Cotton Candy + Pig Feces

[Partial Transcript from the Santa Cruz County Fair Planning Meeting, March 2007]

Board Member #1: Does anyone have suggestions for the Fair's theme this year?
Board Member #2: We need a pun.
Board Member #3: Let's pun on a song about the U.S. Government failure in Vietnam and its subsequent betrayal of its veterans. That would be both funny and appropriate.
Board Members (all): Hooray!

Ergo, we have...

Clearly, this Fair is going to be full of cool rocking daddies.

As much as you might think the Fair sounds lame, don't judge until you hear about the musical entertainment. From the Palo Alto Daily News:

Just off the main promenade, through a pair of dark doors, are the twanging replies of Big Mama Sue and the Banjo Man. Red-cheeked kids walking in from the afternoon sun pause and peer at the duo's strange instruments: a metal kazoo, a gravy whisk grating on a washboard, a skinny-necked banjo. Something about these strange sounds has them on the verge of dancing.

Sue Kroninger of Santa Cruz and Andy Norbin of San Jose say they have been getting this sort of attention from kids since they started playing the fair 20 years ago - even though "Americana" music, as Kroninger calls it, is no longer in style.

"Kids don't hear this kind of stuff in the schools anymore," Kroninger said. "There's nothing produced about it."

Right, because kids just don't have any experience with improvised musical instruments now that the schools are encouraging experimentation with Moogs. Kids just never see anyone playing a kazoo now that they just use the "electric kazoo" function in Pro Tools. Sigh. The world is changing. I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.

Any plans for the weekend? Want to meet me at the SC County Fair?