Rodeo. A foreign word to most of us, ingrained social event for Texans. You can’t be in Houston without going to the rodeo at some point. Last night six of us went for this years festivities. I’ll break down your average rodeo for those unfamiliar.

Rodeo – noun:
A yearly event that may contain any combination of the following: calf roping, bull riding, trick horse jumping, hat and belt buckle vendors, beer, tacos and any type of food imaginable “on a stick”, immediately followed by some sort of live musical performance typically, but not exclusively, by a country western artist. May contain additional carnival attractions and games as well as frightening “carnie folk”.

It’s actually a tad more involved than that, say, about 72,000+ people worth.

Last night was fun. Interesting and different but fun. We actually went to the rodeo on Black Heritage Day. The musical performance was Alicia Keys and the crowd was quite heavily populated with thousands of 16 year old black teenage girls. It wasn’t all bad. The performance wasn’t as horrible as I imagined, she has a talent for the piano. unfortunately the acoustics in Reliant Stadium suck huge panda wang. It was horrible to listen to. Echos, bad bounce, distortion, the whole deal. Worst possible audio setup I’ve ever seen. The stadium is designed to make football games seem loud. That has the side effect of unnaturally amplifying concerts to the point of distortion.

The audio was quickly made up for with a “yard” long margarita. The sausage-on-a-stick and pizza-on-a-stick helped too. Oh, and lastly, to everyone in Houston, Funnel Cakes suck. You people don’t know what you’re missing. Fried dough is where it’s at baby. A funnel cake is fried dough’s poor white trash cousin.

It was certainly an interesting evening.