 of JFC and a talk at The Writers Guild Foundation in 2006.


--------------------------------------------------------

['John From Cincinnati' is not on HBO Go or Amazon Prime, and it should be]

'John From Cincinnati' is not on HBO Go or Amazon Prime, and it should be

Darren Franich, Twitter: @DarrenFranich


Entertainment Weekly, Apr 23, 2014

So HBO is coming to Amazon. This is good news, I think, insofar as anything that makes the great shows of the HBO Renaissance available to more people is good news. I'm a TV obsessive of a certain age — definition of "a certain age" freely covering anyone who remembers when "TV is better than movies" was an argument that you had to make, when TV-on-DVD was the technological forefront, and when the notion of "downloading" a TV show didn't seem needlessly wasteful of valuable hard drive space.

Like several other Of A Certain Age TV Obsessives, I grow alarmed at the idea of the rising generation and what Anne Helen Peterson called the New Netflix Canon. Netflix is a delivery system for quality television; it is not a delivery system for all quality television. The promise of the DVD era was that everything would become available to everyone; the fear of the streaming era is that some things are slightly less available to most everyone, and the slightly-less-available things vanish in the mist. There's nothing wrong with new canons. Kids who love Breaking Bad don't need to genuflect at the altar of The Sopranos, anymore than people who loved The Wild Bunch needed to crosslink that love towards The Searchers.

But to move this into the realm of straw men and rampant generalizations: I find myself having more conversations lately with people of all ages who have never seen The Sopranos, who are perpetually about to start watching The Wire, who will maybe only consider watching Rome when I tells them it's like Game of Thrones without dragons. There are too many TV shows to watch; it makes more sense to watch shows that people are currently talking about; most of those shows are on Netflix; new things are fundamentally more interesting to most people than old things; hence, nobody ever gets around to Deadwood.

So again, HBO is coming to Amazon: Hooray! Amazon Prime deep-divers might find their way to the two-season wonder Enlightened, or to The Pacific, a.k.a. the Empire Strikes Back to Band of Brothers' New Hope. But there's an important piece of the greater HBO puzzle missing here. John From Cincinnati is not coming to Amazon Prime. Sure, you can buy individual episodes via the Instant Video service...which means that the entire run of John From Cincinnati costs the equivalent of two months of an Amazon Prime membership, which is why people aren't buying individual episodes of anything anymore. More crucially, John From Cincinnati is not currently available on HBO Go — and, when I contacted HBO, a representative had no specifics on the show's future on the streaming service.

Now, John From Cincinnati is not really in anyone's canon. It's barely remembered except as a variable punchline for whatever successful TV isn't. (In that regard and no others, it was the original Low Winter Sun.) It was about surfing, which probably scared off people who don't care about surfing, but it's also about surfing in the weirdest way possible, which I assume didn't sit well with surfing obsessives. (It's the Friday Night Lights problem, except with more pantheistic allegory.) It is the most inscrutable work from a barely scrutable creator. It is hard to say what, precisely, happens on the show. (The slowest season of Mad Men looks like Scandal by comparison.) Whenever I tell people to watch the show, they inevitably ask me something to the effect of "Is that actually good?" in a manner that reminds me that "goodness" on television is still fundamentally binary ("Is this more worth watching than whatever else I need to watch?"). It's hard to tell people that they need to watch a show that is guaranteed to frustrate them.

And yet.

John From Cincinnati is essential viewing for anyone who cares about television, partially because it challenges every aspect of conventional wisdom about the medium and mainly because it is so willfully hard to pin down. TV has trended faster and more obviously genre-oriented in the last five years: fantasy, horror, political thriller, a show about detectives called True Detective. Even the new batches of streaming shows from various content providers feels more plucky than experimental: They're all set in New York or Los Angeles, or they have some kind of fantastical "hook." (He's a slacker ghostbuster! The apocalypse is happening, and Jamie Kennedy is a clown!)

John From Cincinnati has none of these things, though not for lack of trying. The simplest way to describe it is: "What if Jesus Christ appeared today and decided to spread his message mostly vis a vis a family of surfers?" But that doesn't really capture what makes the show interesting.

