I may have mentioned, once or twice, that Lori is a photographer, something she pursues with great passion and talent. She recently started a '365 Days of Photos' project on her blog, and last week we moseyed out to the fairgrounds to get a night shot of the Cavalia circus tent.
Between posting that shot Monday night and checking her email Tuesday morning, Cavalia's national marketing firm (based here in Tampa) saw the shot and invited her to today's press review. This meant an almost private performance, and she was in heaven.
Go check her blog. Check it now. And don't be afraid to follow her, you'll be rewarded every day. Go!
Yes, kids, it's time we had that 'little talk'. When we were in the Poultry and Rabbit building at the fair, there was an entire wall of educationalish FFA artwork. Some of this revolved around the reproductive process of chickens.
Yeah. Lori and I just didn't get it, exactly. There were lots of snaky tubes, and pipe cleaners glued to cardboard, and it just wasn't making much sense.
And remember, if I find something disturbingly intriguing, you're ALL going to learn about it. And there are some things you can't un-learn, so it's not like doing a somersault or riding a bike. Turn back now if knowing this means you'll never be able to eat eggs again. I will not bear the responsibility for this, nor will I abide another toe. If you don't think you can handle it, go check out this post instead.
But really, how do chickens 'do it'? It sounds like a bad Mister Wizard question from my youth.
Like other reproductive systems, it starts with ovaries. However, chickens, while born with two, develop a 'dominant' ovary. This is the one that starts all the egg-laying. In fact, several of the chickens at the fair had eggs in their cages. That's one of those things that just happens, and if memory serves, it happens about 5.5 times a week. This egg-laying cycle is referred to as a 'clutch'. Chickens run on some weird internal clock, that allows them to produce an egg in just over a day, but once it gets to be 3 pm, no eggs. This ends the cycle, creates a break of a day, and then the hen starts laying again, creating a new clutch.
I don't know if Daylight Savings Time factors into this at all.
Hens have about two years of productive laying time in their lives, after which they become soup fodder. Egg formation itself starts when the ovary produces the yolk, with its runny, yolky center, a single cell. The outer membranes and layers get added as the egg passes through the chicken, from the infundibulum (or 'the funnelly bit'), and then through the magnum (or 'the Sellecky bit'). The Sellecky bit is responsible for the secretion of the albumen, or egg white, and on a good day, can encompass two yolks at a time. Magnum, indeed!
Then we move on into the isthmus ('the membrane-y bit') and into the shell gland. What? I didn't figure that one needed a scientific renaming.
Then, and only then, does the egg pass into the vagina. I can't type the word without hearing Phil Hartman as Charlton Heston. However, avian vaginas differ from their mammalian counterpart in this area. Between the shell gland and vagina, chickens (and other birds) have sperm host glands. Hens can maintain a rooster's sperm at body temperature, allowing it to remain viable for up to two weeks inside the vagina. Each time an egg squeezes through the shell gland into the vagina, sperm is expressed back into the earlier stages of egg development, each egg fertilizing its next sibling. Except for the first egg, I guess.
So how does the sperm get there?
Sweet, sweet, chicken lovin', that's how. When chickens mate, the rooster presses his 'sexual opening' ('the penis-y bit') against that of the female by mounting her, flapping his wings and biting the hen's neck to maintain his balance. The male's sperm enters the female's sexual opening (cloaca) during this time. After entering the cloaca of the female, the sperm, containing the male's genetic information, travels up the oviduct to the sperm host glands where it awaits the next egg.
Don't you feel better for knowing this? I know I do. Omelet, anyone?
A special thank you to Dr. Thomas Caceci, without whose graphic depiction of the avian reproductive system today's fun facts would not have been possible.
Ah, the circus. I always loved when the circus came to town when I was a kid, it was a once-a-year thing. Wild animals, motorcycles in rings, trapeze artists and clowns. Somewhere around fifth or sixth grade, my dad discovered that one of his one-time co-workers was now the head clown at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, so we trekked up there and both my sister and I got to be part of a magic act and meet some of the other circus folk.
Ah, the fair. I always loved the fair as a kid, too. It wasn't until my teen years, however, that I ventured into the midway, experienced the sights and sounds at night. The fair was the place to people watch, better than the mall and better than downtown Milwaukee, for my money.
Carnival and circus culture has touched so much in this world, including the art of film. Obviously, I got to thinking about this after last weekend's trip to the Florida State Fair, and it's amazing to me how many movies I've seen over the years that feature the art of live, gripping entertainment. Freakshows, circuses, little county fairs, street performers, the thrill of traveling entertainers.
Like this guy, our little pygmy fire-eater from Tuesday. Doesn't he look like he wants to be friends? If there was a decent living to be made at it for someone of my limited talents, I'd run off and join the circus or a side show tomorrow, or start raising fair-worthy pigs and chickens. Sadly, the most I can expect is to write about them, being a practical man and all.
But now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you would direct your attention to the center ring, Thursday rules apply. This means study hard, show your work, and enjoy something battered and deep-fried. I give you a few of the actors (generally not the main actor) and a memorable scene, you give me the film in which all three appeared in each case. I do grade on a curve, remember, so even if you don't get them all, you'll have learned something.
Jill St. John and Charles Gray - Jill eludes federal officers by sneaking into a sideshow act where a woman transforms into a giant gorilla.
Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce - A traveling carnival which includes an age-altering merry-go-round.
Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia - A wish is granted by a coin-operated fortune teller on the boardwalk.
Geoffrey Lewis and Sondra Locke - Wild West show performs in a circus tent made from American flags.
David Ogden Stiers and Barnard Hughes - Characters interact with a waylaid physician during the local squash festival.
Louis Jourdain and Maude Adams - A circus is used as an unknowing front for nuclear disaster.
