Going to the rodeo? Bring a hefty appetite and a thick wallet

It’s rodeo time again in Houston, but you already know that.

I know you know that because you live in the Houston area and it is impossible to miss all of the rodeo talk, hype, and other assorted publicity. Even if the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo isn’t your thing, you are aware it’s going on. Our schoolchildren have done rodeo art. The kids in 4-H and FFA are hyperactively busy. Lots of people are talking about the concert lineup and buying tickets. People you don’t normally see sporting cowboy hats and boots suddenly look Urban Cowboy chic. The biggest clue, however, is the air in Houston smells like barbecue.

On Monday I had the opportunity to return as a Gold Buckle Foodie judge. That’s where RodeoHouston brings a lot of media types into a room and presents us with samples of fair fare. We get to judge things in all kinds of cool categories – most of which involve deep frying and impalement on a stick. This is my third year as a foodie judge and I gotta tell ya, the food vendors at the fair are trying harder than ever to get you to fork over your hard-earned cash. If you go, bring a hearty appetite and a fat wallet. You’re gonna need it!

Let me cut to the chase for you. If you like pizza, you absolutely must have Swain’s Fine Food’s pizza on a stick. It was the best thing I’ve sampled in three years of doing this. There were even fights for the leftovers. On the sweet side, you’ve got to try Stubby’s cinnamon rolls. Soft and slightly chewy they’re some of the best I’ve ever had, especially swimming in pools of hot frosting.

(At the time of this writing the winners had not been announced, but I will add them online.)

Fair warning – there was something served, and I don’t know what it was called, but there were lots of fruits and candies poking out of a hollowed-out pineapple. It looked amazing, but the pepper sauce was awful and soured the taste.

When it comes to the HLSR, my favorite part is the rodeo. I’m not a big fan of most of the musical acts they’ve brought in the last few years, including this year – with the exception of Garth Brooks. I fancy myself a pretty good sports photographer and some of my favorite sports photos over the years are from the rodeo. My favorite events are barebacks, bulls, and barrels. I’m looking forward to shooting a lot more rodeo in the weeks to come.

It’s also fun to stroll through the commercial exhibits. I rarely buy anything, but this year I’m in the market for a new hat and boots. This might be a good opportunity to do a little bargain hunting.

The carnival is also a big draw. One of these days I’m going to take a shot at the bungee jump. The other rides are fine for most people, but I like my thrill rides to be a little more exhilarating than a rollercoaster or Tilt-a-Whirl.

Although not much of a spectator sport, the livestock judging is a really big deal for a lot of youngsters. These kids work very hard to prepare their animals and for many of them this is their big payday. The discipline and work it takes to raise farm animals gives these kids a lot of courage and character. I really admire them for their efforts.

Overall, it is a rite of passage to for those of us in the greater Houston area to go to the big show at least once or twice a season. So what are you waiting for? Grab your boots and cowboy hat and head on over to NRG Park. I hope to see you there!

  

HLSR Gold Buckle Foodie Awards 2018 winners

Best Specialty Food: (Out of 8)

1st:            All of Us (E12107) - Chocolate Cobbler

2nd:            The Great White (LSM 140) - White Chocolate Cheesecake

3rd:            DGZ Chocolates (B5049-5050) - Toffarazzi (Toffee)

Classic Fair Food: (Out of 13)

1st:             Biggy's (RCS Carnival) - Spicy Turkey Leg

2nd:             Stubby's Cinnamon Rolls (L0259) - Cinnamon Roll with Icing

3rd:             Aunt Edmoes Cookies (CD205) - Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies

Best Value: (Out of 8)

1st:             Yoakum Packing (L0256) - Bacon Blast Croissant ($9.00)

2nd:             Saltgrass Steakhouse (L0063) - Chicken & Ribs ($12.00)

3rd:             Ranch House Meat Co (RP 110) - Bar-B-Q Plate ($21.75)

