The PBR at The Deer Lodge

Since we are nothing if not meddlesome, Montana Barn Cat and I have been pondering how to help the divine SoCal Jay experience his first-ever PBR event. Because he and Pamela have too much sense to spend a bazillion dollars on premium cable service every month, they don’t get the Versus channel, which is probably the only one that I’d miss (and that for only about four hours a week) if we came to our senses and deep-sixed the big cable bill. I don’t to this day understand how we ended up with all the crap we get on the tube, except to say that Barn Cat was here the day the cable dudes appeared with their magic box and he said yes to everything—HBO, Starz, HD, local stations, and the other assorted nine million channels we can haul in. Those guys are nearly as good at up-selling as the ones at Jiffy Lube.

And of course, even with all those options, most of the time it seems like there’s nothing on. Just last night, in a fit of PBR-deprived desperation, we watched, yet again, the first part of Independence Day, which has rapidly become one of those movies you can always find on, at any hour of the day or night, and sometimes on a couple or three channels at the same time. A few years ago it was the same with Demolition Man, which, for all its right-wing, tough love, gun-totin’ posturing, is still one of my favorite movies. It’s worth the price of admission to hear Sandra Bullock tell Sly Stallone that the crook Sly had just cold-cocked “finally matched his meat. You really licked his ass.”

But fortunately for Jay, Barn Cat grew up in the same town and he probably knows the local bar scene there better right now than a bunch of folks who still live there do. Late one evening last week, he called one such fine establishment, The Deer Lodge in Ojai, California. I’m not sure to whom he pled his case, but suffice it to say he told the lady on the other end of the line that he was calling from Montana because his good friend would probably just die if he didn’t get to see the PBR on Versus, and soon. He asked her if Jay could come over there on August 2 to watch the Tulsa Open on one of their tvs. I sort of suspect at this point there was at least a brief pause in the conversation before she said, and I quote, “That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” She then assured Barn Cat that Mr. Jay could come watch the PBR and welcome, since they have three tvs and they would happily set one aside for him.

So the preening Barn Cat, being very pleased with himself, left word for Jay that the arrangement had been made and our good friend would cheat death for a bit longer, though whether the riders will be as lucky is one of the main reasons we are so hooked on this sport. Jay almost instantly replied:

What a beautiful thing! I don't know what's more impressive: Your vision of this bold idea, or your execution of it. In either case, I hope you can hear my applause, and my fervent shouts of "Bravo!" right now, way over there in Montana.

Thanks. I'll be there with my spurs a jingle-jangle-jinglin'. (And of course, as you know, there should be something in the neighborhood of 30 Harleys parked, by 4, in front of The Deer Lodge. My guess is that those boys are gonna dig the broadcast, too. If not, I guess I'll just have to open up a can of cowboy "Whoop Ass.")

Loveys, Jay

So to all you who may also be suffering from a lack of access to the PBR broadcasts, or if you just want to go hang with Jay and the bikers on Saturday, August 2 for Jay’s First PBR, I’m sure the folks at The Deer Lodge would be happy to accommodate you as well. Here’s a link to their website: http://www.ojaideerlodge.net/home.htm

It makes me positively pine for the chance to lift a few and holler at the screen with Jay and the boys. Y’all come!

On the PBR Team Shootout

On June 28, the PBR announced a new competition, the PBR Team Shootout, a series of five events pitting twenty two-man teams against one another. The top 20 PBR riders would choose partners from the remaining pool of all eligible PBR riders. On July 1, on Wild Bill’s weekly online radio show PBR Prime Time, PBR Chief Executive Officer Randy Bernard, Dennis Gach, Senior Vice President of Operations, and Jay Daugherty, Vice President of Event Tours, started with the top- ranked rider, Guilherme Marchi, and worked their way down the list, drawing numbered poker chips out of a cowboy hat to determine the order in which the riders would pick their partners.

The teams were announced on July 8. In the order determined, they are: Sean Willingham and Justin McBride; Mike Lee and Wiley Petersen; Brian Canter and Bryan Richardson; Travis Briscoe and Cole Taylor; J.B. Mauney and Bart Miller; Brendon Clark and Jared Farley; Renato Nunes and Sinovaldo Correia; Valdiron de Oliveira and Pim Rosa; Luke Snyder and Cory Rasch; Ross Coleman and Matt Bohon; Mike White and Colby Yates; Zack Brown and Mark Lopes; L.J. Jenkins and Austin Meier; Chris Shivers and Nick Landreneau; Guilherme Marchi and Juliano Marchi; Adriano Moraes and Allan Moraes; Kody Lostroh and Matt Austin; Ednei Caminhas and Chad Denton; Robson Palermo and Robson Arageo; and Dustin Elliott and Wesley Silcox.

The Shootout will take place between August 10 and September 14, and the first four events will be televised on ESPN2. The Team Shootout final, at Pueblo, Colorado on September 14, will be televised on ESPN. Ten teams will compete at two of the four events, attempting to ride a total of four bulls. The team scoring the highest will take the entire purse at the event, and all teams will be in contention to qualify for the Team Shootout event in Pueblo.

Now, this development is interesting for several reasons, not the least because it is being done in partnership with ESPN, the premier cable sports network. On PBR Prime Time, Bernard emphasized that the PBR values its longtime relationship with Versus, but it’s obvious to me that any venture with ESPN will introduce more people, and thus more potential fans, to the sport. The choices the top 20 riders made, though, are fascinating in and of themselves. It’s pretty clear, looking at this list, that in most cases, calculation isn’t playing a big role in the choices. Sean Willingham, who went first, may have made the only calculated choice when he picked Justin McBride, who is the 2007 PBR world champion, but isn’t ranked in the top 20 because he’s been out of action for seven months tending to a shoulder injury. Three of the riders chose relatives (Marchi, Moraes, and Jenkins), and in two of those cases, their picks aren’t ranked in the top 45. In fact, both Matt Bohon and Allan Moraes had been cut from the Built Ford Tough Series (BFTS), so let’s hope they can redeem themselves in this new setting.

