Back in the Saddle

After four lessons, the score remains: Horse 4, Me 0.

Something tells me that in the old days of the Wild West cowboys never took riding lessons. Well, maybe they did in the form of basically being born on horseback. But I doubt anyone ever hollered at Billy the Kid, "sit up straighter," "Keep an eye on the diagonal" and "more weight in the heels, Billy." Whatever, I'm sure it just came natural for them. For me it ain't natural.

The horse named Tanner hung with me for the first three lessons, and we were coming along OK until it came time to "canter." You learn to walk, trot, then canter, then who knows. Basically you are increasing in speeds from a pace that could merely break your arm to one that could leave your innards scattered across the width of Wyoming itself.

From a distance, cantering looks harmless enough, just as — seen from five miles below — it never looks as if a jet is going that fast. But when you are actually connected to the animal, cantering feels much as if you are riding the drumstick of a marching band member.

To go from a trot to a canter, you loosen the reins, dig in your heels and yell — prepare to be impressed with the precision of horse language — "canter."

Except that Tanner seemed to be a bit behind in his vocabulary lessons, because he took "canter" to mean "buck." This was explained away with a wave of the hand and the comment that to him it "was a joke ... kind of a game." Whatever the game, I wasn't big on the rules. All the horses in the world, and I get Chris Rock. Tanner would pitch me skyward and when I returned to earth, there would be open air where there used to be a horse. Keeping Tommy's mantra in mind — always keep the horse between you and the ground — I'd make a wild grab for anything solid — saddle, neck, passing tree, whatever. I always got seated again, feet out of the stirrups and facing backward as a general thing, but seated.

After watching this spectacle a time or two, Tommy reckoned I could use a new model, so Tanner got traded in on "Cappi," a smaller animal that was less of a comedian.

First time out, we went on a "trail ride," which means following a path over hill and dale, up, over and around various obstacles. We were doing all right, avoiding low-lying limbs, descending steep swales and crossing small streams. It was a beautiful evening too, with a late sun filtering through the trees, and peace and a bit of haze in the air.

And that's when we first saw the snake.

Tommy helpfully pointed it out. A black snake it was, making up in size what it lacked in venom. I know black snakes are harmless, but that wasn't my concern. My concern was whether the horse knew they were harmless. For all I knew, Cappi had left her Field Guide to Reptiles in the barn. The horse didn't panic, but I did. I thought i was about to be dragged into the next county. But apparently the old cliche is flawed. Cappi couldn't have cared less. She gave it half an eye and walked on.

We followed it up with a nice canter, the proper kind, not the clown-inspired kind. I didn't even go airborne this time. I like this horse and am ready for the next lesson. At least I was, except that I could have sworn I heard Tommy say something about "jumping"...

A Medical Cure for Fat?

Can a day go by without another news story on the obesity front? Apparently not.

I swear, if the press had paid half the attention to WMD that it pays to F-A-T we wouldn’t be in this mess over in camel and goat land.

As a matter of fact, fatness as a news story is emblematic of the obesity problem in general — we’re lazy. People are lazy and won’t exercise, the media are lazy and only covers stories that are — sorry about this — spoon fed to them.

You really expected us to investigate the sub-prime mortgage warning signs last year when there was a new study out reporting that Twinkies might make you fat?

Look at me. I could be doing a meaningful piece on clean coal technologies or the ethics of human cloning, but — you know. That would take work.

So instead, I turn to the story today about how a virus may be responsible for obesity.

Yeah, a virus. Like what causes you to catch a cold.

Whew. So it wasn’t those six pork chops with a banana split chaser after all. It was a bug. You can’t help that.

I don’t get the science behind this, but basically they say there’s a virus that causes stem cells to turn into fat cells.

Be honest, you want to believe this, don’t you? You want to believe it’s that simple. I want to believe this. I want to believe that if I get fat I can just pop a couple fat-formula Sudafed and it will all be over.

Matter of fact, make it night time Sudafed, so I’ll wake up skinny.

Not that I doubt the report, but I still can’t help but notice that people who eat more tend to weigh more. People who eat less tend to weigh less. What does some virus have to do with that?

I mean, I’m real happy that the pharmaceutical companies will have one more pill to sell us, but somehow I can’t help but think this will do more for big business than big bellies.

Gives a whole new meaning to “fat profits.”

But beyond that, what if it’s true? What happens if there’s a medical cure for being a lard-ass?

I don’t know if I want that, truth be told. What’s the point of being thin if everyone is thin? Yeah, there are health reasons, but everybody’s gonna die of something so in the end it’s basically cosmetic.

If you’re a hot babe, do you want all other women in the world to be hot babes as well? ’Course not, because if everyone is gorgeous, your looks ain’t worth jack.

We need fat. We need the contrast. We need a world with John Belushi and Jackie Gleason and — depending on what week it is — Oprah.

If you’re chunky, who cares? Not me. It’s who you are.

Feel free to have a salad instead of a cupcake every now and then, just to keep them from having to take your foot, but beyond that, the stress people go through worrying about their weight is probably more deadly in the long run than the weight itself.

