Boot Scootin’ Boogie

(blog by Laura)

Hey Y’all!!!!

I’m learnin’ the Boot Scootin’ Boogie on my computer.

I knew this dance once. I mean, I’m pretty sure I did. but i aint done it in a coon’s age. Thankfully this lady on the computer made herself a youtube video. She made sure to wear a cowboy hat, high-heeled boots, and tight-as-hell, flared Levi’s. She says, “People in the country call this a ‘Hitch Kick.’” But Lady, I can think of three other dance forms that call the simple hop she’s referrin’ to a hitch. It’s a drag act y’all. but there aint nuthin’ wrong with a little drag. and you know there ain’t nuthin’ wrong with a little country! but her performance is as calculated as all the g’s i’m droppin’ and the y’alls i’m slingin. and there’s nothin’ wrong with her, and there’s nothin’ wrong with me writin like this, cuz you know every dog has to have a few fleas.

As I watch Romney back peddle to appeal to what conservatives so coyly refer to as the real America, I wonder what “real America”  is. Todd Akin would have me believe it’s a place where a little gal’s uterus can kick the shit out of those no good rape sperm. Those same folks would have me believe that our increasingly moderate president who bailed out banks to the tune of $700 billion in tax-payer’s dollars is somehow a socialist. Silly ole logic just proves to me that real America isn’t so real. But what of the line-dance? What of the lonely cowboy drinking one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer? What of the road trip? Well, I wonder if like the road-trip the real America is somewhere folks keep drivin’ towards but never really get to. Even my family in Louisiana long for some America they never had. Mardi Gras on HBO’s Treme seems a little bit richer, them ladies in Stell Magnolias speak with a little more Southern flair, and the crawfish on the food network always look a lot tastier. America is sold to us as a place where the people are just a little bit friendlier, the food is just a little bit betterr, and the soundtrack is always right in step. Some place they’ve seen in movies or heard about in songs or read in magazines or watched on TV.

It is good for America for America to be that way. Or at least what I suspect the real America to be. The real Cowboys. Our former lonestar-state cowboy of a president, the one who is just like you, save the Harvard Business School education and the Presidential father. A blue and white Cowboy’s star painted on a football helmet covering up the head of some player who makes $9,000,000/year (playing for an owner worth $2 billion and for a company whose value hovers around $30 billion)  or Vegas Vic, the light-up cowboy who’ll wave at you as you contribute to the state’s 9 billion in annual gaming revenue. I remember going to a casino in Mississippi with a van-load of my family. My brother and I found a corner to sit and watch. We were quiet for a while, watching hundreds of people crowded into an enormous room drop their paychecks into these shiny silver slots. I remember him saying “L, everyone in here thinks they are lucky.” America! Where everyone is lucky but only a few get the prize. I’ll leave y’all with some Southern wisdom I yanked off the good ole internet.

Beware the man who never let’s the truth get in the way of a good story.

[Okay, enough of me on this high horse! I’m gonna get back to learnin’ these steps y’all!]