This lack of calculation is probably the most immediately remarkable aspect of the Shootout. Of course, the riders appear to have done precious little calculating when they’ve drafted bulls at regular events, but I have to wonder whether any amount of analysis would affect the outcome. To date, the first man to pick a bull in the draft has yet to win the event. The draft has made no difference, none, in the results of the competition, so it will be interesting to see if the cowboys are better at drafting partners than bulls.

This event will not affect the BFTS standings, but of course the more the boys ride, the more likely they are to get hurt. It does appear, however, that participation is mandatory for the top 20 bull riders. No one declined to take part, so the question of what would have happened had someone done so is moot. But I have to wonder how it would have played out had one of the riders didn’t think the potential payoff was worth the risks.

But it’s the scheduling of the Shootout is most intriguing—it’s a very compressed series that run pretty much concurrently with late-season BFTS events. Starting next weekend, there will be three BFTS events in a row, in Tulsa (July 18-20), Edmonton, Alberta (July 24-26), and Glendale, Arizona (August 1-2). Then the Shootout begins in Del Mar, California, on August 10, moves to Paso Robles, California, on August 17, and to Molalla, Oregon, on August 23. There’s a break in both series over the Labor Day Weekend, and then the Shootout starts up again in Guthrie, Oklahoma, on September 7. The BFTS sprint to the PBR finals commences on September 12 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Team Shootout finals take place in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 14, and then it’s back to the BFTS in September 19 in Jacksonville, Florida.

I’m presuming that the teams will be told well in advance which two events they will compete at, but even so, I hope these guys ain’t drivin’ and sleepin’ their way from event to event, or they will never see anything but the inside of their trucks, the inside of arenas, and the backs of a lot of bulls. That’s assuming, of course, that it’s even possible to drive from one event to the next without breaking the sound barrier or their pocketbooks on $5 a gallon gasoline. Just to keep it interesting, the 2008 PBR World Cup takes place in Chihuahua, Mexico, on August 16-17, the same weekend as the Shootout event in Paso Robles. I hope somebody at the PBR is paying attention, since several of the top 20 riders are also competing in Mexico. It would be unfortunate if some of them had to be in two places at once.

Thinking about the logistics of all these (nearly simultaneous) events reminds me of a job I once had that obliged me to attend national sales fairs about six times a year. I wasn’t alone in this—practically all the editorial staff of the company spent quite a bit of time on the road. The last summer I was employed there, I worked 23 days straight, most of it in places like Dallas and Atlanta. Believe me, that gets to be a drag in a hurry. The men who ran the company paid their editorial staff, which was almost entirely female, really well, and they treated us like shit. The salesmen, who occasionally double-dipped as publishers of the various magazines, sat around raking in salaries plus big commissions from accounts with squirrelly (and sometimes shady) businesspeople that we girls were then charged with keeping pacified.

Anyway, about once a year, like clockwork, the Powers That Were would send out a memo reminding us all that if we flew back into town during regular business hours, we were expected to come in to work that day, even if we’d been glad-handing potential advertisers 18 hours a day for 10 days straight, or had gotten up at midnight to catch a plane back home. When I gave notice, I toyed with the notion of circulating my own memo advising everybody that traveling on business was no excuse for not being in the office at the same time. I expect to regret to my dying day that I didn’t do it. What were they going to do, fire me?

It wouldn’t surprise me to find out the Shootout was scheduled this way because the opportunity with ESPN developed rather suddenly, but I’m hoping that if the event survives into next season, the PBR execs will consider moving it to the long summer break, the one we presently are suffering through out here in TVLand. While it’s true that the money the winners will earn won’t help them in the BFTS standings, it’s also true that seeing a little bull riding during that stretch would ease our pain. Riders who aren’t participating in the Shootout would, of course, be free to compete in Challenger events while the Shootout contestants matched wits with bulls and boys elsewhere. It could be a win-win situation for everybody, except, probably, the bulls, who will be on the road even more than the boys. Fortunately for them, they don’t have to drive.

The Bull Diaries

The Stockyard Queen's note: A few weeks ago, I finally got around to e-mailing the link to “Turn Him Out!” to our friend Jay, who lives in Southern California, damned near at the jumping-off place. Jay and Montana Barn Cat have been friends for nearly as long as they have both been alive, and among his other exploits, Jay was best man at our wedding, an event that included a broken zipper in the bride’s dress, my Spanish (now ex) sister-in-law, a Fulbright scholar at Cal Arts (I swear I’m not making this up), calmly sewing me into said dress, and the baker forgetting us entirely, so the cheesecake was still hot and runny when it was delivered to the reception. It also featured Montana Barn Cat looking absolutely gorgeous in a black tailcoat and white tie, stunningly beautiful weather, and hummingbirds hovering above us as we said our vows on the deck in my new father-in-law’s back yard. In short, it was one of the most perfect days of my life, right down to the champagne and cigars.

I don’t know why I had not thought to send Jay the link before, because among his other attributes, Jay is a remarkable writer and one of the few people I know who still sends off LETTERS to his friends. I always get a thrill when I pull an envelope from him, addressed to Barn Cat, out of the mailbox because I know it’s going to contain something entertaining. I thought (hoped) he might find some of my observations interesting as well.

Now, I have to admit that when it comes to literature, Jay and I have our differences. For one thing, he worships at the altar of Charles Bukowski far too much to suit me. (As a matter of fact, Jay even sort of looks like Bukowski, though more like C.B. might have looked if he’d drunk responsibly and hadn’t been afflicted with the worst case of acne ever described in American letters. If you want to be truly grossed out on that subject, see Ham on Rye for all the gory details). As far as I’m concerned, the only good use for a Bukowski novel is to throw it at bugs on the wall, or at someone who has offended your sensibilities beyond bearing, which is killing two birds with one stone, don’t you think? Since his books tend to be pretty small, you’re far less likely to dent your drywall or your man’s head than if you were throwing the Oxford English Dictionary.

