Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Graveyard Special by James Lileks Lileks: An early fair? It's against the laws of nature. No, hold on. I'm not the only who feels this way, I'm certain. Suddenly it's a looming issue. The State Fair, the Great Minnesota Get-Together, has announced a "mini-fair" on Memorial Day Weekend, and for many it's tempting. Except for the whole "Get Together" part. First, what's a Mini Fair? Does that mean everything is half-scale? That would be amusing. Instead of big lumbering cows, there would be very small cows (or as those farm kids say with their special country lingo, "calves"). The big swing ride on the midway goes up only 7 feet, which is great if it gets stuck. In normal times when it ceases to operate and everyone's dangling, you don't have the "hop off" option. Well, you do, but it's not advised. What else would a resized fair have? Half-sized neon-hued yardsticks, which would work as walking sticks only if you went around on your knees — which perhaps also would be mandatory under the miniaturized theme. Fairchild, the mascot gopher, would be replaced by an actual gopher, manipulated with marionette strings to make it walk erect. (Note to the person who has to put on its clothes: Make sure you're up on all your shots, and we just don't mean COVID.) I know what you're thinking: what of Mini Donuts? In a Mini Fair, would they just cut the number in half, or reduce the size of the doughnuts? Is it even possible to reduce the size of Mini Donuts? At some point the center aperture no longer will be visible, and then people will think they're doughnut holes. "Actually, ma'am, they still have a hole. It's just not observable by the naked eye." "So I'm supposed to bring an electron microscope to the fairgrounds to make sure I'm actually getting a Mini Donut and not a full-sized doughnut hole?" "Step over here. We have a high-intensity light, and I can hold up the Mini Donut; you'll see a thin shaft of light as the photons pass through the hole. That should set your mind at ease." Similar questions attend the About a Foot-Long Hot Dog. I've never quite understood that designation, anyway. Is it full disclosure, in case some class-action suit lawyer shows up with a tape measure, keen on bringing down the entire lying foot-long industry? Or do they mean "about" in the Cambridge Dictionary sense: "on the subject of, or connected with?" As in, "settle down, children, and I'll tell you a story about a foot-long hot dog. Friends called him Frank." If they're going to have a Mini-Fair version of the About a Foot Long, they couldn't call it the About a Half-Foot-Long Hot Dog, could they? Wouldn't that just be . a hot dog? It would suggest that they'd had the fresh opportunity to measure the product precisely to meet the Mini-Fair realignment protocols and had waved it away as too much trouble. I'm not impressed. There was no fair last year, you know — they've had almost 22 months to figure out how long the hot dog is, so apparently they just don't care. Truth be told, I don't think the Mini Fair literally will be mini, and I don't say that just because I've grown tired of the idea and have run out of increasingly strained ways to write about it. The Mini Fair will just be less of what the Maxi Fair provides, a little preview, a gift to a fair-starved state. Sounds like a lovely idea and thank you, fair, for doing this. But I can't go. I want to go! But I don't. After last year, I have great pent-up fair anticipation, and I don't want to squander it on anything but the actual fair. Plus, it always feels wrong to go to the fairgrounds when it's not the proper time; it's empty and sad, like sneaking into Disneyland after it's closed and seeing the guy who plays Mickey sitting on a bench with his mouse head off, smoking a cigarette. Here's the real problem, though. The fair comes at the end of the summer. It is the last hurrah, a time when summer seems eternal one day and fleeting the next. When the fair ends, the summer is over, and no matter how hot and green it may be, we know it's actually fall. If they hold a Mini Fair at the end of spring, it's possible some cosmic meteorological law will be broken, and we'll have a cold summer where the days get shorter and it feels like Halloween at the end of July. You don't want that. You know why? Because then people would start talking about the Great Halloween Blizzard, and they would drone on about it for four months, instead of one. James Lileks. Lileks began his writing career as a columnist for the Minnesota Daily while he was a student at the University of Minnesota. After college, he wrote for City Pages , a Twin Cities alternative tabloid. He served as a general columnist for City Pages until 1988, when he was hired as a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press . This led to a columnist job with Newhouse News Service and thence The Washington Post for a period in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, Lileks returned to the Twin Cities for a job with the Star Tribune , retaining his Newhouse column until late 2006. The Star Tribune discontinued Lileks's column in 2007, eventually naming him editor of the now defunct community website buzz.mn. Lileks also writes a regular column ( Athwart ) for National Review . [2] Radio personality. Lileks's first foray into radio came in 1987, while he was a writer with City Pages . He became a regular guest on the Geoff Charles show, an afternoon talk show on KSTP. When Charles left the Twin Cities, Lileks filled the slot and served as an afternoon-drive host on KSTP for a time in the late 1980s. In the mid-1990s, after returning from Washington DC, Lileks reappeared on KSTP with a new program, The Diner – a show set in a fictional 1950s-era diner. The show lasted several years on weekday evenings and then a few more as a weekend-evening program before leaving the air in the late 1990s. As of October 23, 2013, The Diner was revived on Ricochet.com. In late 2006, The Diner was revived in podcast form. Selected original Diner programs and new original Diners are available on Lileks's website. Lileks is also a weekly guest on the Hugh Hewitt show, [3] Pajamas Media's weekly PJM Political show on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio's POTUS channel, and a frequent guest and guest host on the Northern Alliance Radio Network program. Lileks has also been a monologist for the public affairs program Almanac , carried on Minnesota PBS television stations. Website. Lileks's blog, the Daily Bleat , [4] began in 1997. The Bleat covers many topics in his personal life (including his daughter Natalie (referred to as "Gnat" until she became old enough to object) and the family dog, Scout), politics from a conservative viewpoint, and cultural points of interest ranging from art and architecture to movies and music (one perennial topic is the Minnesota State Fair). Lileks's website also hosts a vast repository of vintage advertisements and other ephemera from the 1920s to the 1970s. Other work. Lileks is a regular contributor to the social networking and blogging network Ricochet.com, and co-hosts the site's flagship podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. [5] Star Tribune controversy and resolution. On May 7, 2007, Lileks announced that his home paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune , was ending his column in the interest of budget cuts and putting him on a straight local-news beat. [6] The move, which was forced by cuts in other parts of the Star Tribune ' s newsroom, drew criticism from many, [7] [8] [9] including Dave Barry. [10] Mike Argento, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, said in reaction to the news: [11] It's just a reflection of the sad state of the newspaper industry. Many of the people running newspapers don't have a vision. They're concerned with dollars and cents, and the bottom line. They should look at the future, not just slash and burn. On June 5, 2007, the Star Tribune changed course and announced Lileks would serve as editor of buzz.mn, a community website. [12] Buzz.mn ceased publication of new content in July 2009. Bibliography. Fiction. Falling up the Stairs (1988, ISBN 0-525-24655-X) Mr. Obvious (1995, ISBN 0-671-73705-8) Graveyard Special (2012, ASIN B00962GFES) The Casablanca Tango (2014, ASIN B00NDLYM70) Columns. Notes of a Nervous Man (1991, ISBN 0-671-73701-5) Fresh Lies (1995, ISBN 0-671-73703-1) Humor. The Gallery of Regrettable Food (2001, ISBN 0-609-60782-0) Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s (2004, ISBN 1- 4000-4640-8) Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice (2005, ISBN 1-4000-8228-5) Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery (2007, ISBN 0-307-38307-5) RiffTrax - special guest riffer for Spider-Man 3 [13] Related Research Articles.