World’s Largest Bore!
Well for those of you that enjoy clogging your arteries with deep fried chocolate-covered bacon, or lard-wrapped pickles on beef jerky sticks, or cannot resist inhaling the piss and shit stench of barn after barn of semi-humane animal pens featuring ‘the world’s largest boar,’ or are fond of wearing over-sized Spongebob Squarepants t-shirts that conceal the horror that are your cut-off denim shorts and cottage cheese-curdled thighs, or thirst kicking back with a 32 oz. plastic bucket of lukewarm Miller Genuine Draft Light with your 14-year old girlfriend from back home Po-dunkville who just wouldn’t take no for an answer when she heard Travis Tritt was making a record-breaking 13th appearance in the Grandstand, happy days to you, you sick, demented imbecile, it is Minnesota State Fair time.
Q-What gives, Petersen? You are not even going to get near the Fair.
You bet your ass I am not. I won’t even put foot in St. Paul for the next two/three weeks. Got to give them ample time to scrub out all the mud and stink, sweep up the litter of grease-covered sticks and scrape the caramel from the streets, and of course bulldoze all the immobile bloated folks who overindulged on the mini-donuts and cheese curds into a deep pit.
Q-So you have at least been to the Fair then?
Oh, it was a most unfortunate experience bordering on child abuse. Dragged kicking and screaming across the river, down a gridlocked Snelling Avenue, through the turnstile, past a bunch of shiny and completely obsolete-in-the-city farm implements to the giant yellow slide where I was carried like a sack of potatoes to the top, stuffed into a splintery burlap sack that had somehow snagged some other poor kid’s retainer, and shoved down the boringest and least exhilarating hill of all time, where upon reaching the bottom I was struck in the temple by a freshly buttered ear of corn that some rube couldn’t keep his mitts on while hauling ass to be the first in line to the unveiling of the ‘Butter Queen’ sculpture. Probably ironic somehow.
Q-Could you describe the ‘Butter Queen’ sculpture?
It’s totally terrifying. Some poor female teenager is forced to having her likeness carved from a large frozen chunk of that ‘famous’ Minnesota butter. Supposedly this is a good thing, but I have been told that she is always heavily sedated from the carving until the conclusion of the Fair.
Q-Are there any contests that would be worth a visit to the Fair?
Don’t bother, don’t fucking bother. Plus, there are so many of them - prettiest butter queen, best honey bee, biggest incapacitated boar, hungriest homeless person, hairiest Uncle Herb, most ridiculous invention invented by an 8-year old from a town that has less than 3,000 people, etc, that the spirit of ‘contest’ has lost all meaning. There’s even some art contest to see who can paint the loveliest sunset on Lake Minnetonka or take the black and whitest black and white photo of a pair of clutching hands or a bunch of birch trees. The sculpture category is exclusively abstractions in brushed metal. Oooh la la.
Q-Have you ever entered the Fair’s art contest?
Hey, no offense to the hard work of the folks who want to have their efforts displayed two doors down from the state’s largest muskmelon, but there’s no chance of catching a glimpse of any of my work at the Fair. There’s an entry fee.
Q-Is it just that you are a cheapskate?
Yes. Plus I don’t paint or photograph or sculpt or carve or draw or cartoon or design or much of any thing else. I don’t fit the format.
Q-What do you do then?
Conceptualize!