The Omnigeek

Once basketball season ends in Kentucky, life turns towards Kentucky’s other sporting passion, Horse Racing. Kentucky is known as the horse capital of the world, known for its picturesque plank fenced horse farms sprawling over rolling hills of Kentucky Blue Grass.

In Kentucky, horses are raced, trotted, shown, jumped and danced. Horses of all breads and pedigree can be found on farms all across the state. There are however two major concentrations of Equine activity: Lexington and Louisville.

Lexington’s sphere of influence includes Keenland, a popular thoroughbred racing track and home to the annual Yearling Sales, where the best 1 year olds are auctioned off from the breeding farms to the owners who will eventually race them. The Kentucky Horse Park is located just north of Lexington and while a state park, it is home to various major equestrian events and has hosted the US Olympic Horse Trials and will be hosting the FEI World Games in 2010. Lexington is surrounded by horse farms. The major equine research facilities and horse database companies are located there as well.

But this time of year, the attention turns to Louisville when the greatest of horse races is run on the 1st Saturday in May, the Kentucky Derby. Ran at historic Churchill Downs in the center of Louisville, the Derby is led up to by a two week festival for the race.

My wife and I have traveled to Louisville to participate in these events and today, we chased hot air balloons during the “Great Balloon Race”. You can read about the chase at http://www.robmiracle.com. The chase carried us to an area with several horse stables north east of Louisville.

One of our missions this week is to photograph horses when and where we can and well, I had a camera and there were horses. With the Balloon race over, and before having to travel two hours south to visit with my family, it was horse photo time. Strapping on my telephoto lens to shoot horses at a distance, I snapped a few shots of a group of horses in one field. I then moved to a small black plank fenced field that contained a couple of horses, one white, one chestnut.

Immediately, the white horse took attention to me and decided I was interesting, perhaps it was my bright red Carolina Hurricanes shirt (I write this from a sports bar watching the Canes play the Devils) or perhaps it was my movement, or the horse was naturally curious or a camera hog.

He got within petting distance and turned his left neck toward me, obviously wanting petted. This horse has spent a lot of time around people. I obliged, petting his neck for a few seconds and as I pulled my hand away, he turned his head toward me and nuzzled me square in the face with his big and very wet nose.

I had been slimed . . . by a horse.

I was stunned for a moment as this came completely out of the blue.

The only thing I could think of was “Lucy” from Peanuts and the dog kisses Snoopy laid on her over the years: “Oh horse kiss. Gross. Bring the disinfectant.” Sherry, my wife was laughing hysterically at the scene and retold the story dozens of times to family and total strangers as the day progressed.

The white horse and his stable mate stayed near by. I regained my composure, switched over to a wide angle lens and shot the horses close up.

We wanted to see some horses and this was definitely “seeing” some horses.

Today the University of Kentucky athletic department and the men’s basketball head coach, Billy Gillispie separated ways. The separation was announced at a 4:30pm press conference after several days of speculation. You can follow the Lexington Herald-Leader’s coverage here!

There are numerous reasons why they needed to part ways but they can all be summed up with the fact that the program was going in a direction that Kentucky did not like and Gillispie was not the right coach to change that direction. Tubby Smith drilled a hole in the bottom of the ship and started it sinking. Gillispie was brought in to try and plug that hole, but the ship was still sinking. Now Kentucky needs to find someone who can save things.

But who will that be?

Florida’s head coach, Billy Donovan has been mentioned. He has built a strong program at Florida, a football school. Donovan is a Rick Pitino protege having been his assistant at Kentucky during their magical run. Is he interested? Would he fit in at Kentucky? Even with his National Championship, he is high profile enough? Can he be consistent? Florida didn’t make it into the NCAA tournament this year. That folks is a huge red flag. If Billy G’s failure to make the dance got him chased out of town, why do we think Billy D will be any different? He does come with strong UK cred having been a well respected assistant.

On the subject of assistants, does Kentucky court Leonard Hamilton, the current head coach at Florida State? He was Joe B. Hall‘s long time assistant at Kentucky? He’s partially responsible for one of the banner’s hanging at Rupp Arena with the 1978 National Championship. On the other hand, 1979 was an NIT year (though in fairness, it was a 40 team field, not a 64 team field, so it was harder to get to the big dance. Again, Hamilton doesn’t have the name power to bring in the McDonald’s All American’s needed to be a consistent Top-10 team. Also a major Geek negative, Hamilton’s Wikipedia page is abysmal. If a coach doesn’t have a decent Wikipedia page, how good can he be anyway?

How about convincing Rick Pitino to come home? Joanne will never go for it. So he would have to commute the one hour drive from Louisville to Lexington. I’m sure a private helicopter would be ponied up to make it happen. Arizona is reported to be chasing Pitino, but I doubt Joanne would put up with Tuscon if she couldn’t handle Lexington. But with Pitino just getting Louisville back to national prominence (sure Louisville wants to be a Football School!!!) he would be a fool to win and run.

Pat Riley? He could do the job, but has no interest in college basketball. He’s too used to life in Hollywood East, er. Miami. Lexington would be too simple for him.

Coach K? He would be met at the border with loaded shotguns. Roy Williams? He is the new evil overload of college basketball (though you have to respect him. He is a very good guy to be the arch-devil…..) but he is so happy at UNC, he wouldn’t give it consideration.

Jim Calhoun? The NCAA is looking at his program at UCONN for rules violations. Kentucky can’t risk that route.

