The Running of the Bulls comes to Thunder Bay

I was tickled by one particular item on today's This Is That, a CBC Radio "news" interview program.

Rudy Parsons, a regular guy and long-time resident of Thunder Bay, was so taken with the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, on a recent visit there, that he has made it his goal to bring a similar event to his home town. As Mr. Parsons puts it, "The kind of passion that is so evident in Pamplona is sadly lacking in Thunder Bay and I wanted to bring it home for everyone to enjoy." As he also puts it, slightly more poetically, "Tourists from all over the world coming to see humanity taking a bite out of the passion fruit that is life by being chased by a freaking bull."

You have to listen to audio for the full effect. The man really is passionate, as he animatedly describes racing down the main street, past the Timmy's and past Shopper Drug Mart, with bulls in hot pursuit. Audio excerpts from Rudy's presentation of his plan before council are particularly enlightening as he justifies his recommendation for 18 bulls ("a nice number"), and answer questions about the risks of the bulls running into the newly installed parking meters ("you know, that's always a risk you take, I think, when you do a running of the bulls").

Unfortunately, Council ultimately rejected the proposal on safety grounds (and the new parking meters). But they did arrange for a safer compromise for Rudy, allowing him to walk down the street with a dairy cow, flanked by two police cars, although Rudy was not overly impressed ("Well this isn't even my idea, right? It's like they totally interpreted it like, you know, I want to just walk down the street with a frigging cow. It's not the point. ... This is just embarrassing, man, look at everybody looking at me.")

Part of the fun of the This Is That program is that the interviews are carried out very much in the style of regular CBC news items, and concerns "news" that could almost be true, so that you are almost completely taken in until you finally start to think "wait, that can't be true, can it?" Many of their "news" items result in a very active audience response, either strongly in favour or, more often, vehemently opposed. Some of the strongest reactions occur when people belatedly realize that they have been duped. The program is in fact completely fictional; it is a satire or parody on life in Canada, in much the same way that Onion is, even if it its satirical nature is not made clear.

Either way, this particular item was hilarious and deserves a listen.