conflict of interest? Is there any other possible description of Cord McCoy getting to ride a bull he bred, trained, and owns? What are the judges thinking?????
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
On Steroids
One of the few benefits of being trapped in a hotel for ten days while contractors try to mop up the damage after a water leak was that each morning we got a copy of the local newspaper delivered to our door, which we gratefully carried downstairs and read while we ate our hot breakfast. (A shout-out here for the Wingate in Bozeman, the best-appointed and operated moderately priced hotel I've ever stayed in. And the staff could not have been nicer, more helpful, or more sympathetic to our plight.)
Even though we are newshounds par excellence, we don't subscribe to our local paper because we were spoiled rotten by five years of getting the Washington Post tossed at the top of our driveway, every morning, like clockwork, in weather fair or foul. The Post is, to my mind, the best newspaper published in the U.S. (yes, better than The New York Times, which is just so tiresomely New York), and the price for a subscripiton is absolutely unbeatable--77 cents a WEEK! My one serious quarrel with the folks at the Post is that they don't sell subscriptions to people outside the D.C. metro area, so folks like us, way out in the hinterlands, are forced either to cough up too much dough for a local paper that can't begin to compete, or else must rely on the Post website to glean what we can. Since we are also junkies of political news, you can guess which option we have chosen, but under protest, believe me. I'd much rather have that big pile of newsprint greeting me every morning than the stripped-down version I'm having to content myself with.
Be that as it may, during our exile at the Wingate, the Bozeman Chronicle did pick up one really good piece from the Los Angeles Times, written by a journalist named Dee Dee Correll, whose work you can bet I am going to be following from here on out. It was titled, "Yo, Cowboy! Is that bull on steroids or something?" and it appeared in the Chronicle on January 27. I have since located the original article in the Times under the less amusing headline, "Steriod suspicions ride into the rodeo," so I suspect that our local headline writers were having some fun. It's nice to know they're not without a sense of humor down on College Avenue.
Anyway, I invite you to read the piece for yourself: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/01/27/news/na-rodeo27
The bottom line is that while at least one stock contractor has admitted to giving his bulls steroids to make them more aggressive some years back, there's no evidence anyone is dosing his bulls now, and for a very good reason: Giving a bull steroids can very shortly render him sterile. No contractor with the sense God gave a goose is going to make that mistake.
So I for one am not in the least concerned that the bulls that buck in the PBR are shot full of steroids. And although to my knowledge the question hasn't come up yet, I also don't give a damn whether the cowboys are taking steroids, either.
As I write this, congressmen and sports pundits are wringing their hands over whether Roger Clemens did in fact dope himself, and there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about the decline in fair play in American athletic competition. You can bet that when the Summer Olympics start up, we will hear more of the same. I could go on at length about why I think it's time to decriminalize the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but I could not say it any better than did Sally Jenkins, arguably one of the best sports commentators now working, in a column that ran in the Washington Post on October 10, 2007. It's titled "There's a legal remedy to the doping issue," and what she says, in a nutshell, is that steroids have approved medical uses, generally short-term prescription of short-acting versions, under medical supervision, for specific ailments. She contends that depriving athletes of access to those drugs can prolong recovery times and, yes, might even shorten their careers.
You can find Ms. Jenkins' column here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101102285.html I recommend it to you highly.
So it's not going to worry me one bit if I learn that on the advice of his physician, a PBR cowboy took steriods at alleviate inflammation in a sore elbow or a ripped-up knee. I'm pretty sure that no serious rider thinks being muscle-bound or brain-damaged is going to help him stick to the back of a bull. Having just watched a season in which too many boys suffered concussions and came back to ride too soon, I think we can presume that Dr. Tandy Freeman, and the riders' own good sense, will prevail.
Even though we are newshounds par excellence, we don't subscribe to our local paper because we were spoiled rotten by five years of getting the Washington Post tossed at the top of our driveway, every morning, like clockwork, in weather fair or foul. The Post is, to my mind, the best newspaper published in the U.S. (yes, better than The New York Times, which is just so tiresomely New York), and the price for a subscripiton is absolutely unbeatable--77 cents a WEEK! My one serious quarrel with the folks at the Post is that they don't sell subscriptions to people outside the D.C. metro area, so folks like us, way out in the hinterlands, are forced either to cough up too much dough for a local paper that can't begin to compete, or else must rely on the Post website to glean what we can. Since we are also junkies of political news, you can guess which option we have chosen, but under protest, believe me. I'd much rather have that big pile of newsprint greeting me every morning than the stripped-down version I'm having to content myself with.