Against my better judgment, I have enrolled in horse-riding classes.
You do these things when, for one reason or another, you start your life over. Mine was a forced restart and not my idea, but it is working out for the best because after too many years of waiting it is finally allowing me to proceed with my god-given right to a mid-life crisis.
Except that mid-life doesn't seem quite long enough for a crisis. Sports car, trophy broad, two years tops then you flame out and go back to clock punching and couch warming for the rest of your life.
What fun is that?
No, I'm shooting for a mid-to-the-time-that-i-lose-all-my-teeth-life crisis.
Enter Tanner.
Tanner is half thoroughbred, half draft horse. He's bigger than Brando and faster than Joan Collins. He's owned by some breeders in Frederick, Md, who — I mean to say they breed horses, not to imply that ... oh never mind — are teaching me the ropes.
I need the human intervention because Tanner is a nice enough horse but as training goes, he, left to his own devices, would tend to leave out a few steps.
My first time out, Tanner assumed the instruction should go something like this: Lesson 1: Get on the horse. Lesson 2: Go from 0-60 in three seconds flat in a full bore, heels to the sky, hell for leather gallop.
I closed my eyes, grabbed his main like a vice and felt around for the ejector seat. Not that this would have really been necessary, as Tanner was in the process of performing an admirable ejection on his own. Fortunately Tommy, my instructor, stepped in at this moment and reminded the animal that a horse has to walk before it can fly. After that, Tanner strolled along quietly enough, although clearly preoccupied. This worried me a bit, as I thought he might be plotting out some other experiment to try out on the new meat.
But I was afforded enough time to learn to walk and steer. I don't think "steer" is the generally accepted horse word for it, but I was concentrating on too many other things to be working on expanding my vocabulary.
"The key," Tommy said, "is to keep the horse between you and the ground."
I was all for that.
We commenced from walking to trotting and something that is known as "posting." Having four legs, a trotting horse goes up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down. Posting is the means by which the rider partially stands in the saddle two beats, thus eliminating the pounding of two of the up-downs. Ergo, up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down becomes up-down, up-down. If you are a woman, eliminating half of the up-down pounding is important, but if you are a man it is VERY important if you know what I mean.
Our first day's lesson concluded with me not getting it. I had it backward, going up on the downs and down on the ups. This made for roughly eight violent blue jean/leather collisions every 10 seconds.
But I haven't been defeated yet; I signed up for another lesson.
And when as I was leaving, Tommy paid me a compliment. Of all the riders he had ever coached, he said I dismounted with the fastest time on record.

Novak meltdown

Judith Miller might be surveying the landscape and figuring out that she's better off in jail. Better there than doing the slow, horrible and public meltdown that Robert Novak is performing before our very eyes. Both journalists are mixed up in the Bush Administration's apparent outing of an undercover CIA spook, and up until now I've been feeling sorry for the most famous she-con since Martha. But now I see it's the dude on the outside who is in pain.

It's all very Wizard of Oz. Dorothy (Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald) throws a bucket of water at the flaming scarecrow (Miller) but hits the Wicked Witch of the West (Novak) who screams as he shrinks and sizzles into a puddle of goo, until there's nothing left but his broomstick and hat.

Yesterday, Novak swore and walked off the set of one of those CNN shoutfests that absolutely nobody with a life cares about. What will kill Novak, when he looks back on it, is that he was goaded into this meltdown by arch nemesis James Carville, who basically called him a tool for the far-right establishment. Which of course, he is. Carville — for some reason, Novak didn't think to call him a tool of the far-left establishment —  had the mother of all smirks on his face, but no one else was amused. Both CNN and Novak apologized.

Figures. The only interesting thing that's ever happened on "Inside Politics," and CNN is apologizing for it. Sorry folks. Didn't mean for a little real drama to taint all this fake drama we churn out five days a week.

Space Shuttle

Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive in this overly sensitive age of ours, but I can't help but think NASA could have handled this whole space shuttle situation better. Here they blast these people into orbit and once they're up there, NASA frantically announce that OHMYGOD THE SHUTTLES ARE UNSAFE AND THEY MAY BLOW UP AND ANY SECOND AND WE'RE GROUNDING THEM FOREVER!!!
I mean, what are these poor astronauts supposed to think? Are they looking at each other, saying: "Unsafe?" "Grounded?" "Um. Like where does that leave us?"
Bummer. You're already skittish because of the unsatisfactory results of the last shuttle ad NASA goes Major Tom on you. Of course maybe the astros don't get the live CNN feed. Maybe NASA is, to their faces, telling them "Remain calm, all is well."
Or maybe they don't care. It just seemed like bad timing, is all.

steroids

So Raffy gets busted while Giambi plays on. You can say what you want about the Yankees' dominance over the American League East, but at the end of the day there is simply no denying that New York, fair and square, year in and year out, continues to acquire the league's top masking agents.

cure

Did you ever think that maybe they cured cancer 15 years ago, but have kept it quite to keep getting the donations?