The Minnesota State Fair 2018

Time for my annual trip to the Minnesota State Fair.  I headed out with the kiddos on Sunday, braving the (at times) intense rain showers

I first headed to the Horticulture Building as the rain showers were keeping the early crowds away.  The crop art is always fun:

Mary!

The Trump ballon was good.

I know Paul and Babe are blurry.  My phone was slowly dying the entire day.  To the woman who chewed me out because she felt as if I was cutting in line to take photos:  1) there was hardly anyone in the building, and 2) there is no "line forms here" signage anywhere in that room.  YOU deciding to wait in a line is your decision, not mine.  Take it up with the Fair, and don't be such a jerk.  There was plenty of room, as well as plenty of people not following your line rules.

The flower displays were mostly off limits because judging was going on, but I did take a few cool photos from outside the room.

I liked the kaleidoscope gardens they had.

Then it was out to brave the rain.  It was pouring when the next two photos were taken.  

We headed to the Fine Arts Building, always one of the best elements of the Fair.

My three favorites follow:

And my favorite:

Time for a cup of coffee.  Hands down the best at the Fair is right outside the Eco-Building

Speaking of the Eco-Building:

Then I headed out for food, but stopped by the big Ferris Wheel up on Machinery Hill.

Mini Donuts, with the cool retro signage:

Oh YES Canada!

I am not sure why the Pronto-Pup guy is Mexican, but I do love him like he was one of my own children:

Even the camera got blurry for this shot.

I was very upset to see the U of M decided to stop with the mint ice cream choice, meaning the mint chocolate ice cream option is no longer available.  That is a crime.  The strawberry was good, but a hollow shell of the mint chocolate...

Off to the horse competitions in the pavilion!

Cow

Pig

Sheep

One last stop at the gyros stand next to Fox 9, the best food you can get at the Fair.  Hello pile of meat!

I headed out, larger and tired.  The rain was bit of a hassle, but all in all, it made for a fun trip.

The Friday Link for 8/31/18

I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day Weekend.  I'm heading to the Fair, but I guarantee there will be a lot of home grilling at Chateau McNeil!

Two fun ones for you this week.  Jason Bateman is a great comedic actor whose career is pretty spectacular.  He's had the occasional stinker (Simon???) but pound for pound his career has been amazing.  Arrested Development made him an all time great TV Character with Michael Bluth, but I forgot completely he was on Little House on the Prairie.  He's worked with some of the biggest names in television history, including Michael Landon and Bob Newhart, but if I can put in a plug for one of my all time favorite actresses, and my personal choice for Bateman's 2nd best TV show, from Valerie (in it's various names), the wonderful Sandy Duncan.  Love her!  With the new season of the drama Ozark, Vanity Fair did this great retrospective of Bateman's career.



Since I did the Great British Bake Off last week, I decided to revisit another of my favorite shows, Antiques Roadshow.

Everyone loves the show because of the reactions of the unsuspecting people.  I remember the Colonial cross stitch sewing sample some guy found in his house and was floored to discover it was one of the best examples the appraiser had ever seen.  It was appraised at 30K, as the owner stuttered, insisting he was about to throw it out and keep the cheap frame the sample was in.

Here is the top 10 items they ever found on the US version of Antique Roadshow, with the most expensive item being discovered in St. Paul.  I could have sworn they had a guy bring in a conquistador's helmet, one that he found digging in his back yard, only to have the expert label it priceless, insisting a museum be called immediately.  When I search for that, I can't find anything.  Maybe I dreamt it.  Helmets aside, they've found some real amazing items.  Enjoy!



Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend.  Drive safe, enjoy some grilling, and watch out for the kiddos beginning school on Tuesday!

Flowers of the Mind

It may surprise you that a hobby of mine is taking photos of flowers.  I kind of stumbled into it, and I have enjoyed the endeavor for the last ten years.

Here are some of the better ones I took this summer.

Rooting for the Asteroid

One night this summer, I was with the kids watching Netflix when one of them asked to see a real summer blockbuster.  Scrolling through the movie choices, I came across Armageddon, the Bruce Willis vehicle which was a huge summer hit from 1998.  That movie has not aged well, and yet somehow it has aged perfectly.

The story of oil drillers being called upon to save the world as an asteroid is hurtling towards the planet is one of the greatest suspensions of belief in ANY summer movie.  Because they determine they have to blow the asteroid up from deep inside to prevent it from hitting earth (?), they recruit the non-astronaut oil drillers to fly on suped up Space Shuttles (??), with nukes and a minimal space/science teams along with (???), with a preposterous refueling stop at a Russian space station (????) only to have Willis character of Harry have to take control of the entire asteroid mission, not only in space, but at NASA headquarters in Houston too (?????) not because everyone was dead, but because these astronauts just don't understand what you have to do to save earth (??????) with great actors like Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, Owen Wilson, Jason Isaacs, Michael Clark Duncan, and Ben Affleck all appearing at their lowest career moment (???????).  How did this movie make any money?

