1. I asked dozens of people what they thought a cowboy was and was given an assortment of answers that could be summed up as: a man’s man, hard, and lonely but happy. Really, all the answers seemed to be euphemisms for the word penis. I tried to think of what I think of when the word cowboy is mentioned, and I realized it makes me think of my step brother. He was a cowboy poet who was happy shoeing horses all day for $100 and three square meals. I still remember his advice to me on that day, “you’ll never go hungry working hard on a farm.”
“Good Eats”
2. The Calgary Stampede website describes the Stampede in reference to Don Taylor as, “[a] pride of place and its people. Perseverance. An entrepreneur spirit. And a colourful character.” Or, in other words, short. Clipped. Sentences. Of. Vagueness. Yet, despite the structure of the sentiment it’s actually a beautiful and apt description. It’s true, the Stampede is all of these things–even if the spectacle of the show is an alien-like understanding of the idyllic and simplistic roots of the perceptions of the cowboy lifestyle.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ggyywei/
3. It’s endlessly fascinating to me the way we’ve sexualized the image of the cowboy and the cowgirl. I overheard someone on the street saying that they were going to the ‘grounds’ so that they could check out the ‘half-n’ked cowgirls.’ I thought, “what a novel idea.” But, when I showed up to work the next day wearing nothing but assless-chaps, I was sent home. I guess the lesson was, there’s a time and a place—and rarely is it ever the time for assless-chaps.
4. I have eaten prairie oysters, worms, crickets, tripe, black pudding, a number of dishes served at Earl’s, but I have to say that scorpion pizza looked the worst; however, anything on a pizza is bound to, at the very least, taste okay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef
5. I took my daughter to the Stampede this year—her first year—and it felt good. I used to hate the Stampede, but this year was different. I started thinking about some of the clichés my step brother would say like, “talk less, say more” and “always do what you’d say you’d do.” So, I finally took out the power tools and started fixing the gate in my backyard that’s always squeaked. Maybe the representation of all things cowboy doesn’t quite live up to the real thing during Stampede, but it wasn’t as painful as I remember this year. Or, maybe, it was the assless-chaps keeping me grounded.