Monday, August 18, 2008

Children of the Corn


The Beauty Queen wore flip-flops


Another year, another 17 tons of Iowa sweet corn consumed. Yes, recently YHP was privileged enough to attend the 56th annual West Point Sweet Corn Festival and lived to upload pictures from his digital camera onto his blog.

But first, a dilemma! His brother-in-law's bar had hired that scourge of southeast Iowa, Money Shot (heh heh, get it?) yet again to entertain the assorted drunken revelers and YHP had made it very clear that a molten lead enema would be preferable to listening to those hacks fumble their way through yet another Green Day cover. Would he be forced to stay in and have a quiet night with his extended family? It seemed all but certain that this would be his fate. And then he got a call.

"Have you heard about this Jefferson County Green Band thing? They're supposed to be pretty good." Well, being named after something that's not porno slang that was considered naughty 10 years ago was enough for me, so I decided against supporting my own family's business on the most crucial night of the whole year and waltzed over to the 4th Street Tavern (aka The Bar Where All The Kids Hang Out) to check it out.

White Riot

And the verdict? I thought they were pretty good, and that was before I heard the opening strains of "Baby Bitch"! That's right, JCGB rocked out a little Ween in front of a mostly confused West Pointian crowd and got a nice little laugh with the "Fuck you, you stupid-ass ho" line. From there they covered all the bases with a couple Johnny Cash tunes, some Dylan and even some Beastie Boys and Snoop Dogg to keep the kids tuned in!


Tim breaks out the bottom to make your booty shake!

I'll admit I was a little concerned, a little hesitant, at first because, c'mon a sax player? And a harmonica guy? And a hot chick violinist? But when the rain started pouring down around 10:30 p.m., they could have packed their shit and left like a certain other group of poser bitches did, leaving Phil's Pub sans entertainment for the evening, but they waited out and came back to an overwhelmingly appreciative crowd. It's called PROFESSIONALISM assholes, and all the spooky dolls, make-up and men wearing dresses in the world won't make up for it.


The hell?

As usual, by Sunday morning any evidence that the square was ground central for an orgy of drinking and debauchery was gone and the young and old lined the road waiting for the Parade. Small children grasped the plastic bags they would use to store their booty and picked the best areas for scoring some sweet candy. The elderly were helped into their lawn chairs and everyone else hid their bleary eyes and hammering headaches behind those oversize sunglasses that are so popular nowadays.


Shriners. They live for this kind of shit.

They all were not disappointed. There was a scary moment late when one of the horses got spooked and headed towards the crowd. It was eventually calmed down with no injuries which is good because YHP didn't even think to catch that shit on video and send it to ebaum.

Here's some of the political stuff - as you can see it's mostly republican:




On that last picture, the driver must have accidentally left off the political affiliation of the candidate - otherwise people would think that having "Republican" on their literature would be some kind of kiss of death or something even in this tiny town which is almost the perfect embodiment "blue collar America" that all those guys in suits give lip service to on TV news channels! But that would mean the whole town is full of elitists! And that's just silly!

These next photos are of stuff that doesn't exist. Somebody probably photoshopped them or Hannity would have mentioned something:






And I'll wind up my report with something that transcends politics: pictures of The Official West Point Sweet Corn Festival Bitchin' Van! Enjoy!






Yeah, so I chased it down the street snapping pictures. You would have too, be honest.





1 comment:

Churlita said...

I saw either Money Shot or a band just like them in Ft Madison last thanksgiving weekend. All the kids seemed to really dig them, but I thought they sucked.

And yes, I would definitely chased that van down to take pictures of it.