HANG ON EIGHT SECONDS . . . : Bulls, Not Ducks, Are Running the Anaheim Arena This Weekend

Sung to the tune of “Streets of Laredo”:

I see by your outfit/that you are a cowboy.

You see by my outfit/that I’m a cowboy, too.

We see by our outfits/that we are both cowboys.

Why don’t you get an outfit/and be a cowboy, too? --Author unknown Residents of Orange County know what it is to be suburban cowboys. We strew our spankin’ new houses with artificially bleached skulls for an “Old West” look, and we buy studly, four-wheel-drive trucks in which we’ll climb nothing steeper or dirtier than parking lot speed bumps.

But this weekend, two separate events will allow local residents to get a little closer to the classic cowboy experience: In Anaheim, the Flying U Rodeo checks into the Anaheim Arena Saturday and Sunday. And in Newport Beach, the historic Buffalo Ranch bids by-by to its bison with the Last Round-up, a community festival with petting zoos, balloon rides and bison photo ops (see accompanying story, this page).

Although there are probably plenty of gen-yoo-ine cowboys who laugh it up at our expense, Flying U president and former Long Beach boy Cotton Rosser takes a more empathetic view, and not just because it sells tickets to his rodeo.

“There must be more city slicker cowboys around Orange County than just about anywhere else,” observed Rosser in a phone conversation from his company’s headquarters in Marysville. “It’s so congested down there, it makes sense that people would want to get out with their families and go to rodeos.”

As a source of family entertainment, rodeo combines the thrills and chills of a live sporting event with the spectacle of a big stage show, said Rosser, a 37-year veteran of the business.

“Rodeo has something for everyone,” he added. “You have clowns, pretty girls in the barrel race, the big, tough, 2,000-pound bulls with young men trying to match their wits against them . . . everything you could want.”

In Anaheim, Rosser will try out a new format that he calls the Flying U Rodeo Classic. Traditional events like bareback bronc riding, in which a rider must stay on a bucking horse for eight seconds while holding on with one hand to a strap around the animal’s girth, and the most dangerous of rodeo sports, bull riding (same idea, only this time with a bigger, meaner and possibly more vengeance-minded animal), will be featured. But, in a response to concerns from animal rights activists (Rosser has a more colorful word for them), events like calf roping and team roping will not.

Cowgirls will get their kicks in women’s bull riding and bareback riding events. Competitors will include Melissa Phillips, 1993 Professional Women’s Rodeo Assn. World Champion Bull Rider, and Jan Vouren, a former world champion bareback bronc rider. Women’s barrel racing, in which a rider on a galloping horse must maneuver a clover-leaf pattern of barrels, will also be featured, as will “mutton busting,” a novelty event in which children ages 4 to 8 try to keep their seat atop an uncooperative female sheep. (Locals interested in competing in this event should call Flying U at (916) 742-8249.)

Rounding out the program will be a handful of specialty acts, headlined by the comedy horse act of Gaylord Maynard, a veteran trainer who coordinated the popular Royal Lipizzan stallions shows, as well as a splashy opening number and a performing black stallion named Darth Vader.

Although the Flying U show marks the first rodeo to be held at the new Anaheim Arena (a bull-riding competition was there in August), the company should be familiar to local rodeo buffs, having coordinated past events in San Juan Capistrano, Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza. More than 900 tons of dirt will be trucked in to cover the arena ice (the Ducks play Friday night), and a post-rodeo Western dance will be held on the arena floor at 10 p.m. Saturday. A planned pre-show festival at noon on Sunday features mariachi music, hay rides and close-up views of some of the Flying U livestock. And at intermission on both days, ponies will be brought into the arena for children in the audience to pet.

“Will Rogers said ‘The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a child,’ ” noted Rosser. “I believe that.”

What: Flying U Rodeo.

When: Saturday, Feb. 19, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 20, at 2 p.m.

Where: Anaheim Arena, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim.

Whereabouts: From the Orange (57) Freeway, exit at Ball Road, drive east. Turn right on Auto Center Drive to parking lot.

Wherewithal: Tickets are $9 to $28, parking is $6 per car.

Where to call: (714) 704-2500 or (714) 740-2000 (TicketMaster).