FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-18-25)

     We've never been to the great New York State Fair, and this year we decided to go and check it out. If you're headed upstate, you should always plan your trip for when you're in the market for a used car. If you look on the lawn in front of most houses, just to the left of the driveway, there is a used car for sale. If there is no "For Sale" sign on it it means that whomever drove it last missed the driveway by a good margin just before the car heaved its last breath, but you might as well make an offer anyway if you're feeling lucky. Some of the more "classic" vehicles are of a vintage just before the car radio was invented, but if you know Morse code you can communicate by telegraph.

    There is also a lot of farm equipment available up there, new and used. I would love to get my hands on a tractor. WHY? My wife asks. Have you ever tried tracting by hand? Takes all day. A backhoe would be nice. My wife put her foot down on that one, but she never said no to a fronthoe, and I can just turn it backwards.

    Anyway, the Fair is a fun and kitschy slice of Americana. Later that evening at the bar I used the word "kitschy" twice, and was informed that to say it more than once is insulting. A good example of kitsch is the annual butter sculpture in the Dairy Building. This year's rendering depicted the theme of, "Dairy: Good for You, Good For the Planet." The work of art used enough butter for over 76,000 pancakes, and over 1400 full-time cardiologists.

    Our first stop was the Canine Stars Stunt Dog show, where dare-devildogs performed high jumps of up to 48 inches from a running start. All of the participants were rescue dogs, saved from a life of inert loafing, and forced to jump four feet in the air all day long to earn tiny morsels of food. One dog refused to take part in this charade, and vaulted over the fence to lick random members of the audience instead, and was universally hailed a hero.

    Other stars of this dog day afternoon could jump 26 feet into a pool of water. By contrast, I brought my dog Gidget into the pool one time to teach it how to swim, which instead turned into a lesson on how to defend yourself against a dog who, while remaining extremely cute, was apparently well versed in mixed martial arts and perfectly content not knowing how to swim.

    The Hawk Creek Birds of Prey exhibit is absolutely raptorous for any bird lover. A fun thing to do is to take someone whose company you really can't stand and, without their realizing it, position them in between the two people with the falcon glove on. When they let the hawk go it flies about two inches over their head to the other falconer, causing your friend's pacemaker to fibrillate to the approximate tempo of "Cry of the Brave" by DragonForce. If that doesn't work you're stuck with them the rest of the day, though.

     It's a great way to learn about these amazing creatures. For instance, the great horned owl, besides being totally cool, has no sense of smell. The reason this comes in handy is because it has no qualms about preying on skunks, and, I'm hoping, people who eat garlic for breakfast and then ride on the same train as me. The peregrine falcon can fly at speeds up to 240 miles per hour toward its prey, possibly a turtle moving at say, three inches per hour. When the turtle catches up, 45 days later, he is immediately eaten, but not before he has a good laugh over the whole thing.

    We attended a show starring John Stetson, The Mentalist. If I had known about mentalism when I was in college, perhaps I would have majored in it. My Dad would have been all for it, since he usually referred to me with similar-sounding adjectives. Anyway, John Stetson picks members of the audience whom he thinks are on the same intellectual wavelength as he is, and guesses what numbers they are thinking of, and so forth. There is always a deck of cards involved. I was thinking the show might be more interesting if there was money on it, and he managed to guess what your hole card was. But he never guesses anything particularly relevant like that, but he does emphasize the power of positivity. If I was a mentalist, I would pick out, maybe, the CFO of Nvidia, and mentalize whether they were planning a stock split or something, just in time for the closing bell.

     The Ferris wheel is a great place to end your day, see the entire playground from the air, and find where the nearest zeppole concession is. There was only one true Ferris wheel in history, designed by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. and built for an 1893 expo in Chicago. It rose 250 feet into the air and was later sold for scrap before its inventor died three years later at the age of 37. The one we rode at the Fair was small in comparison, and we ended up right back where we started, proving that what goes around, comes around.