So I sent Jay the link, and he replied enthusiastically, so enthusiastically, in fact, that we are now thinking of dragging him and the stylish and regal Pamela along with us when we hook up with our new virtual friend Shannon to see the PBR event in Anaheim next season. Jay is already planning his outfit, which will include a denim vest with a picture of Scene of the Crash silk-screened on the back. I told him that was fine, but he had to wear a shirt with it, to which he replied that wearing a vest without a shirt was just “so New Jersey.” As it happens, my BBF Elisabeth grew up in New Jersey, so I guess it’s a good thing that Jay didn’t voice that opinion at our wedding, since Elisabeth was my best woman. She might have thrown the Oxford English Dictionary at him, or at least held him under in the koi pond for a few hours.

Since I think it’s good, from time to time, to offer up a different point of view on “Turn Him Out!,” I invited Jay to write some guest posts. He most magnanimously agreed. Thus I am proud to present his first observations. I hope you find them as enlightening as I do.

THE BULL DIARIES
by Jay Windsor

Episode 1: A Neophyte Is Introduced

I guess it was about a year or so ago when I asked Barnyard Cat, “So, except for the usual nonsense, what are you up to?” He offered two words: “Bull riding.” A short yet poignant discussion followed. I made a mental note, afterward, which went something like this: “Bull riding?”

But after hanging up the phone, related stuff came flooding into my head. Rodeos I’d attended as a kid in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The sights and the sounds and the smells: Beautiful cowgirls on horseback, riding into the arena holding a large, American flag. The fragrance of barbecued meat, and corn dogs, and hay, and animal doody poop, and my father’s breath, on his second beer. I still think the funniest thing I’ve EVER seen was from back then, when a series of (mostly, but not exclusively!) boys no more than 7 or 8 were plopped on top of a sheep, told to “Hang on!,” then set out into the arena with a slap on the sheep’s rear. . . .

Well, given Barnyard Cat’s sensibilities about the more interesting things in life—which I knew fairly well and appreciated in large measure—I began to think about bull riding in earnest. (Which is a fancy way of saying, “Hey, maybe the knucklehead is up to something good.”) And so it was that I investigated what I could watch, or see, or experience, or quickly learn. My preliminary examinations of the sport had me utterly fascinated, and yearning for more. . . .

Thin is the thread, and bitter the necessity.—Teilhard Chardin

A dispatch was sent soon thereafter to Bozeman. “Damn! I don’t get the ‘Versus’ channel via my basic cable service, and there ain’t a rodeo scheduled nearby, near as I can tell. I think I have the fever. What do I do?”

Utilizing deft intelligence, Barnyard Cat turned me over to the Stockyard Queen. “Dear Rookie,” she wrote. “Please stop your whining. If nothing else, you can go to the PBR’s website and view film clips of recent rides, not to mention all manner of other things that you might find interesting. The link is attached.”

Well, she saved my ass. The link is, to date, my lifeline. Since then, several things have come to mind:

• Bull riding is akin to Good versus Evil. This goes back to Greek and Roman mythology, I think. (Not to mention the film series called Star Wars.) I dare say that it is Shakespearean, in its poetic, dramatic attractions. And long may that be so.
• The natural thing to do, as a human being with a bad back and a bad attitude, is to root for the cowboy. And I always do, initially. But sometimes I find myself rooting for the bull. I don’t know why, but I suspect it’s similar to the nascent wish that some folks feel when they watch Godzilla stomping on New York City?
• As a spectator, this is an amazing spectacle. To a professional bull rider, this is very, very serious shit.
  

In time, I suppose, I will become aware of and maybe be fortunate enough to SEE the finer nuances of the sport, the pursuit, the brave foray into dangerous realms, in person. Until then, I wish every bull rider health, and every single bull a seriously bad attitude.

Yip.

Whacked with the Ugly Stick

Since we have plenty of time ahead of us to indulge our more obscure interests, and since when the PBR finally starts up again we will be in a dead run for the finals in Las Vegas and probably won't have two seconds to ourselves for the duration, I wanted to take up a matter that has long puzzled me, to wit: Why are the trophies handed out at the highest levels of professional sports so damned ugly?

For starters, the National Hockey League has the Stanley Cup: http://www.flickr.com/photos/puftdankfotos/266943520/

You can tell that the photographer tried his best to light the trophy nicely, what with the heavenly light in the upper left hand corner and all, but tell me truthfully—don’t you think it looks like an upside (albeit silver-plated) travel cup, the kind that collapses back on itself? Why did anybody think that was a good idea?

Then we have the Vince Lombardi Trophy, courtesy of the National Football League, and named for he who famously said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” though there is some dispute about who first coined that phrase. Check it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisweed/96201373/

It looks like some kind of doodle the CEO did on a napkin and nobody had the guts to tell him it sucked. I think they should give that to the LOSERS of the Superbowl and give the winners gift certificates to Lone Star Steakhouse. They’d be better off, believe me.

Then we come to the trophy handed out to the winners of the National Basketball Association season: http://sports.gearlive.com/blogimages/nba_trophy.jpg

I really cannot figure out what in hell is going on here. Is that supposed to be a basketball about to fall through the basket? Why is the ball so damned big? What angle would you have to see the action from for it to look like that? Toss it in a wastebasket, I say.

