Ah, the long stretch of drudgery after the hectic holiday season. It’s a time of sickened overindulgence and desperate boredom in equal parts. What better moment to post pictures from my own simultaneously crammed and void seasonal stretch? Early in December, arriving home and seeing the full mass of Christmas decorations heaped on our dining room table, I felt inspired* to grab the ol’ point n’ shoot.

(*inspired = wanted to avoid getting pine sap all over me.)

Years of family history lay in tangled heaps, briefly exhumed only to be packed back up in short measure for another year’s basement exile.

This is the oldest ornament my family has, from my mom’s family. I think of her as the Sugarplum Fairy. She’s too fragile and precious to risk hanging low on the tree, easy cat bait, so we tend to hang her high. Wait, that came out wrong.

These must have been created at the behest of some well-meaning elementary school teacher – too clunky to actually hang on the tree, but with photos specifically taken for the holiday season. Nothing says ‘Merry Christmas!’ like awkward personal poses.

One small testament to the skill of Grandma Tillie, not a blood relation but our grandma’s best friend. Aside from copious canvas needlepoint, she stitched each of us stockings for our first Christmas. We still use them.

Brass and vague resemblance to ‘Love Is’. Ah, the ’70s.

Another well-intended class project.

Something about the kid’s expression…I can’t quite place it. It wouldn’t be out of place on a DEVO album, especially with the plate of giant sausages floating next to him.

These bright, saturated orange and yellows popped cheerily on the shelf and drew me right in. Then again that could be due to placement next to a refrigerated case full of de-fleshed cow legs. Whole cow legs, hoof and all. Mmmmm boy.

Yes, come shop at Wally-Mart and enjoy the ice-creamed products at Dari King- totally independent shops with no affiliation to nationwide chains at all!

The Devil looks like he just got back from Burning Man.

Between the rock snot and the bear warnings, upstate New York truly impresses you with the peaceful beauty of nature.

I was kicked out of Scouts for trying to reassure an idiot bunkmate who was freaked out bears would eat us because of the handful of acorns I collected. I calmly pointed out this was silly because a) they do not really eat acorns, b) we were ‘camping’ between two highways in central Jersey, not exactly their turf and c) we were in a solid wooden shack with a lock on the door, not a flimsy tent. However, the kid’s parent was troop leader and just as dumb, and booted me out for endangering the group. With a handful of acorns. In a room just off Route 18. Ironically, I now have a constant camping phobia of bears eating me. I have not even watched Grizzly Man so there is absolutely no excuse. Imagine my terror when the first thing seen upon entering the campground was the above sign. Terrified, I asked one of the two friendly older ladies working the entry booth what we could possibly do if confronted by one of these malevolent beasts. “Oh, just wave your arms around a bunch and make a lot of noise. That usually scares ‘em off.” Ah. There hadn’t been any bear sightings at Little Pond that year, but the ladies aimed to keep it that way through the season.

Driving back home we came across a covered bridge. Take that, Madison County! Upstate New York has several, and an aficionado informed us one had been completely swept away by the flooding, only to be found downstream mostly intact. Inside, the beams were covered in years and years of carvings.

This was the oldest visible year carved in – 1937.

Yes, it’s not truly a State Fair without a wizened man of the land sitting on his horse in the middle of the street, waiting to answer any questions you might have about farming or life.

I saw small children clutching enormous Rastabananas tottering around the food stands. It’s either due to a mistranslation in the Chinese manufacturing company’s order sheet or the trendspotting companies responsible for such pap have officially resorted to random word generators. I defy anyone to connect bananas and Rastafarianism. Wait a minute…

(The secret is to offer them a nice picnic lunch in exchange for their honey.)

The Family Nail Box, with something for everyone! Tiny wood tacks for little Susie, steel bolts for Mom, and don’t forget roundhead screws for Dad’s special projects!

Speaking of which, it wouldn’t be a large gathering in the Midwest without at least one Juggalo sighting. Here, I came across an entire family (no, the baby was not wearing face paint):

Yep.

Just outside, anachronisms ran rampant at the Civil War reenactors’ tent site. He is so irritated by that tie-dye!

