Dec 202024
 

 

Thursday December 26, 2024

Santa Anita Park

Santa Anita Malibu Day PPs

 

American Oaks (GIT) $300k g 3yo f 10f Turf
La Brea S Presented by Don Julio (GI) $300k g 3yo f 7f Dirt
Mathis Brothers Mile (GIIT) $200k g 3yo 8f Turf
Malibu S (GI) $300k g 3yo 7f Dirt
Laffit Pincay Jr. (GII) $200k g 3&up 8.5f Dirt
San Gabriel S (GIIT) $200k g 3&up 9f Turf

 

TDN – Santa Anita Wagering Menu Out For Classic And Hollywood Meets


While you’re waiting and anticipating the opening of Santa Anita’s winter meet: Malibu Day, Yule, Christmas, Chanukah, Boxing Day, the Feast of Saint Stephen et al enjoy a few of Phil’s favourite readings, drinks, flicks, Carols, Christmas and other tunes. If you’re waiting for Kwanzaa go sleep in a hut with Jabba.

And Remember that ofttimes Phil just gotta give into the URGE.

Phil has a question:

Will Phil ever tire of that.

Fairy Tale of New York

Phil has a question:

Will Phil ever tire of that.

The Rare Old Mountain Dew

And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.

2 Thessalonians 3:13

The Conversation – Aidin McGartland and Linglan Zhu –  From bells to choirs, different ‘timbres’ ring in the Christmas holiday season


Scientific American – Krystal D’Costa – What is Christmas Spirit?

Christmas Spirit


samedi 21 decembre

Phil has a question:

Where is the hype about Flavien Prat needing 1 more graded stakes win in 2024 to break Jerry Bailey’s record from 2003.

“Without promotion, something terrible happens…NOTHING!”

Improperly ascribed to P.T. Barnum

Paulick Report –  Ray Paulick – ‘All The Stars Aligned’: Jerry Bailey Remembers Record-Setting Season Of 2003

Fairytale of New York

Paulick Report – Bryan Bohl – Flavien Prat Sets Single-Year Record For Stakes Wins Aboard Poster In Remsen

Christmas is a time when everybody wants his past forgotten and his present remembered.

Phyllis Diller

IMG 6031

The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians.

George Monbiot

Phil’s On the Road to Christmas Drink and  Flick

Black Licorice Widow Martini

After Hours

Because The Night

Take deeds
Away.
Play music
please.

J.P. Donleavy

Garden and Gun – Elizabeth Florio – Fantastic Southern Films—and Their Drink Pairing

TDN – Letter To The Editor: Mystik Dan To California, Why Is It So Difficult?

Why did the Grinch go to the liquor store?

He was searching for some holiday spirit.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Bon Appetit – Sam Stone – Which Bourbon is Best? A Taste Test of Knob Creek, Michter’s, Bulleit and more

Mental Floss – Hollie Stephens – 9 Olde-Timey Holiday Drinks to Whip Up This Winter

Moon Dance

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Garden and Gun – Steve Russell – Bourbon Lore: The Big, Beautiful New Book for Whiskey Lovers

The Rose

Garden and Gun – Helen Ellis – When Can You Stop Sending Someone a Christmas Card?

15 Most Popular Swedish Christmas Dishes

Because The Night

The increase in rhetoric and hate crimes against Muslim-Americans and Syrian refugees is the triumph of fear over ideals. Those engaged in both are doing more to sabotage American values than the terrorists.

Esquire – Sager – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: What I’ve Learned

Spirit In The Night

How To Make Gravy

Aeon – Thomassie – Yes, the Inuit have dozens of words for snow – but what does each one mean exactly?

A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.

Yogi Berra

Light My Fire

Bloodhorse – Bob Ehalt – McPeek: Dubai World Cup or Apple Blossom for ‘Anna’

Front Office Sports – A.J. Perez – Commanders Plan to Bring Back Old Logo on Special Alumni Merchandise

Fairytale of New York

Bloodhorse – Byron King – She Feels Pretty Catches Eye in American Oaks

Canada’s National Observer –  Bartels – Rethinking the tenacity of salt marshes

Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox?

