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Barry Friedman at Large
The Tulsa State Fair: Size doesn’t matter
It is $2 to enter and I have been burned before; still, she is the world’s tallest woman, and as readers of this column know, during the past two years at the Tulsa State Fair, I have had inexplicably bad luck with the world’s smallest woman.
Maybe 2009 will be different.
I pay.
Delores, the sign reads, is 8 foot, 2 inches and 435 pounds.
Unlike Tina, who was 29 inches and gave me the finger, Delores, in all her girth, is smiling as I enter. Like Tina, she, too, is Caribbean — or so it seems. Seated, dressed in a red dress, her breasts are enormous, supple, almost too big — not really my type, though.
Yet there is an inviting peacefulness to her; she is almost doll-like.
With good reason — she was a doll! The world’s tallest woman was a wooden replica, a large mannequin propped up in a glass container.
That’s just wrong.
There’s a disquieting reassurance in all these carnies; all these hot tub, showerhead, Dippin’ Dots and RV booths (though you did have to appreciate all the 800-thread-count Egyptian sheets for sale). The midway looks cleaner than in years past. The men’s room inside the QuikTrip Center has been renovated, but the distance between urinals is too narrow. It’s parking for compacts in a bathroom full of SUVs. It’s tough peeing sideways.
The Tulsa State Fair is a yearly rite of passage, like going to “The Nutcracker.”
And forget the themes — “Flying High!” was this year’s — this is part freak show, part food.
And more of the food each year gets fried or enlarged or doused with powdered sugar or barbecue sauce. Inside the Exchange Center, I see a bumper sticker from American Farmers and Ranchers (“If you eat, you’re involved in Agriculture”) and a teenage girl with a plate of funnel cakes, looking perplexed, in front of the Vita-Mix booth.
Outside, I decide to look for the most expensive food item. For $8, there is pizza on a stick, which seems largely unnecessary; a $9 taco salad; and a $9.95 sirloin steak dinner, but the honors go to the $18.95 Fisherman’s Platter, complete with three cakes, six shrimp, two cod, fries and slaw. Nearby, a booth is selling 32-ounce Budweisers for $9.50. You can get a cheaper meal at Bodean’s.
And then, like every year at the fair, the deer-in-headlights moment: Back at the Exchange Center, I overhear a man in the Aqua Massage having a Vietnam flashback across the way from a half-dozen Chinese girls chanting “Mahhsage! Mahhsage! Mahhsage!” at the Asian Accupressure Experience.
It is the worst seating arrangement since the United Nations put Israel and Iran across the aisle from each other.
It was time to go.
On the way out, I stop and listen to the Bolivian Pan Flute Band. For me, more than 52 seconds of the pan flute and I’m ready to stab myself with a stick.
But there was still pizza on it.
No duh!
When asked about the possible relocation of the amusement park that bears his family’s name, Bell’s owner Robbie Bell said, “It’s just a matter of getting the money to get us relocated.”
Give ’em hell, Mike, and don’t let any of that federal aid they send us get through, either. Damn government!
We wanted to give him a “down” arrow, but we couldn’t find one big, fat or low enough for State Rep. Mike Ritze of Broken Arrow, who said last month, “Whatever the federal government does, we will stop it at the border of Oklahoma.”
And then he cried for all the children’s who go there.
Driving west on 21st Street, our At Large education director saw the following message announcing an open house at Lee Elementary School.
“Parent’s welcome.”
Eavesdroppings
“Of course we have a Wal-Mart in Claremore. We ain’t THAT backwards.”
News stories we won’t be covering
What defeated mayoral candidate Anna Falling will do with her creation exhibit model.
At Large Dumb Criminal of the Month
The 19-year-old Bixby man who accidentally shot himself in the leg while shooting cans. (Our At Large Second Amendment legal adviser says to stop snickering; it happens.) The teen, who is on probation, is forbidden to possess a handgun, so he concocted a story about being shot at a convenience store. Only later did police discover he was doing his Plaxico Burress impersonation.
As upset as motorists were, think of the cattle that were waiting patiently for something to put on their biscuits.
A tanker carrying molasses for cattle feed overturned on I-244 last month.
Random Tulsa reference
On Rachael Ray’s diet blog, Tulsan Alyssa Johnson writes about losing 47 pounds using a regimen of Acai berries and colon-cleansing pills.
Ups and downs
SIDEWAYS Captain ’Cane, new University of Tulsa mascot.
We like the forearms and the electricity flowing in, out and around him, but the crooked smile and steroid-laden jowls are a little freakish.
UP Oklahoma’s black bears. We feel for you.
DOWN Jenks High School Athletic Director Tony Dillingham, head football coach Allan Trimble and assistant coach David Alexander. It’s just football, guys. And high school football at that.
DOWN Landry Jones’ mustache.
