I’m not proud of the fact that I spent 5 of my 6 hours at the New York State Fair looking for a deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  (We spent the other hour sitting on the highway off-ramp waiting to park.)

But I will say this: The “Great” New York State Fair knows how to fry sh*t.  I put “Great” in quotes, not because it isn’t—it is pretty great—but because I think it’s funny that all you have to do to make something great is to call it that.  On a related note, I shall henceforth be known as The Excellent and Awesome Joshua B.

It’s true:  the Great NYS Fair knows how to fry sh*t and I, as it turns out, know how to eat fried sh*t.  Oreos, cheese curds, Twinkies, Snickers, Pop Tarts, dough, pizza… if they can get breading to stick to the sides, they’ll throw it into boiling hot oil and charge you 7 dollars.  They’ll even fry chicken.  Imagine that.

The holy grail of fried foods, as it turns out, is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Not sure why this is true; perhaps it’s because the PB&J is the best sandwich ever invented and frying things is the ONLY thing proven to make just about anything taste better.  But for whatever reason, it’s highly desirable.  And awfully hard to find.  As any holy grail should be.

We really did spend an awful lot of time looking for that fabulous sandwich.  But along the way, we had some other adventures too.  Adventures that involved milk, grilled chicken, and potatoes.

OK, all our adventures involved food.

Here are just a few of them:

25 CENT MILK.  AND COWS!
Having recently learned that cows make milk (see previous entry) I was especially excited to find out that the Fair has both cows and milk in the same place.  And 25 cent milk at that!  To be totally honest, I don’t really get the milk appeal, but Jason was very excited about it…

I have to take a brief interlude here to explain about my friend Jason.  Jason has what I consider to be a slightly unhealthy obsession with the Great New York State Fair.  Why unhealthy?  “It’s like my Christmas,” he explains.  I’m not sure what dreadful things Santa brought him as a child that 25 cent milk is more appealing, but whatever it was, Jason promised to be my guide to the Fair.  And he was, displaying a deft understanding of where to find just about anything in that maze of food vendors, carnival games, music stages, and livestock—including cows!

A quick visit to the NYSFair web site will tell you that milk is New York’s “official state drink”.  What they don’t tell you is that it’s also the official state drink of Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  (In Rhode Island it’s ‘coffee milk’, whatever that is.)  BTW, Nebraska has TWO state drinks.  Milk AND Kool-Aid.  No joke.

So I suppose in light of the state drink thing, it was only appropriate that I tried New York State milk at what was inexplicably called the “Rainbow Milk Bar.”  I guess because the milk comes in BOTH regular and chocolate.  But because I was a bit underenthused about the milk bar, I asked Jason to explain why it makes him so… giddy.  He responded with the following text message segments—each 160 characters or less…

“The Rainbow Milk Bar is a 60-year-old tradition celebrating a cherished New York industry…”
“…Drinking the delicious milk is a nostalgic experience that harkens back to a simpler time…”
“…in a day where the wholesomeness of milk is perverted by flavors and growth hormones…”
“…The Rainbow Milk Bar takes us back to a time where you didn’t need flashy packaging, high-fructose corn syrup, or hyper-sweetened drinks…”
“…Back to a time when all you needed was a quarter in your pocket and a smile on your face…”

We’re trying to get Jason a job writing tourism brochures for historical landmarks in small towns with old mills and civil war statues.  Seems appropriate.

Anyway, the 25 cent milk WAS delicious.  Although—are you listening Great New York State Fair?—the chocolate milk could use a bit more syrup.

What was more interesting to me was the butter sculpture.  Which rotated magically under its own power.  Or at least seemed to.  3200 sticks of butter were used to make the thing—enough to top 6400 large tubs of popcorn… God, I’m getting hungry.  And it was sculpted by husband/wife team Marie Pelton and Jim Victor, who also once created two famous football players entirely out of pepperoni, cheese and olives.  Wow.

This year’s sculpture was entitled “Dairyville 2020”, and the idea was to create a model for sustainable farms of the future.

Then, of course, there were the cows.  Jason was always yelling at me to pet things.  Baby cows.  Baby chicks.  Having grown in North Jersey, there weren’t a lot of opportunities to pet barnyard animals.  Of course, he’d also warn me in advance of petting anything… “Be careful! The cows kick.” “Baby chicks!  Careful… you could get salmonella.”

He also felt it necessary to ask every dairy farmer in the “Toyota Dairy Cattle Center”—(why exactly are cows sponsored by Toyota?)—if the brown cows give chocolate milk.  :: Hangs head in shame. ::

STUFF THAT ISN’T FRIED
Everything at the fair is fried.  EVERYTHING.  Well, almost everything.  I was starving on the drive up and begged Jason to stop.  He refused, saying there’d be plenty to eat once we arrived.  Which was an excellent theory, until he missed the off-ramp and spent an extra hour in traffic.  I was pretty much famished when we got there, and on a mission to find something legitimately healthy to eat.  Finally, after another hour of searching, we found the ONE vendor at the fair that offered a grilled chicken sandwich.  Luckily, there were plenty of terribly unhealthy options at the same spot for Jason to sample.  We grabbed something called “Potatoes O’Reilly”, which were basically thinly sliced potatoes, deliciously soaked in oil, and Jason got a bacon and cheese sandwich.  Here’s how Jason ordered…  Jason: “Hey, what’s on a bacon and cheese sandwich?” Girl: “…bacon and cheese.”  Jason: “Oh… OK… I’ll have one of those.”

