Prix du Grand Palais - SAUT HERMES - CSI *****

Prix du Grand Palais - SAUT HERMES - CSI *****

Christian Ahlmann (GER) & Taloubet Z (Galoubet A x Cor de la Bryere)
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Christian Ahlmann (GER) & Taloubet Z (Galoubet A x Cor de la Bryere)
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Christian Ahlmann (GER) & Taloubet Z (Galoubet A x Cor de la Bryere)
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Beezie Madden (USA) & Coral Reef Via Volo (Clinton x Heartbreaker)
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Beezie Madden (USA)
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Beezie Madden (USA)
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Rolf-Göran Bengtsson (SWE) & Casall La Silla (Caretino x Lavall I)
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Rolf-Göran Bengtsson (SWE) & Casall La Silla (Caretino x Lavall I)
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Roger Yves Bost (FRA) & Ideal de la Loge (Dollar du Murier x Joyau d'Or A)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Couleur Rubin (Cordalme Z x Grannus)
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Harrie Smolders (NED) & Exquis Powerfee (Fedor x Erdball)
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Michel Robert (FRA)
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Michel Robert (FRA) & Kaloe des Perrieres (Quat'Sous*HN x Benroy)
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Michel Robert (FRA) & Kaloe des Perrieres (Quat'Sous*HN x Benroy)
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Alvaro Miranda (BRA) & AD Norson (Quidam de Revel x Grand Veneur)
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Daniel Deusser (GER) & Untouchable (Hors la Loi II x Heartbreaker)
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Daniel Deusser (GER) & Untouchable (Hors la Loi II x Heartbreaker)
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Daniel Deusser (GER) & Untouchable (Hors la Loi II x Heartbreaker)
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Kevin Staut (FRA) & Silvana de Hus (Corland x Widor)
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Kevin Staut (FRA) & Silvana de Hus (Corland x Widor)
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Kevin Staut (FRA) & Silvana de Hus (Corland x Widor)
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Billy Twomey (IRL) & Romanov II (Heartbreaker x Fedor)
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Billy Twomey (IRL) & Romanov II (Heartbreaker x Fedor)
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Steve Guerdat (SUI) & Urgent (Numero Uno x Julio Mariner XX)
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Jeroen Dubbeldam (NED) & BMC Quality Time TN (Quantum x Cantus)
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Julien Epaillard (FRA) & Champs Elysees (Coriano x Ahorn Z)
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Julien Epaillard (FRA) & Champs Elysees (Coriano x Ahorn Z)
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Julien Epaillard (FRA) & Champs Elysees (Coriano x Ahorn Z)
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Julien Epaillard (FRA) & Champs Elysees (Coriano x Ahorn Z)
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Malin Baryard-Johnsson (SWE) & H&M Reveur de Hurtebise (Kashmir van Schuttershof x Capricieux des six Censes)
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Pilar Lucrecia Cordon (ESP) & Ultra (Gralshuter x Polydor)
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Philippe Rozier (FRA) & Jadis de Toscane (Quidam de Revel x Laudanum)
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Eric van der Vleuten (NED) & VDL Groep Cannelina (Carthago Z x Sir Shostakovich)
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Richard Spooner (USA) & Billy Bianca (Vechta x Iroko)
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Richard Spooner (USA) & Billy Bianca (Vechta x Iroko)
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Rik Hemeryck (BEL) & Papillon Z (Perhaps x Cassini I)
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Marcus Ehning (GER) & Plot Blue (Mr.Blue x Pilot)
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Marcus Ehning (GER) & Plot Blue (Mr.Blue x Pilot)
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Simon Delestre (FRA) & Couletto (Couleur Rubin x Caletto)
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Christian Ahlmann (GER) & Sebastian (Lux x Ramiro)