Best Food-on-a-Stick: (Out of 14)

1st:             Sudie's Catfish House (RP95) - Fried Bread Pudding On a Stick

2nd:             Swains Pizza On a Stick (KC 504) - Pizza On A Stick

3rd:             Burton Sausage (L75) - Chicken & Sausage Kabob

Best Fried Food: (Out of 10)

1st:             The Original Minneapple Pie (CD202) - Minnepumpkin Pie

2nd:             Aunt Edmoes Cookies (CD 205) - Deep Fried Cookie Dough On A Stick

3rd:             Burton Sausage (L75) - Foot Long Corn Dog

Most Creative Food: (Out of 10)

1st:             Fried What! (J302) - Fried Bacon-Wrapped Cinnamon Rolls or Fried Cinnamon Rolls (no bacon)

2nd:             Cadillac Bar (RP85) - Carnitas Guadalajara Mexican Bowl

3rd:             Ranch House Meat Co (RP 110) - Fat Max (3 Meat Sandwich) - Beef Sliced, Pulled Pork, Sausage

Best New Flavor: (Out of 14)

1st:             Harlon's BBQ (J508) - Harlon's Stuffed Turkey Leg

2nd:             Sills Funnel Cakes (RP120) - Fried Cheesecake Balls

3rd:             The Original Minneapple Pie (CD202) - The Ultimate Minneapple Pie

Best Dessert: (Out of 11)

1st:             Fried What! (J302)- Buckeye Sundae

2nd:              Aunt Edmoes Cookies (CD 205) - Cookie Dough Parfait

3rd:             The Original Minneapple Pie (CD202) - Minnechocolate Pie

What it was, was rugby – and it’s a lot of fun and worth checking out

I can’t say that I understand this game called rugby, but I have a much better feel for it after having seen four matches.

Apparently so do the local fans of the Houston SaberCats. This is the inaugural season of Major League Rugby and although the sport has been around for nearly 195 years, most people here are unfamiliar with it. It’s like someone blended football and soccer together, added some quirky rules and let ’er rip. (Actually, according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the game we know as football was born out of rugby.)

My first match was on Jan. 13 when the SaberCats hosted the Vancouver Ravens. It was the second match held at the pitch (they don’t call it a field) at Constellation Field. I had no earthly idea what to expect and no clue what I would be photographing, so I just took a lot of pictures of everything. It was clear to me the fans (with the exception of a few diehard rugby aficionados) had no idea what they were watching. They knew to cheer whenever the SaberCats scored (they call it a try, but it doesn’t count until they touch the ball down on the ground in the in-goal [end zone], which to me sounds more like a touchdown) but other than that, they seemed to be as bewildered as I was.

Over the past few weeks I’ve come to understand the basics of the game and some of the strategy and quirks. The same is quite obvious with the black and gold faithful in the stands. They now cheer at appropriate times and seem to really be getting into the matches. Unlike baseball and football where the scoreboard operator frequently flashes “get loud” graphics, the hundreds of people in attendance were very in tune with what was going on and were quite vocal about it.

(I relate my experience of learning rugby to that classic Andy Griffith story called “What it was, was football.” It’s the story of a country bumpkin’s accidental discovery of a football game. If you’re not familiar with it, I recommend you Google it for a good laugh.)

On Saturday I covered my fourth match, which was the team’s seventh at Constellation Field. The SaberCats played five matches before coming to Sugar Land and, after two more matches here, will take to the road for a couple more exhibition season matches before the regular season starts.

At the time of this writing it has not been announced where Houston will play their inaugural regular season. The City of Houston has agreed to build a $3.3 million, 3,500-seat stadium at Houston Amateur Sports Park along Texas Highway 288 in south Houston for the SaberCats to lease, but that won’t be ready until the 2019 season.

We do know they will not be at Constellation Field because it’s a baseball stadium and the Sugar Land Skeeters will be playing there at the end of April. In the meantime the field will need to be reconfigured for baseball, which will take some time.

