I, contrary to popular belief, can be talked into "country" pursuits when they masquerade as opportunities to engage in a healthy consumption of kitsch, americana, and white trash baiting. All of these desires were satisfied in spades by the wonder that is the Buffalo Rodeo, Buffalo,MN. What started out as a joke last year became an obsession this year. Last year, when my good friend Ali asked me if I wanted to attend a Rodeo in her neck o' the woods, I thought I had misheard her. I don't go places that smell like feces and only sell domestic beer. Not to mention the limiting footwear choices available to a rodeo attendee. BUT. I thought it would be a hoot, because as anyone who knows me well can tell you I find nothing quite as rewarding and soul soothing as making fun of the unfortunate dressers/hair/republicans/soccer moms of this world. A Rodeo promised untold heights of mulletdom, big ass ugly hats, shitkicking, Bush supporters, fried cheese curds, and if I was really, really lucky, zubaz. I was in!
The Rodeo last year did not disappoint, my friends. I was pointing and laughing from the word go. To my left was a Billy Ray Cyrus Mullet making out with a Pamela Anderson Boobs. To my right was a guy in shitkickers sans teeth ogling preteens in short-shorts. And dead straight ahead was a "beer" tent selling only Coors Light! I was in liberal-elitist-superiority-complex heaven! The evening of course began with a salute to our fearless leader and his cavalcade of atrocities. I personally feared for my safety and the safety of my companions during my pointed, post-colonial diatribe against the obligatory (and, let's face it, masterbatory) moment of "God loves the USA best of all" required at all events held outside the metro (I should clarify that I do support the military, my own father being a navy man. In fact, I have so much respect for the military that I'd rather not see them getting killed in some little man's grudge match waged because Papa Bear never loved him-Here's my deal with the Star-Spangled bullshit: There is a difference between patriotism and nationalism kids, and this is it: reasoned debate versus blind faith. Let us not forget that Nationalism put the N in Nazi. And these spectacles of Republican circle-jerking repulse me at the deepest level, because people are singing "Proud to be an American" while not taking the actual time to question and examine what it means to be an American, and what exactly we have to be proud of. It's such an adolescent statement to say "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free." At least. And how free are we exactly, at this point in time? NSA wiretapping, Guantanamo detainees in their own personal version of Dante's Inferno.... I'm so in love with this country that it makes me weep in anger and frustration. In the words of Ralph Ellison:
Personally, I am too vindictively American, too full of hate for the hateful aspects of this country, and too possessed by the things I love here to be too long away.
Anyway, I digress....) So once we got through the terror of me possibly being torn to pieces by rabid Toby Keith-listening-Neo-Cons the fun really began. Once that first cowboy straddled his bucking bronco, banging out of the gate and whipping around like a life-size rag doll, I was hooked. These were hot men on big horses being thrown on to the ground with alarming force. It was both arousing and strangely cathartic, seeing grown men broken and bleeding, inches away from getting kicked in the head... I should mention that men were on my shit list at this moment in my life... but mostly I was impressed. These cowboys were real athletes in a way that makes baseball players look like the laziest bunch of motherfuckers to ever put on a jockstrap. This was a lot of violence for very little reward, and while some may call it barbaric, I found it much less barbaric than something like football. How much skill does it take to run up behind another guy and fall on him? Or boxing, where the main point is to knock your opponent around until they are quite literally retarded? Here, it's man against beast, and generally the beast wins. It's aggressive and adrenal and fast and close. It's like sex, but with horses.
um, that came out wrong.
ANYWAY. After the Rodeo itself was over, came the hootenanny... it may have been a hoedown, I was unclear as to the distinction. There was a live country band, dancing, and of course, more "beer". I would have been satisfied with just the athleticism and majesty that was the rodeo, but observing the redneck in his natural habitat, in a mating ritual was no less than fan-fucking-tastic. I didn't last long at the hootenanny- i think I was emotionally drained from all the laughing.
This year, however, I vowed it would be different.
I came prepared to embrace the white trash, the swillish beer, the mullets and most of all, the hootenanny. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to participate in the Bush-a-Palooza.... I think Ali did that on purpose. It was rainy this year, but the beer was as cold, the clothes as loud and garrish, and the spectacle of man on horse satisfying in just as many ways as before. But the hootenanny, friends, was where the fun really began. First of all, there were a bunch of army guys at the dance who had a night off. There was some disturbing wedding ring removing from one of our nation's finest, but other wise this bunch was out to party, and very focused on accomplishing that mission. There was one female soldier in the bunch that just kept getting asked to dance by this old guy... i think it was a fetish. There was a drunk middle-aged woman in stonewashed jeans and a bad perm (she was like the anti-milf) that literally got tossed from soldier to soldier in a desperate attempt to keep from dancing with her. The woman would not give up, she was like a drunk, dancing Terminator, and any man in uniform was her Sarah Conner. It was pathetic in that really really funny way...don't judge me, you know you would have laughed. The band played country favorites and a little bit of Johnny Cash, and I danced like I hadn't danced in years. There is nothing more freeing than dancing in the middle of a group of people who you know for a fact you will never, ever see again. After the hootenanny died down, we went onto another bar where I saw a cute, goofy looking guy sitting to the side, clearly enjoying himself in the way that people that think their current activity is completely ridiculous and contrary to their typical activity tend to enjoy themselves. It was clear that he was not a saturday night bar-hopper, but found it fun and funny to participate as a guest star. We were on opposite sides of the bar, so there was no convenient way to flirt with him, so I chose the direct approach (big surprise). At the end of the night when they brought the lights up I took a business card, wrote my cell number on the back, walked over to him and said, "Hi, I'm Hala, you seem interesting. If I seem interesting, give me a call. "
10 minutes later, my phone rings.
