Visiting the fairgrounds for the first time, I asked a friend what the grounds were used for the rest of the year. He said not much really, the occasional 4-H show, but mostly the fairgrounds were just used for the fair. Wait, said I, not grasping this concept in the least, this large parcel of land with all these decorative brick buildings…just sits empty the rest of the year? Indeed, the friend said. And all the buildings are only in use the two weeks of the Iowa State Fair? Yep. As someone coming from a tiny island so crammed a closet will cost you $800 a month, this made my head explode.

To give you an idea of the fair’s history and general layout, this short film depicts the Iowa State Fair in the 1940s (via MST3K, hooray). The majority of the buildings seen are still in use to this day, and the fish tanks have been designated a historical area (an historical area?).

As can be seen, the fair is an enormous sprawling event reaching into every aspect of Iowan life: agriculture, health, family, religion, art, and local culture. As such I’ve broken up my coverage into separate subjects for easier consumption. Today’s topic- Food!

Meet food mascot Mr. Oinkers!

“Hi Kids! I’ll eat your soul!”
Oh, you kidder. Mr. Oinkers is one of many friendly fellows waiting to greet you at the kiosks!

“Eaaaaaat youuuuuur souuuuuuuuulll….”

Right! On to the food! You can’t take a step in any direction at the fair without seeing something edible and artery-clogging. For an agricultural fair, there were surprisingly few fresh fruits and vegetables available and those that were came dunked in batter. Generally food choices fell into one of two categories, with generous overlap between each: deep fried or sugar-coated.

Case in point.

Fried stuff in two sizes: plate- or tub-full.

The teenager working the deep-fryer plucked this guy out of the vat and plopped it on the plate without pause. As it oozed out a puddle of grease I vainly attempted to ask for at least a lift n’ shake to disperse some of it, but before I could even get the sentence half out he dumped a cup of powdered sugar on top. My friend and I agreed the sugar-grease absorption definitely made this the best damn funnel cake we’d ever eaten.

Normally, vegetarians traveling through the Midwest are out of luck. Vegetarianism in the flyover states is still mostly a foreign concept; the last time I stepped into Pizza Ranch (a local pizza buffet*) all the pies had meat on them, and asking for a vegetarian slice I was brought a pie with a half ton of olives dumped on top. Walking into the Fair and seeing people tearing at comically huge drumsticks Medieval Times-style, I figured here was more of the same. But lo! Shining on the main midway sat….

The Veggie Table! The shock of seeing a booth entirely dedicated to vegetarian fare at the State Fair knocked me for a considerable loop. Keep in mind this is a place where more than one booth told me God knows babies in utero and evolution is a liberal conspiracy. (See that girl in the foreground? Exactly the face I made too).

Bad pun name and Led Zepplin-inspired logo aside, The Veggie Table had a long line throughout the day for good reason: their veggie corn dog was perfectly crisp and squishy with a delicious toasted corn flavor, and their other offerings (including Portabello Mushroom Strips and Broccoli Cheddar Bites) looked equally tasty.

Another relatively inexpensive option for vegetarians (sorry vegans, you are way out of your league here): Nachos! If there’s one thing working in the cheapskate’s favor in the Midwest, it’s portion size. These weren’t even Grande!

Before…

After. Elapsed time: 2 minutes.

A word of explanation – as opposed to the East Coast, where pizza by the slice is as natural as breathing, pizza in many Midwestern states comes whole-pie or no dice, or is served buffet-style (*see Pizza Ranch. Yes, there are pizza buffets and yes, they are usually western-themed). Pizza by the slice is a novel concept in Iowa, hence the beatific glow around the slice above.

Another culture shock- condiments. You think you like condiments? You do not like them as much as Midwesterners.

Mayonnaise is a birthright here. All this stuff is from Heinz and only one of each were mustard and ketchup.

