2015-08-17

Aw-festi-FUL

It's summer, and I'm all for a festival. Nothing beats drinking from a paper cup in the street, am I right? But not all festivals are for all people. I need to be better about looking for signs.
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from dailymail.co.uk
Some have great music, some have the mayor's cousins's garage band that does a fair Steve Miller band cover. We stumbled upon a high school band that really played their hearts out. However, they can't all be gems. Yesterday's trip to VeggieFest, or as my husband calls it's "Yucky-Fest," got me thinking we should probably do some research before we just go.

I wasn't expecting much. The vague description of 'vegetable talks and demos, music, family activities' told me we wouldn't be eating Shark On A Stick watching an aging, though respectable, David Lee Roth perform slowly like at Naperville's famous Rib Fest. 
Just to get IN to the fest from survivorsucks.com
I also thought maybe we wouldn't have to wait in long lines for everything like Rib Fest. George Wrongington. 

Admission was free, and there were a lot of crafts for kids, run by cranky vegans that really needed a good....serving of meat. They had a brilliant little open play place with toys for toddlers. I thought, "Wow, why don't more festivals have that?" Well, here's why. Because: People.

During the half an hour we endured this Tot Tent, we saw TWO different unattended toddlers. One who kept taking all of the toys right out of other kids' hands until I literally had to go pick him up and explain sharing. I don't think he spoke English and he didn't pay attention anyway. Good lesson for my kids. We watch children in our home, so they're used to having to explain sharing, and defend themselves. 

The 5 yr old's signature move is whining "He took my toy!" and breaking down in a pool of tears. The 3 yr old on the other hand is a baller. She yells something like "HEY!" and gets her toy right back. Usually making older and larger children cry. We're working on tact, but we don't worry about her survival skills in the cold, cruel world. 

So needless to say, we left that scene. There were 5 other adults in the tent when we left, so we didn't feel guilty about leaving the already unattended toddlers, still unattended. 2 moms were trying to figure out where the wandering 2-yr old girl came from. I pointed out a "Family Meditation Tent" and said maybe the parents were in DEEP meditation? *puff, puff, pass* might make the food better?

We walked past a long line for face painting, which is Lola's jam, but waiting in line? Not so much. We walked past several tents marked for speeches. Speeches about vegetables? Sounds corny. There were tents of organic products, and castille soap which I already use and my husband thought he was funny running over to look for a list of actual uses (you can make EVERY KIND of cleaner w/castille soap b-the-w.)


from thepoke.co.uk
Other than that, there was a long line for food tickets, huge sign read "NON-REFUNDABLE" and some food tents with long lines. It was over 90 degrees and we were surrounded by people who eat nothing but vegetables and wear natural deodorant, so without brutal detail we jogged to the air conditioned car. 

We went swimming at my sister's house, and that's the BEST SUMMER FESTIVAL I've ever found so far. 

Have you been to any good, or really bad, festivals lately?

Check this one out below, called The Boring Festival.

The chap from the Süddeutsche Zeitung was awfully polite as he quizzed Hamish Thompson, one of the organisers of the annual Boring conference, which took place in London on Sunday. 


He gestured to the Boring buffet: 
bowls of undressed iceberg lettuce, 
cucumber chunks on sticks, 
piles of white sliced bread, dry crackers and 
label-free bottles filled with tap water.
It was undoubtedly a Very Boring spread. 
Yet the conference was sufficiently interesting to attract not just the classier end of the German press but also 500 free-willed people who paid up to £20 each to spend a Sunday listening to a series of lectures on superficially tedious things: the relative heights of celebrities; letterboxes; and the features of a keyboard. Kathy Clugston, a Radio 4 announcer, discussed the shipping forecast.

10 comments:

  1. Love the woman in the turd costume! Was she at a Laxative Festival?

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    1. I wish I knew. The post just said a festival *sad face*

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  2. I am going on a road trip to the state fair with my dad later this week, where I read there will be a presentation called "Aprons and Their Uses." Wouldn't miss that for the world!

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  3. The Tot Tent incident reminded me of my daughter in pre-school. She was a tiny girl but much like her mother, she could hold her own. There was one particular, much larger, boy in her pre-school group that had taking a liking to her. I dropped her off one morning and heard, as I was signing her in, "Frankie, Leave Me Alone!" I looked at the teacher and she just grinned and said "Don't worry she'll be ok. Frankie just wanted to give her a hug, as usual, and she's having none of it." Apparently Frankie had taking a liking to my daughter the day he took a toy from her, she took it back and hit him between the eyes with it! Yeah tact doesn't run in my family either but my revenge is now she has a son of her own!! *que evil laugh*

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    1. hahahaha that is beautiful! We're taught to be nice, polite, if you're Catholic you're taught to "Turn the other cheek" but with a bully? You have to stand up to those bastards or it never stops. The world is a tough place, your daughter and her son will be JUST FINE! Good word, mom. And Grandma!

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  4. Well, on the plus side, at least VeggieFest wasn't just an awkward gathering of comatose people hooked up to a bunch of medical equipment.

    Q: What's the hardest part of a vegetable to eat?
    A: The wheelchair.

    I'm here all week.

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    1. That's a classic. I see that and raise you one Jackie The Joke Man bad one.
      Q: What's better than winning a GOLD MEDAL in the special Olympics?
      (This is bad, and it is not my joke)
      A: Walking.

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  5. I love any and all festivals...but the veggies and BO might have turned me off just a bit. Or on if I had gotten drunk enough...

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    1. Agreed!
      And agreed.
      I hadn't packed my special Capri Sun bag, so we just went to my sister's where there is always plenty of booze.

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