Red Splash in Blue State

I'm sure you're wondering what studly, dangerous, macho activities I was up to this weekend. Well, let me give you a little hint:

That's right: I was taking pictures at the rodeo. I like to live on the edge.

I'm kind of proud of that shot, and I want to show you a couple of details. First, this bull seriously needed some Chlor-trimetron:

Bullsnot!

And second, you know this ride was a tough one not only because the bull's rear end is higher than his head, but also by looking at the faces of the cowboys behind him:

I bet it takes a fair bit of bucking to impress those guys.

All in all, this was an amazing event to a redstater like me who is trapped in one of the deepest blue parts of the country. There were big-ass belt buckles and gas-guzzling trucks with W'04 stickers in the windows, and the music the announcers played was mostly Marty Robbins, the Sonos of the Pioneers, and Gene Autry. I had to go check whether they had stolen my iPod. And to hear Marty Robbins sing the Ballad of the Alamo over a PA system in California, well, that was just delicious:

In the southern part of Texas, near the town of San Antone,
Like a statue on his Pinto rides a cowboy all alone.
And he sees the cattle grazin' where a century before,
Santa Anna's guns were blazin' and the cannons used to roar.
And his eyes turn sort of misty, and his heart begins to glow,
And he takes his hat off slowly to the men of Alamo.
To the thirteen days of glory at the seige of Alamo.

For you progressives who are reading this blog, I can only try to describe the sheer undiluted outstanding All-American awesomeness of the day in a way that you would understand it: imagine, liberals, if you saw Che Guevara pooping on an American flag at a gay pride parade while Cindy Sheehan threw her disinterred uterus at a flaming effigy of Dick Cheney. Yeah, it was that awesome.

The opening ceremony was a thing of such unabashed patriotic pageantry that during the national anthem, several ACLU members in the crowd hurled themselves off the top of the bleachers into screaming oblivion. Before the anthem had come a huge, sparkly grand entry parade, full of pretty girls and American flags. At the end was an empty wagon, pulled by two clydesdales. The announcer explained that this was to symbolize all of the Americans who were stationed in foreign lands, fighting to keep us free and...massive applause drowned him out, but he kept on talking about how lucky we are to be CITIZENS of the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, at which point up in Berkeley or wherever Markos Moulitsas groaned and said that he felt "a great disturbance in the force". The applause was thunderous.

But then, while a local country singer mangled the words of the Star Spangled Banner, it got even better--down at one end of the arena, there were kids throwing white doves up into the air, so they would fly over the heads of the assembled cowboys and rodeo queens during the national anthem. Then, gigantic bald eagles shrieked down from the sky and devoured the white doves in midair!

Okay, there weren't any eagles, but that's about the only way it could have been more awesome. It was time to go post the colors, so the pretty girls with the big smiles thundered by the bleachers at a dead run, flags fluttering behind them:

And then it was time for the Feats of Strength. This bucking bronco, for example, was able to lift itself straight into the air with new VTOL technology:

Harrier Horse!

This is still California, though, so some things are ubiquitous. Like cell phones:

Hang up and ride!

And even the bronc busting had a California twist, as you can see by looking closely here:

Notice anything? That's right, the horse was bucking so hard, it knocked this cowboy's pink brassiere loose:

Another unique event, perhaps inspired by a desire to bring California's pastime of surfing into the dirt of the rodeo arena, was a competition in which a cowboy would throw himself on a cowhide being dragged by his or her partner (on horseback), and then hang on for dear life as the horse raced across a finish line:

This event is also known as "redneck bust-reduction surgery".

Then there was one I would be good at: Utterly Improbable Napping.

Palomino!

And let's not forget another Northern California favorite, Brokeback Team Goosing:

Slappy, I wish I knew how to quit you!

In conclusion, I am still so high and aroused from the weekend's potent brew of vicarious testosterone, jingoism, and aerosolized horse poo that I'm ready to jump on a Brahma bull and go invade North Korea. Or vote for Fred Thompson. Yee-ha!