Be that as it may, during our exile at the Wingate, the Bozeman Chronicle did pick up one really good piece from the Los Angeles Times, written by a journalist named Dee Dee Correll, whose work you can bet I am going to be following from here on out. It was titled, "Yo, Cowboy! Is that bull on steroids or something?" and it appeared in the Chronicle on January 27. I have since located the original article in the Times under the less amusing headline, "Steriod suspicions ride into the rodeo," so I suspect that our local headline writers were having some fun. It's nice to know they're not without a sense of humor down on College Avenue.
Anyway, I invite you to read the piece for yourself: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/01/27/news/na-rodeo27
The bottom line is that while at least one stock contractor has admitted to giving his bulls steroids to make them more aggressive some years back, there's no evidence anyone is dosing his bulls now, and for a very good reason: Giving a bull steroids can very shortly render him sterile. No contractor with the sense God gave a goose is going to make that mistake.
So I for one am not in the least concerned that the bulls that buck in the PBR are shot full of steroids. And although to my knowledge the question hasn't come up yet, I also don't give a damn whether the cowboys are taking steroids, either.
As I write this, congressmen and sports pundits are wringing their hands over whether Roger Clemens did in fact dope himself, and there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about the decline in fair play in American athletic competition. You can bet that when the Summer Olympics start up, we will hear more of the same. I could go on at length about why I think it's time to decriminalize the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but I could not say it any better than did Sally Jenkins, arguably one of the best sports commentators now working, in a column that ran in the Washington Post on October 10, 2007. It's titled "There's a legal remedy to the doping issue," and what she says, in a nutshell, is that steroids have approved medical uses, generally short-term prescription of short-acting versions, under medical supervision, for specific ailments. She contends that depriving athletes of access to those drugs can prolong recovery times and, yes, might even shorten their careers.
You can find Ms. Jenkins' column here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101102285.html I recommend it to you highly.
So it's not going to worry me one bit if I learn that on the advice of his physician, a PBR cowboy took steriods at alleviate inflammation in a sore elbow or a ripped-up knee. I'm pretty sure that no serious rider thinks being muscle-bound or brain-damaged is going to help him stick to the back of a bull. Having just watched a season in which too many boys suffered concussions and came back to ride too soon, I think we can presume that Dr. Tandy Freeman, and the riders' own good sense, will prevail.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Our Apologies
It has been a long, hard six weeks at the Stockyard, and we are just now getting all the pieces picked up. The short version of this painful story is that while we were away at Christmas, there was a water leak in our house that caused massive damage. Fortunately our homeowners insurance covered us, but we hadn’t bargained on how difficult it would be to live in a construction site. This despite the fact that Barn Cat and I had each helped remodel a house before we got together, and since have remodeled two more, so we couldn’t complain that we didn’t know pretty much what to expect. Nevertheless, the strains have been significant. It’s been about all we could do to work for a living and manage the action on the home front, so even though we of course have not stopped watching the PBR, we haven’t had much energy to comment on it.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
On the Bull Draft
Throughout both broadcasts and in online forums since then, I’ve heard a lot of talk about how great the bull draft is because it allegedly has resulted in more qualified rides. Frankly, I am skeptical. It’s true that there were more qualified rides than usual at both events, but that’s because the bulls were not, er, first rate. In fact, for the most part we saw what the Stockyard Queen very impolitely labels “the pussy pen.” The only bulls I’d rank as exceptional at both venues were Big Bucks, Copperhead Slinger, and Scene of the Crash. In fact, it seemed like a lot of bulls who usually do better had lackluster trips. Maybe the water on the East Coast doesn’t suit them!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
On International Copyright Law and Intellectual Property
By now our devoted readers are probably wondering where all those pictures are that we promised when we first fired up this blog. Rest assured that we are working on acquiring some, specifically to illustrate an entry that we hope to generate within a couple of weeks. It might be helpful to you to know, however, why up until now we haven’t posted any images.
The answer is simple: I deal daily with international copyright law and intellectual property issues, so I will not use any image for any purpose, commercial or frivolous, without the express permission of the copyright holder. That means I won’t go grab images off anybody else’s website nor will I scan them out of magazines or newspapers and post them here. If an image appears on this blog, you can bet your boots we have permission to use it, and most likely we will have paid for that privilege. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a photograph provided by the PBR or a breeder, or an original work of art created by one of our many talented artist friends. If it’s here, we have done the homework to use it.
