Weekend Warrior

While the masses were enthralled this weekend with the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, Murmurs felt like doing something different.

Ogling hot people’s always fun, so Murmurs attended the Third Annual Model Volleyball Tournament hosted by Nikki Beach and Nikki Style Magazine. Murmurs expected it to be full of gorgeous women in bikinis spiking and bumping and setting and whatever else beach volleyball entails; but, it was mainly well-chiseled, six-packed men with snow-white teeth — which only confused Murmurs’ already debatable sexual orientation.

Nevertheless, the unusually large concentration of pretty people made for a great way to celebrate not having to elbow through crowds of Middle America salivating over Rachael Ray’s buns at the Amstel Light Burger Bash this year. In fact, Murmurs was mesmerized by the effortless gyrations of one particular table dancer/party starter who, like the Energizer Bunny, never seemed to run out of steam.

After baking in the sun all day Sunday and consuming nothing but mojitos and Mini-Thin Rush energy pills (Energizer Bunny’s secret, no doubt), a hopped-up Murmurs revisited Club Nikki for the models’ VIP celebration.

Modeling agency Irene Marie won — for the third year in a row. Maybe Elite and Ford models just aren’t good, but Murmurs heard that their secret is (wait for it): having actual sports models who play volleyball professionally. Oooh, scandalous. In any case, the gallons of champagne and vodka and the mix of house and hip-hop music made the models happy enough to keep anyone from being clobbered by a jewel-encrusted BlackBerry, which goes to show that Club Nikki — formerly Pearl — still knows how to throw a party like no other.

I Write the Songs

When Murmurs was offered two tickets to see Barry Manilow in concert, he snatched them up in a second.

It was the opportunity of a lifetime to make fun of the people who planned ahead and actually paid money for the tickets. It was also a truly selfless act of kindness because Murmurs’ girlfriend has a couple of dozen Manilow tunes in her iPod.

Before you jump to conclusions, no, she doesn’t have a frosted perm, doesn’t wear animal print polyester and isn’t old enough for an AARP card. She’s a Mormon.

The concert was at the BankAtlantic Center all the way out near Sawgrass Mills, which, coming from South Beach, might as well have been the Panhandle. Manilow also played the next night at the American Airlines Arena, but those tickets weren’t free. We were supposed to get a ride from another SunPost employee so we didn’t have to go all that way on a motorcycle, but after the girl that employee tried to lure on a date failed to return his phone calls, he backed out and left us with his car, which has more than 200,000 miles. He probably hoped it would break down, forcing Murmurs to shell out the cash to fix it, but, ha ha, it ran like a sure-footed pack mule.

Waiting to get into the parking lot, the vibe was more along the lines of a Midwestern religious revival than a concert. There wasn’t any loud music cranking out of the cars, no patchouli oil-scented air, no marijuana smoke. Instead, senior citizens and couples, whom this arrogant writer imagined lived in the suburbs and went to Applebee’s for fine dining, inched along quietly and much too politely. It was weird and uncomfortable.

The walk from the car to the arena was really special, too. A cranky old man wearing Dockers and white Reeboks hollered at his white-haired wife, who was trailing behind him, to pick up the pace. A hip-looking, 16-year-old boy shuffled his feet behind his parents, wearing a gloomy expression.

Our seats were in the upper level and offered a great view of the waving sea of green Manilow glow sticks, as some soft jazz band warmed up the crowd’s stiff joints. We were late, and soon Barry walked out on stage sporting a spiky Rod Stewart haircut. Thank God he chose a nice black suit instead of leopard skin tights. The crowd went wild.

Murmurs, who was preparing for a nap, was soon wide awake and actually having a good time. Manilow is a freakin’ fantastic performer — a true showman. Between such crowd-pleasing ditties as Mandy, Looks Like We Made It and It’s a Miracle, Barry spoke to the crowd in a kind voice that made us all feel like family.

“Welcome friends … tonight we’re going to have a splendid night of music and passion … because I write the songs.” Okay, those aren’t exact quotes, but you get the idea. Manilow led the crowd through every range of emotion. One particularly intense moment was when he told the story of his Russian grandfather taking him from Brooklyn to Times Square every Saturday to record songs for a quarter. The story ended with his grandfather getting to see him play Carnegie Hall. It brought a lump to cynical Murmurs’ throat.