PLAYING TO TYPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-03-25)

     I've played in bands for longer than I can remember, but that's only a guess since I can barely remember the last 48 hours or so. If it happens to come up in the course of conversation (in other words me shamelessly plugging dates, like Trillium playing at Bar 141 on the 14th, or No Options at Mohansic Grill on the 19th), someone might ask, "What kind of music do you do?" And the answer is, who the hell knows?

     There are so many bands that defy categorization that it's almost a badge of honor to have trouble defining what they do in words alone. It's a mistake to pigeonhole a group into a particular musical style. It's confining, confusing and usually misleading. The group Blondie, in the space of three albums, had hits in the styles of punk, pop, rap, reggae and disco. 

     What constitutes a genre? Sometimes its the lyrics. "Emo" music features songs about social alienation and teen angst, and generally celebrating the art of being miserable. Sometimes music is defined by the beat, like reggae music, driven by a downbeat with two upbeats, usually employing a smug bass player who for once gets to play louder than the guitarist.

     Sometimes it's in the style. "Glam rock" musicians unapologetically espoused platform shoes, tight pants, glitter and eye makeup that looked like it was airbrushed on using a leaf blower. The '80s were hard enough on women who to this day curse the fact that hair crimpers and cameras existed at the same time in history, but brutal on men. That reminds me, I thought of my retirement job: opening up a trendy boutique for undercover cops so they don't have to dress in plain clothes anymore.

     Sometimes the brand of the music has to do with where you listen to it, like "elevator music" or "yacht rock." I'm sure the label "yacht rock" was meant to convey a relaxed pop vibe. But for those of us inexperienced boatmen who regularly backed their yachts into the rocks, thereby shearing off every last blade of the propeller, the term is anything but.

     I used to listen to a lot of "progressive rock," as exemplified by the bands Yes, ELP, Genesis and Jethro Tull, bands that would play a song in a 7/4 time signature and not care AT ALL that you sprained your ankle trying to dance to it.

     Once in a while a genre of music is marked by the specific activity it's meant to inspire in the listener, like "thrash metal." "Mom, I've been asked to join a band." "But Bobby, you don't play anything, do you?" "No, but I've been thrashing fairly often, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. By the way, we'll need a new living room lamp." Thrash metal is a young man's game, because sooner or later your orthopedist will put the kibosh on any further thrashing, and you'll have to be the first to invent "360-degree swiveling massage recliner-chair metal."

     Sometimes just the hair alone will do it, as in "hair metal." It's a real commitment, so if you cut it all off into a bob, don't expect the other members of the band to coo, "OOOH! It looks great! I bet it's SUPER low maintenance!"

     I'm pretty open-minded about music, which is certainly a change of pace for me. But there are a few musical genres that I have some fundamental problems with. "Rap music," or "hip-hop" feels like street poetry, recited over a manufactured beat. Some street poetry isn't that bad, but a lot of it isn't very good, and the fact that they need to use Autotune just to SAY the words on key is not a great selling point. And without a decent melody to help you, all you have is your word. However, there is some talent in being able to use a rhyming dictionary, and in the ability to talk that fast without a lawyer present. In the case of "electronic dance music," there really is no redeeming musical value, just repetitive notes strung together by binary code. 

     I was in a nightclub where it was playing, bad music that inspired worse dancing, when bales of confetti were released from the ceiling, like I was in a ticker-tape parade. Everyone else seemed elated by it, but when a few of them landed in my drink I wondered what it was made of? It probably wasn't toxic, but was it Coors Light-soluble? At least with actual ticker-tape I could check my stock prices. There was so much on the floor afterwards that a family of gerbils could nest there undisturbed.

     These days, an algorithm working for a music streaming service will try to figure out the genre of the songs you like, and play other songs for you that it thinks are like the ones you like. Which is, like, a great way to keep your tastes from ever expanding. What happens if your hand slips and you click on "Kung Fu Fighting?" You've opened up Pandora's box, and Pandora is going to try to play to your taste, which is obviously, goofy fad disco songs about martial arts sung by Jamaican singers. I wish both you and Pandora all the luck in the world.