Odds and Ends

I haven’t blogged in over a week and even now don’t have much to say. Just a few odds and end on various topics, delivered here in no particular order.

For the first since I’ve been a voting member, I had more of my picks correct than incorrect for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, given out last Sunday night. I got 7 right and 6 wrong. I was particularly happy to see Eddie Murphy win. I finally got around to seeing Dreamgirls just the week before and really liked the work he did in that picture. He’s got a career doing more dramatic work if he wants to pursue it. But Norbit may be a bit of a setback.

SAG Awards time is about the only time of the year when I feel like a big shot. Regular ole no name members like me get to vote and the studios actively court us. I got a free pass to see Dreamgirls, along with passes to see The Queen and Babel, although the former arrived a day late and the latter was for a theater chain that stopped honoring them. I also got DVDs of The Departed, which I’d already seen, Venus, and just arriving in the mail today, several days late, Little Miss Sunshine.

I was genuinely sad to hear that Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro had to be euthanized although it was far from unexpected. Yes, you can argue that too much has been made over the life of an animal, but what was interesting to me was the very fact that his owners even cared enough to try to save his life. Horse racing’s dirty little secret is that far more horses get “put down” than ever get put out to stud. Only winning horses get that retirement, which is why Barbaro got the medical treatment he did. Had he been well enough to sire offspring, he could have easily earned back in stud fees the money spent on training, racing and treating him. But the vast majority of race horses, most of them losers, are of little value to their owners should they get injured or once their racing days are over. Quiet as it is kept, they wind up going to the glue factory or turned into dog food. No lie.

Two weeks ago for my birthday, I saw the Signature Theatre Company’s production of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running. It was simply excellent in every possible way. Frankie Faison and Arthur French were partiularly memorable, but the entire cast was brilliant. Now comes word that the third play in the Signature’s tribute to Wilson, King Hedley II, sold out its entire run in just 48 hours when tickets went on sale Jan. 22. Theatre-goers were waiting in line outside the way sports fans line up for playoff tickets.

This Friday, some friends and I will take in the 100th Millrose Games indoor track and field meet at Madison Square Garden. This is the second year in a row I will have attended and in addition to seeing great competitors, there is some of the best eye candy both on the track and in the stands. It’s a “ke-ke” event that apparently not a lot of non-sports fans know about, otherwise NYC might have developed a weekend of social events around it in the same way the Penn Relays led to the Black Pride weekend in Philly. Maybe one day.

On a topic I may discuss further at some later date, with all the talk of Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls, and will it be Hillary or Barack, I just want to remind everyone that we have 22 months before the presidential election. Twenty-two months! Primaries aren’t until next year, and we won’t vote until November 2008, yet some people are acting as if we must decide on a candidate now. Not only do I refuse to play along but I don’t think such an early start to the campaign is in anyone’s best interest. Certainly not the voters.

There’s an outside chance my voiceover career isn’t over yet, but that’s about all I can say at this point. Hopefully I’ll have some good news in the near future.

I’ll post my official Super Bowl prediction either late Saturday or early Sunday.