I am not a NASCAR fan for a whole bunch of reasons, and this trophy, awarded to the winner of the Dayton 500, only enforces my attitude: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosaliedefini/2285880959/

That is truly lame—it looks like it was designed by a bunch of rednecks who’d been drinking beer at the shooting range all afternoon. Is it supposed evoke one of those turntables car dealers used to have in their showrooms, where a car would revolve endless while admiring would-be buyers looked on? And what’s with those tacky little name plates? At least they ENGRAVE the winning team’s name on the Stanley Cup.

Aside from the ones that I just can’t make any sense out of, my main objection to all these monstrosities is that the proportions are all screwed up. The best of the bunch is probably the America’s Cup, which harkens back to the classic days of trophy design, though even it is too tall for its own good:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21951463@N02/2122292532/

It may look like a syrup pitcher (with a great big reservoir below it), but at least it’s not totally top heavy or just indecipherable. In other words, you can tell it’s a trophy, not something somebody found in a junk yard, polished up with an SOS pad, and dragged down to the arena at the last minute.

Compared to these, the PBR’s trophy doesn’t look completely horrible, but it’s still no orchid. Here it is in the company of the current title holder, your very own Justin McBride, Miss Shannon. If you can’t bear to look at his face, just cover it up with your hand:
http://www.lvrj.com/sports/11017206.html

My main objections to this thing are that it looks like a soup pot, and those bulls on the handles are beyond ridiculous. At least, with the pseudo-belt buckle on the front, they’ve got that Western silversmith thing going on, because if it didn’t have that, it would look like a big punch bowl for serving the ginger ale and sherbet (“sherbert,” where I come from) drink they always served at weddings when I was a kid, because of course we were all too pure to drink champagne, or maybe for holding your mamma’s fruit salad that she makes every Thanksgiving under the delusion that people like it, when in fact they won’t touch it with a barge pole. If she's anything like my mamma, she makes enough to feed Coxey's army and you'll be bumping into it in the refrigerator for weeks, until somebody finally surreptitiously throws it out.

Or maybe it looks like (truth be told) a chamber pot, which is ironic in the extreme considering that the dude who wins walks away with $1 million. At that moment, he couldn’t be accused of not having a pot to, er, you know, in, or a window to throw it out of, though I’m not at all convinced that these guys are particularly prudent with their winnings and he could be broke before he turns his back on Vegas. (Ruby would phrase it, “didn’t have a pot nor a window,” so as to get the meaning across without sullying her reputation for clean speech.)

Of course, the biggest problem we’ve got with all these butt-ugly objects is, we’re stuck with them. It’s like nobody can admit the original design was a mistake. No, it's worse than that, it’s like nobody even TALKS about it. Can it be possible that they have no idea? I'd prefer to think that, but in my heart, I just can't believe it.

So please, folks, reconsider. Even big billion-dollar corporations retool their images once in a while. Given the relative ugliness of these trophies, I am the first to admit that there are a bunch of professional sports organizations that should do that before the PBR does, but it wouldn’t hurt the bull riders to be ahead of the curve for once.

Recapping the Dickies American Worker of the Year Invitational presented by Pike Electric in Dallas

Since sometimes I have to go trailing off to other parts of the state on behalf of my clients, I was in Billings all day yesterday, which naturally delayed the posting of our recap of the Dickies American Worker of the Year Invitational presented by Pike Electric in Dallas. And thanks to popular demand (I think five people actually requested it!), Montana Barn Cat and I had decided to do another pseudo-live blog, which in this case took the form of our taking copious notes about the event and all the snide comments we managed to fire off in the course of it. Let's face it, sometimes trying to do this on a laptop just complicates things unnecessarily. This sort of post takes a little longer to wrangle, but we consider it our contribution to the war effort. No doubt it’s way funnier to us than you’ll find it, but them’s the breaks.

We were also motivated by the fact that it will be FOUR FULL WEEKS before the next event, in Tulsa, and then Shannon, the keeper of the flame and all true information, pointed out late last night that the Tulsa event won’t be televised till August 2. Do you get that, folks? It will be SIX FULL WEEKS before we see any new PBR action on the tube. That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard all year, which is saying something.

So in the event that your spirits are flagging a bit, we offer up this long-ass treatise. Two disclaimers: For the most part, these are the Stockyard Queen’s observations—if that’s not so, I’ve noted it. Which brings me to the last cautionary note, for my lovely mother-in-law, who sometimes drops by here: You may need to cover your eyes when you read some of Barn Cat’s contributions. I swear, I have not made a word of this up. I can only keep in mind what you told me—when you were growing up in Wyoming, you heard it all, though of course you weren’t allowed to say it, because you’re a girl. Well, the Barn Cat has spoken and some of it ain’t purty.

You have all been warned. Here goes.

Saturday, June 21
We see a panorama of Dallas, but fortunately are spared hearing the theme song from the nighttime soap opera of the same name. Down in the arena, the boys in the booth are talking about the return of the Messiah, oh, excuse me, Justin McBride, and Justin McKee remarks in passing that the folks at PBR headquarters were worried that without a “superstar” (my remark, not his), fan interest might fall off. But guess what! It’s greater than ever!

Nevertheless, this comment explains a lot: 1) the continuous and ultimately annoying worshipping at the altar of Justin McBride, this season, which has included reminding us every five minutes that he wasn’t there, what had happened to him, when he would be back, and how much all our lives would improve when that blessed event occurred (honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t set up a shrine to him on top of the cage in the middle of the arena, complete with a big picture and some candles, just in case we’d somehow managed to miss hearing about him); 2) the multiple, ridiculous, fractured-logic observations that Marchi (and all the other boys, of course) was riding great BECAUSE Justin wasn’t there; and 3) the blatant and ongoing search to find a new American “superstar,” like Travis Briscoe and then Sean Willingham, which, as Ruby would say, “hasn’t worked out too good.” Travis pretty much tanked early on and, though Sean presently is riding well, he’s not in Guilherme Marchi’s league, never has been. Marchi has hit a rough patch lately, but he’s still way ahead in the overall standings and I’m betting he’ll back up to snuff shortly.

