The Fried Food Experience

I’ve been at the Excel Center since 9am. I’m trying to find features but am having little success. Photographers pounce when workers peel protective paper off of a mirrored riser. People are bored.

Word came midway through Sunday that the organizers of the RNC are thinking of making changes to the convention due to the imminent landing of Hurricane Gustav. They announced a press conference for 3 pm that would outline these changes. After running tests on our tether systems, I covered the press conference. The room was packed. There had to have been at least 40 stills or more. McCain would be speaking via satellite to announce the changes in the convention schedule.

When McCain came on the TV, the cameras went wild. Thousands of shutter clicks went off during his short appearance. Motor drives gone wild. I felt like I was under fire. Cease fire! Cease Fire!

McCain announced that the first day of the convention would be abbreviated and only tend to official convention business. All of the heavy hitting speakers scheduled for Monday had canceled. The list included George Bush, Dick Cheney and Ahhhnold Schwarzenegger. The six hour program had been cut down to 2 hours. Hurricane Gustav was killing the convention. Could it be karma for the current republican administrations lack of response to Katrina? Did the evangelicals who prayed for rain on Obama’s Invesco field speech get the date wrong? The RNC was getting washed out by a hurricane that was hundreds of miles south of Minnesota. McCain said during his satellite fed speech that “it is time to take our republican hats off and put on our American hats.” What exactly does that mean?

News crews began to trickle out of the convention. Some are heading to NOLA for the hurricane, some are just thinking that this story is dead and scale back their coverage.
With all of our work done for the day, a group of us head to the Minnesota State Fair. The 320-acre fair is a bad food mecca. The fair is known for its huge variety of deep fried food on a stick. You can get deep fried Twinkies, corn dogs, alligator, Oreos and pretty much any other bad food you can think of. There are carnival style food trailers everywhere. There is more food here than anything. You can also buy hot tubs, couches and grain silos. One of the grain silo sellers advertised the availability of “fall erections.” A group of kids took pictures and laughed at the sign. Yes, we did too.
Reuters photographer Brian Snyder had told me about chocolate covered bacon at the fair. I was intrigued. It was my mission to find this delicacy. We walked around for a few hours in search of the bacon. Along the way, a few of my co-workers “got their Twink on” and tried the deep fried Twinkie on a stick. Looked scary.
As the sun was going down we finally found Famous Dave’s, home of the chocolate covered bacon. For five dollars I got a cone shaped water cup filled with 5 pieces of “Sweet and Salty Pig Lickers.” Fairgoers looked on as a group of geeky photographers simultaneously photographed the cup of bacon. I took a deep breath and bit into the greasy confection. Hmmm, not bad. Seriously. Tasted a little like when you have bacon with pancakes and you dip it in the syrup. I wanted it to be more disgusting than it was.