John Calipari? He certainly puts together winning teams. He’s yet to win the big one, and in each of his coaching stints, he’s needed two to three years to get the teams to the NCAA. He has the most wins behind Roy Williams among active coaches. His two college jobs lasted 8 and 9 years respectfully, so based on his history, he may be ready to move on.

Bring Bobby Knight out of retirement?

Who ever it is, it can’t be someone who has built a low pressure school to making the dance. He has to be a proven winner. Someone who consistently, year-in and year-out produces a champion. It has to be someone who can thrive under the extreme pressure that is the Kentucky Basketball faithful yet not mind living in a small farm town. Kentucky doesn’t need a builder, it needs a star and those are few and far in between.

What do you think? Chime in by posting a comment on the blog.

I don’t like reality shows for the most part.  I enjoy American Idol once the final 12 start performing because you hear *some* entertaining music.  But I don’t have time in my life to get involved in them.

Needless to say, “The Bachelor” is probably near the bottom of the rung when it comes to Reality TV for dudes.  Mushy “Rose Ceremonies” in exotic locations that mortals can’t reach are great for women’s dreams.  Its a romance novel on TV.  And you know what, I’m cool with that.  Its something they like.  They are allowed to have their fantasies as long as they don’t complain about my por…, er fantasies…..

So its Monday night, the Mrs. is clipping her coupons and she makes sure to watch “The Bachelor” when its on.  I’m sitting 6′ 4″ away in the other chair with my laptop surfing the net doing my social networking thing and I convert the show to white noise while I’m twittering away about photography to someone.  Its a fairly normal Monday.

But not this Monday.   “Honey, tonight is the last night and you won’t have to put up with ‘The Bachelor’ for a while.”  I replied “Yea, like 4 weeks”.  It was the “After the Final Rose Ceremony” night.  Three straight hours of mega mush, crying, frolicking in New Zealand and some really nerdy emcee saying “the most emotional rose ceremony every”.  Gag me with a pitch fork.  Three hours?  You have to be kidding me.

I manage to kill the 1st two hours by spamming my Twitter fans as I experimented with a Twitter chat of budding and experienced photographers for a blog site (Thats http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/ btw).  The show is to a point where the dude, Jason has dumped the woman who is probably really in love with him, Molly in favor the other woman, Melissa for whatever reason possessed him.

The third hour was dedicated to how things are going between the couple after six weeks.

My wife, and I love her dearly, was nice and realized how much torture this show was handed me the remote and went upstairs to watch the last hour from the bedroom.  This is where it gets embarrassing.

I didn’t change the channel.

I had the remote.  I had the power.  I even shut the computer down.  I watched the last hour on purpose.

Perhaps it wasn’t as much as on purpose as much as the show running as background noise had gelled my brains so the aliens can scoop them out easier with a melon baller.

I had 52″ of wide screen high def Jason with the nerdy emcee blasting me.

Six weeks had elapsed since the final rose ceremony where Jason proposed to Melissa after telling Molly to bugger off because she was 2nd place and well 2nd place as we all know is the 1st looser.

Now of course, this is all taped and the exec’s at ABC along with the nerdy emcee had time to write their promo scripts taunting you with “This show is so emotional out of respect to the participants we chose to film it without a studio audience” so it was obvious something was up.  Of course ABC has to keep mixing things up or the show will become boring (oh what, it is boring.)

Well Jason tells nerdy emcee in the couples six weeks of one-on-one time “Dude, something changed.  I messed up and picked the wrong one.  Its not working out with me and Melissa.  I want to press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and get a do-over.”  Nerdy emcee is eating this up realizing that their ratings are popping through the roof.  (BTW:  The hashtag for our twitter chat was trending higher than the hashtag for the Bachelor for the night!  Take that Nielsen ratings!!!!).

They bring Melissa out and Jason drops the bomb.  “I don’t like you I like the other one and you can go take a joy ride in the limo”.  Supposedly the couple had discussed this over the past six weeks and she should realize things are not working.  Well Melissa seems to have forgotten that and this is all news to her.  She rips Jason a new one and goes for her joy ride.

WTF?

So this is where I have to start getting “involved” with this.  Men have a bad enough reputation with women over commitment.  They know men have trouble committing and here on their grandest stage, Jason didn’t let them down.  He made us ALL look like chumps.   I was shocked.  I shouldn’t have been, we didn’t earn that bad rap without reason, but for ABC to parade that was just wrong.

Then they (predictably) brought Molly out where she sat on the couch listening to the story.  This dude breaks up with his bride to be on national television and a matter of minutes later, he’s telling the women he told to bugger off that he just dumped his choice and wants his do-over with her.  Molly of course has a skeptical “WTF” look on her face.  She looks like she’s about to slap the cooties out of him realizing his level of scumbagness for this move.

Jason then says he wants to hook up with Molly and she pretty much jumps him on set.

WTF?

So now Molly has done to women what Jason just did to all the men.  If guy dumps you for another woman then he comes back crawling and in a half-assed “I’m sorry” she’s all forgiving.  Molly, he dumped you six weeks ago.  You haven’t talked to him or seen him other than watching the TV episodes and in less that 10 minutes you’ve forgiven him and acting like nothing ever happened.  What if he changes his mind and wants to go back to Looser #2 or #3 or some other woman who passes through his life?

This show has to be the worst for male-female relationships.

Oh, the real last hour of the season is on now.  Its another six weeks later.  Who knows were we will be after tonight?

And he needs to turn in his man card for crying on national television!!!  (Thanks to Sherz for that one!)