And to think that people had the nerve to complain when Tim Russert’s death was in the news for a week! How long have we been putting up with this Justin McBride mantra? AN ENTIRE SEASON, that’s how long. The only miracle out of all this is that I don’t faint, or spit, or at least hyperventilate at the sound of his name, and I am still interested in watching him ride instead of pelting him with wadded-up beer cans. To hear these guys tell it, though, I might as well turn off the tube and take up croquet or tatting now, because Justin’s got the title in the bag already.

And here comes our first rider: my good buddy Reese Cates, who is in the race for Rookie of the Year. He goes off Crazy Train in 2.5 seconds.

MBC: “I guess he did too much drivin’ and sleepin’.”

Bryan Richardson gets thrown off Hustler. Justin McKee says that’s a Playboy son out of a Bodacious daughter. “He’s a ringer for his grandpa.”

Living Large is throwing some snot, and also throwing Tyler Pankewitz.

Avalanche is back! Pistol Robertson is off!

Austin Meier gets thrown.

Aaron Roy rides Ham Bone, who looks like he’s been drugged. Does not look like the same bull that J.W. said looked like “the real deal” in San Antonio.

Clayton Foltyn can’t stick to Rewind, a “bucking son of a gun,” though he comes close. J.W. wonders whether he got that far on effort or if it was a hang up. Well, somebody else won the world championship hanging off the side of a bull, so there’s no reason not to stick any way you can. You’ll still get a score.

The bull named Mr. Zantrex has been dyed blue. SQ: “Ladies, don’t date him.” [Late note to Miss Jean: No, I do not believe his, er, apparatus was also dyed blue. I'd like to have seen the son of a bitch who would have been brave enough to try that. I'd give him the bull riding title without his ever climbing on a one of them.]

Zack Brown and Say When. MBC: “That bull looks like a Dutch Lop.” Zack goes off, bull scores 44.

Cord rides Clown Attack—a bore. It’s Cord’s 4^th straight ride.

Harve Stewart off Rush—he gets off holding his groin. Maybe they have some Zantrex-3 Insta-Shot in the back for him, to ease the pain.

Brian Canter on Too Sharp, a rematch. Too Sharp is a muley. Kurt Hummer: “Brian is wearing his hair a little longer.” J.W. says Canter “ain’t shaved in four months and you can barely tell it. He’s got a bet going with somebody.” Brian rides for 84.50. J.W. says that bull has a common day.

Rocky Boots Trivia—what is Mike White’s favorite movie? KH: “I hope it’s not Lonesome Dove.” J.W.: “Lonesome Dove is the greatest movie of all time.” SQ: “But it doesn’t have a soundtrack by Toby Keith, J.W.!”

Kolt Donaldson is pitched off Snap Shot, who can jump. That was fun.

Dustin Hall is off Full Throttle and immediately starts praying. Justin McKee: “He’s a Playboy looking dude, ain’t he?” Looks like there are a couple of Playboy’s sons in this round. Assuming McKee was talking about the bull, of course.

Wiley Peterson rides for 87.5. Shorty doesn’t call it for once.

Jared Farley off Cadillac Man. Bull was awesome! Bull score: 44.5

Colby Yates rides Can Rock for 89 and is now in the lead.

The Gerber Man ad still sucks.

Here comes a bull named Jack Daniels. That reminds me of a Beverly Hillbillies episode where Jethro steals Granny’s “medicine” to fuel his moon-shot, because he wants to get up there to party with the Moon Girls. He blasts off just as Granny is sampling her latest batch, and the concussion about shakes the house to pieces. Granny says, “Eat your heart out, Jack Daniels!”

Nick Landreneau makes it to 7:20 on Sharp Dressed Kid.

Sinovaldo Correia rides Red Man, a BIG bull, for 88.25.

Brendon Clark is off Lucky Strike.

Ryan Dirteater? Are you serious? Surely he made that name up.

Ad for Fight Night. I thought we were watching that already.

OH MY GOD! IT’S JUSTIN MCBRIDE! HE’S BACK! THANK THE LORD, WE DON’T HAVE TO WATCH CRAPPY BULL RIDING ANYMORE! WHEN DO HIS SUPERPOWERS KICK IN? OR DOES HE HAVE TO WEAR A CAPE?

He’s on Fish Creek Bandit. J.W.: “When they announce his name, everybody stands up.” SQ: Yeah, they all just realized they need to go to the john and get another beer. Maybe several. He rides but it’s a pussy bull. He looks thinner, his haircut looks better (basically he’s shaved his head). I’m still not a fan.

Kurt Hummer: "The bulls are all picked randomly." SQ: "Why are you telling us that now?"

Justin McBride says it was a perfect bull to come back on. “I’m still a little rusty but it felt good.”

Helton Barbosa off Handsome Jack. Bull score is 43.5.

Ednei is wearing a helmet, which causes considerable consternation in the booth. Rides Monkey Shine for 85.25. A good ride.

Ned Cross is hyperventilating on Monkey Business. It doesn’t help, he gets thrown. Bull score is 44.

Renato Nunes is on Hellfire, a bull J.W. isn’t too high on. He rides, gets five. Frank Newsome takes a hit.

Commercial for Ford F Series, which “has stood by the American worker for 60 years.” Vehicles don’t stand by people, people stand by people. And what about the fact that Ford has delayed the rollout of the new F-150, due to its financial woes? What kind of “standing by” is that?

Doorbell rings in a commercial and MacKenzie starts barking. He runs over Tiny and Belle on his way out the door to protect us all from the evil hatchet murderers on the loose in our fair city of a Saturday evening.