We plan to follow the rules about using content others generate, and we expect others to do likewise for the content they find here. We will not countenance theft from this website. Don’t go lifting anything without permission, because we will find you out and we will not let it go.
Having said all that, we now present our inaugural image, a bucking bull Christmas ornament made for us by our very good friend, the talented artist and children’s book illustrator Jill McElmurry. Jill has written or illustrated such wonderful titles as Mad for Plaid, Where’s Stretch?, and our all-time favorite, I’m Not a Baby. We recommend her books to you wholeheartedly, especially if you have little ones in your household, but we have to admit that we grown-ups occasionally sneak off to enjoy one of them surreptiously, the same way we might slip down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to polish off the last of the lemon risotto. Hope you enjoy seeing this creation as much as we enjoyed unwrapping it.
The answer is simple: I deal daily with international copyright law and intellectual property issues, so I will not use any image for any purpose, commercial or frivolous, without the express permission of the copyright holder. That means I won’t go grab images off anybody else’s website nor will I scan them out of magazines or newspapers and post them here. If an image appears on this blog, you can bet your boots we have permission to use it, and most likely we will have paid for that privilege. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a photograph provided by the PBR or a breeder, or an original work of art created by one of our many talented artist friends. If it’s here, we have done the homework to use it.
We plan to follow the rules about using content others generate, and we expect others to do likewise for the content they find here. We will not countenance theft from this website. Don’t go lifting anything without permission, because we will find you out and we will not let it go.
Having said all that, we now present our inaugural image, a bucking bull Christmas ornament made for us by our very good friend, the talented artist and children’s book illustrator Jill McElmurry. Jill has written or illustrated such wonderful titles as Mad for Plaid, Where’s Stretch?, and our all-time favorite, I’m Not a Baby. We recommend her books to you wholeheartedly, especially if you have little ones in your household, but we have to admit that we grown-ups occasionally sneak off to enjoy one of them surreptiously, the same way we might slip down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to polish off the last of the lemon risotto. Hope you enjoy seeing this creation as much as we enjoyed unwrapping it.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
New Year's Resolutions
Finally we are back in the swing, with the PBR season launched last weekend at the Copenhagen Bull Riding Invitational in Atlanta and Mike Lee in the lead. Since it is the first week in January of the New Year, I am offering up some resolutions. In the spirit of fairness, I have made five for myself and six for the PBR, in the hope that the organization will continue improve in more than just ways monetary.
Resolutions for the Stockyard Queen
1. I will pay more attention when I’m simultaneously doing laundry and watching the PBR, so Barn Cat’s best Wranglers don’t come out of the wash with big bleach spots on them (ever again). Likewise for trying not to leave a hot iron sitting on his best dress shirt while I jump up and down and scream at the television.
2. I will at least close the windows and doors during broadcasts, so the neighbors won’t be obliged to cover their children’s ears whenever they pass by my house.
3. On behalf of those few people who see me in the flesh when I attend a PBR event, I will forego the teeny little muscle shirts the PBR merchandises to women at $30 a pop. Actually, I would never spend $30 on any tee-shirt under any circumstances, so the fact that people won’t have to see my girls trying to escape from a too-tight tee-shirt is just gravy.
4. I will do my best not to rant endlessly when I am certain a bull has been scored low because “He don’t love his job.”
5. I will make an honest attempt not to gloat when one of the riders I particularly disdain (and there are several of you, boys) gets pitched off and face planted, particularly after the commentators have bragged for five minutes about how great he is. Or was. Or has the “potential” to be.
Resolutions for the PBR
1. To do away with the flame-shooting bull heads. Today a friend directed me to an article on Yahoo News by Ben Klayman that described the PBR as a cross between NASCAR and a rock concert. Right. Those flame-throwing bull heads are just dumb. What do they possibly add to the experience? More smoke, that’s all, and there was already considerable smoke hanging above the arena before the bull heads appeared. Smoke naturally suggests smoke and mirrors, which is not something the PBR should be encouraging its audience to think about.
2. To abandon the ’80s rock music as well. I have yet to figure out whether the heavy metal tunes we are tortured with are the brainchild of Flint Rasmussen, or of someone higher up the food chain, but please, guys, cut it out. At the very least, you could play more recent stuff. (Yes, somebody has made a record you might like since 1983. I’m positive about this.) And it wouldn’t hurt you to turn the volume down a little.
