The Weekender | March 7th-9th

The Weekender

The Weekender is your guide and open thread for the weekend, presented by the fine folks at Viva The Matadors. Things to quote, read, look, watch, and listen to for the weekend. Let's do this.

Read about bullfighting and bull riding. Look at the Sony World Photography Awards, which includes a frog riding a beetle. Watch an incredible girl climb some rocks. Listen to tunes of Ronnie Fauss.

Quote

Earnest Hemingway (via Good Reads).

"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters."

Earnest Hemingway (via Good Reads).

"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

Read

A couple of really long reads about bulls. One is where the bull never wins, which is about bullfighting in Spain (via Narratively) and the second is about where wins and is a hero, which is about riding a bull in Costa Rica (via SB Nation). This past weekend I watched an old episode from Bourdain in Spain and they actually showed the kill shot from a bullfight in Spain. It almost wasn’t graphic enough, I was expecting something more gory than what I saw. Still, it reminded me of these two long-reads. From the Narratively article:

The third bull of the afternoon, named Canalla, enters the ring—big, black, strong, and disorientated. With quick head movements—right, left, front, back—it tries to take in everything at once: the sand, the sun, the crowd, the noise. It circles and flicks its tail as it contemplates the empty arena and the heaving crowd. It lets out a pleading moo of misunderstanding and then charges aggressively at thin air. Yet still no man enters the ring to confront it. Obviously bewildered, and breathing more heavily now, the bull trots to the center of the ring, where it waits, with something of a dramatic irony, for the beginning of what will undoubtedly be its end.

And from the SB Nation article:

Tonight — a Sunday night in March — the townspeople will empty out of the local Catholic church and congregate in a nearby field for an affair held in equal regard. They call it a corrida, which literally means, "run." What it actually means here is rodeo — and these events largely resemble a typical American rodeo — but some people would call it a bullfight. They would not be entirely wrong.

As in Spain, Costa Rican bullfighting is sometimes a fight to the death, but there are distinct differences. There, bullfighting evolved as a sport for the elite: man slays bull in ritual sacrifice and is revered for taking dominion over nature. The bull never lives long enough to wrest the spotlight from the matador.

Costa Rican bullfighting began as a diversion for farmers who couldn’t afford to kill cattle for sport, and the spectacle is more about man’s lack of control. Montadores — bull riders, not matadors — certainly aim to subdue and conquer the beast, and they are applauded when they manage to remain on top. But the bull reigns supreme. Those most adept at tossing, goring or even killing riders are celebrated more than even the greatest montadores.

If that seems like treachery to the human race, it is. Of all the bulls in Costa Rica, the most celebrated and revered is the bull people call "Malacrianza." Translation? "Badass."

Look

The Sony World Photography Awards (via The Atlantic).

The Sony World Photography Awards, an annual competition hosted by the World Photography Organisation, has recently announced its shortlist of winners. This year's contest attracted more than 140,000 entries from 166 countries. The organizers have been kind enough to share some of their shortlisted images with In Focus, gathered below. Winners are scheduled to be announced in March and April. All captions below come from the photographers.

Watch

Rock climbing is one of those things that I’ve tried and I have okay body strength, but goodness, this girl can climb (via Vimeo).

On October 15th 2011, adidas team athlete, Sasha DiGiulian became the first American women to climb the grade 9a (5.14d) with her historic ascent of "Pure Imagination" in Kentucky's Red River Gorge. Keith Ladzinski and Andy Mann (Three Strings Media) were there to capture her efforts and tell her story.

Listen

I am continually amazed by what I get to hear on my local non-profit radio station and I was working on something in the garage, with an actual radio and me actually tuned in to 91.7 here in the DFW and was introduced to Ronnie Fauss and I was just blown away by how good his whole album was. Fauss is apparently from the DFW area and he will play in and around the area, so go check him out. Crazy talented.