Monday, August 11, 2008

Ah, Summer.

Summer, State Fair, baseball.  Ahh.  There's something about the combination.  Something... "everyman" about it, maybe.  

But just to be sure we don't become *too* pedestrian, let's throw in a little outdoor Shakespeare theatre, too.  Then again, didn't old Will write primarily for the masses?  So maybe we ought to even think of American Players Theatre in Spring Green as slumming...  :P

We're on a 4 day mini-vacation in SE Wisconsin, and we're enjoying it.  The Brewers had the great marketing idea this year of doing a special on a pair of tickets to a game, plus a pair of State Fair admissions at a deep discount.  So, yeah! We're all over that.  

Eat a brat, drink a beer, watch a game, eat some sweet corn, scratch a pig.  Nice.

And now they sell churros at both venues.  :)  I loooove churros.

Reminds me of when we lived in California and the family would go watch the local single-A minor league franchise play ball.  It was way too hot for day games usually, but in the evening when the sun would drop below the grandstand, you could tolerate the 100 degree dry heat.

There are no bratwurst in California.  The local treat was churros:  dough rolled into ridged tubes and deep-fried, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  And I learned to love them.

So in the midst of all the ethnic diversity of rural California, we'd eat churros and watch baseball at dusk, sharing a common cultural element with the rest of the multi-cultural little town.  There was something poetic about the basic Americana of it all.    

And it seemed well-suited to verse.   So... here is some, from about 15 years ago.  :)




1 comment:

Future Urban Planner said...

Actually, there are brats in Cali now, or at least, if Johnsonville has any say in it. I've seen 'em at BBQ's here, makes me feel liek I'm in a time-warp, but there they be.
PS- Will wasn't the only one who wrote for the masses, scholars have been kicking around that either Sir Francis Bacon (not the 20th cen. artist) and/or Ben Jonson are actually responsible for some of the Bard's work. In fact, Rolling Stone did a fascinating article on some island in SC-? that has this booby-trapped, mile deep treasure that reputedly carries one of Sir Francis's manuscripts that pen words we currently assign to the Bard of Avalon. It was a few years ago and Dave Matthews was on the cover. . .but yeah ;-) -"Jenny"

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