Food on a stick has become a part of State Fair culture- each year more and increasingly ridiculous food items are perched atop a dowel and served to the public. Reportedly beer on a stick was sold last year, but I didn’t see it this time around. However, I did see this stuff:

The classic corn dog, combining fried and meatstuffs on one convenient pole:

Proto-corn dogs are just hot dogs on a stick. Hot dogs on a stick look sort of sad.

Mmm, lookit that grease fly!

The Corn Dog in all its glory!

Chicken on a Stick,

Rice Krispy treat on a stick,

Some substance called Cheeze on a stick,

Meatballs on a Stick might sound like a good idea…

…but trust me, you do not want them.

Uh, some sort of German pastry on a stick,

Courtesy of the Iowa Egg Council, egg on a stick,

Deep Fried pineapple on a stick…really? Did it need to be deep fried? It did? Whatever.

Aaaaand Snickers on a stick.

I also read about but did not get a chance to experience salad on a stick and frozen twinkies on a stick.

There were a few other Fair staples that might need a bit of explanation- a number of kiosks sold something called ‘Walking Tacos’. Tacos are pretty portable already, so I asked my friend what made these particular tacos conducive to perambulation. By way of definition:

Walking Tacos: basically chili dumped into a bag of corn chips whether it be Doritos or Fritos and eaten out of the bag with a spoon or a fork.

Ewwwww.

Also regional- Shake-Ups. They’re just lemonade with a big half a lemon sitting in it. The name comes from squeezing the fresh lemon into the drink and, yep, shaking it up. It does add a bright flavor to the beverage, making it taste fresher.

Heh.

Coming up next: People!

As a bonus, check out the clean, pleasant graphic layout of this pattern. So simple! So elegant and useful! Take note, everyone slapping random clipart on t-shirts.

Just because America broke off from people that loved sticking whole animals in aspic doesn’t make Jell-O the apex of culture. If I recall the Chinese used spoons with flat bottoms so stuff wouldn’t spill while Europeans were still dunking witches.

This is exactly like the imagined joy of owning an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle but REAL.

Tee hee hee hee.

Remember when America saw Mexicans as comical bumbling lazy thieves instead of a swarm of brown locusts stealing all our best jobs (and probably women too)? Ah, for the golden days of a gentler racism.

Funny enough, Frito switched to the Frito Bandito from a wholesome all-American scamp called ‘The Frito Kid’. You can learn all about him here, and here, or you can experience interacting with him firsthand over at Angry Jim’s site. The audio comes from an old Disney setup where you popped a coin in and animatronic Frito Kid would call down delicious, salty Fritos from a guy in a mountain mine. Snacktacular!

The sheer amount of time involved in knitting is one of the reasons I like it – I get a visual record of that time passing by. There’s an artist who only ever knits one enormous project, sitting in museums as an installation piece knitting ever more of it as it rolls out the museum and down the steps. Unfortunately the internet fails me in finding her name (damn you, Google!), but if anyone knows who it is drop a line.

This amount of life and time poured into a hand-knitted object, when combined with the fickle and ephemeral nature of fashion, seems the cruelest waste. I get angry flipping through Vogue Knitting, as page after page of ridiculous trend pieces sure to be passè by the time one finishes working them up flash by (not to mention their projects use rather expensive yarns, so not only are you spending a month or two working on something already dated, you pay $200 for the privilege).

As Jean Cocteau said, “Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.” Well put, and part of the reason I so enjoy vintage knitting. These lovely objects have already passed the test of time, and are sure to… reward….. your…..uh, investment……. huh.

Well then. Fugly apparently spans the decades.

Eh, I shouldn’t mock; just as each era chooses its heroes and villains from the past anew based on their mores and beliefs, so fashion looks back myopically and picks out that which suits our current sensibilities. In another 30 years we’ll all look back on this and laugh a hearty, angora-wrapped laugh.

As usual, click to see a larger image.

The truth turned out to be far sadder, with the director knowing he had terminal pancreatic cancer but choosing to keep it quiet, as he wasn’t going to undergo treatment and didn’t want to worry everyone. Still, there are cases of ‘sudden’ cancerous deaths with a cancer, usually malignant melanoma, spreading and metastasizing in a short amount of time. Usually the suddenness comes from a diagnosis made after several months of the cancer growing unchecked.