David Milch doesn't really write dialogue so much as he writes glorious musings, which makes his best work feel a bit like an extended tangent. John From Cincinnanti is the Tangent-As-Purpose. The lead character (played by Austin Nichols with admirably awful hair) might be an alien or a robot or the reincarnation of Christ or the reincarnation of Jim Carrey in The Majestic. The show is initially constructed around his interactions with the Yost family, a clan of surfing royalty.

But the show quickly expands its ensemble to include a whole host of characters who could be termed "misfits" if the series didn't strive so hard to imbue their remarkably smallscale dramas with depth. It's a show about drug addiction and repressed trauma, a show about loss but also one of the most optimistic dramas to ever come out of HBO. Luiz Guzman is on the show, barely. There is an incredible scene that requires no context wherein former '90s teen star Luke Perry has a serious conversation with former '90s teen star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, and all you really have to notice about this scene is that they are styled to look eerily identical, for reasons that are either really important or not important at all:

Am I selling this show? Is it enough to just say there was never anything else like it, that the show's anti-narrative anti-gravity makes much better TV dramas look a bit too grounded by comparison? John From Cincinnati rides a singular wave between camp and profundity, between navel-imploding indulgence and brainbending genius; if The Sopranos was the Godfather of TV in the '00s, then John From Cincinnati was the El Topo. (Imagine a Roger Corman movie written by Harold Pinter.) It's a part of TV history. It's available on DVD — cheap!

But the future isn't in DVDs. The future is online; the future is in the zeroes and ones; the future is in the Word, and the Word is in Cass's camera. Don't know what that means? Me neither, and I've watched the damn show! Clearly we need to figure this out together.

from:
http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/04/23/john-from-cincinnati-hbo-go-amazon-nowhere/

[David Milch Extends Overall Deal With HBO]

David Milch Extends Overall Deal With HBO

By NELLIE ANDREEVA
Wednesday April 2, 2014 @ 10:23am PDT

EXCLUSIVE: There are few relationships between a network and creator that have been as enduring as the one between David Milch and HBO. Now it has been extended with a new overall deal, which will keep Milch exclusive to HBO in television for two more years, bringing his tenure at the pay cable network to 14 years. Milch has been at HBO since 2002, when he embarked on developing his first project there, cult drama Deadwood, and under an overall deal since 2005. The relationship has yielded five pilots, three of which — Deadwood, John From Cincinnati and Luck – went to series. Milch's most recent project at HBO was drama pilot The Money, about hbo45__130924185923-275x112wealth and corruption among the super elite, which focused on an American mogul and patriarch (Brendan Gleeson) who wields power and influence to expand his media empire and control his family. HBO opted not to go forward with the pilot, co-starring Nathan Lane and featuring Ray Liotta and John Carroll Lynch, but the network remains very much in the David Milch business. He has other projects in the works, including a feature-length adaptation of a William Faulkner novel.

from:
http://www.deadline.com/2014/04/david-milch-extends-overall-deal-with-hbo/

[The Money - David Milch Drama nears Pilot Order at HBO]

 The Money - David Milch Drama nears Pilot Order at HBO

Posted by Babar Suhail at Friday, July 26, 2013

David Milch is close to returning to HBO 's primetime. The writer behind HBO's Deadwood, John From Cincinnati and Luck has another project that is close to a pilot green light at the pay cable network, where he is under a deal. HBO's Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler addressed the project, which Milch is executive producing with Art and John Linson, during the network's TCA session today. "It's a look at a dynastic New York media family, a look at power, the complexity of modern urban life in a classic Milchian voice," Plepler said. The script, winch has been in the works for a while, "may go into production soon and we're talking casting," Lombardo said. I've learned that Justin Chadwick is attached to direct the potential pilot for the project, which is titled The Money.

Source: deadline

FROM:
http://www.spoilertv.com/2013/07/the-money-david-milch-drama-nears-pilot.html

[Why We Can't Look Away: David Milch on L.A.'s Heart of Darkness]

Why We Can't Look Away: David Milch on L.A.'s Heart of Darkness


Hard bodies. Dead bodies. Sunny L.A. is known for both—and for our ongoing fascination with what lurks in the shadows.


