HAHA. Check it:

Ugh. Those parents.

In related news, you could be Balloon Boy for Halloween.

We made The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night. Check it out:

Embarrassed? Yea? Nay?

He is on the teevee, too!

Here he is on fancy Fox News talking about the Jason Stinson trial:

Gabe Bullard is the biggest thing since Chuck Woolery.

And you can quote that (PLEASE!).

The bad boy of racing, the guy nobody likes, gets into a lockerroom brawl after he gets bumped in a comeback race.

A woman trying to make it in a man’s world faces down her competition, aided by one woman trainer who believes in her.

The stories of Corey Nakatani and Chantal Sutherland are featured in the first week of the new set of episodes of Jockeys, the Animal Planet reality series that debuted early this year. The new episodes continue to follow the dramatic stories of jockeys’ lives, which includes plenty of footage from Churchill Downs Derby week.

The first one-hour episode airs Friday night at 10, following the network’s popular Whale Wars series. It’s on Insight’s channel 60.

A key player in making the series happen is familiar to a lot of Louisvillians. Darrell Haire, the Western Regional manager for the Jockeys Guild, accompanied producers around the world to get the inside stories you’ll see on the show. Starting at Santa Anita, the show follows jockeys to several tracks, including Churchill Downs, in the upcoming weeks.

Haire, who appears briefly in every episode, is the go-to guy for the jocks. He’s been through a lot himself, placed himself in the middle of controversial jockey issues, and is enthusiastic about the TV series. Haire says it’s a great opportunity to help the image of jockeys.

“I wanted to protect the riders with all the bad publicity of the last few years,” he said. When I saw him in town Derby Week, he was busy arranging interviews and shoots for the show’s producers.

Haire helped choose the riders to be featured in the series. He was looking for athletes who were articulate and good in front of the camera, and for those who had compelling real-life stories.  Haire, in fact, has become a key figure in racing on film — he’s consulting with Disney to help cast jockeys in the upcoming film about Secretariat, starring Diane Lane.

Eight jockeys will be featured in the series. Mike Smith, Garrett Gomez, Kayla Stra, Alex Solis, Joe Talamo and Aaron Gryder join Nakatani and Sutherland.

While the first episode takes place mainly at Santa Anita, there’s always an eye toward the Kentucky Derby and Louisville, and a few episodes will focus primarly on the dramatic changes leading up to the Derby.  It’s good dramatic reality TV complete with beautiful pictures.

We’ll be watching, and let you know what to expect.

Hoffman gave no specific reason for the change, mumbling something about the way new management always makes changes, that they’re adding some things and taking away some things, that it was nothing personal. That’s not exactly true.

Did it have anything to do with what we’ve been writing about changes at the station, I asked. Of course not, he said. I asked if it wasn’t because the new owners, who are publicity-shy and have refused requests for an interview, were bothered that we wrote about the upcoming cancellation of the morning and late-night locally-produced sports programs?

Maybe it was our affection for Spangler, the dispatched morning show host with whom we’ve been doing our on-air shtick for 15 months, never missing a single week.

The real reason may have been the way we criticized the new on-air talent, Adele Guarino-Sanders, who has been doing segments on the show this week. She has no TV experience, is awful on camera and when Googled brings up a trail of court cases in which she’s the defendant.

On Wednesday, Hoffman called to make sure that I was planning to show up for next Tuesday’s show. He said there might even be an expanded role for us and that he was considering other ways to expand our brand in station programming. 24 hours later, he called to say our segment was being discontinued.

Next week, Hoffman’s on vacation and Guarino-Sanders is scheduled to host the morning show. I told Hoffman on Wednesday that I’d show up, despite reservations about the host. He assured me it was just one week, to get through that, and he’d be back as the regular host the following week. But 24 hours later, Hoffman called to say everything was off.

There are no regrets. The show gave us a video outlet and brought new fans to the ‘Ville Voice and Page One. Spangler was an enthusiastic fan, and the segments just wouldn’t have worked without him. It was fun while it lasted.

The good news: Now we have time to work with other stations that have been angling for months to pull us on-air on a regular basis.

Oh, and Rick needs to quit it with letting that fancy MacBook we got him hover dangerously on the edge of a tiny table! Apple Care won’t fix it if he breaks it on live televisions. Jeez.

Extra-long segment! Check it: