Horseback Riding: A Sport for Life

I started horseback riding when I was nine years old, at a rundown barn, with entirely unqualified horses and not enough green space to take care of them.  The trainer was abusive towards both her animals and her students, didn't know the first thing about teaching, and generally didn't know what she was talking about when it came to riding.  Still, I enjoyed the sport and I loved the horses and the time I got to spend around the barn, so I kept arriving every week in my ripped jeans and hiking boots. After one summer of baking in the sun my parents were convinced I was not going to quit riding like I had quit every other sport I had ever tried I got my first pair of real leather paddock boots and riding boots.  I advanced quickly from trotting on the longe line to cantering around the covered arena on my lesson horse, sitting deep in my saddle to offset the jolt from Remi's bad hip joints not moving in cohesion with each other.   After eighteen months I switched horses from my old and ailing Quarter to an obstinate Tennessee Walker by the name of Blaze, owned by a friend of my dad.  When prodded enough he and I finally took our first jump, a measly six inch cross-pole, which became an oxer-gymnastic that we soared over gracefully like we were ready for the World Equestrian Games.  Sure Blaze and I had our, very literal, ups and downs, but we were a team.  So when both he and I ended up lying in the dirt after I missed a cue and he tripped over a jump it wasn't Blaze's fault.  It was mine, and when we got ourselves up and brushed ourselves off we were even stronger.

Eventually I left my old barn due to a falling out with the trainer.  Falling out may be an understatement.  Storming out and never looking back except to worry about Blaze is a more accurate representation of what went down.  The trainer was had always treated her horses terribly but in my third year of riding for her barn the abuse to my lesson horse got much, much worse.  She would frequently grab Blaze's reins right under his curb chain, yank his head down, and then bring her foot up to kick him in the stomach over and over before releasing him, wild and terrified.  The day I left he had refused a vertical three times, and the last times I had nearly gone over his head, thinking he was following through.  I was pulled down from my horse, informed to "watch and learn," before the trainer mounted and began to beat him mercilessly with her whip, screaming at him to go, all while pulling back on his mouth so hard I thought for she would break her reins.  That was the first and I ever cried at the barn, ruining my "tough as nails" persona I had kept up which was necessary to run with the older kids.  One negative comment towards the tears that were running down my face was all it took for me snap.  And shout.  And finally give my big and scary trainer a piece of my mind about what she was doing to the animals people trusted her with.  That day I cooled down my horse, fed him an obscene amount of carrots, and told him goodbye.  Then I left.  That afternoon combined with the death of my beloved Remi was enough to ruin that barn for me.

Not riding, though.  Although I haven't been to a stable in four years I still love horses and the atmosphere of the barn more than anything else.  I occasionally head to my aunt's farm and hang out with her horses, ride around the empty paddocks and just love on the horses, but I haven't trained in a long time.  But unlike sports like soccer and dancing horseback riding isn't a sport that ends when you leave high school or college, in fact many people don't get into horseback riding until they're much older.  I knew a rider who was still riding at the age of eighty five (he died because his horse threw him and killed him but that's beside the point.)  Horseback riding is something you can participate in and love for your entire life, and with so many different disciplines that no matter whether you want to soar over jumps, race around barrels, or just wander through fields, horseback riding can be the sport for you.

The Practical Olympics

      After all the drama that went on with the 2014 Olympics held in Sochi, Russia there is no lack of things to talk about.  The oppression of LGBT people, the poverty many Russians live in, the uprooting of Sochi citizens to make way for an expensive sports complex that would be abandoned within weeks, and the hotel conditions that foreigners and athletes stayed in have all given way to heated debate.  However, with everyone else in the blogosphere already heatedly sharing their opinions, I have decided that I will share my "New and Improved Olympics: Designed for Practicality and Entertainment."

      I'm not saying that we replace the Summer Olympics, everybody loves those things.  There's horses and gymnastics and well-muscled men without shirts on every sports channel for two full weeks.  However the Winter Olympics might as well be called "thirty different ways to get down a hill" and other than the opening and closing ceremonies are only watched for the Figure Skating, which could be added to the summer because that takes place inside anyways.  So without further ado: the New and Improved Olympics.

Category One: Practical Skills

Event One: Multimedia Minding

In this sport it is every man for himself, with only the help of a computer, a smartphone, and a telephone with a headset.  This harrowing event requires the competitors to answer basic IT calls coming in from all over the world on their headset, while also answering emails from their boss, and texting their "spouse" and "kids."   The event continues for three minutes and as the time goes on the questions get harder, the emails become more complex, and the kids become more whiny.  The athletes are judged by a panel on grace, composure, legibility, and poise, and hilarity ensues.

Event Two: Kid Whisperer

The dangers of leaving a child unattended

The sport of Queens requires patience, focus, luck, training, dedication, and God's Good Graces to do well.  The Kid Whispering Event requires each competitor to take three young children, aged 3 months, 2 years, and 6 years and complete menial tasks while also keeping them happy.  In an event similar to a single person relay race each athlete much get each child up, dressed, and entertained so that the athlete can complete a random chore they will be assigned at the start of the event.  Anytime that the children become upset, the baby begins to cry, or the work is interrupted for more than 30 seconds the competitor must start over.  There is no way that this sport would not prove who is the best parent/babysitter and would not prove to be the best television the world would have for two weeks every four years.