It should be clarified that ‘super cancers’, cancers that supposedly metastasize and kill in under a day/week, do not really exist except in one or two very rare medical instances where other factors figured in.

Just in case you’re a healthy young person with an unremarkable family medical history who exercises regularly and suchforth, there’s always pulmonary embolisms to worry about.

If you only saw him in later years, it’s easy to forget Vincent Price had the build of a quarterback and height of a basketball player. In this film, described as a ‘low-rent ‘House of Wax’, he plays a magic show prop-builder for a cruel boss who stole and married his now-ex-wife. Denied a chance to shine on stage, he snaps, and subsequently kills again and again to hide his crimes. There’s plenty of ‘comin’ at ya!’ 3-D effects, including water squirted out at the audience and a fight where objects are thrown more than punches, usually directly at the camera.

For sheer 3-D exploitation though, nothing topped the Three Stooges short preceding the movie, ‘Spooks’. Foot-long needles, squirting water, flamethrowers, knives, axes, pies, all were shot out at the audience, with a healthy helping of angry gorilla and physical abuse thrown in. Admittedly, it’s not the Stooges at their best (Shemp’s looking a little rougher for the wear), but the charm of an added dimension makes it work.

It’s hard to state without being able to show how amazing Film Forum’s 3-D setup is. The theater’s size and distance make for a perfect experience of the intended depth of field, and the lack of color filters emphasizes the space you’re seeing on screen, without modern movies’ loss of brightness and clarity (not to mention Film Forum doesn’t have modern vinyl screens, which also dilute image quality. Hey, if it’s good enough for Martin Scorsese it’s good enough for you).

This fellow greeted me on the way in and out, and reminded that right after the 3-D Classic screenings end, the William Castle screenings BEGIN! Percepto! Emergo! The Coward’s Corner! ALL WILL BE PRESENTED AT FILM FORUM! That’s right, they’re even wiring up the seats for ‘The Tingler’ so you too can ‘Scream! Scream for your lives!’

En route home this was all over the subway:

This ‘Jim Joe’ is quite the upstart. The tag started appearing in Bed Stuy and the Lower East Side here and there, on a dumpster and the occasional wall. In less than a month they were all over Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, and now something this scale!

Lest you think all graffiti is dudes writing names on stuff, here is a tagged Fibonacci sequence. Yep.

Wait, no it won’t.

A number of these publications contained ‘Women’s Supplements’, separate sections of the paper filled with all sorts of patterns and gossip on the latest stars and scandals, presumably because looking at national news might hurt womens’ heads. Still, there is a treasure to be dug out of these pages! Ravelry person shabbyknits found these beauties:

Knitted in Eyelet Fashion

New Pouched Jumper

…and I only searched ‘knitting’ and came up with these wonderful patterns amongst many, many others (click for the pattern):

Knit This In One Piece

For Your Holidays

Ski-ing Days: Where Hearts Are Trump

Ideal For The Summer Cruise

They’re out there! I didn’t even look for crocheted stuff! Oh, did I mention they have a one-click option to save as a PDF or image file? Your choice, at whatever zoom level you want (admittedly it gets a bit fiddly, breaking up into strange pieces sometimes, but thems the breaks). I ask that anyone reading this who has an interest in vintage patterns hops over there ASAP and starts searching, tagging, and correcting where possible, and if you’re on Ravelry, add them to the database! Even if you just add a link and the title, one of the obsessives (such as myself) will come along and add the rest of the information, and so another pattern will be shared with the world.

Here’s a verdant Iowa cornfield. Green, bountiful, but lacking in action-packed nonsense.

Here it is AFTER! YEAAAAAHH! BLAMMO!

I’ve also taken the ‘liberty’ (oh, pun INTENDED), of spicing up an exciting moment of New Jersey history:

BLAM! KAPOW! OBJECTIFY! EXPLODY! KABOOOOOM!

Ah, it’s good to be back.