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Gerco Schröder (NED) & Eurocommerce New Orleans (Colbert x Carthago)
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Edwina Alexander (AUS) & Cevo Socrates (Darco x Chin Chin)
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Laura Kraut (USA) & Dona Evita (Darco x Fleuri du Manoir)
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Pénélope Leprevost (FRA) & Nenuphar'Jac (Cumano x Pidayack)
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Pénélope Leprevost (FRA) & Nenuphar'Jac (Cumano x Pidayack)
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Pénélope Leprevost (FRA) & Nenuphar'Jac (Cumano x Pidayack)
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Marco Kutscher (GER) & Cash (Carthago x Lavall II)
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Beezie Madden (USA) & Danny Boy (Clinton x Alexis Z)
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Rolf-Göran Bengtsson (SWE) & Quintero La Silla (Quantum x Chamonix)
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Rolf-Göran Bengtsson (SWE) & Quintero La Silla (Quantum x Chamonix)
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Roger Yves Bost (FRA) & Nikyta d'Elle (Richebourg x Papillon Rouge)
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Sergio Alvarez Moya (ESP) & Wisconsin 111 (Darco x Coriolan)
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Ben Maher (GBR) & Tripple X III (Namelus R x Catango Z)
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Ben Maher (GBR) & Tripple X III (Namelus R x Catango Z)
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Ben Maher (GBR) & Tripple X III (Namelus R x Catango Z)
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Ben Maher (GBR) & Tripple X III (Namelus R x Catango Z)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Ludger Beerbaum (GER) & Coupe de Coeur (Calido I x Lincoln)
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Michel Robert (FRA) & Kellemoi de Pepita (Voltaire x Jalme des Mesnuls)
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Alvaro Miranda (BRA) & AD Wilbert Z (Picasso Z x Numero Uno)
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Daniel Deusser (GER) & Cabreado S.E. (Canabis Z x Gold Sky)
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Kevin Staut (FRA) & Zeta de Hus (Zandor Z x Atlantus Z)
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Kevin Staut (FRA) & Zeta de Hus (Zandor Z x Atlantus Z)
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Kevin Staut (FRA) & Zeta de Hus (Zandor Z x Atlantus Z)
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Billy Twomey (IRL) & Tinka's Serenade (Tinka's Boy x African Drum)
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Steve Guerdat (SUI) & Jalisca Solier (Alligator Fontaine x Jalisco B)
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Julien Epaillard (FRA) & Mister Davier (Quiniou Sf x Leprince de Thurin)
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Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum (GER) & Kismet 50 (Kannan x Furioso II)
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Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum (GER) & Kismet 50 (Kannan x Furioso II)
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Malin Baryard-Johnsson (SWE) & H&M Tornesch 1042 (Lux Z x Libero H)
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Malin Baryard-Johnsson (SWE) & H&M Tornesch 1042 (Lux Z x Libero H)
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Malin Baryard-Johnsson (SWE) & H&M Tornesch 1042 (Lux Z x Libero H)
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Philippe Rozier (FRA) & Randgraaf (Burggraaf x Renville)
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Eric Lamaze (CAN) & Hickstead (Hamlet x Ekstein)
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Eric van der Vleuten (NED) & VDL Groep Utascha SFN (Lux x Indoctro)
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Eric van der Vleuten (NED) & VDL Groep Utascha SFN (Lux x Indoctro)
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Richard Spooner (USA) & Cristallo (Caretino x Cicero)
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Richard Spooner (USA) & Cristallo (Caretino x Cicero)
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Fifteen or twenty years ago, for reasons I can’t recall, I found myself in Victorville, California, home of the Roy Rogers Museum. I had a couple of hours to kill so I decided to look around.

