Mister Faded Glory | misterfadedglory.com

If you’re like me (Oh, save it, I know), you no doubt spend portions of your day bantering via mindless email or flippantly hopping ’round facebook, casually visiting with friends and enemies and long-lost people you don’t care about. If you’re also like me, you have a solid contingent of friends and friends of friends still in your home state of Iowa.

If all this is true, you’ve also no doubt heard ceaselessly about Iowa’s Great Big Motherflipping State Fair all week. The fried dough. The musical acts. The East Side. The peoplewatching. The infuriating Midwestern stereotypes. U Gotta Love it! Want to know more? Check out the acclaimed musical! Oh, the pageanty and wonder of it all! If you thought I couldn’t possibly care about anything less than the Olympics, well, this would be Exhibit A.

For the first time, ever, however, it seems like everyone talks about it. The spectacle, the entertainment – bigger than the Dark Knight, even. Friends taking newborn kids to the fair. Friends excited for mediocre entertainment. Friends bound for expensive beer gardens. And friends dragged to the cavalcade just because. The 2008 prattling is not only endless, it’s horrific – and it continues to fuel the stupid country-bumpkin stereotype the Midwest emanates too often. It’s a State Fair - WHO CARES.

A close friend of Mister Faded Glory analyzed Iowa’s State Fair phenomenon further. He concludes that Iowa’s State Fair isn’t just anecdotally popular among former, current, breathing MFG acquaintances – Iowa’s State Fair actually is more popular than its other weeklong brethren, according to Google Insights. A bittersweet revelation – I’m not imagining the zeitgeist, but my home state is actually batshit insane.  That’s right – Iowa doesn’t just have CHOP HOCKEY, they’ve got the best fucking state fair around, doggone it. Take that, Pueblo, Colorado!

And, again, MFG weeps, but at least I’m not crazy. (Bitchy, yes. Crazy, no.) But until August 17 and the Iowa State Fair’s blaze of glory, well, this is one time MFG is quite happy lurking in Kansas, resolutely part of a small population who doesn’t care about a state fair.

Well, until September, I guess.