Celebrity Bull Riding

We've taken to watching Ty Murray's Celebrity Bull Riding on CMT lately, and I have to say, I actually enjoy it.

Normally I'm not a fan of reality TV, nor is CMT my usual haunt. Those who know me know that my musical tastes run in the direction of Scandinavian metal, not C&W, and there's little on CMT that would appeal to me (not even the camp appeal of the endless repeats of The Dukes of Hazzard, a show I found amusing when I was in high school but have since outgrown).

But I do like bull riding, and I've been watching the PBR for longer than the average TV fan, and Ty Murray has my respect for toughness, honestly and fair dealing - and for an extremely sly sense of humor that seems absent at first. Honestly, the idea of the poker-faced Ty Murray having a few drinks and riding the plastic cow on top the sign is difficult for me to wrap my mind around, but somehow reassuring all the same.

One problem I had with the show was that I didn't know who most of the celebrities were. I never watched Survivor, so Johnny Fairplay was a complete cypher. I don't watch Ultimate Fighting, so ditto Josh Haynes. Honestly, the only ones I'd ever heard of were Stephen Baldwin, mostly because of his membership in the bold, sprawling Baldwin clan, and the washed-up pop stars Leif Garrett and Vanilla Ice. So to me, it wasn't Celebrity Bull Riding so much as it was "Celebrity" Bull Riding.

Now I confess, when I first heard of the idea I had every expectation that the bulls would make red flapjacks out of the celebrities. Even the best PBR riders are periodically trashed by the bulls, so the inexperienced celebrities? I predicted mayhem. The thought of Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, K-Fed, Karl Rove and certain others perched atop bulls like Gnash and Doctor Proctor and Bodacious (now retired and dead, of course, but a man can dream) simply made me smile. At the very least, I wouldn't have to read about them every damn day once the initial surge of horror and macabre curiosity died down.

But as it turns out, some of the celebrities turned out to be pretty decent, and though I still think of them as "celebrities" instead of celebrities, at least I know who they are and what they do. And how could one not enjoy the impromptu performance of Ice Ice Baby on Ty Murray's porch in Stephenville, Texas? Or see the very great difference between Stephen Baldwin and Leif Garrett and come to think that there's something primal and instructive in that? I like to think that if I had been on the show, I would have gone out the way Stephen Baldwin did - physically beaten, maybe, but still trying down to the very end, and not copping a whine from the warm comfort of my bed.