Now where was I?

Ah yes... STAMPEDE!

As you travel through the beautiful rural Missouri landscape towards the Ozarks, eventually you'll hit clusters of billboards. First will come the ones advertising vacation resorts, then the various theme parks around Branson and then, finally, the various shows. Some of these will be for old standards like Yakov and Andy Williams, some of them will be pretty much inexplicable and then some of them will advertise the wonderment that is KIRBY VAN BURCH.

Every time I'd wind my little beater through the Ozark hills, my heart would skip a beat when I would spot a Kirby billboard. Would it feature his Royal white tiger? His helicopter (it appears in four seconds!)? His smoking hot wife (she has a pyrotechnics licence!)? Or maybe, just maybe, you may get a glimpse of his fucking unicorn.

That's right, assholes! HIS FUCKING UNICORN!

Check it:



Needless to say, I was pretty excited about this trip. I had just the year before made up my mind that I must witness this remarkable Bruce Jenner look-a-like and his amazing fucking unicorn for myself. However, despite all my pleading, my sister and mother (bless their hearts) had decided instead to attend something called Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.

I held my ground as long as I could, but eventually I succumbed to the temptation of the "free" meal included in the ticket price. So I swallowed my pride, played the good son, and headed on over to Dolly's for the evening.

Hurry up and wait

After parking and walking past the stables to get to the front gate (mmm... smell that manure! Who else is hungry?) Everybody gets herded (no pun intended - not a metaphor) into the waiting room pictured above to watch a juggler. Seriously. Those fat-asses who cannot wait 30 minutes to eat are treated to sleeves of popcorn ($7 each) and specialty drinks ($7.50 each) they can consume as they watch what can only be assumed to be Dolly Parton's Favorite Juggler. Keep in mind that everyone paid about $50 just to get into this place. Well, you do get a nice plastic mug shaped like a boot to drink out of, so it's all good:

Note: this boot is made from a plaster cast of Dolly's foot - her feet are really this tiny!

After the juggling, we all made our way slowly to the arena as "Jolene" whispered from the strategically placed speakers. The mouth-watering aroma of horse shit once again greeted us as we took our seats and were presented with our drink choices by the pimply-faced teens in Civil War costumes that ran up and down the length of the bleachers and the show began.

This was just supposed to be a picture of the table!

When we called to get our tickets, we were asked if we wanted to represent the North or the South. Being a proud citizen of corn country, I chose Blue instead of Gray and as a result, we were situated on the north side of the arena and were expected to root for the dudes in blue as more and more food was shoveled onto our plates. Did I mention the lack of silverware? If you visit the Stampede website, the flash animation on the front page presents a pretty accurate depiction of what the meal looks like. See that roasted chicken? Two minutes after serving it, a guy came from the other direction asking if anyone needed seconds. *shudder*

To wrap up: the meal was... interesting (I can still taste the soup), the entertainment was... entertaining (though I was in the bathroom when they featured grown men riding ostriches :( ),
the North won and most of us (or at least the kids) went home happy.

And others will wait until next year.

*Sniff* Someday.