Gilbert Carrillo owns (at least a piece) of Fish Creek Bandit. Re: McBride riding him: “You can’t throw him off of nothing.” J.W. says it was a practice bull for McBride. Who, BTW, didn’t ride any practice bulls while he was out.

Mr. Zantrex appears again. MBC: “Maybe they should just paint a va-jay-jay on the rider’s vest.” [Later: I've thought about that comment for about three days now and I still can't imagine what that picture would look like.]

Mike White’s favorite movie is Talladega Nights. Montana Barn Cat: “Kurt Hummer’s favorite movie is The Birdcage.”

Ford Tough Stuff Moment is Renato Nunes.

NO MENTION OF PAULO CRIMBER’S INJURY YET.

Mike White rides Dirty Secret, who was bad. Reride option.

Dustin Elliott on Stiffer. He rides.

MBC takes over for a bit: Adriano vs. Sand Boy. Good ride! With family in the stands! 85.75.

Chris Shivers vs. What I Say. Looked good for a couple of jumps but throwed off. Bull score 45.25.

Sean Willingham vs. Slow Ride. He’s five-for-five of the riders here. Won Orlando. Snot slingin’ in the chute. 87.75. He’s six-for-six now.

Ross Coleman vs. Wild Nights. (SQ: Which he should know a lot about.) Bucked off—bull had good timing—scampy!

Mike Lee vs. Hill Street. Rides for 85.5.

Mike White vs. Wild Life for reride. 90.75. SQ: Where’s the points fairy?

SQ is back.

Travis Briscoe rides Rock Star. He’s still not on a streak.

MBC: Mauny bucked off Fraggle Rock.

Valdiron vs. Roll the Dice. Good first hop, then spins. Possible re-ride. Bull fell down in the back.

Cody Lohstroh vs. Billionaire. Bucked off. Bull scores 46.

Marchi vs. Total Darkness. Nice nose view of the bull, who “loves his job.” Did the bull stumble? Three straight buck-offs! SQ: Guess those superpowers kicked in before McBride even got back in the arena.

Round is over. In the booth: “That would mean the night is over but for the Zantrex-3 Insta-shot Grudge Match.” Bet a lot of guys are saying the same thing when the night should be over. Willingham and Jenkins both end up in the dust, so the Grudge Match comes to naught. Guess that extra energy Zantrex gives them isn’t helping.

Sunday, June 22

We are admiring the Dallas skyline. I haven’t been in Dallas in 20 years, but the skyline was way overrated even then. The only thing it had going for it was that unlike most of Texas, something was sticking up more than 15 feet above the horizon. Would love to try out Guilherme’s steak house, though.

Now we are admiring some bulls. Jacob’s Pet is unridden in four outs. Fish Creek Bandit appears.

J.W.: “Hustler is extremely rank on a right-hand delivery, like they have him tonight.”

Travis bounces off Rewind.

Last night there were 19 rides out of 47, if I have the number of rerides right. That’s roughly 40 percent.

Brendon Clark on Rush—Clark rides but the bull practically stopped. Clark scores 88.25. What the hell?

Mauney on BMF—that was a good ride, but he only gets 86.5. The judges are already hard at work here, throwing darts at the board to pick the scores.

Brian Herman almost gets stepped on when Rowdy You Hou unloads him.

Renato rides Little Bo, a BIG bull, for 88.6. He gets kicked in the back as he gets off but that’s a good score. He’s ridden two.

SQ: “Oh, no, it’s the dancing pharmaceutical reps! They never stop.”

MBC: “He sells birth control pills, she sells Viagra.”

SQ: “Is that why he keeps grabbing his crotch?”

Pistol Robinson has grand plans to ride Total Darkness, who has different plans. And who manages to carry them out. Off he goes.

Nick Landreneau is bucked off King Solomon. A close call—his hat is wrecked.

Valdiron goes up against Young Gun, which name is sort of ironic, and prevails. 80.5. He should have gotten a reride. Sez J.W.: “The judges are dumb tonight because that’s a 14 point bull if I ever seen one.”

Robson Palermo and Lucky Strike combine for the worst wreck of the night. Yikes! He landed right on his head, just like Paulo and Ross Coleman did. I thought for sure he’d have a compression fracture of the spine.

Clayton Williams loses his rope and Red Man tosses him off. Sez J.W.: “I’d throw that rope in the garbage and get a new one.”

Here, once again, comes the Ford F-150 Series, the truck that has stood behind the ’Merican Worker for 60 years, and now you can get it for employee pricing! Sez MBC: “All the employees are laid off, so the price IS exactly the same for you.”

Feature on whether helmets should be mandatory. Cody Lambert opines that the reason they’re not required is there is no PBR safety standard for the manufacturers to meet. And whose fault is that? If the PBR established a standard this week, there would be helmets manufactured to meet it in another three weeks. You can take that to the bank. J.W. says he doesn’t agree with making helmets mandatory and he doesn’t agree with the seat belt law either. He won’t wear a helmet because “I’m a cowboy and I like the way a cowboy hat looks.” I hope he likes the way his face looks after he goes through a windshield. Reasoning like that, and role models behaving like that, could get a lot of people hurt and even killed. It’s a good thing J.W. isn’t riding this season—maybe riders will pay less attention to what he says. Really! That’s just irresponsible. If you want to endanger your own life, that’s your prerogative, but at least have the sense to keep your damned mouth shut about why you’re being so aggressively stupid. I’ll bet J.W. rides his ATV without a helmet, too, because it “infringes on his rights” to feel the wind in his hair. Of course the community has no right to an opinion on the subject, even though the county paramedics may end up having to scrape him up off the highway so he can take up space in the hospital on life support, probably on the county dime, till somebody who loves him has to make an awful decision. Thanks, J.W.! We love it when you defend your rights. As Mario Cuomo said of New Hampshire, the only state that does not have a seat belt law, “Their motto is ‘Live Free or Die’ and they have chosen to die.”