My kids started outright laughing at the movie when the line "he has space dementia" was delivered.  I actually had to stop the movie at that point because it was so freaking ludicrous, my kids took ten minutes to stop.  The acting, the science, the script; it's all absolute garbage.

The movie its basically Rednecks in Space.  They should've named the two shuttles the "General" and the "Lee".  It was anti-city slickers cliche multiplied: 'you book smart folks don't know about nothin and nobody so you just move to the side and let us good old country folks...drill a whole into a massive asteroid in space and deploy a nuclear weapon to save the Earth, like gramps used to do!'

That last paragraph doesn't do the movie justice.  The beginning of the film is all about Harry complaining about how nobody respects him and his crew for doing a tough job where you get dirty.  The rest of the film is Harry and his crew disrespecting EVERYONE else for doing their job.  From portraying all the intelligent people at NASA as pencil pushing nerds, to portraying Asian investors like kids in a messy Nickelodeon ride, to portraying one of Harry's geologists (Buscemi - a man who thinks getting money from a loan shark just so he can have clothed slippers rub up against him is a great investment, who then questions the propulsion and space experts as NASA) as smart, even downplaying and insulting a seasoned life time astronaut who managed to land one of the shuttles on a wildly rotating asteroid in the middle of a massive asteroid storm, calling him a fool because he missed the designated landing zone by only 26 miles.  The only thing missing would be if the asteroid space vehicles used were pick up trucks, and somehow one of their hound dogs comes along with them.

This is how the film actually is a precursor of our time.  Nothing sizes up Trump supporters bitter hatred of the modern book smart individual than Armageddon.  Nothing better encompasses the modern port a potty scrubber's resentment and frustration with how their life has ended up then their  praying someday NASA might call on them to save the planet form a dirty port a potty asteroid.  'My life isn't turning out how I planned, but instead of changing it myself, I'll just marinate in my disappointment, hoping I get to prove to everyone I was the smart one for not making my life better!'  Isn't that every gun kooks fantasy, to try to stop a school shooter or terrorist group with their gun, showing the world they were the right all along?  And the beginning of the film is a great representation of our modern Right wing Christian, when Harry is golfing golf balls at Greenpeace boats, hitting people, and then screaming "Stop whining, I gave you money."  The modern Republican Christian validates their anger and hatred at the poor and hungry by saying "I gave money to my church, hence I've earned the right to insult you poors."

Armageddon IS the modern Republican, how they perceive themselves, unintentionally emphasizing the ambivalence to how wrong they are, and how much of jackass they can be!

There's a brief moment of light when Harry blows himself up on the asteroid to save Earth (oops, spoiler alert), but it's not enough.  This movie is atrocious.  It makes you long for a planet killing astronomical event.

The Friday Link for 8/24/18

As we get ready to wrap up summer, let me fondly remember one of the best reasons to stay inside on summer Friday nights, the PBS airing of the final season of Great British Bake Off.

Yes it was un-apologetically British.  Yes they dealt with intricate lattice work and sugary frostings.  Yes they had some of the most repressed people in history having their first broaches with emotions.  It was AMAZING!

I've often said they had to make this in Britain because if they made this show in the US, the hosts would be constantly calling the contestants pathetic, the show would introduce a mystery ingredient from some far off land which no one in their right mind would ever use, contestants would be constantly recording prepared snarky lines to deliver with American jerkishness, there would be a bikini week, and one contestant would have to bake on a shovel each week.  Thank goodness England saved us.

I love the show and I've tried baking more than a few things I've seen on the show.  I've even avoided the 'soggy bottom,' as I imagined I was getting a "scrummy" from Mary Berry.  The Great British Bake Off also produced the greatest Reality Show contestant ever, Howard from Season 4.  His nebbish, nerdy British-ness was what initially hooked me in, but when he almost put his face on a hot griddle, I fell in love.  He is the best.

The worst part of the show is how they never factor in consistency into the final winner decision.  Three times the best baker was not awarded the title at the end of the season because that one episode is all that mattered.  If you're really looking for the best in anything, consistency should be a metric.

The show left the BBC for another British network, and so the final season PBS had agreed to air (the actual 3rd season of the show) finished up a week ago and so now...sigh...

Here are Watch Mojo's top 10 moments from the original show.