This practice is really dating you—it makes us wonder if you have progressed a single step since you barricaded yourself in your room during high school and cranked the stereo up to 100 decibels. And now I see on the PBR website a link to “The music of the PBR.” Can you be serious? I know (because I feel the same way) that the music a person grows up with is the best damned music in the world, but the fact that it’s a universal sentiment makes it highly suspect. For the record, I have a couple of decades on practically all of you and I KNOW the Doors will always trounce Van Halen. See my point? Please, give it a rest.
3. To tell the jerk who hits the bulls in the face with a clipboard to just stop it. I know that sometimes bulls don’t cooperate in the chutes, and they kneel down, lie down, and lean on the riders, and that nudging and prodding them is necessary to get them in position and the gate open, but hitting them in the face with a clipboard? Come on! You certainly aren’t doing yourselves any favors with the PETA set, not that we give a particular damn what they think, but there are those among us who love the sport and still think this practice is out of line. Count me as one of them. Even the PRCA dudes use a padded four-by-four instead of a bare-knuckle version to pry the bull off the chute. You would do well to follow their lead in this one instance.
4. To ask the sponsor that manufactures smokeless tobacco to lose the girls in the skintight s&m outfits. One of these days I am going to discourse on the apparent disconnection between the insistence that the PBR is a “G-rated” sport and the constant in-your-face sexiness you can’t escape from at an event, but in the meantime, could we at least be spared the sight of these girls in their leathers and chains? It mystifies me who would think that’s appealing (doubtless the sponsor thinks it appeals to its customers, but that’s a whole different subject), but I’m telling you I find it extremely distasteful. If you can’t put a stop to it, please, at least make them ditch the chains.
5. To encourage your riders to come up with some new descriptions of how they ride. One of the funniest scenes in any sports movie takes place in Bull Durham, when Kevin Costner helps Tim Robbins work on his baseball-playing clichés. “I just want to go out and contribute to the team and good Lord willin’ and the creeks don’t rise, we’ll win.” Well, in my book, “I just try to ride ’em jump for jump” is fast becoming the dumbest string of words ever uttered. Every sport suffers from this kind of crap, but so many PBR riders repeat the same stuff over and over that I can barely tell them apart. Sure, virtually all the riders are under thirty, and a stack of them are barely more than eighteen, but I really can do without hearing the same tired expressions week after week. It may not be Shakespeare, but Adriano’s advice that a rider “tuck his chin and remember why he’s here” is still a huge improvement. I recommend some riders’ meetings specifically to deal with this issue. Maybe you can get Costner in to coach.
6. To reconsider the premise that spinners should always outscore jumpers. I know that a lot of different factors are at play in judging bull rides, and I know that the judges don’t like bulls who leap and charge out into the arena because the farther away they get from the chutes, the harder it is to see what’s going on, but could you please stop giving 90+ scores to bulls who run five feet out into the dirt and then spin like tops? My GRANDMOTHER could stay on the back of one of those bulls, and bake a cake and adjust her Sunday hat at the same time. I don’t buy the notion that spinners score higher because the riders look so good on them. You guys are getting the big bucks to make the hard calls, so let’s step up and acknowledge that it’s harder to stick to Raindeer Dippin’ when he’s trying to fly than to Ditto when all he does is make the riders carsick.
Even if Raindeer “don’t love his job.”
Resolutions for the Stockyard Queen
1. I will pay more attention when I’m simultaneously doing laundry and watching the PBR, so Barn Cat’s best Wranglers don’t come out of the wash with big bleach spots on them (ever again). Likewise for trying not to leave a hot iron sitting on his best dress shirt while I jump up and down and scream at the television.
2. I will at least close the windows and doors during broadcasts, so the neighbors won’t be obliged to cover their children’s ears whenever they pass by my house.
3. On behalf of those few people who see me in the flesh when I attend a PBR event, I will forego the teeny little muscle shirts the PBR merchandises to women at $30 a pop. Actually, I would never spend $30 on any tee-shirt under any circumstances, so the fact that people won’t have to see my girls trying to escape from a too-tight tee-shirt is just gravy.