I must confess that I was just a little skeptical last summer when the Skeeters introduced the team and announced they would be playing at the stadium. I’m thrilled to have a local professional sport here and very grateful for the chance to see and learn about rugby, but I’m your basic football and baseball kind of guy. I don’t like basketball and never got into soccer or hockey.

I think I could come to really like rugby, but once baseball starts it will have to take a back seat. I’m unapologetically and enthusiastically a Skeeters fan. That and they are the local team. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to skip the Skeeters to cover the SaberCats. Nonetheless, I think it’s safe to say that the SaberCats have made new fans here and will have a good following going into their first season. I think they’ll also sell a lot more tickets once they can tell people where they will be.

In the meantime, if you have any interest at all in seeing professional rugby (or are just looking for an excuse to get out and have a good time with friends), I highly recommend checking out the SaberCats. They play Feb. 24 against the New Orleans Gold (I foresee a rivalry forming here) and on March 3 against the Ontario Arrows.

Major League Rugby currently has seven teams with an eighth scheduled to join in 2019. In addition to Houston and New Orleans, there are the Austin Elite Rugby (an in-state rival), the Glendale (Colorado) Raptors, the San Diego Legion, Seattle Seawolves, and the Utah Warriors. Next season the Rugby Union of New York will join the league.

This is the second recent attempt to bring professional rugby to America. While there are rugby clubs that have been in existence on these shores for decades and even a century, a professional league has never taken root. In 2016 the PRO Rugby league formed with four teams but folded the next year. From everything I’ve seen so far, it appears MLR has taken a smart and well-researched approach to forming the league. All of my interactions with them have been highly professional and the play has been fun.

Not only are they trying to get a league off the ground, but they are also very involved in the community and have been instrumental in getting youth leagues going. It’s going to take the league some time to get traction in this country, but I think it can be done. The timing is good with so many fans getting fed up with the NFL. Houston, and especially here in Fort Bend County, is a great location because of the incredible diversity here. Many people come from countries where rugby has a strong foothold.

I hope that this league and this team are wildly successful here. It’s been an honor and privilege to be with them from the start. Even though my focus will switch to the Skeeters, you can bet I’ll be following the SaberCats – hopefully for a long time to come.

Valentines Day is a good time to reflect on what love really is

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Feb. 14 is universally known as a day of love. Although the true origins of the day and the history of St. Valentine are muddled and mired in a mix of history and lore, the modern celebration is a day dedicated to love and romance.

I’d like to take a moment here to explore love – true love. There are several different types of love, such as sexual, infatuation, familial and such. What I want to look at is agape love – the kind of love shared between a husband and wife. This is the kind of love that is selfless and sacrificial.

There is an old saying that says if you think marriage is 50-50 you’re doing it wrong. Divorce is 50-50. Marriage is 100-100. If you really want to fully express your love and commitment, you must be in it 100 percent or not at all. When it seems that your spouse isn’t carrying their fair share of the weight, that’s the time to dig in and work harder, not back away. You never know, that 80 percent effort by your spouse just may be the 100 percent they have to give at the time. Sometimes you just have to give more than your fair share, but that’s what love is all about.

Many people will find love on Valentine’s Day. There will be marriage proposals, weddings, firsts dates and countless acts of romance between people with varying degrees of commitment.

Defining love is difficult. It’s many things to many people. If you really want to know what true love is, turn to the creator and author of love. It’s best described in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8A: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

People will fail, but love does not. Love is more than a feeling or an emotion. Feelings are fickle and fleet. They come and go. Love stays. Love is what keeps you with your spouse when the feeling of love has faded like the light of an extinguished candle and all that remains is a wisp of smoke from a dying ember. Love is what sees the beauty in a person when their hair is gray, their skin is wrinkled and sagging, when bags form under their eyes, their waistline has expanded and they’re tired and grumpy and griping about every little thing.

