Bad Luck

At the risk of putting my hoof in my mouth, I'm going to take an unpopular position. I know it's unpopular because Facebook has been all a twitter about it (notice the subtle yet deliberate blending of two social networks in the same sentence).

I don't think HBO should have cancelled Luck. At least not for the reason they did.

Because three horses have had to be put down since the series began shooting at Santa Anita Racetrack, HBO decided to cancel the series. I don't think that's the real reason, but more on that in a minute.

It's unrelentingly heartbreaking that three horses died in the making of the show. But sad as it is, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the series that killed them. However you'd never know that if you've been online today.

Judging from the reaction on the interwebs, there seems to be a lot of agreement that Hollywood should never make a movie with horses in it again.

Goodbye Seabiscuit. So long Secretariat. I'll never forget you Black Beauty. You were a good friend Flicka.

War Horse? That's just crazy talk.

If that's going to be the policy going forward, it's also going to rule out westerns. And movies like Ben Hur. Maybe all those extras can pull the chariots instead.

I completely understand the emotion behind the anger. Everyone loves horses. My wife's family used to stable and breed thoroughbred race horses for years at their ranch in Northern California (important safety tip: never walk behind a thoroughbred). But the fact is it's not like the 40's and 50's when studios were using trip wires to make horses fall. In this latest incident, the horse got spooked while being walked back to the stable, reared up and fell over backwards injuring it's head and breaking it's neck. The first two suffered permanent leg injuries during racing scenes. Just like horses do sometimes in real races.

In those scenes the horses were being ridden by professional jockeys, not actors or production assistants. And the entire shoot was being monitored and supervised by the Humane Society. Here's what HBO had to say about it:

"We maintained the highest safety standards throughout production, higher in fact than any protocols existing in horseracing anywhere with many fewer incidents than occur in racing or than befall horses normally in barns at night or pastures. While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won't in the future. Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision."

I tend to believe them when they say they took every precaution possible. There's really no upside for them to have horses dying on set.

I'm a little more skeptical about it being a "difficult decision" to cancel the series.

HBO ordered a second season of the show after the pilot aired. While they were excited about it, the viewers weren't. And with Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte and Dennis Farina as stars of the show, and Michael Mann and David Milch as producers, they had a very expensive flop on their hands. A flop they'd just renewed.

So the horse accidents gave them an out and they took it. This isn't to say they don't genuinely feel awful about what happened. I'm sure they do. At the same time, I imagine they also feel a certain amount of relief that they were able to cut their losses.

The tagline for the series is "Leave nothing to chance." Unfortunately even when you take every precaution, in Hollywood, as in horse racing, that's not always possible.

Next

On the menu bar at the top of this blog, just like every other Blogger blog, is a nav link like the one above (although not nearly as pixelated). It's kind of like Amazon's "You might also be interested in..." feature. It's the eHarmony of blog sites. It's the match.com of blogspot.com

You see where I'm going here.

I don't know if you've ever clicked on it, but I have a few times. I'm not quite sure what algorithm design they use to make the connection between one blog and the next.

But let me just say this. If you like ROTATION AND BALANCE - and what's not to like? - the "next blog" button tells me that, for reasons only it knows, you might also be interested in:

A game of Checkers

A friend of mine used to say you weren't in a real city unless you could do two things: jaywalk and hail a cab.

The first time I was in New York I realized, as everyone instantly does, that this was not only a real city, but the real city.

And one of the best and most memorable things about it were the ginormous yellow Checker cabs.

By the thousands, these tank-sized cabs would roam up and down the avenues, looking great, burning gas and picking up passengers. Once inside, you were met with the cavernous back seat. It made you feel like you were driving in your living room. Or more often than anyone needs to think about, bedroom.

I remember flying into JFK one time and sharing a Checker cab into the city. They were built for sharing - they had an additional backwards-facing fold-down bench seat in the back so about 8 or 9 people could fit comfortably into one of these babies.

It made getting into the city fairly painless, financially speaking.

Eventually the Checkers, like the dinosaurs, became extinct - not because they were taken out by a meteor, but because they couldn't adapt to the changing times. And by changing times I mean gas prices.

