What can I say? I'm easily amused. In my head, Pear is freaking out because he thinks he's about to fall off the desk, but Orange realizes that both fruits are at a safe distance and are in no real danger, so he's judging Pear's neurosis with that sarcastic look. Screw you, Orange! All it would take is for Banana to come by, get naked, and leave her outfit next to you for you to slip and fall to your death! Then who would be smirking? Not Pear, because Pear is respectful and would send flowers to your mother. Wait, what? Ummmm, sorry about all that....
Anyway, The Young and The Seedless was not the story I intended to tell you today. In an effort to gain my official Minnesota residency, I decided that it was time to jump head first into a Minnesota tradition: the State Fair. Growing up in South Dakota (and probably anywhere in the Midwest, for that matter), fairs were essential in my childhood experience. Since I grew up in the greater Sioux Falls area, the Sioux Empire Fair was always a much bigger deal to me than the South Dakota State Fair. The SE Fair always felt bigger and more geared towards me because it had more modern concerts (Sheryl Crow as opposed to Charlie Pride), more rides, and less tractors. I had friends that would show cattle, so they'd be around all day to hang out with. Our parents would buy us the daily/weekly ride passes, so they could drop us off and take a week off from the stresses of parenting as the toothless carnies took their turn in the child-rearing department. Judging by the looks of most of them, rearing a child was something they were quite familiar with. Kind of a sidebar, but my two favor carney stories. One: It was the mid-90's, so bright neon colors were in. I had a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses that had neon green sides. Thor Carney (he looked like the superhero Thor, only if Thor was on meth) was running the Viking Ship ride (fitting) and decided he quite liked my shades. He offered me $10 for a pair of glasses that I had spent $5 on that morning at Lewis Drug. I gladly handed them over and told him where I got them. He told me that if I could get more pairs, he'd give me even more money because he knew that he had friends that would like some, too. Thankfully, someone's parents caught wind of our little money turning scheme as we all begged to go back to Lewis for more glasses. I'm pretty sure that had we been allowed to continue our business transaction, Carney Thor would have had a box of free sunglasses and the rock quarry directly next to the fairgrounds probably would have had a fresh batch of 9-year old's carcasses. Second carney story: They paid some drunk asshole to get dressed up in a clown costume and sit on a plank above a pool of water. His job was to be as big of a prick as possible in an effort to get you to come throw balls to dunk him in the water. This guy was like a mix of Don Rickles and Satan. Oh, and he had a megaphone so everyone could hear him. As previously documented within this blog, weight has always been an issue for me. I kind of looked like Jerry O'Connell in Stand By Me, and on that unfortunate day, I was wearing a striped shirt. The clown must have been on his third fifth of whiskey that morning because he decided he was going to ruin everyone's life. We sat from afar and watched as he eviscerated teenager after teenager, picking on anything from their hair to the likelihood that they were homosexuals. We were having a good chuckle, as 10-year olds are wont to do, when I saw him lock in on me. I froze in terror as I saw him reach out his gloved hand and point directly at me. "Hey fatty, what are you looking at? If you want a corn dog, the stand is just down the way, so stop looking at me like you're about to eat me! You know, it is a good thing your mom dressed you in that striped shirt today so that she could tell whether you were walking or rolling!" That's right. The asshole clown from Hell dressed me down in front of everyone in the middle of the day on the midway of a county fair. Through a megaphone. At some point someone must have reported the guy because there was a different clown in the tank for the rest of the week.
I digress. Every Minnesotan I have ever met gets excited about their state fair. The biggest draw seems to be the fact that there is all kinds of wacky foods on sticks. For a guy trying to drop pounds, this probably wasn't the best place for me. Still, I had to see what the hype was about, especially since my sugar mama had bought me a ticket. Upon entering the gates my first impression of the great Minnesota get together was that it was the great Minnesota cluster fuck. There were people in every direction for as far as I could see. I asked Molly what we were supposed to do, and she said that we just kind of walked around. Awesome...
I took her hand and she helped navigate us through the crowds of people standing in line for something known as "All The Milk You Can Drink", which sounded pretty reckless considering the hot August days and spinning rides everywhere. We went around and checked out different barns and arenas with different vendors selling their mops and salsa makers. It quickly became apparent to me that no matter the size of the fair, you pretty much know what to expect. I had it in my mind that I wanted to get some cheese curds, something on a stick, and some Sweet Martha Chocolate Chip Cookies, all staples for the essential Minnesotan experience. I started with a huge order of cheese curds that reminded me of why I hate dieting. Seriously, is there anything greater in the world than breaded, deep fried cheese? Who in the world wants to eat a sarcastic orange when you could have fried cheese? Unfortunately for me, this was the first thing going into my stomach. The amount of grease located in the crevices of the cheese immediately dripped to the pit of my stomach and left me with a sudden sense of urgency. I have a tremendous dislike of public toilets...would I really be forced to use one right after some sweaty fat guy who was battling a funnel cake? I set my mind to persevering. Molly went with the corn on the cob, which was a much more reasonable option. We did some more walking around, including a trip down the midway. I saw two of my all-time favorite rides, The Scrambler and the Alpine Express. We used to be able to sit on those rides and not get off because there was no one there during the mid-day. I'm not ashamed to admit that I peed my pants a little one time when I was on the Alpine Express with Ryan Kapperman. He was also a bigger kid (more in general size than being chubby), so we tried our best to make sure that we set it up where gravity would pull us towards him so that he didn't crush us. Well, it turns out we cracked that code when the Alpine spun one way, but when it unexpectedly switched positions, so did all the kids in the cart. We were all screaming in pain while laughing our heads off, which is what a carnival ride is supposed to do. Anyway, through all the screaming, squeezing, and laughing, I peed a little. So what, don't judge me. It was the time of my life up to that point.