Event Three: Everyday Driving
This event may seem like a breeze but it takes a true look at what driving through a downtown area is like.  Each competitor must answer a phone call and keep up with the conversation, while swerving through angry Christmas shoppers, over-assertive bikers, pedestrians, rapidly changing lights and randomly appearing stop signs.  This challenge is not for the faint of heart, and provides for the best entertainment that people are actually training for.  No worries though, for safety reasons, all pedestrians and bikers will be artificial.

Category Two: Humor

Event One: Pun Battles

This sport challenges not the physical body but the mind, testing the endurance of the brain and it's capability to process quickly and respond even quicker.  Competitors are paired off in groups of two randomly selected and the starter is chosen by a coin-flip done by an Pun-Official.  The starting athlete makes a pun, which their competitor has fifteen seconds to responds to with a corresponding pun.  The first person to not respond within the allotted time, to respond with a pun that does not make sense, or to respond without a pun is disqualified.  All of the winners advance to the next round, until a champion reigns.  To add extra fun for viewers this can be turned into a kind of March Madness with brackets and predicting who will be the overall winner.

Event Two:  Quote Conversations

This is the perfect event for the athletes who are Netflix addicts like so much of the world.  This event requires two people to hold a conversation entirely in quotes from television and movies.  The conversation must make sense, must have a logical progression, must not lapse into silence, and no quote may be used twice.  There will be two panels of judges: IMDB moderators to check the quality of movie quotes and teenage girls from Tumblr to scan gifs for TV show quote correctness.  What makes this event special is that every once in a while the entire cast of a movie shows up in full costume to film a scene and the competitors must remain calm and may not use any of the things said by the professionals.

Event Three: Debating a Southern Politician.

As someone who has roots in the south I am qualified to say that a lot of them are lacking in the smarts department, and are a bit delusional when it comes to major issues such as rape, gay marriage, abortion, and just about every other pertinent issue that is currently a major topic of debate in the country.  For this athletes are made into teams and each take one fifteen minute chunk of debate time so as not to become too angry and break any rules which restrict violence, swearing, degradation of the opponent, or general name-calling. To possibly add tension the winning team could then be made to debate against other except this debate would also be a cage match.
The debates will be judged by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, who will be as objective as possible, knowing that the Russians and Conservatives are also working and those people really do love their guns.

Superwholocked

     With the array of television sources available to nearly everyone in the world, it is no surprise that there are literally hundreds upon thousands of TV shows for those of us with the attention span of a spoon to choose from.  Having viewed a majority of the shows people love to rant and rave about on a weekly basis as I have managed to finagle my way into having access to nearly every channel and streaming site I can safely say that most of these programs are good, and are, at the worst, decent.  But what makes some television shows a level higher than the others?

     Analyzing three of the most popular shows currently, it is difficult to immediately say.  These three shows: Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, all are currently very much in the media spotlight.  Not only that but they continue to hold the media spotlight even while off-season.  However, what makes them similar and so successful.  It could be the attractive British men, if it wasn't for the fact that Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki are both American, as is the entire show.  It could be the fact that the shows follow around handsome young men who are saving the world in each and every episode, except that Benedict Cumberbatch is 37 and Martin Freeman is 42.  It could be the supernatural and sci-fi elements, except Sherlock is a crime drama that takes place in central London and the only thing Supernatural is that they manage to catch a cab so quickly.  No, what the three shows have in common is the extreme dedication of their fans.

       While most shows have a small sect of die-hard fans who are committed to that show to the point of unhealthy obsession, Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock have a unique ability.  They will draw in every viewer who watches more than ten minutes of an episode to forever be one of their hypnotized fans, who will watch the show religiously every Tuesday at nine p.m. with wide eyes, noting the slight changes in the length of JarPad's hair, and praying to all of the Angels and the King of Hell that Kevin will be okay.  While some may claim that this ability to fascinate nearly every viewer who makes the mistake of trying out the BBC is the strapping lads who spring across London, either Victorian or modern day, I would say that is calling us quite facetious, especially when we are so facetious already.

     The success of these shows is due to their absolutely brilliant writing, and the way their plots have intertwined so well not only throughout episodes but throughout seasons.  For instance, take the first episode of the BBC's Sherlock, in which before the cabbie is point a (fake) gun at Sherlock and asks "are you sure you don't want to phone a friend?"  While at the time his simply seemed like a cryptic question to ask before shooting someone, after seeing the later seasons, the well trained viewer has realized this was actually a brilliant bit of foreshadowing to the last scene in the last episode of the second season of Sherlock, in which Sherlock commits suicide, and phones a friend to say goodbye before jumping.  That's just one of the bigger and more noticeable moments, Sherlock is full of little nods that point towards things that will happen later.  In Supernatural the two main characters travel with a book full of their dad's information that help's guide them, and the story is lead through flashbacks which lead the story on.  The plots that are introduced early on carry into much later seasons and basic principles enter early and are never mentioned again as they are assumed known.  Doctor Who is an entire show based on a timeline created in the 1960's about the future and the past but where the time was manipulated, so the plot had to be intertwined well as the chronological timeline of the plot was nonexistent.

The difference between these shows and other shows is that these constantly have unanswered questions, there are always a thousand loose ends just hanging there waiting to be tied up, and when you get an answer to one, then there are three more questions that need to be answered.  These are what keep bringing people back, the plot and stories and the questions.