July 4th, Freedom and the Pony that Will Kill Us

My wife, son and I just went to the Taste of Minnesota Festival on Harriet Island in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  It is a festival predicated on Minnesotans having extremely low expectations, and it never disappoints when it comes to disappointing.  For those who have not attended this tribute to mediocrity, I will describe it for you.

Taste of Minnesota is held on an island so you cannot escape.  It is essentially a culinary Alcatraz.  Upon your arrival on the island, you discover that you cannot buy food with money, but instead you must trade your cash for sheets of tickets that can then be exchanged for food.  This is all in an attempt to establish an abstract barter system in hopes that your brain won't recognize that you just spent $18 for an ear of corn.  You then tour through a series of booths that fall into three categories:  food booths that supposedly represent Minnesota cuisine, sponsor booths manned by underage malcontents hawking goods and services for large corporations, and tiny booths manned by people selling crap.  On top of this, you have the opportunity to see free concerts given by bad cover bands from San Francisco, Whitesnake, Judas Priest, and for reasons only he truly understands, Elvis Costello.

The food is remarkably average.  It always tastes exactly one standard deviation worse than you expect it to.  However, if you would like to spend $8 to find out what an authentic Minnesotan falafel tastes like, this is the place to do it.  This country was built by immigrant labor, and what better way to celebrate our independence than by eating their food while they sweat profusely in poorly ventilated food service torture-boxes.

As I mentioned before, the sponsor booths are manned by our nation's future.  They have been called upon to sweat it out while handing out sample boxes of Honeycombs or small cups full of cinnamon chipotle rubbed pork.  One booth offered the promise of adventure while small children scaled inflatable climbing walls in order to learn about the virtues of Lunchables.  Another offered the promise of love through computerized compatibility testing.  Another had puppets.  You know the youngsters signed up to man these booths months ago when they were still in school and had no hope, and the idea of working on Independence Day seemed like it was so far away that it would never actually happen.  Then, reality encroached, and they were forced to accept the consequences of committing to something without thinking it through--an American tradition. 

It is also obvious that they were all given the same instructions:  "Give out samples until there aren't any left, then you can go listen to Whitesnake."  People were practically throwing samples at us.  When I was offered my second cup of pork, I informed the young man I had already been given one.  He said, "I don't care.  Take more.  Take as many as you want."  My walked up a to a cereal booth and asked fora sample box.  The plasticene jailbait day-laborer disgustedly shoved six boxes across the counter.  She was determined to go home early.

The crap booths sell crap of many different varieties.  An odd occurrences this year was that multiple booths were selling Egyptian cotton sheets.   I cannot think of anything more ridiculous than walking around in the blazing heat and suddenly deciding, "Hey!  Let's shop for bedding!  I want to snuggle up for freedom!"  A more savvy booth operator was selling sunglasses and cursing the gods for the cloudy day that signaled his own glare-free recession.  I bought exactly nothing from any of them.  I am the reason our economy refuses to recover.

In an effort to excite children and depress adults to the point of suicide, there was a pony ride.  A group of dead-eyed, soulless, future glue sticks were tethered to a large, spoked wheel--much like Arnold Schwarzenneger in the first scene of Conan the Barbarian.  I imagine that they are being weeded out in the same way as the non-Schwarzennegers in that film, and in a few years there will be one incredibly muscular pony left that will be shipped to Asia to learn the ways of war from the ancient masters:

Vaguely Ethnic Chieftain:  "Buttercup!  What is best in life?!"

Incredibly Muscular Pony:  "Crush your enemies!  See them driven before you, and hear the       lamentation of the women.  Also, take their sugar cubes."

I chose the pony I thought looked most likely to survive the wheel, and I seated my son atop him.  Upon closer inspection, the animal was a horse in the loosest sense of the word, but he would never defeat Thulsa Doom.  The handlers had somehow genetically eliminated its spirit through generations of selectively interbreeding the equine equivalents of Sylvia Plath.

All in all, it was exactly as much fun as I expected, or maybe a little bit less.  And when you think about it, that's what our forefathers fought and died for:  for our lives as Americans to be so great that food festivals with performances by former superstars, multiple boxes of free cereal and pony rides are disappointing.  I can think of no greater tribute to those who worked so hard for us to have it so good. 

Happy Independence Day.  For at least a moment, think about it.