It's Going To Be A Good Week (And You'll Know Why On Wednesday) !

This was a sports weekend and it was filled with controversy. Before you jump to conclusions, I was not involved in any of the controversy. But it's Mundane Monday, the weekend's over and tomorrow, Billary and Obama-Lama-Ding-dong will probably make some stupid remarks and yadda, yaada, yadda..... ad nauseum. I'm almost starting to miss "Podium Al" Sharpton.

The Kentucky Derby was a mixture of triumph and tragedy Saturday at Churchill Downs. The favorite, Big Brown with jockey Kent Desormeaux aboard, started in the 20th post position of a 20 horse field and charged at the field from the start. The size of the field made it almost impossible to save ground and the colt was in sixth place going into the far turn. Jockey Desormeaux gave the colt his head and Big Brown took the lead at the top of the homestretch. The jock tucked Big Brown neatly to the rail and won the race by 4 3/4 lengths over the gallant filly, Eight Belles, with Denis of Cork finishing third.

Eight Belles, who ran the race of her lifetime, went down about aquarter of a mile after the finish line, She broke both front ankles, and without a standing leg available to splint her, she was euthanized. I hate to see any animal put down, but the injury is very painful and the track Veterinarian decided to euthanized her on the spot. 

NASCAR:  The Richmond 400 in Virginia started out normally enough and it seemed like pole sitter Denny Hamlin had a pretty good chance to win two nights in a row. Hamlin ran away with the Nationwide race on Friday night and the only controversy was when Kyle Busch and Stephen Wallace got into it on the final lap. In pit lane after the race, Busch, in his normal obnoxious way, confronted Wallace about the incident. Wallace reached out and grabbed Busch by the bottom part of his face helmet and the two had to be separated.

The Saturday night race was very much like Friday's and Hamlin was leading every lap. On lap 230, Dave Blaney slid up into the #96 car of J.J. Yeley and the field stacked up. Patrick Carpentier was bumped from behind, sending him into the wall and creating a ten car pileup.

With 45 laps to go, Casey Mears, coming out of the pits and  attempting to merge into traffic, crashed into Michael Waltrip. Waltrip, obviously upset at such a bonehead move, came back and crashed into Mears in retaliation and pushed him, throttle down, for the length of the backstretch. NASCAR parked Waltrip for the remainder of the race for that trick.

The race restarted and Hamlin continued to lead. On lap 29, Dale Earnhardt Jr passed Kyle Busch to take second place with Clint Boyer and Mark Martin running fourth and fifth, respectively. With 20 laps to go, Hamlin's right front tire developed a slow leak and he began falling back.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the lead with 17 laps to go with Kyle Busch running in second place and Clint Boyer running in third. Hamlin's tire finally went down and he stopped on the track, bring out the yellow flag with ten laps to go. Earnhardt had developed a good lead and many feel that Hamlin stopped on the track to help his teammate, Busch, catch up to Earnhardt. NASCAR did too, assessing Hamlin a 2 lap penalty for his actions.

The race restarted with six laps to go and with three laps to go, Kyle Busch got underneath Earnhardt going into turn three and turned him around. This allowed Clint Boyer to get underneath both Earnhardt and Busch to take the lead. The "green-white checker" race-ending rule provision was in place and the restart saw Boyer jump into the lead with Busch and Mark Martin contesting for the 2nd position. It ended that way with Clint Boyer taking the second race of his Sprint Cup career, followed by Busch and Martin.

Kyle Busch, although very talented, always seems to run out of intelligence in the closing laps of these races and the biggest mistake he could have ever done was to take out Dale Earnhardt Jr in the final laps of the race. Busch overdrove his car into the third turn and Junior did take a tight line going in beside him on the outside. But, Busch lost the rear of the car going in and had to steer right to save it. This caused him to move into Junior and take him out. The fans weren't very happy and Busch may have dug himself an even bigger hole in the world of popularity. We'll see.

The CAT Award: There was only one nominee last week for the Cat's Ass Trophy. That nomination, made by Linda, was Josef Fritzl, the 73 year old Austrian man who held his daughter captive for 24 years while repeatedly raping her and fathering seven children. Fritzl is the hands down winner of last week's CAT Award.

The Pictures: Some photographs of the Kentucky Derby and the NASCAR Richmond 400 are among the shots for today. Then, there's always "the usual suspects." 

This Date In History: 1821; Former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of St. Helena. 1921; Channel No. 5, created by perfumerErnst Beaux for Coco Chanel is launched. 1925; Biology teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching the theory of evolution, which is outlawed in Tennessee public schools. He is later convicted in the so called "Monkey Trial." 1961; AstronautAlan Shepard makes a 15 minute suborbital flight, becoming the first American to travel in space.

Birthdays: Karl Marx, political philosopher and revolutionist (1880), Nellie Bly, pseudonym of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, American journalist who documented her trip around the world in seventy-two  days, eight days less than the fictional hero of "Around The World In Eighty Days"(1864), Christopher Morley, writer and editor (1890), Tammy Wynette, country music singer and songwriter (1942).

The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The

Before the inauguration, George W. was invited to a 'get acquainted' tour of the White House.

After drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked President Clinton if he could use his personal bathroom. He was astonished to see that the President had a solid gold urinal!

That afternoon, George W. told his wife, Laura, about the urinal. "Just think," he said, "when I am President, I'll have my own personal gold urinal!"

Later, when Laura had lunch with Hillary at her tour of the White House, she told Hillary how impressed George had been with his discovery of the fact that, in the President's private bathroom, the President had a gold urinal.

That evening, Bill and Hillary were getting ready for bed. Hillary turned to Bill and said, "Well, I found out who pissed in your saxophone."

A man is walking down the street and he sees a boy riding a wagon. The boy has his dog pulling it with a rope attached to the dog's balls. The man says "You know if you tied it around his neck, it would go faster." The boy replies, "Yeah, I know but then I wouldn't get the cool siren."

That's it for today my little jujubes. More tomorrow.

Stay Tuned !

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