GregHowley.com

I guess I really have moved to the West. Yesterday, I went to a rodeo. Whoda thunk? So here's my take.

First, they played that tacky song God Bless the USA while the audience stood up reverently with hands over hearts. This was perplexing to me. Has the country got a new national anthem? I hate that song.

Next, all these people started to ride out on horseback to introduce themselves. I couldn't hear any of what the announcer said - it sounded like a blurry drive-through speaker - but every one of them was holding a long pole with a flag, and most of the flags had advertising on them. People applauded the advertising quite a lot, and even more so when kids rode out on ponies - one cute little girl even lost her hat as she was riding.

Next, the blurry-voiced announcer led us all in a prayer. Hard to believe - I guess we really are in the heart of the conservative west. I've got nothing against prayer, but this hardly seemed the place. After the prayer, the audience sang the national anthem, and a clown then came out and stood there. Hmm...

The first event was bareback riding. The horses would come out, a leather strap around their whosie-whasis, and they'd buck like crazy trying to get the rider off. Eventually, either the guy would fall off, or somebody on another horse would help him off while another guy with a lasso would twirl it threateningly - he never actually used it, it appeared to be a tool for threatening the horses. The highlight was one horse which was bucking so hard that it fell over. Some of those horses caught quite a lot of air while bucking.

The next event was cow tackling. No, I don't mean calf roping - there was no rope involved. They'd release a baby cow, it would run out, and two guys on big horses would ride on each side of it and hedge it in, then one guy would jump off the horse and tackle the cow, then immediately release it. Cow tackling. Weird.

After that event, two guys in bad halloween costumes came out - an astronaut and a ghost. Turns out they were the comic relief. The guy in the biohazard suit or whatever it was announced that the guy with the sheet over his head was the ugliest person alive. He had one guy come over and look under the sheet, and the guy dropped dead. A second guy came and looked under the sheet, and boom - he fell down too. Then they called over the sheriff to look. When the sheriff looked under the sheet, the guy wearing the sheet fell over. Ha. Ha ha.

The next few events had to do with cow bondage and riding horses. I was glad I'd brought a book. For the next break, some drunk transvestite-looking guy stumbled out and fell down. A clown rode out in a freaky clown ambulance and decided to jump-start "her". After he connected the jump cables wrong, fireworks shot out of the ambulance, which was actually pretty cool. The skit they did was forgettable though.

After that was a kind of horse slalom, where they rode really fast around barrels. And lastly was the main event - bull riding.

Those freakin' bulls were mean. The horses just bucked guys off. The bulls bucked them off and tried to kill them. The first one bucked the guy off, and he flew through the air and landed on his stomach. Then the bull stomped him. Ow! He was the only guy to get trounced though.

At one point, a seriously PO'ed bull was standing in place, kicking up dirt, looking for someone to charge after he'd rid himself of his rider. One clown had a metal barrel with openings at each end so he could walk around wearing his barrel-armor. A second clown tipped the barrel on its side with barrel-clown inside and started rolling him towards the bull. The bull rammed the metal barrel, which got quite a reaction from the audience. The clown stood there with the barrel between him and the bull. The bull rammed it a few more times, then got bored and went back into the pen. It was pretty funny - the best part of the rodeo for me.

So that was my first rodeo. Guess I've been initiated now. Yee-haw.