Over at the 4H tent, this fellow represented endangered species or something:

I am still unsure how not seeing a snake is inconveniencing.

There’s something poetic about this man, gazing upon a purple tractor as the warm summer twilight falls around him.

State Rocks! All the excitement of geology plays out state-by-state RIGHT BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!

A nested WTF within WTFs, this model railroad had its own (delightfully air-conditioned) room, right next to a special snake exhibit. Pretty much a modified trailer, the entire room save one narrow pathway around contained a glass-walled enclosure filled with an enormous model train set. I got to walk around with a 10-year old who ran ahead of his family (or, more likely, they left some lag time), calling out the name of each train, car type, rail system and engine number like he some kind of train-specific form of Asperger’s. I got the strange impression he said all this out loud assuming persons nearby (ie me) would be impressed. We were not. However, I was taken by some of the smaller details in the gigantic tiny world; it seems model train makers are a mischievous sort as opposed to the dour caricatures of them portrayed in so many movies and TV shows. Some highlights:

Faster than a speeding bullet! Tinier than a G.I. Joe! It’s…Superman! Off to destroy something with some rock he found!

I’d like to think the placement of the Batmobile in this wee parking lot was an obscure nod to the classic monorail episode of the Simpsons, where a mention of help from Marge has Homer query “Is it Batman?” “No, he’s a scientist.” “Batman’s a scientist.” “IT’S NOT BATMAN!” Then I looked over at Lil’ Rainman rattling off train cars as they went by and kept the thought to myself.

A slice of everyday Americana, if your neighborhood constantly reenacted North By Northwest. Given the ridiculous stunts people pulled with small aircraft in the past (playing tennis, doing the hully-gully on the wings), flying one under a train bridge towards a small-town bike race wouldn’t surprise me too much.

Ah, bringing some much-needed gravity to the comical world of models. Here we have a reenacted scene from COPS: Iowa. Is that show still on? Is it just 90% meth arrests now, or do they still get the occasional shirtless convenience store robber caught down the street (still shirtless) sitting at the local bar?

The cemetery was just a tad too far away and underlit to get a proper, focused photo, but rest assured, that’s Beetlejuice sitting on a tombstone. No sight of the Maitlands though. So meta!

(click for a larger image)

Eventually I snapped some photos in a continued attempt to figure out what the point of this all was. Dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, they were drowned in the Great Flood, maybe? A friendly older woman came up to me and said all the pamphlets were free; I could take what I wanted. I took several before my friend dragged me away; I think he thought I’d angrily start correcting her, when really the only thing I wanted to ask was ‘what are you trying to tell people?’

After reading the pamphlet, detailing the hows and whys of dinosaurs being left off the ark, along with a confusing tangent about animals being ‘paired in twos’, not necessarily male/female couples (God would take care of it?), I was more confused than ever. I think the point of the exhibit wasn’t dinosaurs at all, but how the Earth is much younger than scientists believe. If anything, the experience was a comfort- no matter how well-funded and deeply believed the silliness is, without competency the message doesn’t get across.

Piles of sticks, tiny trees, and the llama’s deadliest foe, the ground pheasant, all traversed bearing bags of water about the neck.

After that, limbo time! Several handlers, along with audience volunteers, the Iowa Llama Queen and the State Fair Queen, were randomly paired up with available llamas, all which were shaggy-coated, pokey-eared, and adorable. One of the audience volunteers was a 7-foot tall former Iowan, current New Yorker, which made him the brunt of constant ‘city slicker’ jokes the entire contest despite his coming in second place. In a limbo contest. With a llama. While being over 6 feet tall.

The State Fair Queen and her randomly assigned llama ducked successfully under the bar. I was impressed she managed to do so well with her foot-tall crown on.

The costume contest began after a short break to prep and gussy. Now, the point of the contest is to highlight how trusting, confident, gentle and trainable llamas are, in a fun way. That’s why the costumes have to completely cover the face and body, with extra points for heavy, jangly bits and crinkly fabrics that would terrify lesser animals like cats and dogs. Unfortunately the net effect was less ‘cute animal costumes’ and more ‘Texas Chainsaw Llamas’:

Yeaaaaah. It didn’t help part of the cutesiness was supposed to stem from the handlers’ costumes matching the llamas, resulting in some unsettling pairings. Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyon at least make sense.

