Fair in motion

The last weekend of the 2019 

Iowa State Fair . . . in motion.

Politics in the age of short-fingered vulgarians

  
My wife thought I was having a stroke.

There I stood in the Varied Industries Building at the Iowa State Fair, mouth agape, jaw slacked. My eyes must have been a little glazed over. I stared at the Republican Party of Iowa booth.

Actually, I stared at the Crooked Hillary photo booth. That stood in front of and perpendicular to the life-sized Donald Trump cutout, where bunches of good Iowa people were lining up to take a picture with the cardboard candidate.

I found myself compelled to take pictures of the people taking pictures, if for no other reason but to reality-check myself that this campaign -- this insane presidential contender -- was really happening, and that a formerly mainstream political party had entered the terminal stage of a decades-long descent into bat-shit madness.

THIS COARSE display . . . this supreme unseriousness and spleen venting . . . this is how the the government becomes delegitimized (see Obama Derangement Syndrome) and the country becomes ungovernable. This is how we lose faith in democracy, and how we cast off all our hopes for the future.

This is so beneath us as Americans. We are so beneath us, at least beneath our better selves, as Americans.

This is how everybody becomes The Other, and this is how opposing political parties become Lebensunwertes Leben. 

How damned sad that what's left of Republicanism sounds so much more serious in the original German.

The Real Donald J. Trump -- star of stage, screen, divorce court and bankruptcy -- would sound just as nuts in Classical Latin, alas.

As we were leaving the fair Sunday, I asked my wife whether this would be the last Iowa State Fair we'd go to without having to get a passport or obtain a visa. Would Iowa end up in the Republic of Heartland, while Nebraska joined with the Dakotas in the new Canadian province of South Manitoba? Would the United States still be united in 2017, somehow, despite Trump ginning up panic and rage among the booboisie about the "rigged election"?

Could be a hell of a "reality show."

Call it The End of the World as We Know It.

And we feel . . . pissed.

Mind the sign

Just a random thing on the American scene. Though I do have to wonder whether this is a thing in the great state of Iowa, at least such that signs must warn against the practice.

I will have no further comment. Iowa Hawkeye fans may say what they like.

On a fair summer evening

You can't escape the screen, ever.

And at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, the screen gets supersized. Now if they could just put it on a stick and wrap it in bacon.

Old school

Pioneer Livestock Pavilion, Iowa State Fair.

Summer's last gasp

 Iowa State Fair, August 2014

 

The state fair season is winding down and football has returned to the prairies, fields and Norman Rockwell towns of the Midwest. The rituals of its people point to the changing of its seasons, and we know the trees and shrubbery will, soon enough, will break out into a riotous festival of color, as if the Almighty were looking down upon his Technicolor palette and saying to LeRoy Neiman "You never could top me, could you?"

Then the leaves will exhaust the last of their color and blanket the earth for nature's long winter slumber. And we will settle in, bundle up and dream dreams of springtime.

Thus is the circle game of life.

Iowa's state fair is a great state fair

Our State Fair is a great state fair,

Don't miss it, don't even be late!

(Our state fair is great!)

It's dollars to doughnuts at our state fair,

It's the best state fair in the state!

OUR STATE FAIR IS A GREAT STATE FAIR!

IS A GREAT . . .

IS A GREAT . . .

IS A GREAT STATE FAIR, HEY!

Our State Fair is a great state fair,

Don't miss it, don't even be late!

(State fair is great!)

It's dollars to doughnuts at our state fair,

It's the best state fair . . .

in our state!

"State Fair"

-- Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

Radio-geek photos of the day

At the Iowa State Fair on Saturday night . . .


. . . and Sunday afternoon.

Get on the stick

Hidey ho, neighbors!


Welcome to the Iowa State Fair!


Here, food comes on a stick. Even food that wouldn't seem to be particularly stick-friendly.

I'm guessing PBJ on a stick is heavy on the PB and light on the J.


In Iowa, even salad dressing and juice come on a stick.


Not to mention origami.


Look, even Cajun "cheeze" comes on a stick, cher. I think Cajun cheeze must be cheeze that you roll around in "garlik" and "kayenne" pepper and call it "Cajun" -- and "cheeze."

I wonder whether "cheeze" is to cheese what "krab" is to crab.


But if you think "cheeze" on a stick might give you a heart attack on a stick, you certainly can opt for salad on a stick.


Or perhaps some fruit on a stick.


Or . . . you could just go for the original stick food.

I won't tell your cardiologist.

What I learned at the fair

Everything is better on a stick.

Even this meatball-and-melted cheese sandwich on focaccia that I just made. And consumed. After removing the stick.

I'm not that dumb.

Now, a word from our contestants

If you think you're having a bad day, think again.

You could be a participant in the cattle judging at the Nebraska State Fair, trying to send out telepathic waves to everyone you encounter -- mental images that impart a simple message:

Eat mor chikin.

Because for a cow at the state fair, if you win, you lose.

ON THE other hand, life at the fair ain't exactly a bowl of cherries for the sheep, either.

They get paraded around. They get stretched. They get lambhandled by teenagers.

They get poked, pulled, prodded, gawked at and ogled.

All they want to say is "Hey, you @#&%+*$! Go pick on somebody your own size! Some creature with opposable thumbs and a discernible IQ! Leave. Me. Alone."

But can the sheep say that? No, they can't.

They try, but all that comes out is "BAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

And you think you're having a crap-o day, huh, Bunkie?

IN THE WORDS of that great philosopher Travis Tritt, "Here's a quarter. Call someone who cares."

We are Midwesterners. We have perspective. Now, get away from me before I make you march behind the draft horses. Blindfolded.

And barefoot.

IT'LL HAVE to be next year, though, for the state fair has ended its 2010 run at its new home out in Grand Island.

Pray for Bossie. And for Beauregard, too.

And remember . . . eat mor chikin.

Agriculture today

Friday at the Nebraska State Fair in Lincoln. I think that if the cattle had opposable thumbs (hell, fingers) and cell phones, they'd probably be texting "HELP!!!!"