Wiley Peterson rides Papa Smurf. Behind the chutes, he holds up his helmet and says, “Don’t leave home without it.”

Sean Willingham vs. the unridden Slade, who remains unridden.

Marchi climbs aboard Derringer and gets the job done. He scores 89.0, which puts him in fifth place. The last time he bucked off four times straight was in September of ’07. Wasn’t Travis Briscoe 0 for 11 at one point this season? Travis, the next Great White Hope?

Austin Meier is bucked off Flat Creek. Austin isn’t looking too good these days.

Mike Lee goes two for two on Handsome Jack.

Leah reports that Robson has a concussion and has re-injured his shoulder. He is questionable for Tulsa. What about Paulo? What about Ross Coleman? Who decides whose injuries get reported on?

Colby Yates can’t stick to Monkey Business. I’m liking that bull a lot.

MBC: “Justin McBride looks a little like Tom Cruise to me.”

Stockyard Queen: “Maybe like Tom Cruise would look if he had his cheekbones liposuctioned.”

L.J. Jenkins just plain falls off Lucky Strike, and manages to spit almost as soon as he hits the ground. SQ: “He’s too busy concentrating on his snoose to ride bulls.”

Adriano Moraes has Player—he rides him, but just barely. Oh, no, he slapped the bull! The crowd is booing. I agree. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you slap the bull,” sez MBC.

Sinovald Correia gets bucked off Black Ghost. An excellent bull.

Justin McBride draws his second pussy bull of the event, Jefe, and rides him. Even J.W. says this is a “practice bull” for Justin, who of course hasn’t ridden any practice bulls before coming back. Justin is probably telling the truth about that, since it’s such a point of pride with him that he doesn’t need to practice or work out or (most likely) even go to physical therapy, but I suspect that when some of these boys say they aren’t getting on practice bulls, it’s like some writers saying they never revise their stuff. Jack Kerouac always insisted he never revised anything—turns out, he was lying. Make of that analogy what you will.

J.W. says Justin McBride will pick the rankest bull in the bull draft.

Chris Shivers rides Cadillac Man for 90! I have to admit, that was a good ride. He made a great correction when the bull changed directions. His 73^rd 90 point ride! But—can you spell “score inflation”? That explains all the 90 point rides this season, as far as I’m concerned. Overall, I’d bet we’re still not seeing the cowboys ride 50 percent of the time. The judges have one hell of a lot to answer for.

Kurt Hummer: “Justin McBride is back!” Stockyard Queen: “Who? Oh, was he gone?”

Luke Snyder gets bucked off Hustler. As you’d expect. I think that’s the rankest bull bucking right now.

Cody Atwood and Holy Smoke part company, and the end is ugly. Almost a major disaster! Cody got off easy that time.

Brian Canter tries to ride Avalanche. Shorty Gorham predicts he will be bucked off at 2.5 seconds. He is EXACTLY right. They should put him in the judging booth and pitch at least one of those (conveniently anonymous) dudes down into the arena. Let’s see how he’d do fighting bulls instead of hiding behind his clipboard.

Kolt Donaldson is bested by Bigger Man, who poses very nicely before leaving the arena. That bull looks great!

Enterprise Ride with the Best—Mike White vs. Scary Deal. He rides for 88.25 points! He goes first in the bull draft.

The picks are 1) Mike White and Camo; 2) Renato Nunes and Grey Dog; 3) Wiley Peterson and Cat Man Do; 4) Justin McBride and Billionaire; 5) Mike Lee and Mr. Zantrex; 6) Aaron Roy and Hot Stuff; 7) Valdiron and Full Throttle; 8) Chris Shivers and Zorro; 9) Travis Brisco and Jacob’s Pet; 10) Colby Yates and Ricky Bobby; 11) Dustin Elliot and Nasty Mike; 12) Guilherme Marchi and Spitfire; 13) Jared Farley and Showtime; 14) Reese Cates and Party Time; and 15) Brendon Clark and Gnash.

Clark has been thrown off Gnash twice before but this time he manages to hang on for 92 points. Justin McKee: “Talk about going from the outhouse to the penthouse.” Up the back stairs, I presume.

Reese Cates and Jared Farley are bucked off. Marchi gets thrown and gets whacked in the face with a horn for good measure. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch! Dustin Elliot loses his bull rope and that’s that. J.W.: “That’s a bad day at the office right there.”

Travis Briscoe gets thrown off Jacob’s Pet, as we all knew he would. Why didn’t Justin McBride pick that bull, arguably the rankest in the pen this out?

Chris Shivers rides Zorro, who J.W. describes as “hard as a brick.” He scores 89.5, which makes no sense to me, compared to Clark’s score.

Valdiron and Aaron Roy both get bucked off. Then Mike Lee gets a reride on Mr. Zantrex, which is not something I want to think about much longer.

Billionaire throws Justin McBride—the bull clearly didn’t get the memo about how Justin was going to ride anything offered him. Bull scores 46.

Wiley and Renato are both bucked off. Mike White gets a reride on What I Say and still gets bucked off at 7.3. Mike Lee wins the event, being the only rider to cover three bulls. You can’t argue with consistency, as we have observed all season about a different rider.

All this forces me to conclude that despite Ty Murray’s high hopes, the bull draft hasn’t made it more likely the riders will still be aboard when the buzzer sounds. Not once this season has the rider who picked first won the event. Not one time! Either the riders don’t pay any attention to what the bulls do (hence the need for Cody Lambert’s blatant coaching as they choose their bulls), or knowing what the bulls are doing doesn’t make any difference to how well their ride. The latter would suit me just fine. That’s just the way I am.

Hang On! Help is on Its Way!