Also Watch Mojo's top 10 contestants...No Howard?!?  How dare they!



Have a great weekend everyone!

Summer Art

I wanted to post some of the art photos I've taken this summer, especially since I usually have a ton of art posts from the fine arts exhibit at the MN State Fair coming in a few weeks.

These were all taken in and around the Twin Cities metro area.  Get out and explore, and discover the art for yourself.

Enjoy!

A Day at the Fair!

Hennepin County, the home of the city of Minneapolis, has a county fair.  It takes place usually around the weekend of Father's Day (June) in the pretty, far western Hennepin County town of Corcoran.  I've been multiple times in the last few years as my daughters got involved in 4-H.  Not only did they preform in the musical skit competition, but last year my oldest daughter made the State Fair in fine arts, and blue ribboned.  I'm a very proud dad!

I know some people are scratching their heads; 'Hennepin County has a county fair?'  It indeed does, but don't feel bad if you don't know anything about it.  It's my impression the people running the Hennepin Country Fair are not taking advantage of their biggest asset, the large county population.  They're turning their back on the majority of the county, catering the event to the thinning sliver of remaining farmland in the western part of the county, and in turn, creating an event which has fewer participants, fewer activities and events, and fewer attendees.  In a county with well over a million people, the falling attendance numbers are inexcusable and a clear sign the fair needs a new strategy.  The Hennepin County Fair is cutting off their shrinking farming community nose to spite their undeniable metropolitan face.

The suburb of Hopkins used to host the county fair, until thirty two years ago, in 1986, when they moved the fair to the western side of the county, in Corcoran.  It is a pretty drive out Bass Lake Rd., but even now the metro is creeping closer and closer to the fairgrounds; suburban subdivisions sprawling on the other side of Brockton Rd, across from the grounds.  If they truly want to have a rural county fair in the future they might end up having to move it someplace north of St. Bonifacious or to Greenfield, but even there you are only a few miles from the exploding development on the very western side of the county, and it's only going to get closer.

The Hennepin County Fair is very different than most county fairs.  Of course they have livestock and agricultural competitions, a connection to the farming society we're all dependent on, but considering the ever shrinking agricultural population of the county, it's participation is limited.  The Hennepin County Fair does have an impressive selection of 'creative activities' entrants; everything from various fine arts to advanced science projects.  Of the county fairs I've been to (and as a radio broadcaster who worked in small town America for many years, I've been to a lot) very few county fairs come close to the quality and variety of the creative activities entrants.  Even so, for a population draw as big as the county has, the amount of people participating is shockingly small.

One thing the Hennepin County Fair has less of is visitors.  They got rid of all the 'midway' rides because their attendance didn't justify the cost. They now rely on a series of 4-H run activities to keep the kids entertained.  As the fair loses popularity and visitors, it feels like their solution is to try to become even more agriculture-y, resulting in an event with limited appeal outside of the handful of farmers remaining in the metro, and their numbers are shrinking.

The crime here is that Hennepin County could have the biggest freaking country fair in the state. If they moved it back into the metro area, someplace with good visibility and easy to access, you'd end up getting a massive increase in attendance.  I'm not saying the agricultural elements of the fair should be abandoned.  ABSOLUTELY NOT! The focus on the farmer is what makes a county fair fun, but imagine if the Hennepin County Fair embraced ALL of Hennepin County.  The flower, art, fine art, design, clothes, cooking, jarring, dog, car, science, cat, dance, display and crop art competitions would be out of this world.

People in a city like Minneapolis aren't willing to travel to the outskirts of the county for a fair which is frankly not that much fun.  If you embraced the ENTIRE county (how about a hipster facial hair competition!), and made it more accessible, you'd have a attendance winner!

When I was in Portland, Oregon a few years back, they had a great example of what I was talking about.  Driving the 20 miles from my in-laws house in Washington state to Portland, you drove right past a county fair, right next to the interstate.  It was packed! My brother in law told me it was always a big success because even though the area around the interstate wasn't farms, the county keeping it in the most visible area in the county, where the population was based, allowed for massive crowds.  Now imagine a County Fair with a mini-midway visible from 394 in Minnetonka or in Golden Valley.

And the extra people coming through the gates would mean more awareness and education of agriculture as a whole.

Stop trying to deny what Hennepin County really is, pretending that turing away from the vast majority of the county is succeeding.  It may not be something you like, but Hennepin County is far more than agriculture.  Shouldn't our county fair should represent all of us?

The Friday Link for 8/17/18

For the Link this week, I'll be quick as I'm officially on vacation for the next week.

Here's John Oliver's great segment on astro-turfing.  Warning - Tons of adult language!



Have a great weekend everyone.