You Can Stick It

Ann and I went to the Orange County Fair on Friday night. It's become a tradition with us in our over 11 years of marriage to take in the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of everything the fair has to offer.

But mostly, we go to eat. With such a variety of tasty foods everywhere you look, why would you go to do anything else?

One of our favorite places to eat is a Chinese food vendor called Pon's, home of the "Egg Roll on a Stick."



Egg roll on a stick? Can they do that?



Bah, I don't care. The food's good, even though the stick doesn't really give any additional suport to the egg roll.

But how do you explain, or eat, this?



As we walked around the place, I began to notice even more places taking advantage of the stick gimmick:



This looked pretty good, but we had already eaten:



I can't really say anything about Hot Dog on a Stick since they practically invented the whole stick idea:



Including Cheese on a Stick:



But perhaps the most disturbing, and nonsensical of all the stick foods, was the Cream Puff on a Stick:



Okay, I understand marketing and a gimmick is a gimmick. But seriously - what the hell are these people thinking?

Stick foods aside, the atmosphere is great - especially at night. The flashing lights from the rides, the sounds of people screaming, the carnies, it's fantastic. It's easy to see why Rod Serling used a carnival-type setting for an episode of The Twilight Zone. It's freakishly cool.

Another fun part of the fair is viewing the photo exhibition. I've been taking pictures since I was in high school and have taken lots of classes. I know about composition, subject matter, techniques, etc. I've also worked at many photo labs over the years. The same goes for Ann except that she learned everything from me, including working in photo labs.

Suffice it to say, we know a little. That's why it's fun to criticize the photos that the average eye will deem as "acceptable". The flaws can be easily pointed out and we do just that, even while someone is admiring.

"Ooh, honey, look at this one," someone might say.

"Pfft. It's out of focus, poorly composed, and just boring," is what we might say in return. Ah, the fun of it all.

Note: photographic prowess is not displayed on these images as they have been resized and are nothing more than simple shots of signs. I took them with my trust Sony DSC-P32 3.1 megapixel digital camera.

I did take some artsy-fartsy stuff, though:



Another part of the fair we like is the "Carnival of Products", or "Cavalcade of Crap" as we like to call it. Peddlers trying to sell you everything from hair extensions to "Powered by Deez Nuts" die-cut decals for your car (which I bought as a joke, I might add). We didn't buy anything in there, and the Deez Nuts sticker was purchased outside the crapfest.

We're going back in a few weeks to make up for what we missed last night. More fun--and food--to be had...

Speaking of food, I'm off to get a donut.