This just has so many strange implications.

Seems a bit on the nose.

This was the winner for the mid-age group, mostly because of the hula skirt’s crinkliness.

This should’ve been the winner, but apparently the legs weren’t covered enough or something. Come on, it’s Dino!

This was the winner for the older age group; I think the llama was supposed to be a mobile haunted house or something. The judge lost her mind over the pumpkin booties.

‘Get a Workout While You Walk’.

Immediately upon arrival fellow traveler Angry Jim and I set out to do that which we dared not the year before- eat fried butter. “But how can you fry butter?” you ask, either in a tone of horror or with notepad and pen at the ready. I’ll tell you. First, take a whole stick of rich, creamery butter. Slice it in half diagonally so you have two butterwedges (yes, I’m making it one word). Dunk that thing into a vat of thick, gooey pancake-like batter spiced with cinnamon and magic.

Now, dunk THAT into a vat of superheated oil. Swirl gently and fry to a deep golden brown. For no earthly reason, top with a generous drizzle of sugar frosting.

Here’s Angry Jim contemplating the horror of what he has ordered.

Despite the insulating coat of batter, the butter mostly melted or soaked into the dough.

Mmm, delicious goo. The final product tasted like a cakier cinnamon bun, with the texture of a corn dog.

Yep, pretty much just like this.

Behold! Some of the largest vegetables this country has to offer:

These are greenbeans. GREENBEANS! What kind of freakish mutant-vegetable future are we living in?!

Two-headed corn
Just sitting on plates
The judges await
Now you’re greater than great
I can hear as your ear grows by far

That does not look like a ‘slow snail’, unless ‘slow snail’ means turd.

In front of the Pork Tent, obviously.

Not the kind variety, just All-American.

Everything is on a stick at the fair. Salad on a stick, eggs on a stick; a booth run by a Methodist church even handed out ‘Prayers on a Stick’. I hoped they’d be little parchment rolls skewered through, but it was just a popsicle stick with stuff written on it.

This probably took 20 minutes to reach capacity.

Here was the most charming surprise at the fair- amidst bacon-wrapped corn dogs and turkey legs on a stick, an entire cooking category devoted to vegan foods. Vegan! In a land where you have to ask to make sure the french fries aren’t served with a hunk of lamb on top!

Didn’t Wes Anderson make an animated feature with these two?

The Jelly Which Shall Not Be Named.

We on the East Coast are geographically fortunate, mostly avoiding natural disasters that plague the rest of the country. We’re on a major fault line, but it’s mostly inactive. We do get storms, but they’re weakened after moving up the coast. We’ve even had the occasional tornado, though with the dense build-up they’re rarely as destructive as those in the Midwest and barely touch down. So it’s a bit of a surprise having a hurricane follow an earthquake in less than a week.

The yin and yang of stereotypical New York mindsets, the high-strung neurotic and the blasè rock, are reacting about as expected. For every gallery owner panic-grabbing fontina and prosecco at Eataly screaming “I HAVE CHILDREN TO THINK OF!”, there’s a stoopfull of elderly Hispanic guys quietly chatting and playing dominoes (which they would continue doing whether the sun came out or a car exploded in front of them). Given how hectic day-to-day life in a crowded city is, either mentality is an acceptable coping mechanism, but it’s funny how few major disasters the city has to deal with. With the 10-year anniversary of September 11th drawing near that may seem strange to write, but it’s the 10-year anniversary, and how many large-scale terrorist attacks have we experienced since? Exactly.

Which brings me rather long-windedly around to this week’s pattern, from a state that’s no stranger to devastating natural events.

Stay safe, everyone.

On a random tangent, I declare the Allan Moore lookalike the Stevie Nicks of Kansas, for while the rest of the band plays 12 instruments each, he sings and plays tambourine. And sports a boss beard.

No relation to Dunkin’ Donuts. Or ‘The French Connection’.