Roy had been a huge Western star for a couple of decades before I discovered him in my childhood. By then he was well known as “The King of the Cowboys” with a weekly TV show starring himself, his wife, his horse and his dog.

Though not an actual monarch, Rogers was as wealthy as one, listed among Hollywood’s box office leaders from 1943 – 1952.

But Roy’s empire wasn’t restricted to the movies.

Born into poverty in a Cincinnati tenement, he’d had to seek factory work as a child to support his family. He never finished high school, quitting after he was chastised for falling asleep in class – after a night shift making shoes.

His family travelled West during the depression, with Roy learning to play the guitar and sing in the transient and worker camps later made famous in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”.

He broke into show business in the 1930’s as a country singer, forming a group called “The Sons of the Pioneers” and meeting his wife Dale Evans (later “The Queen of the West”) at an Oklahoma radio station where she gave him with a lemon pie to coerce him into playing a song she’d requested.

The Sons had several hits that eventually landed them spots in a few Westerns, including a Gene Autry movie that the star exited on the first day in a contract dispute. Stuck for a star, the producers noticed the handsome young man with the guitar, handed him a white Stetson and the rest – as they say – is history.

But Rogers not only copied Autry’s singing cowboy character, he improved on it. In a 1940 contract negotiation he gave back some of the money the studio was offering to acquire the rights to his likeness, voice and name.

Within a couple of years, he’d parlayed that into his own production company, radio serials, comic books, adventure novels, public appearances, records, action figures, western clothing and toy six guns of all description.

Only Walt Disney had more merchandise bearing his name.

Already a cottage industry, one that soon expanded to include Dale, trusty mount Trigger and dog bullet, Rogers took over creative control of his films, shooting them in color when everybody else was still making their low budget oaters in B&W.

The West of Roy Rogers films had nothing to do with the Real West and he knew that. But he understood that most people dealt with enough reality in their own lives and wanted something else when they bought a ticket to one of his films.

I thought the museum was kind of tacky. It was weird looking at the taxidermied Trigger, Dale’s horse “Buttermilk” and Bullet posed around the corral set from Roy’s Ranch I’d remembered from childhood.

The racks of rhinestone and silver saddles, handmade Technicolor boots and shirts all seemed phoney and dated.

And after watching film clips of shows I’d loved that now came across as awkwardly concocted and badly produced, I wondered why so many people had bought into the Roy Rogers myth.

I got my answer yesterday as the media marked the 100th anniversary of Roy Rogers’ birth.

In an interview with Rogers’ son, who still makes a good living touring with his own son performing a show featuring the music and stories of his father, there was this insight…

"He came at a time when World War II was coming on pretty heavy and a lot of people, their dad didn't come back or they came from broken homes, so Dad, was a father figure to a lot of kids."

"And so they looked up to him and they knew they could hang their hat on what he would ask them to do. To go to church on Sundays and to keep yourself neat and clean and take care of your animals and obey your mom and dad, and just basic, common sense things."

The museum in Victorville closed a few years ago and its artefacts were sold for millions. Trigger alone went for more than six figures.

Roy Rogers may have been a cowboy caricature and a walking merchandising campaign, but he spent much of the fortune he  earned realizing the values he espoused, advocating for adopted children, kids with polio and research into Downs Syndrome.

He also did much for environmental causes, animal rights and ensuring that the history of the west, the “Real” West was preserved.

He closed every episode of his TV series singing one of his biggest hits, “Happy Trails”. You always felt he really meant the sentiment and maybe that’s the part of the man we should most remember.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

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"You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass." 

-- Glenn Frey/Don Henley

Sometimes I feel like I've become the local Internet Go-To Guy for an opposing opinion.

At least five times in the last week, I've had people asking me to blog about Rob Ford and the CBC, the Occupy Movement and other issues the Left and Right like to take sides on in order to pontificate on what morons the other bunch are.

And I'll admit I have opinions on all those issues. But since everybody and their dog is already filling up Column inches, Op-Ed pages and as much blog, podcast and TV panel space as they can on those topics, I ultimately came to the conclusion that nothing I add will be all that and a bag of chips.

Yes, I'm capable of throwing a pretty good fit from time to time on topics where I figure I have some inside perspective. But that's off the top of my head stuff. I really don't have the time or inclination for subject matter that doesn't concern me personally.

Tackling such issues also makes me think too much and being a Libra that ultimately means I'm gonna see the other side of the argument as well and end up either confused or catatonic or both. And we don't want that. At least, I don't.

But that still doesn't stop people, even weeks after some "outrage", from needling me on Twitter with "new information" or some "inside scuttlebutt" even the Press doesn't know. As if most in that profession actually look for much more than how to wind somebody up enough to tuck some change into the "Pay Here" slot.

My particular favorite is when somebody refers to some politician who has miffed them and asks "So what do you have to say about 'Your Guy' now? " as if I'm that idiot's mom or personally responsible for their current Gazebo building binge or whatever.

Other than making a mental note of who to call should I ever need a Gazebo, my honest response is, "All politicians are junkyard dogs! You can't even trust the ones you vote for!" I mean, we all live in hope -- but seriously…

For instance, while I know Jack Layton has now been beatified, there's still news footage of him screaming at police to arrest peaceful demonstrators outside an abortion clinic and threatening to have any cop who doesn't fired.