Anyway, with the cheese curds starting to settle down, I decided it was time to find my food on a stick. They really don't exaggerate when they say that they have almost everything on a skewer. I really wanted to try the hot dish on a stick, mostly because I couldn't wrap my brain around its physics. Instead, I went with something that sounded a bit more reasonable and more fair-ish: a pretzel dog on a stick. As I chomped down on the buttery, meaty deliciousness, Molly led us to something called The Miracle of Life barn. I choked down what was remaining of the hot dog before we entered in an effort to not offend any the piggy brothers located inside. Maybe it is because I grew up in South Dakota and had to help one time with calving, or maybe it is because I'm a logical, reasonable human who doesn't need to see gross babies shooting out of their mothers, but I wasn't as impressed with the whole exhibit. They had all sorts of baby animals that had just been born in incubators feeding on their mothers or trying desperately to figure out how to coordinate their new legs. I guess that part was cute enough, but it was hard to focus on it all when every five feet above my head there was a video screen with an animal squeezing out another animal. I fully plan on being a Ricky Ricardo someday and smoking in the waiting room until someone hands me a nice, clean baby that I can name.
With our visit to the piglets out of the way, we made our way towards what would become our final destination. Sweet Martha's Cookies are a Minnesota State Fair staple. Check out their website for more info: http://sweetmarthas.com/ Sweet Martha has a sweet gig that pulls in millions every year at the fair. I would estimate that while we were in line, at least 100 people were sharing the waiting experience with us. All day long I had seen people with buckets of cookies, so I figured that must be the way to go. We could have purchased the much more reasonable cone of cookies, but the fat-guy economist inside me told me that I would save more money by buying more cookies, regardless of how many I actually needed to eat. We finally made our way up to the counter, and I plopped down my money and asked for my bucket. The nice girl in the yellow shirt reached up, pulled down a bucket (that already had some cookies in it), finished off the tray of cookies in front of her, called behind her for another tray, and proceeded to empty it on top of my bucket, too. The sign said a bucket had roughly four dozen cookies. I would estimate it closer to eight. I put my hand on top of my purchase so as to not lose a single precious calorie, and we made our way over to a nearby bench. You might be having a hard time visualizing all of this, so let me help.
There's enough cookies in that bucket to even make Cookie Monster stop and say, "Wait, this might be a little much." We ate a couple of cookies before I came to the realization of my biggest impending problem besides the onset of diabetes. At some point, I had to eat enough cookies to get that lid to close. I proceeded to eat and eat and eat some more. With every cookie down, I tried the lid again to see if I could seal it up and move along my way. I eventually lost count of how many cookies I had eaten as the sugar coma started to settle in and my body gave up on me. Suffice it to say, I had taken in my daily caloric intake and still had a bucket to take home for later. As we sat there on the bench and I went in and out of consciousness, we noticed that some rain clouds were moving in. We decided to wrap up our day at the fair and get me on a bus home before the paramedics needed to get involved. Thus ended my first official great gathering with other Minnesotans.
I did the smart thing and brought in the cookies to share at work yesterday (sorry to all you people upstairs, but the added weight from the Sunday binge made it nearly impossible to walk up a flight of stairs to come share with you). At the end of the day, I was left with three cookies, which I'm happy to report are in my belly and soon to be out of my life. The scale says that there weren't any real negative repercussions, but I have a feeling that once the sugar has a chance to settle, it might be another story. Still, another Monday has come and gone, and I'm still chugging away with the October 8 deadline in sight. Besides being a fatass this weekend, I also made some really good decisions, like going on a three mile walk with Molly around Lake Calhoun and ordering the healthy pad thai instead of the unhealthy mac and cheese at dinner. I'm playing basketball four days a week now, so I'm expecting to see some real results coming in the very near future. I'm reluctant to post any real numbers because I want to make the October 8 reveal a bit of a surprise, but trust me when I say there isn't any real surprise right now. I'll get there, though.
Still giving my life a Fair assessment,
Jeff "Horizontal Stripes Mean I'm Walking, Not Rolling" Pool
PS - Happy birthday to one of my biggest supporters, Kacey!
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