Dr. Seuss

Punch – Grant – The Vineyard Falcon Does Not Suffer Fools

Q. What did one Snow Globe say to the other.

A. Things are kinda shaky round here.

The Nutcracker in Ten Minutes

The Conversation – This holiday season, ‘Don’t Call Me Resilient’ brings you a booklist with your playlist

Cherry-and-Chocolate Bûche de Noël

Light My Fire

The Conversation – Scott Lear – How to keep your physical and mental health on track during the holidays

How To Celebrate Yule

Fire

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.

Margaret Atwood

How To Celebrate Yule

Fire and Rain

How To Celebrate Yule

History Extra – James Osborne – The child-eating Christmas Yule Cat: what are the origins of this Icelandic folklore?

NPR – Dustin Jones – You’ve heard of Santa, maybe even Krampus, but what about the child-eating Yule Cat?

How To Celebrate Yule

Sex on Fire

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Plutarch

National Today – Yule

Heart Moon Blog – The Yule Fire

Davy and Tracy – Celebrating Yule – The Winter Solstice

Fairy Tale of New York

Stonehenge Stone Circle – Yule – Winter Solstice

The Vulcan Advocate – Roberts – Canada’s Stonehenge, a Vulcan County treasure

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Ray Bradbury

Phantom of the Opera

Atlas Obscura – Terlach – Aurora Hunters Capture the Wonder of the Northern (and Southern) Lights

Outside – Siber – I Spent the Winter Solstice in One of the Darkest Places on Earth

Darkness, Darkness

Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going, don’t take anything too seriously, it’ll all work out in the end.

David Niven

Bon Appetit – Emily Saladino – How I Celebrate the Feast of the Seven Fishes

Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.

Vladimir Nabokov

Bon Appettit – Sommelier Shops For Holiday Wines: Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

Mark Twain

Italy Magazine – Katia Amore – My Family Christmas Eve in Sicily and The Feast of 24 Treats

Mental Floss – Lucas Reilly – 7 Facts About the Feast of the Seven Fishes

Vietnam Song

Would you like them in a house? Would you like them with a mouse?

Dr. Seuss

Bon Appetit – Sophie Dodd – The 14 Best Italian Gifts for Your Italy-Obsessed Friend

Home Made Italian Cooking – Cara Kretz – Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Sicilian Christmas Eve Dinner

Food and Wine – 21 Seafood Recipes for a Feast of the Seven Fishes

Lola

Phil has a question:

After the Feast of the Seven Fishes do you waddle to midnight mass.

Study Finds – Drinking hot cocoa can wipe away stress better than fatty comfort foods

How to Make the Perfect Hot Chocolate

Chocolate

Cast You Fate To The Wind

The Conversation – James Deaville – Charlie Brown, Frosty and other ‘anti-heroes’ of TV specials: How holiday soundtracks inspire hope for a little more love

“Most thoughtful hostess gift ever? A timely RSVP.”

Now, don’t get me wrong—flowers, wine, cookies, and candles are classics. Keep ’em coming. Just give them with the intention for your hostess to enjoy them after the party, so she doesn’t feel compelled to vase, pour, plate, or light a fire that makes her powder room smell like a sugarplum fairy was in there for an hour. And give them with the knowledge that they might be regifted. Kay says, “There is a certain candle that is meant to go around the world.”

Garden and Gun – Helen Ellis – What’s the Best Hostess Gift?

FairyTale of New York

If you need a break and are stepping out for dinner and drinks support your Ma and Pas and small Local chains.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.

Erica Jong

Times Like These

The Ringer – Holyn Thigpen – The New Christmas Classic

Esquire – Yogi Berra: What I’ve Learned

RTE – Barry Houlihan – The story of how ‘Fairytale of New York’ got its name

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. 

J. P. Donleavy

16 Tonnes

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

Marcel Proust

Southern Living – 15 Last-Minute Recipes So Good, Our Editors Make Them Every Holiday

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

Joyce Carol Oates

Forward – Seth Rogovoy – Is ‘A Christmas Carol’ antisemitic?