Love is making the bed, taking out the trash, washing the dishes, cleaning the toilet, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, paying the bills, doing the taxes, diapering babies, cleaning up puppy piddle, and all the other necessary unpleasantries of life without complaining.

OK, maybe there will be a little complaining – or even a lot – but the point is you do these things for the other person so they don’t have to. Love is sacrificial and committed. It may mean telling your golfing/hunting buddies no so you can say yes to shopping or the ballet. It may mean watching a romantic comedy instead of an action flick (or vice versa).

Love usually means biting your tongue, picking your battles, re-shuffling priorities, and delaying gratification in order to meet the needs of your spouse. This doesn’t mean you never get what you want out of the relationship, especially if this goes both ways. Look at is at as the Golden Rule in practice – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Guys, if you were willing to climb mountains, swim oceans, and slay dragons to win the love of your life, why would you bicker and get mad about the little things? We all do things that are annoying to other people, you’ve just got to learn to deal with it and move on.

I do need to interject something here. There are some things that people should not have to endure in the name of love. That includes abuse, adultery, and abandonment. You may still love the offender, but if that’s what you’re getting in return, that’s not love. You may choose to be forgiving and to help the other person through their problem, but if they’re unrepentant and not willing to change, the relationship is no longer based in love but on control and manipulation. That’s toxic, unhealthy, and not a relationship worth investing in.

I want to take a minute here to boast about my wife, Sandy. She is a godly woman who takes her vows seriously. When she committed her life to me “for better or worse and in sickness and in health,” neither of us had any idea exactly what that would mean.

For several of our 18 years together it has meant living at or below the poverty level and enduring a bankruptcy and a foreclosure. It’s meant caring for me through 10 years of chronic depression. It’s meant forgiving me and helping me recover from an addiction to pornography. It’s meant that she has had to be stronger, smarter and wiser than she ever anticipated being. She has been the one to repeatedly give more than 100 percent when I’ve been incapable of giving even half an effort.

Our life and our marriage are much better today and I have to give her most of the credit. I’ve seen a lot of marriages crumble under much less stress. Where we have had weakness, God has given us strength. Doubts have been erased by hope. Hope has been bolstered by faith. In faith, we have love.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1Corinthians 13:13.

So again I say, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Chamber Chairman’s Gala was a totally awesome trip back to the ’80s

The Spazmatics provide ’80s dance music at the

 Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce Chairman’s Gala.

(Photo by Joe Southern)

We, like, totally had a good time, fer sure, fer sure!

The Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce held its annual Chairman’s Gala on Jan. 26 and it featured a Totally ’80s theme. Oh man, that was fun! It brought back some really wonderful memories.

It reminded me of my days in junior high in the late 1970s and high school in the early 1980s whenever we had the inevitable ’50s day or ’50s dance. Our teachers used to say they didn’t remember the ’50s looking anything like our interpretations. I think that’s because for those of us born in the ’60s, our only link to the ’50s was “Happy Days” and “Grease.”

I recall talking to friends at a ’50s dance in high school and commenting about how someday our kids would be having ’80s dances in school. Well, here we are 30-some years later and they are. I have to agree with my teachers. I don’t remember the ’80s looking anything like their interpretations. I was more impressed, however, with the ’80s party hosted by the Fort Bend Chamber. I think that’s because most of us in attendance lived through the ’80s and knew how to dress.

In the days leading up to the gala, Sandy and I were trying to figure out what to wear. I brought out my old high school yearbooks to get a reminder of how we really looked back then. Blue jeans and T-shirts. I guess some things never change. That’s how I’ve always dressed.

As I thumbed through the yearbooks I kept saying, “I still have that shirt.” I do. I’m either a sappy sentimentalist or the world’s most stubborn packrat. I dug out a bunch of those old T-shirts and football jerseys. They were still in good shape, but I’m not. Those old clothes aren’t anywhere near my size now. So much for going with an authentic look.