So instead, in their place today we have fuel-efficient, technologically-advanced, non-polluting, dull-as-hell, puny little Prius cabs. They barely carry four people. None of them comfortably. And luggage? That's just crazy talk.

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If you know anything about me - and really, what haven't I shared on here - you know political correctness isn't one of my strong suits. I think the Big Apple should bring back the inefficient, polluting, technologically outdated, passenger-pleasing Checker cabs.

Earth Day, Ed Begley and Al Gore be damned.

Bumper. Car.

With cars, as with life, sometimes you're the bumper and sometimes you're the bumpee. In this picture, my car is the bumpee.

While I was stopped in a strip mall parking lot near where I live, questioning what this beat up Chevy Tahoe angled in front of me was going to do, the Tahoe gave me the answer. It backed up into me. No one was hurt, my car was still drivable, and the Tahoe driver was insured. All good right?

Not so fast.

As we were exchanging information, the woman's husband who apparently worked at one of the businesses in the mall - and didn't see the accident - came out and joined us. They were both just as apologetic as could be. They had a short conversation between themselves, and I happened to overhear him say to her, "You're going to lose your license over this."

Clearly there were implications and incidents I wasn't privy to. By the way, Implications & Incidents - great band. Saw them at the Roxy in '98 (Note to Rich: you're welcome).

After apologizing again for hitting me, the husband asked me how I wanted to handle it. I said I wanted to go through my insurance company, but he had another idea. He said, "If you're open to it, I'd like to pay out of pocket for it. I have the cash, and I know a body shop you can go to."

Sounds perfectly legit - I know, right?

You know what body shops are like in California? I'll give you a clue: everyone has one.

Even though every instinct I had was screaming not to do it, I told him I was willing to get an estimate on the repair and bring it back to him. He could look it over and give me an answer that night. If he agreed, he'd have to meet me at the bank in the morning to get a cashier's check made out to the body shop.

Here's what I learned: in my next life I want to own an auto body shop. The estimate for this seemingly minor damage was $1703.00. After I brought it back and he saw the total he grumbled a bit, then said he'd talk to his wife and call me that evening.

When the phone rang at 8:30, I was frankly a little surprised since I figured I'd never hear from them again and wind up going through insurance anyway.

It was all very civil, she apologized again for hitting me, and said she'd called her insurance company and I'd hear from them. I said fine, I'll call my company and we'll go from there.

I'm with Mercury. Have been for almost as long as I've been driving. They've never been anything but amazing in past dealings, and they were just as awesome in this one. They took the information down and had a claims adjustor call me this morning.

After going over a few things with the adjustor, we got into a discussion about how they might change their story. She said she'd call the woman who hit me and find out.

You'll never guess what happened next? No, really, you'll never guess.

Apparently her new and improved version is that we collided. I told the adjustor that if by collided she meant she backed her big fat SUV into the side of my stopped car, then yes.

So it's going in the body shop tomorrow, I'll have some awesome rental for about a week, and the insurance companies will duke it out. But I'm pretty sure mine will win. The thing is to get the kind of damage my car sustained, I would've had to have driven sideways into her. The Lexus comes with a lot of options, but not that one.

Frustrated, I told my adjustor that you'd just hope people would do the right thing.

In that world weary voice only insurance adjustors who've heard it all have, she replied "I hope that every day."

Rock and roll

There's an exhibit coming to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) called Levitated Mass. At first I thought it was about me on a ladder. Come to find out, it's actually a display with a giant 340-ton boulder as it's centerpiece.

That's how I knew it wasn't about me. That boulder weighs at least twice as much as I do.

I had an advance viewing of the rock yesterday as I was coming home. Turns out they're transporting it, slowly, right through my very own city on it's journey to the museum. There was a huge line of traffic moving slower than the rock just so they could get a look at it.

Logistically it's like a presidential visit. Since the bed of the truck it's on is 32 feet wide, it can only move on specific streets wide enough for it. Roads have to be closed as it passes, and traffic signals have to be coordinated since it doesn't exactly blow through the intersection.