Posted on 7/18/2013 9:00:00 AM by David Milch


"Though the tourism department won't soon be putting it in brochures, crime in Los Angeles has always held a certain dark allure. Maybe it's the long shadow of noir that makes our bad guys seem glamorous; maybe it's that so often the perp in the mug shot is familiar for his decadent TV smile. Could be that in L.A. we'll take our mysteries unsolved, keeping the threat loose, turning crime into legend: the Black Dahlia, Nicole Brown Simpson. Crime reminds us that Tinseltown can be a hard, messy place where dreams get carved up and gutter out, providing some satisfying contrast to the paradise promised in ads; under all those gentle palm fronds, this is a city of devils.

Sometimes the devil is us. Beneath that California nice, a little killer lives in our chests who would knock our neighbor's teeth in for the noise of his mower. We're just animals in sunglasses, still subject to the jungle's fear and anger and desire as well as worse motives that separate us from simpler beasts—envy, bitterness, regret.

Most of us have a measure of self-control that reins in that little killer, stops us from looting RadioShacks and crushing our enemies in a bloody spree. But that little killer still demands a workout.

Cop and courtroom shows get us only so far. There's a puzzler's diversion in watching the mystery unpacked. But in stories and in natural life, what often engages us on a more cathartic level than the gory details of how one person manages to kill another are his reasons why.

We all know that the laws governing our little killer's choices are only nominally related to laws on the books. The real forces that control our urges owe far more to our moral code, the individual disambiguation of right from wrong that we excavate over a lifetime.

Our favorite criminals are the ones working not purely from animal urge, but operating from that personal code—outlaws doing bad for their own good reasons: Michael Corleone, Tony Soprano, Omar from The Wire. We know that a man's specific sense of justice is often more complex and thoughtful than rules applied to the masses could ever manage, and watching someone live in subtle negotiation with broad laws excites our understanding that life is always more complicated than governance would allow. When the criminal acts in defense of what he believes, he becomes someone we can understand, even root for.

In real life, even in real Los Angeles, we might cheer to see the criminal wind up in chains—safer that way. But in our imaginations we're untouchable and thereby free to let guilt and innocence grow as thorny and complex as they truly are. Having the dimmest sense of our own capacity for bad behavior, we ought to not be comfortable with cartoon notions of white hats and black. Secretly we wonder whether guilt is just a matter of perspective, that if we knew the whole story, breaking the law would seem like justice."

David Milch, a TV writer and producer, created Deadwood and Luck and was a co-creator of NYPD Blue.

from:http://www.lamag.com/crimeinla/2013/07/18/why-we-cant-look-away-david-milch-on-las-heart-of-darkness

Los Angeles Magazine

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sno/sno-20130107-0908-feature_interview_-_david_milch-048.mp3

[End of 'Luck' and Racing's Future]

End of 'Luck' and Racing's Future

By JIM SQUIRES
March 17, 2012, 10:45 am

As has happened many times, a dead horse has set back the hopes of thoroughbred racing of ever again becoming a major sport.

This time, it was a movie horse that flipped over backward at Santa Anita last week before the filming of the HBO series "Luck," a marvelous character study of the industry that some optimists hoped would help attract new people to the sport.

These same aspirations have been dashed repeatedly in recent years when horses competing in the Breeders' Cup and in Triple Crown races broke down and had to be euthanized before television audiences considerably larger than the half-million people who were still watching "Luck" after seven episodes.

The show was canceled Wednesday after a third horse died during production, but "Luck" was probably imperiled anyway because the writing and production genius of David Milch was lost on most of its audience.

As usual in the wake of a highly publicized death of a racehorse, the sport's critics are gloating while the leaderless industry hunkers down, thankful that "Luck," too, has broken down before it could do more image damage. Frank Stronach, the owner of Santa Anita and one of the world's leading breeders, said he planned to meet with the show's producers in an effort to influence a more appealing presentation of his businesses.

Strong doses of reality do not go down easy. But the truth is, racing has owners a lot worse than the character Ace Bernstein, trainers even more irascible and uncommunicative than Turo Escalante and bettors just as appalling as the Forays. These were our people, like it our not, and expecting Milch to sugarcoat it is as ridiculous as believing competitive athletes won't get injured before your eyes or that you can be around animals for a long time without watching one of them die. When a racecar driver is killed in public, it only draws a bigger crowd. When a horse dies in the hands of a human, it drives people away. I know a woman who quit watching "Luck" after the first episode because it showed a horse that broke down.