Put those same words in the mouth of somebody demanding an Occupy encampment be removed and those who admire Jack would be equally horrified.

Where did we move from a common sense of decency and maybe skepticism as well as acknowledging we don't own the moral high ground to needing to take up an immediate implacable stand?

"They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat."

Do I think the CBC crossed the line with Rob Ford? Yeah. Do I think Ford over-reacted? Yeah.

Do I think the man is a Buffoon? Sometimes. Is he going anywhere else for the next three years? No.

But what's amazed me the most is how little so many people who work in my own film industry are aware of how video can be tweaked, sound bites clipped and additional perspectives omitted (by all sides) to skew the final impression. We do that every hour of every day in our own work but ignore the possibility that others might do the same for their own reasons.

So while the Left has used the incident to make Ford come across like more of a doofus than he already is, the Right has used it to successfully eviscerate the CBC.

I don't like to put anybody through the agony of tuning in to SUN-TV with its bad 1970's Game Show sets and caricature personalities. But they went to the trouble of simply removing the fake laugh track from the CBC broadcast, revealing the cause célèbre as little more than a blown joke that somebody whose creative skills outranked their ideology would have binned and replaced.

I'm just saying that anytime you can make Ezra Levant come across as the voice of reason, you have completely failed as artist or activist or both.

But it seems we've become a society where it's okay when our side does something wrong and a capitol offense when somebody else does it.

Even more than that, we seem to have become a people more intent on shouting down opposing views than considering they might actual have a kernel of merit.

A couple of days ago, I chatted with a good friend who has the unenviable task of getting Dwaine Lingenfelter elected Premier of Saskatchewan.  He was wrestling with the fact that he couldn't get anybody from the local media to write about how Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party was using subliminal images in their attack ads -- in direct contravention of the Elections Act.

He pointed me to a Youtube video where Lingenfelter's image had been photoshopped to make him look somewhat demonic and then surrounded by further Tarantino-esque imagery to brand him as a mud-slinger instead of the one on whom mud was figuratively being slung.

With Wall polling somewhere around 186% of the popular vote, it seemed such contravention of election rules raised no interest among media types. Was that because nobody wanted to alienate future government ad dollars or because it wouldn't alter the outcome of the election, or -- wasn't there enough controversy since Lingenfelter's people had been caught doing something similar not so long ago?

It's weird how we jump at the chance to make a Federal case out of the slightest things but appear to have no interest when an actual Federal case can be made.

"The more I think about it, Old Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight
You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing."

All this got me thinking about a couple of comedians I admire. Bill Maher, who continuously inflames the Right. And Dennis Miller, now firmly entrenched as a conservative radio host.

I still think Miller is the best "Weekend Update" anchor SNL ever had and I'm enthralled by the intelligent wordplay that permeates his material. But mention Miller to those leaning Left and he's almost universally dismissed as "no longer funny".

When I lived in LA, I made it to as many tapings of Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" as I could, enjoying his visceral outbursts. But now, not a week goes by that some aspect of his new series "Real Time" angers those on the Right to the point of demanding he be silenced.

Have we fallen so far that we not only can't laugh at our own sacred cows being skewered, but we can't even acknowledge that somebody with talent might not think exactly the way we do?

And why do we feel it imperative to insist they change their minds and think just like we do?

Aren't those the kind of people who go around knocking the dongs off statues or burn books or crucify those who make them feel uncomfortable?

Aren't those the kind of people that form in pods if we should fall asleep?

If a joke's funny, it's funny. If it's not, maybe you shouldn't try to wrap it up as something else in order to make your point. And if you don't like the joke -- maybe you should consider that it's just a joke.

"It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak.

All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it!"

There was a time, less than 10 years ago, when Maher and Miller could be on the same stage and enjoy each other even though they disagreed.

This clip was recorded a few months after Maher was unceremoniously turfed from ABC for remarks he made about the 9-11 attacks. Instead of celebrating his newfound status as only "politically incorrect" comic remaining on TV, Miller put his own career on the line by bringing Maher on as his guest.

Their discussion on the importance of free speech and making room for dissenting voices has as much power a decade later as it did at the time.

And here's that Eagles song some of may need to listen to a little more closely…

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