Life at the rodeo

As I said earlier, I finally attended the rodeo for the first time on Saturday, and actually rather enjoyed it, though I admit my expectations were a wee bit skewed. Over-the-top would be an apt description for what I expected to be on display, and for a brief moment at the beginning of the rodeo I thought I was about to get it. Just as the national anthem was about to start, a man in garish clothes came out positioned standing astride two horses, one foot on the back of each. As he charged towards me, my eyes widened as I came to the (faulty) conclusion that this man would be singing the national anthem while standing on two trotting horses. Alas, this was not to be the case, as some elederly chap serenaded us instead. Damn.

Interesting note: at the rodeo, the national anthem has been pushed out of the limelight by "I'm Proud to be an American" song. The former is played while a dozen or so gals in sequined red, white, and blue outfits ride about in different patterns while each carrying a large American flag; the audience, meanwhile, dutifully places hat over heart for the duration. Quite the spectacle. The actual national anthem, in contrast, is quickly run through after this, with only the double-horse guy doing laps to commemorate it.

A few things I can't quite fathom about the rodeo, though. One was the scoring system for the timed events. As I understand it, each day the riders participate in their event, and the cumulative scoring determines who eventually wins on Saturday night. During the afternoon session I attended, scores from each event were posted, along with the leaderboard. The puzzling aspect was that the "average" scores on display were all much higher than any of the individual times I witnessed. For instance, if people were routinely scoring, say, 15 seconds on a given event, the leaderboard nevertheless showed the top riders as having an "average" time of 30 or more seconds. Don they mean aggregate time, instead of average? Anyone with more rodeo familiarity out there care to help me out?

Also, I'm a little troubled by the "No Time" designation for those who fail at an event. Wouldn't "no time" (i.e. zero) be a boon to those determined by average time. Wouldn't infinite time be more appropriate as a punishment? But this lends itself to a logic problem: what is the average of a given number plus infinity? The mind boggles.

Finally, I was dismayed that the bulls were considerably more tame than I desired. Perhaps it is because I just watched "The Last Unicorn" recently, but expected nothing less than bulls with glowing red eyes and steam being snorted out of their nostrils to be chasing hapless rodeo clowns around the arena, goring them and otherwise tossing them over the barricades into the audience. Instead they furiously buck for a few seconds, and then benignly trot back to their pen. Boo. How about this instead?




See? That's much more like it.