Bernadette Peters and M. Emmet Walsh - Character runs off to the circus with his dog to avoid a madman.
Stockard Channing and Edd Byrnes - Students attend a carnival on the last day of high school, declaring their eternal friendship.
Yes, I make you jump through hoops and tie yourself in knots over these things, but it's worth it. Really, it is. Have at it!
As a child, the Wisconsin State Fair was always about the animals, and the WonderKnife demos, corn on the cob and then the cream puffs. I don't even remember eating anything else there as a kid, except for the one time I thought fried rice from a trailer seemed like a good idea.
It wasn't.
This year, we decided we should make the effort to make it to the Florida State Fair, it being, presumably, our last year in Florida. What we encountered was light years from anything either Lori or I have ever seen in our lives.
Wisconsin holds their state fair in August, a nice, summery month where we can wear shorts and enjoy cool lemonade and not get hypothermia. Florida, contrary to popular northern belief (or at least mine), is not this way twelve months a year. What started out as a tolerable 55 degree day descended quickly to 40 when the sun dropped. Thankfully, we were dressed for it. Our parents raised us well, and Wisconsin weather means you ALWAYS expect it to be colder than you think it could ever get.
The fair did have the original Batcopter, and for $30 apiece you could get a 45-second ride around the fairgrounds. Sorry, but unless I actually get to use the Shark Repellent Bat Spray, it's not worth $3, let alone $30. They had removed the wings, too, so it wasn't until we were right up at the booth that we even knew it was anything other than an ordinary helicopter.
Upon entering the fairgrounds, though, the first thing we encountered was Cracker Country. The purpose of the exhibit is to preserve and celebrate Florida's rural pioneer heritage. Am I the only one who thinks this might be a wee bit racist? Just me? Okay, then. Old turn-of-the-century buildings, craftspeople, overpriced touristy crap, ideal. Kind of like Old World Wisconsin, only without the diversity. I must admit, it was tempting to send our friend Bob, the whitest white guy I know, a postcard from the Cracker Country post office.
Once out of Cracker Country (and am I the only person relieved they elected to keep the traditional spelling?), we emerged into the sea of food stands that comprises about 80% of the remaining fairgrounds. If it can be deep-fried, you can buy it from about 200 different vendors. Elephant ears and funnel cakes shared space with the more modern deep-fried Oreos and Twinkies, and the 18" corndogs shared their batter-dipped goodness with Swedish meatballs, bratwurst, Polish sausage and more. The fried green tomatoes were excellent, but I didn't try the deep-fried pickles from any of the vendors offering them up. Fried cookie dough, battered and fryolated bacon, fried butter, Hostess cupcakes, Ringdings, Mars bars, Pepsi Cola, potatoes both French- and spiral-cut, tons of pizza, tacos in a bag, barbecue from all regions of this fair nation, strawberry pies, shortcake, cheesecake (which could also be had deep-fried or chocolate-dipped on a stick), and grilled Italian, German and Polish sausages with peppers and onions, cheesesteaks, and a vendor making a killing selling cheap frozen burgers, fried and mashed into a Krispy Kreme donut for $6.50. For another $1.50, you could add cheese and bacon, but I will not sully my first Lutherburger experience by going on the cheap. Deli sandwiches from far and wide, including the ubiquitous Cuban. There were more turkey legs than I've ever seen, piled high next to grills and smokers. There was a pork chop on a stick. There was even the official 'Fried Wisconsin Cheese' wagon that usually graces the south entrance of the Wisconsin fairgrounds.
Disappointed was I, denied gator on a stick, denied any signature 'Florida Flavor', some gimmick that would suck me in for something unique, something that won't appear anywhere else.
Surprising, too, was the ratio of elements. Five Ferris wheels, but barely a sampling of livestock. Had we not been so tired from our six hours of wandering, we would have made it back to the freak show, with the world's tallest man, the gorilla girl, and one of the original Oompa Loompa's eating fire, all 39" of him. We missed the world's smallest horse, because I think $2 a person is too much to ask for a goat with a mane hot-glued to his head. There were funhouses and Whizzers and Himalayas and all manner of spinning, shaking nauseaters. When the nation's carnival companies winter in your back yard, I suppose there wouldn't be a shortage of rides, (ahem) scams, weight-guessers and side-show attractions, would there?
There were some animals, exotic chickens and lop-eared rabbits, goats and sheep and llamas and Watusi cattle and a six-day-old Guernsey calf, we saw a few horses but everything is so cordoned off, not like Wisconsin where we spent our childhoods walking right up to animals to pet them. We saw newborn piglets suckling with fury, fighting for prime position. They had exotic animals, wallabies and giraffes, frantic to eat the overpriced carrots being sold.
More than anything else, Lori and I got sucked into the mechanical bull riding tent. It's insane how much money this thing makes! $7 for your chance to ride the bull, for as long as you can or until the barker decides you've used your $7 wisely. Little kids, teens, grown men and women alike, $7. Make your eight seconds? You're done. Next? It was nice to see he was gentle with the little ones, let them enjoy themselves until they couldn't hang on any longer. Want a photo? That's another $7. Want a DVD of your eight seconds of glory to show to all your friends? $10. Lori and I watch for better than half an hour, for sure.
Every state fair should have one.
I may have mentioned, once or twice, that Lori is a photographer, something she pursues with great passion and talent. She recently started a '365 Days of Photos' project on her blog, and last week we moseyed out to the fairgrounds to get a night shot of the Cavalia circus tent.
Between posting that shot Monday night and checking her email Tuesday morning, Cavalia's national marketing firm (based here in Tampa) saw the shot and invited her to today's press review. This meant an almost private performance, and she was in heaven.