4. I will do my best not to rant endlessly when I am certain a bull has been scored low because “He don’t love his job.”
5. I will make an honest attempt not to gloat when one of the riders I particularly disdain (and there are several of you, boys) gets pitched off and face planted, particularly after the commentators have bragged for five minutes about how great he is. Or was. Or has the “potential” to be.
Resolutions for the PBR
1. To do away with the flame-shooting bull heads. Today a friend directed me to an article on Yahoo News by Ben Klayman that described the PBR as a cross between NASCAR and a rock concert. Right. Those flame-throwing bull heads are just dumb. What do they possibly add to the experience? More smoke, that’s all, and there was already considerable smoke hanging above the arena before the bull heads appeared. Smoke naturally suggests smoke and mirrors, which is not something the PBR should be encouraging its audience to think about.
2. To abandon the ’80s rock music as well. I have yet to figure out whether the heavy metal tunes we are tortured with are the brainchild of Flint Rasmussen, or of someone higher up the food chain, but please, guys, cut it out. At the very least, you could play more recent stuff. (Yes, somebody has made a record you might like since 1983. I’m positive about this.) And it wouldn’t hurt you to turn the volume down a little.
This practice is really dating you—it makes us wonder if you have progressed a single step since you barricaded yourself in your room during high school and cranked the stereo up to 100 decibels. And now I see on the PBR website a link to “The music of the PBR.” Can you be serious? I know (because I feel the same way) that the music a person grows up with is the best damned music in the world, but the fact that it’s a universal sentiment makes it highly suspect. For the record, I have a couple of decades on practically all of you and I KNOW the Doors will always trounce Van Halen. See my point? Please, give it a rest.
3. To tell the jerk who hits the bulls in the face with a clipboard to just stop it. I know that sometimes bulls don’t cooperate in the chutes, and they kneel down, lie down, and lean on the riders, and that nudging and prodding them is necessary to get them in position and the gate open, but hitting them in the face with a clipboard? Come on! You certainly aren’t doing yourselves any favors with the PETA set, not that we give a particular damn what they think, but there are those among us who love the sport and still think this practice is out of line. Count me as one of them. Even the PRCA dudes use a padded four-by-four instead of a bare-knuckle version to pry the bull off the chute. You would do well to follow their lead in this one instance.
4. To ask the sponsor that manufactures smokeless tobacco to lose the girls in the skintight s&m outfits. One of these days I am going to discourse on the apparent disconnection between the insistence that the PBR is a “G-rated” sport and the constant in-your-face sexiness you can’t escape from at an event, but in the meantime, could we at least be spared the sight of these girls in their leathers and chains? It mystifies me who would think that’s appealing (doubtless the sponsor thinks it appeals to its customers, but that’s a whole different subject), but I’m telling you I find it extremely distasteful. If you can’t put a stop to it, please, at least make them ditch the chains.
5. To encourage your riders to come up with some new descriptions of how they ride. One of the funniest scenes in any sports movie takes place in Bull Durham, when Kevin Costner helps Tim Robbins work on his baseball-playing clichés. “I just want to go out and contribute to the team and good Lord willin’ and the creeks don’t rise, we’ll win.” Well, in my book, “I just try to ride ’em jump for jump” is fast becoming the dumbest string of words ever uttered. Every sport suffers from this kind of crap, but so many PBR riders repeat the same stuff over and over that I can barely tell them apart. Sure, virtually all the riders are under thirty, and a stack of them are barely more than eighteen, but I really can do without hearing the same tired expressions week after week. It may not be Shakespeare, but Adriano’s advice that a rider “tuck his chin and remember why he’s here” is still a huge improvement. I recommend some riders’ meetings specifically to deal with this issue. Maybe you can get Costner in to coach.
6. To reconsider the premise that spinners should always outscore jumpers. I know that a lot of different factors are at play in judging bull rides, and I know that the judges don’t like bulls who leap and charge out into the arena because the farther away they get from the chutes, the harder it is to see what’s going on, but could you please stop giving 90+ scores to bulls who run five feet out into the dirt and then spin like tops? My GRANDMOTHER could stay on the back of one of those bulls, and bake a cake and adjust her Sunday hat at the same time. I don’t buy the notion that spinners score higher because the riders look so good on them. You guys are getting the big bucks to make the hard calls, so let’s step up and acknowledge that it’s harder to stick to Raindeer Dippin’ when he’s trying to fly than to Ditto when all he does is make the riders carsick.
Even if Raindeer “don’t love his job.”
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