Good morning, folks. Even though there is nothing I'd rather do than blog about bull riding all day long, I'm sorry to state that I have to work for a living and I'm going to be really pressed today. And Montana Barn Cat is in an even sorrier state, since he has to actually leave the house and GO to the office to bring home the bacon. But I want to assure you that we will be posting our report on the Dallas event by midday tomorrow at the latest.

In view of the fact that it will be FOUR FULL WEEKS before the Tulsa event, we pulled out all the stops and did our patented not-ready-for-primetime-pseudo-live blog. We hope you will find it entertaining enough to make up, at least a little, for the long dry spell we are all facing. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we will be facing it together.

Coming Around Again

Okay, boys, bring it on! DING DING DING DING DING Here comes The Stockyard Queen’s Hoof in Mouth Award, being presented for the third time in just over a month! This time, the lucky winner is 19-year-old Reese Cates, for his stellar blog post on the PBR website. It started out innocently enough when Cates remarked that “Personally speaking, I think getting in the truck and driving from one event to another is what riding bulls is all about. . . . Flying from one place to the next and staying in one city all weekend is not rodeoing. It’s definitely easy that way—maybe more convenient—but, to me, that’s not what makes you a bull rider.”

So far, so good, though I thought what made you a bull rider was getting on bulls, not driving and sleeping for 24 hours straight. But then he had to go and say this: “And there was something that I was thinking about this weekend and it’s going to make a lot of people unhappy, but I will go out on a limb and say: Guilherme and Valdiron are great bull riders—two of the best ever—but I don’t think those Brazilians could handle being gone like that—the mentality it takes. I don’t think they could take it. It would start to bother them about being away from home. It would bother them about not being able to work out everyday. I don’t know if those guys could handle getting on that many bulls. I’ve never seen them at very many Challenger events so I don’t know if they could take it or not. You could take the top Brazilians in the world and match them up against the top Americans and let them haul all summer long and I just think the Americans would win. It’s the cowboy mentality and that’s what it takes to do it.”

Of course, my first inclination was to jump on the comments board and rip poor Reese’s head clear off, but fortunately I managed to restrain myself, and other people with better impulse control and greater reserves of kindness did point out to him two of the errors of his ways. First off, the Brazilians are already away from home, every damned day they are in this country, in a place where their native tongue isn’t spoken and the customs are totally different. Second, every one of those guys had to pay his dues to get to the Built Ford Tough Series, just like Reese is paying his, right now. Nobody pointed out something equally obvious, which is that Brazil and a stack of other Central and South American countries have cowboy traditions that go back as far or further than does ours. I’d be willing to bet good money that some of those Argentine gauchos could outride, rope, throw, and brand your average Texas cowpoke.

But I actually am willing to cut Reese a little slack because he is young. Very young. I don’t think I was that young when I was 10, to be frank. He and I also have something else in common, which I won’t elaborate on here, that makes me want to give him the benefit of the doubt. It remains to be seen whether I have to shove him out of the “young” category and over into the “young and incurably stupid” pile, and only time will tell that.

But his ignorant remarks led me to think about something my first boss said that probably helped me be a better employee than anything anyone has ever pointed out to me. She remarked that we all want to believe that our strong suit is the most important contributing factor to getting the job done successfully, and generally, it’s not. For instance—if I happen to be a morning person and I get in to work an hour early every day, then of course I think everybody ought to believe getting in early is really valuable. Which it might be sometimes, but mostly, it’s not. And by the same token, I’d want everybody to think the fact that I was so tired by the end of the day I couldn’t see straight was okay, when of course, it isn’t.

I surmise from his remarks that young Reese Cates thinks that since he’s so good at drivin’ and sleepin’, those abilities are most important to being a bull rider. Here’s a reality check: Drivin’ and sleepin’ don’t make you a cowboy or a bull rider. Being willing to drive and sleep from one event to the next doesn’t make you a damned thing, except almost certainly worn out, which I doubt will help your game much when you finally climb out of the extended cab and onto the back of a bull. And for sure you’re going to have to win a pile of money to not be broke, what with $5 gasoline on the horizon. I’m pretty damned sure those boys aren’t driving Priuses, assuming they are willing to drive something not made in ’Merica, or even Ford Escape Hybrids, for that matter.

One final observation: It might interest you, Mr. Cates, to know that when you were about seven, I went to work for a real cowboy, one who was making cowboy movies before my parents were born. I suppose some folks would argue that because he didn't cowboy much before he came to Hollywood, he wasn't a real cowboy, but nobody would dare to state he didn't become a fine horseman before he hung up his spurs. And the man had a closet full of cowboy clothes to die for. I'm talking a real clothes horse, right down to the custom, handmade Lucchese boots.

I never got to spend much time with him, though I’d see him around the place once in a while and speak to him, casually, the way you might speak to the CEO of your company if you were the low man on the security force, say. Way back in the day, he made a movie, Rancho Grande, with a little gal named Mary Lee, in which they sang a duet, “Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande.” As it happens, he wasn’t the first to sing that song in a movie—that distinction belongs to Bing Crosby, who crooned it in Rhythm on the Range. The lyrics were written by the immortal Johnny Mercer, and the second verse goes like this:

I’m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande,
And I learned to ride ’fore I learned to stand.
I’m a ridin’ fool who is up-to-date
I know ev’ry trail in the Lone Star State
Cause I ride the range in a Ford V-Eight.
Yippy-I-O-Ki-Ay.

Now, when that song was written in 1936, every real cowboy would have laughed his ass off at the suggestion that you could drive a Ford rather than ride a horse, and still claim to be a cowboy. So much for the drivin’ and sleepin’ theory of cowboyhood.

In the meantime, guys, would you just think about what you’re saying for maybe five seconds before you go shooting your mouths off, please? You’re wearing the finish off this damned trophy! At this rate, I’ll have to put these boys on the payroll to keep dragging it around for me, unless I can make the points fairy an offer he can’t refuse.