July is bustin’ out all over. Pre-vacationers are cleaning up the RVs, assembling their camping gear and scrambling for last minute reservations to national parks and other attractions which used to beg for customers. It’s the post-Covid era and the citizens are properly nervous about getting shut out. If this should happen to any of our Flying Pie readers, your favorite nourishment providers are ready with several sophisticated alternatives. Like, for instance….
The Marlinton Roadkill Festival & Cookoff
Circle September 23 in your little appointment book and get out your West Virginia maps. The notion of wasting food has always been frowned upon in the Mountain State and what better way to draw an exclamation point than cooking and eating roadkill? Thousands of gourmets make the trip to Marlinton each year to gaze upon the amateur chefs competition and try local delicacies foraged from too-close encounters of the armadillo kind. It’s not for the faint of heart but you might be surprised at the delicious stewed black bear with chili and beans or the popular quail meatballs, snapping turtle, iguana and squirrel gravy on biscuits, all slightly flavored with asphalt. Veteran festivalgoers swear the rattlesnake pie is to die for. That’s what we’re worried about. And yes, there is a Miss Roadkill contest, although the sash is a little stained.
On your way to Pocahontas County, you might want to stop off in Point Pleasant, WV for the annual Mothman Festival on September 16-17. The event celebrates a yearlong siege of Mothman sightings from 1966 to 1967 in which large human-like creatures with glowing red eyes were often sighted cavorting around the area. A highlight of the day is a visit to the World’s Only Mothman Museum, which purports to contain the largest collection of Mothman memorabilia in existence. And who’s to argue?
Wasteland Weekend (participants only, please)
Most of the time there’s not much happening in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, but on one weekend a year things change. On Wasteland Weekend (September 27-October 1), live bands provide background for combat performers, fire dancers, post-apocalyptic style shows, wasteland burlesque and the number one blood-sport of the future, Jugger. Inspired by the legendary Mad Max movies, thousands of participants come to celebrate life at the end of civilization with bizarre parties and iconic elements of post-apocalyptic pop culture. It’s adults only, folks, and costumes are required---the dirtier, the better. Although it seems incongruous with the theme, portable toilets will be provided.
Potato Days
Why didn’t someone in Spuds or Hastings think of this? Things don’t get much crazier than Potato Days in Barnesville, Minnesota (August 25-26), first conceptualized in the late 1930s to celebrate the lowly spud grown by farms all over the area. Sol Neelman an attendee, saw it this way:
“The potato wrestling contest only lasted an hour but it was the best hour of my life. I was covered in mashed potatoes afterward and grateful they set up showers. The more experienced people used earplugs to keep the potatoes out of ear canals. I missed the sack race but I got back in time for the potato-peeling contest. I think some of those whip-fast peelers were ringers from the U.S. Army.”
You have to understand that Sol doesn’t get out much.
Vegetable Antics
Hippies on their way back to Oaxaca for a romp in the mushroom fields of the Lord might consider staying on for The Night of the Radishes (or ‘Noche de Los Rabanos) on December 23. Fields of unsuspecting radishes wait innocently for the invading hordes to rush in and begin carving them into human-like characters, the best of which will be entered into competitive categories like Best Representation of Sancho Panza and Most Creative Genitalia. After the prizes are awarded, the radishes are placed in a display and may be eaten by hungry festivalgoers. Careful--not too much salsa on Sancho, folks.
Those Mexican radish-carvers aren’t going to get the best of the citizenry of Piornal, Spain with its annual Jarramplas Festival. In case you were wondering, this Jarramplas fellow is a devilish character in fancy clothes and a conical mask with horns on his head and a very big nose, carrying a tambourine. Jarry has the envious job of meandering around town while people pelt him with torrents of turnips. This is considered such a great honor that parents daily enroll their newborn bebes to play the Jarramplas’ of the future and the waiting list exceeds 20 years. Hey Mr. Tambourine man, take a hit for me---in the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you. Or maybe not.
