cowboy up

some people say there is nothing to do in st. george and these people are right. unless you are talking about the three days a year st. george has a rodeo...

i went with my friends colleen and warren. fortunately, neither of them suffer from livestock allergies, unlike my friend meat hooks. there are many great things about the st george rodeo. it provides everyone with an opportunity to remember what the american flag looks like because it is displayed around the rodeo at minimum 63 times. i have been trying to decide if the rodeo royalty princesses' shirt counts as a flag even though the red stripes were just red tassels....i am going to go ahead and say yes. 64 flags.

the rodeo started off right with a prayer. i don't know if rodeo prayers are constitutionally legal but i am going to go ahead and give it my ok. there are lots of amendments i just sort of skip over. if fact, it was only my third year of law school that i actually sat down and read the whole thing. you would not BELIEVE what is in there....

anywho, the announcer prayed that no one would get hurt in their high risk behavior and that someday when we get to the big arena in the sky that God will say admission is free. there were some other great cowboy analogies that i can't recall. i may or may not have laughed. my friend warren said that a women was trying to take pictures of the crowd during the prayer and had her camera pointed towards us before my little outburst (which bytheway was silent). which brings me to my next two points. firstly, i don't think people should take pictures of other people's attempts at communicating with God, because hey, that is private. secondly, i don't think warren should have had his eyes open during the prayer, i hope his irreverence didn't cause a trampling. we left early so i will never know.

i must say i always enjoy the political commentary while eating my delicious dollar nachos. the jokes are fairly predictable with saddam and hillary clinton being the main punch lines. evil dictators and democrats seem to be the biggest threat to america. although there is a lot of opportunity during muttin bustin to contemplate politics i recommend that any political discussions that don't end in george w bush being allowed to run for a third term should be avoided until you have exited the rodeo (and perhaps utah).

i am going to go ahead and get to my favorite part of the rodeo....monkeys on dogs hearding sheep. warren said he went last year and there were mini horses but that the monkeys were even better. he wanted to go back and rescue the monkeys but i think that once you are a trained monkey sheep hearder its hard to go back into the wild. besides where would we take them, snow canyon?

and on a semi unrelated note i heard a rumor that wranglers have changed their designs and colors. which reminds me of my summer goal for 2003 which was to bring wranglers back. i really let that one slip but i figure my jeans cant get much tighter (as illustrated below) so i half way there. . .