I know what you're thinking: it's a rock. Technically, true. But it's also one of the single largest items ever moved since ancient times. Maybe that's because they didn't have flatbed trucks back then.

As the video shows, the engineering behind moving it is mighty impressive.

I know what you're thinking. He's reached the end of the post, and here comes some quasi-attempt at a funny wrap up line involving the words "getting stoned" or "rocks in his head" or "sticks and stones."

You're way ahead of me.

Piercing observation

Picking up a prescription at CVS the other day, this woman was ahead of me in line. And, like you, I couldn't help noticing her neck piercing. In fact I was so focused on it, I almost overlooked the one in the cartilage of her left ear.

My first thought was how much it must've hurt getting it. The two reddish dots on each side of the piercing didn't look like the daily alcohol swabbings were going particularly well.

My second thought was why her neck?

As a rule, I don't have any problem with piercings. In fact I wear two earrings in my left ear (it used to be three, but the third hole never healed - let's leave it at that). I got them years ago while I was working at Tracy Locke, and I asked this cute girl I worked with if she liked guys with earrings.

After she said yes, I broke a land speed record getting to a store on Melrose called Maya and had my ear pierced by yet another cute young girl.

Just for the record, that was the last thing I did that either of them liked.

To me, the secret of a great piercing is like buying a house: location, location, location. Why squander a perfectly good one in a location no one is going to see it? Or at least not enough people to make it worth the effort.

But I suppose that's better than going completely overboard like Pinhead over here with so many that absolutely everyone can't help but noticing.

Moderation, so I'm told, is the trick.

The issue occasionally comes up with my own kids. When my daughter was 9, we were on a trip to San Francisco and walking through the Emporium Mall on Market Street. She asked me if she could get her ears pierced while we were there. And, you know, thinking I actually had a say in the matter, I told her sure. She was ecstatic, right up until she saw the horrified look on my wife's face. The one that says to her "You're too young for earrings." And says to me "Maybe you should've discussed this with me before you just blurted out she could have them."

I get that a lot.

The deal we struck was that when we got home she could get them pierced. The plane hadn't even touched down before we were at a Claire's in some mall getting her ears pierced. I would've bet her allowance she was going to cry. She didn't. That was her mother.

My 15-year old son has started rumblings about getting his ear pierced. And I'm well aware that I don't have a lot of ground - as far as setting examples go - when I tell him no.

But he's mighty involved in acting, and nothing looks worse than a piercing hole in a close up shot. So far that's keeping the discussion at bay.

That and the fact I keep telling him if he gets me a potato, an ice cube and a pin I'll do it for him.

Al Franken called it

It was true then and it's true now.

I've always been a fan of Al Franken. Beginning when he was half of a comedy team called Franken & Davis, through the years he was head writer for Saturday Night Live (to me, it'll always be the Al Franken decade) and today as Senator from Minnesota.

Sorry about the ad in front of the clip. Curse you Hulu!

Hysterically funny, wildly entertaining and, the part I like best, vicious in the way it exposes not just the glaring hypocrisy and inaccuracies of almost everything Limbaugh says, the book also calls out the entire conservative party for the lies they shamelessly continue to peddle.

An easy example of the hypocrisy: Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh both taking a righteous stand about family values as they're on their third and fourth wives respectively.

The amazing thing is the book's title - which Franken gave it because he knew it would be controversial and get noticed - has proven even more true in the last week than it was when it came out.

I think it's only fitting that we take a moment and enjoy some of Limbaugh's more entertaining and insightful quotes:

''Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"

''She comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her -- guess what -- she's off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry. She's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life."

You're forgiven if you thought that one was from Rick Santorum.

And of course, it wouldn't be complete without this past week's words of wisdom:

''A Georgetown coed told Nancy Pelosi's hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex they're going broke, so you and I should have to pay for their birth control. So what would you call that? I called it what it is. So, I'm offering a compromise today: I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. ... So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

I hope Al Franken is working on a Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot 2.

God knows there's enough material to work with.