Okay, so it’s not technically a vegetable, it just tastes like one. The lovely tomato is the big star of Spain’s La Tomatina Festival (Bunol, August 30), which began innocently enough in 1945 during a parade of Giants and Bigheads in the town square, when an irked performer’s mask suddenly fell off and in a fit of rage he began throwing tomatoes, as might we all. But don’t get those fiery Spaniards started---in no time, the hurling became infectious and the hills were alive with the sound of splatting, which injured several and led to a severe tomato shortage. The city government became enraged and immediately banned the Bighead parade. It came back and they banned it again, many times in fact, leading to a dramatic protest by tomato-lovers in 2002. There is nothing worse than a Bighead scorned, so now the whole mess is a prized local institution, though some grouches accuse the current tomatoes of being (gasp!) imported.
You didn’t really want to know about Yuma Lettuce Days, did you? No? We didn’t think so.
The Day Of The Dead
Not everyone gets a day named after them in this life but once you’re defunct you’re celebrated in Day of the Dead on Bill’s quaint birthday, November 2. Dia de los Muertos originated in Mexico, where events run from October 31st through November 2nd, when the spirits of the dead are said to visit their living family members, sometimes even imparting advice. Last year, my Mother told me I was eating too many Haagen-Dasz mini ice-cream bars and not enough fresh garden squash. Later on, I found out it was really a note from Siobhan, which I think is probably sacrilegious.
Other ways of celebrating are by building small altars containing sugar skulls, orange marigolds and photos of the deceased, then sitting around the altar and discussing foibles of the poor dead guy with family. “Remember the time Uncle Jorge got drunk and tickled the bull’s testicles?” Followed by gales of laughing and more margaritas. Stuff like that. Other people write mocking poems, create papier-mache skeletons in various scandalous positions, carry meals to the graveyard or don a dead guy mask and join in festive parades. It’s all good. Upstairs in Mexican Heaven, Uncle Jorge is logging material in his journal and waiting for the days of payback for his kin.
In recent years, aging hippies proud of their longevity have take to throwing Not Dead Yet Parties on November 2nd. The original event of this genre seems to have been created by an Austinite named Dave Moriarty, who hired a band, provided alcohol and made his soiree “clothing optional,” a scary thought. Dave was originally disappointed when only a few old coots showed up at his rumpus room. Then he looked down the difficult three flights of stairs leading up to his aerie and saw dozens of oldsters milling around the base of the stairs. One of them yelled, “What the hell’s wrong with you, Moriarty? You think you’re dealing with a bunch of kangaroos?”
Days Of Our Lives
Everyone in Marion County is gearing up for National Ugly Truck Day on July 20, an event mourned by car-wash facilities everywhere. Vehicle owners are busy at work buying ever bigger tires for ever smaller trucks and bumper sticker stores are virtually out of stock on the more lively Trump merchandise. Giant flags? We got ‘em at Emblems ‘R’ Us, where 10% of every dollar spent goes for wardrobe enhancements for your leading GOP candidates.
Get out those crutch-extenders for more fun on Walk On Stilts Day July 27 and don’t forget to grind up a batch of beetles for your furry friends on Tarantula Appreciation Day August 8. Come September 8, it’s a rare opportunity to celebrate a typographical symbol on National Ampersand Day, September 8. Believe it or not, the illustrious ampersand, a Latin character and logogram that depicts conjunction, has been in use since the first century A.D. and was even discovered as graffiti on a wall of Pompeii, preserved by the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D.
We’re not sure we believe it but we’ve been told that October 13 is International Skeptics Day (motto: “I don’t THINK so.”). On December 8, oddballs of every description rush into the local town square to submit to astonishing auditory abuses on Take It In The Ear Day, which some nonbelievers claim was created by a simple typographical error.
December 18 is, as everybody knows, Wear A Plunger On Your Head Day, during which citizens of Oviedo, Florida gather at Grand Marshall Will Thacker’s barracks laden down with plumbing supplies and subsequently march through the streets of town singing “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” and occasionally “Born To Run.”
Finally, on December 26, complainers everywhere have enormous Zoom meetings to celebrate National Whiners Day. Maybe they didn’t get the Christmas present they wanted, perhaps they’re not happy about the hustle and bustle of the holidays or possibly Will Thacker was one plunger short when they showed up for the festival in Oviedo. Achievers will create, partygoers will participate and whiners will wine. Until, at least Memento Mori or “Remember You Die” Day on January 3, 2024, when the wakeup calls come in.
Gotta run. Surf’s up.
That’s all, folks….
