more pics (see post below)

That's me driving that horse!

Quite a lot of bouncing up and down, since I don't really know how to post. It's a lot harder on the knees than and I thought, and that bra my girlfriend has been teasing me to wear would not have been a bad idea today. Another butch fashion dilemma...what to wear horseback riding.

one picture is worth a thousand words

My god daughter L. loves to ride, as you found out yesterday. I have been wanting to learn so that when she is big enough, I can take her riding on the weekends. I have been threatening to take lessons to catch up with her, but she tells me, "You'll never catch up."

So today I went to Friendly Acres for a two-hour ride. Given that I haven't been on a horse in 20 years, it went better than I expected. I even managed to take some pictures and a short video clip. I tried to upload the video clip, but I need some technical assistance. Here are the photos.

The minimum age to rent a horse is five, so I left a message for Molly to see if it's OK to take L. there with me. There was a man there with his six year old daughter, and everything looked under control.

What a beautiful day. Riding a horse along the ocean and actually going down onto the beach. I recommend it.

off we go to the rodeo

Today I found myself somewhere where I NEVER thought I would be. The rodeo. Not the Junior Rodeo, where seven year-olds ride 25 year-old horses around barrels. I mean the real rodeo, with bucking broncos and steer wrestling. Real cowboys from Utah and Arizona. And Castro Valley, that little bible belt of Alameda County. And let’s not forget that confederate flag on one of the trucks in the parking lot.

My god daughter rides horses. She is six. Two years ago I spent countless hours on the internet and telephone finding a riding teacher that would take her at four. I found Molly.

Molly said that she can teach “the little ones” if they have good balance and are obsessed with horses. My god daughter qualified. So once a week, she goes to Castro Valley for her horseback riding lesson. And after two years of lessons (probably way before, but Wednesday at 2 PM is hard to get to for this nine-to-fiver), she can ride that horse.

Molly is involved with the rodeo. So anywhere that Molly and horses are, my god daughter wants to go. So we went. Somehow I was under the naïve impression that we were going to the Junior Rodeo, but I wasn’t so lucky. I knew when they started broadcasting John Wayne reciting over some patriotic-sounding music that I was in uncharted territory.

I suspected that the star spangled banner would be involved, and that my usual reluctance to stand up might not be in my best interests today. I was surprised by the racial diversity, and that a Native American man near me seemed to be actually singing the words, but I was indeed the real diversity today, a jewish butch dyke.

Despite the cruelty to animals part (although at times it seemed the animals had it all over the humans) it was actually quite interesting. Cowboys (and girls) pay money to enter rodeos with the hopes of winning prize money. Unfortunately, we both got tired before the cowgirls. But we did get the autograph of the “queen of the rodeo”.

So here come these guys who actually get up on a bucking bronco and try to stay up on it for eight seconds. I truly wish I had seen the women riding bucking bronco, but when it’s time to go…….What I did learn today is that to get these horses to buck, they tie a strap around its belly, back toward the rear legs. They don’t like it, so they buck. Also in the arena are two other people on horses who have to remove the strap from the bucking horse as soon as the rider falls off. Now there’s a niche job.

Then came the steer wrestlers. Two men on horses chase a steer out of the chute. One of the men actually slides off his horse, aims for the running steer, and tries to grab the steer’s horns and wrestle it to the ground. Testosterone makes people do funny things.

Luckily, after a few rounds of that, my six year old god daughter commented that there might be a lot of traffic on the way home, so I took that as a clue to get the hell out of there.

Then I went to La Pena to see the Lesbian Hip Hop group from Havana, Cuba. WOW. We live in interesting times.

the spirits like mid-century moderne

I am a third generation junker. My grandfather would go to church bazaars and buy up everything that was left over at the end. Boxes of bright red nail polish and dozens of short sleeved men’s shirts with those weird little diamond patterns. Today they would be sold on Valencia Street in a vintage store, but in 1966, we thought they were the squarest thing going.

One time he came home with two four-foot tall carved wooden African statues. We laughed about those things for years. After my father died two years ago and we were clearing out the house, I thought about those statues and how much they must be worth now. My cousin Robert still has them in his basement, and he said I could have them. Getting them out to California would be a challenge, but maybe the next time Antiques Road Show comes to town………

My girlfriend, on the other hand, is a first generation junker. She was teased by her family about going to flea markets and wearing “old clothes”. But she has a passion for junking that is hard to believe is not inherited. Imagine our delight at finding collectible ceramic candlesticks for 99 cents each.

In the past year, we have gone to Philly, my home town, twice. We discovered an antique store in the Italian Market area of South Philly, one block from the best cannoli in the world. The guy that owns it grew up “in the neighborhood” and sold fish out of that store for thirty years. Now he’s into “junque”. He talks loud and fast and loves a bargain.

Last week, when we were there, we found some pink Mikassa plates with a small peace sign on the bottom from the 60s. D loved them, and I teased her about being converted to my love for “mid-century”. She usually finds the straight lines of the mid-century moderne too cold and sterile compared to the lush, sensual décor of her house.

She bought the plates and I schlepped them home on the plane. The other day, I noticed two of them under plants on her altar. I screamed, “That’s not what those plates are for”, and she said it's OK, they could always be washed.

Last night we heard a crash, and one of the plants on a pink plate was on the floor. Today I told her that the spirits didn’t think the pink plates should be used for that either. She laughed. A little while ago, the other plant on a pink plate crashed to the floor as well. “I guess you’re right”, she said. “The spirits like those pink plates and don’t think they should be used for planters”. You know you’re right when the spirits throw their vote with yours.