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I know you've all heard me bitch occasionally about urban cowboys and their SUVs, but it never occurred to me to dedicate an entire rant to the unworthy subject. So here we go. What the hell is up with people who feel the need to buy oversized environmental hazards that are capable of hauling far more stuff than they ever will? At least half of the vehicles I've seen in Austin are like that, while a smaller percentage exists in Houston. It's as though the number of arrogant jerks is directly proportionate to the number of unnecessarily oversized vehicles. Suspicious, really; you'd think that Houston would be worse, but it's not. It's just typical Austin, really—hyped as an exciting and different town, while it's actually pretentious and self-congratulatory and has a whole lot of nothing going for it. Right, so, cowboys. And stupid cowboy hats. The only people who have any reason at all to wear them are people who are actually on ranches or outside all the time. People at rodeos should wear proper headgear; not that there's that much to protect. I feel no pity at all for anyone who gets gored by a bull. Anyway, cowboy hats should be reserved for those who actually spend time outdoors and need protection from the sun. By that logic, I should wear a cowboy hat since I do gardening and occasionally go hiking, but I prefer to wear my trademark safari hat on those occasions. I used to wear it all the time when I was in high school, but not so much these days, partly because the hat doesn't fit that well anymore and also because I've changed my style of dress since leaving high school, and the hat wouldn't match the skirts and things I wear these days. Anyway, I think cowboy hats look ridiculous, especially the little bitty city cowgirl ones. Seriously, if you're going to be a pretentious fool, you could at least do it a bit more authentically. That reminds me of cowboy boots. Unless you really are living up to the name of shit kicker, you shouldn't wear them. I used to have a huge, tacky pair of cowboy boots that I bought at Goodwill to wear for doing Foley work. They made terrific clomping Bigfoot footsteps. The only noisier shoes I can think of are Nazi hobnailed boots, and short of visiting and "borrowing from" a German museum and subsequently being deported from Germany, I don't know where to obtain such things. Eventually the boots became annoying since they were taking up needed closet space, and to get rid of them, I locked them in a stall in the women's room at the mall theatre. I would like to point out that no "real" cowboys I've seen wear the big, showy, stereotypical cowboy boots. Trust me; my mom and exstepdad used to keep some horses, chickens, and goats. Nobody ever wore cowboy boots around there, just Wellingtons. Speaking of kicker trends, I also hate the fashion trend of dressed up cowboy boots, meaning boots with heels added or maybe in some fancy color. What's the deal with that? It's still ugly, and you can't run in it. I personally have always made a point of wearing shoes I can run in. It's come in handy more than once. As I told Aron and Justin in preparation for one of my practical jokes, "Make sure that, whatever else you wear, you at least have shoes that are good for running; we'll probably have to drop everything and run at some point." Good luck doing that in your bitch boots. Another thing is the fake accent. If you're from the South, as I am (Texas, for all two of you who don't know me personally), you'll know the difference between a real twang and a fake twang. I don't understand why anyone would want to sound like that. A lot of people work for years to lose their accents, and then along come these pretentious fools who think it's cute to talk in an exaggerated twang. Ironically, most real Southerners don't have terribly strong accents. I remember when I was working at the Office of Survey Research, an outgoing call center, we'd often call people up north, and the people on the other end of the line were often surprised to hear that I was indeed Texan. One guy wanted to know where my Southern accent was, and somebody else had the gall to say that I sounded Canadian, an impression which was promptly deflated by somebody else who knew what the Canucks really sounded like. I also hate Southerners who take pride in their redneck heritage—we all know the type. "Heritage, Not Hate," "God Bless John Wayne," and George W. Bush's rattlesnake nachos (whatever the fuck those are). Odds are, if you don't think rednecks are an object of derision, then you should probably reevaluate your life. Having said that, I have to admit that I like "Dixie" more than "The Star-Spangled Banner," and I think that the Confederate flag looks nicer than the Stars and Stripes, but those are matters of aesthetics, not philosophy. So. In conclusion, if you're not a real cowboy with an authentic excuse for wearing old boots and big hats, shut the fuck up. Or, in the far more eloquent words of the incomparable Berke Breathed (a Texan himself), "let's keep the regionalistic emotionalisms under our big, ugly hats, shall we?" |