As any horseman knows, sometimes a scared horse flips over backward and hits its head on the ground. It has nothing to do with incompetent handling or inhumane treatment. Sometimes horses do it on their own — not out of fear, but while playing or racing with one another.

If the future of horse racing depends on the prevention of fractured skulls and broken leg bones, racing might as well shut down today. The fact is, the thoroughbred racing industry is not going to have any luck or much of a future until it quits turning a blind eye to its major problem — drugs. If two other horses had not already broken down during the filming of "Luck," a filly's flipping over on the way back to its stall would not have halted production. Both were put down after performing on the track in racing scenes, not full-fledged races but the shorter sprints used to stitch a movie race together. And both injuries were because of bones no longer capable of the stress they had just endured.

On the day "Luck" was canceled, the industry was again ballyhooing the return of "the sale horse" and the extraordinary profits connected with $500,000 and $800,000 prices being paid for horses at a Florida 2-year-old in training auction. Barely 24 months old and younger, these horses invariably had earned their value by running an eighth of a mile in 10 1/2 seconds or less, or a quarter-mile in 20 seconds and change. They did this after weeks of training for that one run down the track at speeds and levels of stress never again required for a successful racing career.

As is routine, some of them had probably already been inducted into a regimen of a diuretic and performance-enhancing drug known to leach calcium out their bones every time it is administered, even though a horse's bones do not mature until age 6.

Because of unsoundness, Animal Kingdom, the winner of the 2011 Derby, has run only one allowance race since, and this week he was benched again for at least three months while he recovers from a stress fracture. Already this year some of the most promising young aspirants for the 2012 Triple Crown have been sidelined by stress fractures. And there by the wayside along with them are all the reform efforts to curtail the industry's obsession with speed.

It is a shame that Milch, a knowledgeable horse owner who loves the game, and the impressive cadre of expert advisers he had assembled, didn't get far enough along to deal with the drug issue, along with a few other horror stories that need telling. Then there would be less mystery about why our retired racehorses can't even stand the stress of a short movie run and a greater understanding of why things need to be changed.

from: NYT Rail Racing Blog
http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/end-of-luck-and-racings-future/

[Any "lucky" guess about the upcoming show?]

Any "lucky" guess about the upcoming show?

A humorist Dave Barry used to suggest one name in every news-story he published. Some were hilarious.

This is the whole story as it was written on the now extinct JFC Bulletin Board on HBO website.
All the episodes are now under one roof, so anyone could read here what had occupied our minds and imagination after, on August 13 of 2007, "John from Cincinnati" was canceled.

The same episodes could also be found in two blogs here:

http://jfcwritings.blogspot.com/

http://furtherdaysofjfc2.blogspot.com/

What are you watching and reading?

[News, news to amuse and weird news]

News, news to amuse and weird news

[Salt on a melon]

Salt on a melon

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand
- Plato

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash
- Leonard Cohen

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance
- Carl Sandburg

Trish, the sound in the videos is breaking up, that was not happening when I first posted them. Is that my computer (although I have FIOs), YouTube or is that something else?
Would you, please, check?

[That is the last episode that was being written on HBO BB before we were thrown out. Re-posted here for everyone's convenience - in case someone wants to continue that episode or simply refresh in their mind where the characters were left. The rest of the story is here:http://furtherdaysofjfc2.blogspot.com/]

That is the last episode that was being written on HBO BB before we were thrown out. Re-posted here for everyone's convenience - in case someone wants to continue that episode or simply refresh in their mind where the characters were left.

The rest of the story is here:http://furtherdaysofjfc2.blogspot.com/


My apologies for the plain text, it will take some time to work on bolds and itallics.

Finished! (beautifying, that is, bolds, etc.)

[A playground for anyone who sees our characters in roman togas or spacesuits, tomorrow or a thousand years ago, in a spoof or in an ancient tragedy. Tell it as you see it, keep them alive.]

A playground for anyone who sees our characters in roman togas or spacesuits, tomorrow or a thousand years ago, in a spoof or in an ancient tragedy. Tell it as you see it, keep them alive.

[Huntington Beach live cam.]

Huntington Beach live cam.

http://www.hbcams.com/live/

Maximize and enjoy. Wish it were in color.

Or these:

http://www.hbcams.com/index.html
http://www.hbcams.com/cam1.html

[The story continues.]

The story continues.