Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Random notes on the Erie County Fair, which we attended yesterday. The Fair is one of the biggest such events in the country, although there is some dispute in my family as to whether the Buffalo version is bigger than a fair that's held in Iowa somewhere.

:: Sometimes it's depressing to note that a lot of things really never change, but sometimes it's also heartening. While we were eating dinner, Def Leppard was warming up in the grandstand for their big concert last night. (Yes, I made a tasteless joke about their drummer only requiring half the time to warm up. Sorry.) The entrances to the grandstand were barred, of course, and there were the big guys in yellow shirts with SECURITY in giant letters on the front, standing there and basically acting unmoved whilst skimpily dressed teenage girls and their skinny boyfriends, tried to talk their way inside just for one free look at the guys in the band. It's things like that which make me think that things may be more right in the world than I usually give them credit for.

:: And here's something I always notice: why is it that those amateur rock bands that put on free gigs at street fetivals and fairs and such events never actually end a song? Instead, they reach kind of a consensual point of "Let's stop here, guys", and the lead guitarist will do one final riff of some sort while the bassist stops keeping his part of the rhythm. The drummer, accordingly, does one last bit of pyrotechnics, a sort of rock-esque "stinger" is applied, and then the bassist keeps noodling about for a second, and the drummer gives his toys a few more whacks, with a few thumps on the bass drum, and the lead vocalist says things like, "Yeah! All right now....good one, guys...how about it, people!"

:: Tucked amongst the lemonade stands and hot dog stands and places selling popcorn and cotton candy and Italian sausage and ice cream, you can now find stands trucking in espresso. And there were people buying it, on an 85 degree day. And I though I was hooked on coffee.

More observations later, maybe....