Figuring that a lot of people would be coming dressed as punk rockers or wearing animal print spandex, leg warmers, or parachute pants, I thought I’d go for an oft-neglected look from the ’80s – preppy. I knew that would be an easy one to pull off. All I’d need to do is turn up the collar on my polo shirt and drape a hoodie over my shoulders with the sleeves knotted together up front.

Since I didn’t have pastel colors and the proper jewelry and my hair wasn’t long and feathered back, I think I came across more like a bum than a preppy, but hey, the spirit was there. From what I could see I think I’m the only one who attempted the preppy look. Given that I used to make fun of preppies in high school and my abysmal failure to duplicate the look at the gala, I’ll be content to let that fashion trend rest in peace, never to be resurrected again.

The event itself was a blast. Everything from arriving at the Texas Safari Ranch and finding the DeLorean on display up front to dancing to music by the popular ’80s cover band The Spazmatics, the gala was a totally gnarly trip down memory lane. I think the biggest surprise of the evening was seeing U.S. Rep. Pete Olson and his entourage dressed in black and wearing the iconic, red energy dome hats made famous (or infamous) by the band Devo. They stood out in a big way and seemed to be having the most fun.

Kudos to everyone at the chamber who made this event such a huge success. The committee that put it together and handled the decorations and other details deserve a big round of applause. I’d also like to congratulate those who were honored at the event. The Community Spirit Award went to Tom Webb of HCSS. The Chairman’s Award was presented to the Fort Bend Chamber’s favorite “citizen,” Mary Favre.

Also recognized by immediate past chair Sterling Carter of Sterling Physical Therapy and Wellness were immediate past chairman Mike Dobert of HR in Alignment; retiring board members Monroe Ashworth of Stewart Title, Nona Austin-King of Himalaya, Rick Conley of Fluor, Christina Hawkins of GlobalSpex, Mark Kolon of Audi of Sugar Land, Barkley Peschel of Colliers, Jonathan Pursch of Frost Bank, and Chip Sutton of Linebarger Law Firm; and retiring division chairs Vern Hegwood of Costello, and Randall Malik, formerly of the Rosenberg Economic Development Corporation.

Carter also recognized incoming Chairman Malisha Patel of Memorial Hermann Hospital Southwest and executive officers Chair Elect Rehan Alimohammad of Wong Fleming, Treasurer Benjamin Swan of Svane Capital, Legal Counsel Dustin Fessler of Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey, PC, and President and CEO Keri Schmidt, along with the 2018 board of directors, committee and division chairs.

Once the acknowledgements and formalities were done, guests moved from the dining room to the dessert room and dance floor. I’ve seen The Spazmatics in concert a few times and I really like their music. They dress like they walked out of the 1984 movie “Revenge of the Nerds,” which is part of their shtick. They put on a very physical, high-energy show that is always very entertaining.

As Sandy and I were pondering our ’80s garb, she wanted to watch “Sixteen Candles.” I was thinking more along the lines of “Fast Times at Ridgmont High.” We ended up watching “Dirty Dancing,” which was made in the ’80s but set in the ’60s.

I think the best part of the gala for me (besides spending an evening out with my beautiful wife) was the trip down memory lane. The ’80s for me began with high school, getting my driver’s license and first car (’69 Dodge Polara), earning my Eagle Scout rank, playing four sports in high school (football, swimming, track, and intramural bowling), graduating and going to college. Along the way were milestones such as Prom, first kiss, first date, first job, first time to vote, and so on. In the middle came college, followed by graduation, first marriage, and first cross-country moves.

Those were adventurous and exciting times. What’s interesting to think about is how my children’s children will one day have early 2000s parties and try to dress like kids do today. I’ll be getting a good laugh out of it as I push my walker around the nursing home dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt and wishing it were the ’80s again. All I’ll need to do is figure out where they parked that DeLorean.