Another special treat was when Barry, lowered to the front row on what resembled a handicap elevator platform, grabbed the trembling hand of Kelly from Boca Raton, and chivalrously asked her to dance. Wearing a white and black tiger print dress, the 50-something-year-old Kelly had seen Barry three times at his regular gig at the Las Vegas Hilton. She wrapped her arms around Barry and buried her cheek in his chest, and appeared in love. Barry, on the other hand, was probably thinking about Randy or Andy. Oooops, that’s Mandy.

The encore was Copacabana, and with showgirls named Lola being Murmurs’ weakness, Murmurs sang along to every word. Come to think of it, Murmurs knew the words to almost every song. And the next day Murmurs was still singing Manilow tunes, giving them a personal twist. “Her name was Esther, she was a show cat.”

And that’s when it all became clear: Barry Manilow really does write the songs that make the whole world sing.

Ain’t Our First Rodeo

“Is that a sheep in that baby carriage?” asked a fellow SunPost employee, motioning toward a woman sitting in the audience several bleacher levels below us.

“No,” Murmurs said with a laugh.

“Whew. Okay,” he said.

“It’s actually a goat,” Murmurs said.

“Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. And it was just the beginning — the first bit of the show Saturday night at the 2008 Orange Blossom Festival Rodeo in Davie. First, six hot chicks in red, white and blue sequined cowgirl outfits holding American flags straddled horses in a circle, while an audience of thousands sang along to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They were real cowgirls. Yes, they exist. They were from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Yes, that exists, too.

Okay, so it was our first rodeo.

About 80 of the cowboys and cowgirls from the PRCA were in Davie last weekend competing for more than $20,000 and national championship points. But $20,000 for doing what exactly? Murmurs had to find out.

First, they competed at different events designed to test their cowboy mettle. For example: A cowboy on a horse chases after a rowdy little bull calf, lassoes it by the horns, then leaps from his horse, picks up the bull and drops it on its back so it is splayed out in the muck, flailing hoofs up. Then, in three super-fast loops of a rope, he must hog-tie at least three of the calves’ legs, thus immobilizing the animal. Yeah. Mmmmkay.

Then they do this in teams, with one cowboy roping the horns and one roping the hind legs. Nebraska trick roper Jerry Wayne Olson showed off his trained horse, which sits, lies down, walks backward and leaps into the back of a moving pickup truck, all on verbal cue. Then some more cowboys actually wrestle with steers (young castrated male bulls), and more hot chicks on horses race around barrels at what is actually the definition of “breakneck speed” in a cloverleaf-shaped pattern.

Probably the most fantastic display of cowboyism (in Murmurs’ opinion anyway) is bronco riding. Here, cowboys ride wild broncos, not the kind of horse you’d have up on blocks outside of your double-wide, but real, mean horses — lesbian-gym-teacher-mean horses.

Then, a bunch of cowboys who all look exactly like the all-American stereotypes in Wrangler jeans ride these scary broncos around the arena as the horse bucks the rider so hard you’d think the guy would have whiplash or brain damage.

And if that wasn’t exciting or weird enough, there is, of course, the ever-popular bull-riding. It’s called the most dangerous eight seconds in professional sports. So, Murmurs had to see what it’s all about.

Local rodeo announcer Norman Edwards narrated the hours-long event, in which cowboys ride randomly selected bulls of some kind of prescribed level of strength and agility that defines their snarkiness.

The rider gets to hold on to nothing but a rope tied around the bull (the other hand must remain free). When they get the go-ahead, the chute is opened and the bull charges out into the arena. Since riders get more points for how hard the bull bucks, the cowboys do all kinds of crazy stuff to get it to freak out more, like dig their heel spurs into it. The guy has to stay on for at least eight seconds while this thing tries like hell to buck him off, at which point the cowboy would be catapulted dozens of feet in the air, come down even harder and then, quite possibly, be mangled by the fuming bull. The bulls get points too, by the way. Then the crowd goes nuts for about 10 seconds and waits while the rodeo clowns do stupid tricks for the kids.

So, out west in Davie where the houses look like dude ranches, there are horse crossing road signs and nobody can communicate anything in a conversation less than five minutes long, Murmurs discovered the magic of the tight-jeaned, cowboy-booted, livestock-offspring rodeo. Just one thing was missing from the whole endeavor.

“Is the only beer Budweiser?” Murmurs asked the friendly, southern-drawled beer tent lady.

“Yeeep,” she said.

“Only Budweiser — in this whole place? All of these tents are only serving Budweiser?”

“Yeeep.”

“Even that tent over there. And that other one over there. Just Budweiser.”

“Just that and Jack Daniels, honey,” she said.

Yeehaw.

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