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

Mark Twain

New York Times – Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren – .P. Spending Hawks Defy Trump on the Debt Limit, Previewing More Clashes

Phil has a question:

Does demented Donald think that all Republicans are boot-licking sycophants like that useless wussy Mitch McConnell.

Southern Living – 7 Things Southerners Stress About Before Hosting A Party

Wired – School of Rock: The Physics of Waves on Guitar Strings

Good Vibrations

Q: Why would you use a Bryan Adams CD to cut your pizza when your pizza cutter breaks.

A: It cuts like a knife.

Cold and dark, this time of year,
the earth lies dormant, awaiting the return
of the sun, and with it, life.
Far beneath the frozen surface,
a heartbeat waits,
until the moment is right,
to spring.

Prayer to the earth

My Jewish Learning – Hannukah Food

The Nosher – Susannah Brodnitz – The Real History of Potato Latkes Will Surprise You

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

Montesquieu

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

I paint things as they are. I don’t comment.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Food and Wine – Everything You Need to Know About Cookies

12 days of Christmas Cookies

The Athletic – Zack Rosenblatt, Dianna Russini and Michael Silver – Woody Johnson’s Jets: ‘Madden’ ratings, a lost season and ‘the most dysfunctional place imaginable’

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

William Safire

Front Office Sports – Alex Schiffer – Woody Johnson’s Fingerprints Are All Over the Jets Disaster

Phil Has a question:

Has Woody Johnson become the poster boy for higher succession taxes.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Charles Dickens

Paulick Report – Mystik Dan Gets Feel For Santa Anita Surface Ahead Of Opening Day Malibu Stakes

Dedicated to The One I Love

2024 Kentucky Derby

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.

Mark Twain

Fairytale of New York

There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless. 

Wilson Mizner

Front Office Sports – A.J. Perez – RFK Stadium Bill Passes in Overnight Stunner

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Losing My Religion

Bon Appetit – Debary – The Right Way to Open a Bottle of Bubbly

Champagne for All Occasions

Always Ravenous – Jane – Pairing Pizza with Grower Champagne

Mental Floss – Jon Mayer – A Brief History of Pizza

Better Off Dead – Christmas

Girl You’ll be a Woman Soon

 I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Henri Matisse

Ahead of Thyme – 50 Best Christmas Side Dishes

Southern Living – Melissa Locker – Is Cleaning Vinegar The Same As White Vinegar? An Expert Explains

Allen’s Double Strength Cleaning Vinegar

Greensleeves

The Score – Ciao Miari – Chargers’ Harbaugh relishes rare fair catch kick after win: ‘My favorite rule’

La Bamba

The tiger and the lion may be more powerful, but the wolf does not perform in the circus.

Earl Derr Biggers

Magic Carpet Ride

Better Homes and Gardens – Karla Walsh – 7 Steps That Made These Chocolate Chip Cookies King Arthur’s 2024 Recipe of the Year

Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cookies

Q. What does the gingerbread man put on his bed?

A. Cookie sheets!

You may like them. You will see. You may like them in a tree!

Dr. Seuss

BBC – William Marshall – The bishop who banned York’s Yuletide 

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

Michel de Montaigne

Q. What’s the Grinch’s least favorite band?

A. The Who!

Christmas

If you surround yourself with clowns, don’t be surprised when your life resembles a circus.

Steve Maraboli.

Lola

It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters but who’s around it.

Charlie Brown

Sunset – Farrell – How to Celebrate the Winter Solstice, the Shortest Day of the Year

Hazy Shade of Winter

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Golda Meir

Town and Country – Adam Rathe and Emily Burack – The Best Books of 2024

Yule is when the dark half of the year cedes to the light half. Known as Solstice Night, Awaiting the rebirth of the Sun God. Bonfires, wassailing crops with toasts of spiced cider a time of madness and awesomeness.

Anujj Elviis

Making a Fire

Wassail Song

In Anglo-Saxon times, according to Crippen, it was customary for someone offering a drink to say, “Wassail!” and for the recipient to respond “Drinkhail!” and for the participants to repeat the exercise until comfortably horizontal.

Bill Bryson

Kitchn – Catalano – I Tried 5 Latke Recipes and This Is What I Learned

The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


Phil M Stockmen

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