I spent the weekend in Louisville, Kentucky thinking about analogies (and how new things are like old things.) Amy and I took four friends to the Breeders Cup (also known as the Super Bowl of Horse Racing.) I’m not a horse person (I’m actually afraid of them), but I like to humor my wife whenever I can. We had a great time and – as I looked around the very expansive race track (that I’d been at once before for the Kentucky Derby) – I realized that horse racing is “NASCAR for Snooty People.” I was down $40 for the day (I quit betting after I lost my second race in a row – I still can’t figure out how to bet a trifecta.)
As we read the newspaper on Sunday, we ran into plenty of “heads up your ass” type of stuff. My friend Warren (who is from Boston) pointed me to the delightful Christy Mihos for Governor ads – including “Heads Up” – his commercial about The Big Dig.
We were part of the $26.4m spent on the opening weekend of Borat. Watching it in a full theater in Louisville, KY was kind of bizarre. All three of us that saw it were incredibly subdued as we walked out of the theater and waited for a cab back to the hotel. Pascal states things clearly – it’s fundamentally a depressing movie about the state of intolerance and bigotry in America.
Finally – MySpace does a joint venture in Japan (MySpace Japan) with Softbank and Charles River Ventures announced a seed program last week to tons of buzz in the blogosphere. What’s old is new again.