Keep your day job....

At work the other day between calls a couple of us in our row at the call center had a conversation about karoke. I recomended an indie film I had seen involving the same subject. Of course I couldn't think of the name of the film at the time and trying to describe it just brought blank stares. Needless to say I finally had time to look it up on the net. Jackpot (2001) written by Michael and Mark polish, directed by Michael, and starring Jon Gries as Sonny Holiday, Garrett Morris is exceptional as his manager, Daryl Hannah (friend of the polish bros) Peggy Lipton, Adam Baldwin etc.
Here's a summary: In a beat up pink chrysler, Sonny & Lester (Morris) travel the karoke circut across the desolate western landscape making their stops in sweltering, barely habitable towns to perform in contests held by a variety of swanky lounges and honky-tonks. This is sonny's"big tour" where fame and fortune are just a "pop-song" away. The tone of the film hums with a sense of estrangement, solomnity and many disappointments, but juxtaposed with sonny's character, who takes himself very seriously while donned in his fringed jacket and cowboy boots(picture Dwight Yokum before he could afford the nudie jacket) crooning to Billy Idol's Eyes Without a Face, you just have to break out laughing and laughing--til you start feeling embarassed for Sonny, but not for long because sonny is a prick-- in a way, the karoke theme lends a portion of humility to the otherwise cranky and ego-centric Sonny.

Like the other films by the polish brothers (Twin Falls Idaho, Northfork) , this one is really about relationships. Relationships between sonny and lester and the people sonny has estranged. The dialogue is rich as in the other films and Lester has some very sage comments throughout. The drama culminates as Sonny reunites with his brother, but I can't remember if he completely gives up his notion of fame as a karoke cowboy. I do know that they end up with a heck of a lot of miracle cleaner they haven't been able to unload.

Paint the Horse

Paint the Horse a horse blog at journal space, here's a cowboy blog, comment's later... here's a nice blog about ranch life in general called The Long Journey home

While you were sleeping...

While you were sleeping... the afore menioned link is where i had been sporadically posting whenever i had internet access and to keep my account active at journalspace. A few posts there track some of the goings on with the horses and myself--and my dog Amy. Rather than re post everything here at horsephiles, the journalspace entries can be referred to if you are really curious about the last year and why the horsephiles entries are far and few between

I do want to say a few things here about Amy, our once family dog, (kids are grown and on their own), now my constant companion & with me through the saga of my move up north and back. Amy has had the misfortune to be afflicted with a tumor on her belly which began to make its presence last july and has continued to grow at an alarming rate. The vet says that at her age she probably would not survive an operation. Performing a biopsy would be a moot point, for cancer or not, it's mere size will begin to hamper her quality of life. When this happens, or if she stops eating, or if she starts developing neurological or respiratory problems, that will be the time to let her go and kindly put her down. She is being treated with steroids to keep her comfortable.We were hoping that the steroid therapy might shrink the mass but it hasn't. The prednisone has been helping for quite a while but will not be able to keep her symptoms under control forever. For now, I just make the most of every moment I spend with her. I wish everyday could be Amy day, but since I work in an office she can't come with me. Instead she prefers to stay faithfully in my room until I get home. She does get all the peanut butter biscuts she wants, she gets to come to the barn with me on barn days and hang out, which she loves--helping with the barn chores or snoozing in the car if she gets too tired, and she gets a lot more hamburgers than she used to.

CANTER Ohio: Providing retiring racehorses with opportunities for new careers after the finish line.

I stop at this site once in a while when I wanna play, "hmm, if I were horse-shopping, which horse would I buy." CANTER Ohio: Providing retiring racehorses with opportunities for new careers after the finish line. I've always been impressed by Canter's determination to place ex racehorses in new homes and careers after their usefulness at the track is spent--at usually such an early age too. I read somewhere that among the various breeds of horses, the ones most likely to end up in the kill pen are first, thoroghbreds, then arabians, then something like standard breds--I think that's after they've (the standard breds) gone from track, to hauling an amish buggy around day in and day out for a couple of years til they're near death anyway, and arabs, well, don't really need to explain why they end up there, but thoroghbreds-- so few out of the many prospects make the grade or bring in the cash enough to justify the feed and vet bills. Then, the same as arabs, thoroghbreds are just too high on the maintenance scale for people who want a pleasure horse. The hunter-jumpers and dressage junkies don't just want a plain old thoroughbred anymore, as the warmblood, or any kind of european sporthorse is the thing to have. But I, like some others ,still happen to enjoy thoroughbreds. I love their personalities and their sensitivity and I get sad when I hear about their so often unhappy fates, like one example our local canter points out in the trainer section adoption ads:

SOLD - Big Time Sentence - At the SugarCreek, OH auction kill pen -- His fate is unknown!! Please help us stop this from happening by donating money to our "Pal Joey" fund to facilitate the purchase of these "at risk" horses.
If you go to that page and see the picture of Big Time perhaps the sad truth will hit home that these quality animals end up meeting this kind of fate. Such a waste, well, I hope he tastes good to someone in France or makes a nice handbag for someone -- our local canter is asking for foster care volunteers, especially for the Beulah park horses. Now you bet that if i were lucky enough to have my own successful horse operation, I would always reserve at least one stall for a foster or rescue project. To me that goes with the territory--to offer something back to the equine community that I derive so much joy and happiness from and was probably benefiting financially . Even if I was only breaking even, I would be compelled to make that small sacrifice. What the heck is an extra ration of grain and hay going to set you back, you know?

I personally loved the jeans

I found my original post and yes, Brokeback Mountain is included in Still Wild. Why, of course Mc Murtrey and Ossana would win for best screenplay adaptation from blah blah blah, whatever the category. So I had to check and see who this Annie prude, Annie prew, whoever the heck they were talking about was, so I checked my old post--here's the link--and have been digging around at barnes and noble reading the reviews of Still Wild (click my link toward the bottom of the page to go to barnes and noble, don't know what happened to the thumbnail of the book though)

Ohhh...that's who they were talking about. Annie Proulx. Well, ok how could I have forgotten that. Ms Proulx who won the pulizer prize for Shipping News is another of my fav's and for a really great read check out her latest or last to latest That old Ace in the Hole. And no, ha, ha, ha, despite the title, it is not a sequel to Brokeback Mountain.
Fear not.

Still in limbo

Haven't posted in so long that Still Wild, Mc Murtry's collection of stories from the west that Id featured is fashionable once again...I believe Brokeback Mountain is included in this collection. I'd check for sure but the book is packed away or got thrown out by accident when I moved. At any rate, Still worth reading.