EXTREME SCULPTURE
I always thought ice-sculpting was pretty kick-ass—that is, until I saw the “Master of the Chainsaw”, Brian Ruth.  His “X-Treme Power Sculptor” performance involves transforming ordinary logs into things that are, well, surprisingly dainty and cute.  Things like heron.  Aww.  According to nysfair.org, he’s there EVERY DAY, creating four pieces a day.  I truly hope that he’s available for events like weddings and children’s birthday parties—because nothing says young Bobby’s birthday like a sculpture that requires a metal cage, power tools, and safety goggles to craft.  Carve on, my friend.  Carve on.

THE NEON CHICKENS
I would honestly go to the fair just to see this in person.  I’ve seen people die food unnatural colors before just to make sure the kids will care, but I’ve never seen the principal applied to livestock.  Until now.  Green!  Blue!  Red!  These chickens are like an unwitting pop punk band in a cage.  And I’m SO all about it.

The neon chicken area is ALSO where I got to hold a live chick.  My live chick hated me.  And kept trying to jump out of my hands.   Potentially, to its death.  Baby chickens can’t fly, right?  But it seemed willing to endure the 4 foot drop to the floor below just so it would be done with me.  Jason couldn’t understand why I was so timid with the animals, but what with the salmonella warning, could you really blame me?

THE WINE SLUSHIES
I had never even HEARD of a wine slushy until I moved upstate.  Now, I’m not sure why they’re not available EVERYWHERE.  State fair veterans should pay attention here—there’s a change from last year.  Previously, the wine slushy tent was roped off from the rest of the fair, forcing slushy drinkers, who were clearly there ONLY for the booze, to make idle chit-chat with their fair-going companions… until they were finished and able to free themselves from the confines of slushy zone.  Starting this year, however, the slushies may roam free!  Free to wander over to the fried oreo tent—opening up the possibility for endless dipping combinations.  Free to head over the midway, where one might partake in my very favorite carnival game of all: lobbing dirty old baseballs at empty glass beer bottles.

However, there IS a tradeoff.  No longer can one buy a giant 20-ounch plastic souvenir wine slushy cup.  We’re now forced to buy 10-ounce flimsy plastic cup after 10-ounce flimsy plastic cup of slushy yum to get our wine buzz on.  Jason had thought we were limited to 2 cups per order, but, after I left the tent, he emerged a moment later with three cups—a practice he charmingly referred to as “triple-fisting”.  WARNING: Wine slushies can and do cause wine slushy brain freeze.  Drink with caution.  Or, at the very least, slowly.

THE CHEAP SEATS
The Great New York State Fair has a truly phenomenal line-up of concerts this year.  Aerosmith, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Sean Kingston, Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts, Kellie Pickler—whoever’s doing their booking is doing a kick-ass job.  Of course, they can only bring in the big names if we go and buy the big tickets.  So make sure you support the shows.  Try to pay for at least ONE show this year…

And do as I say, not as I do.  Because I’m way poor right now.  And couldn’t afford a ticket for Rihanna.  Who I really, really, really wanted to see live.

See, there’s a story here.  A long, long time ago (5 years) in a land far, far away (NYC), I worked at a radio station and actually met Rihanna in person.  She had just released her first single and I, frankly, wasn’t sure how far she was going to go as an artist…

God I’m a f*ing idiot.  I mean, stupid beyond reason.  I couldn’t have asked for one little autograph?

Anyway, ever since then I’ve desperately wanted to see her in concert.  So thank God, again, for my NYSFair veteran Jason.  He told me that if you REALLLLLY wanna see a show and REALLLLLLY don’t have the cash, there’s always the super-obstructed cheap-ass viewing option.  THIS was my view of the last half-hour of the Rihanna concert.  All I paid was general admission to the fair.  And as you can see, I was NOT alone…

THE FRIED PB&J
Only ONE DAMN VENDOR at the fair makes fried PB&J.  And let me just say this: the other fried food vendors aren’t always that happy to direct you to their competition.  But who else are you supposed to ask?  There’s not exactly a fried food map to the fair.  After hours of searching, we finally found the PB&J people.  And man, did we hit the jackpot.  There’s almost nothing they wouldn’t fry.  In fact, their sign says it all: “You bring it, we’ll fry it.”  Quite an offer, considering the guy that created fried beer in Texas burned himself on the deep fryer several times before figuring out you had to wrap it in a pocket of pretzel dough first.

Now here’s the thing about fried PB&J…  Um, it really isn’t that great. Certainly not worth the 5-hours quest.  And it’s not the fault of the fryer!  Certainly, they used good ingredients.  Their PB&J tasted great on its own.  And the fried coating tasted great on their cheese curds.  But some things simply aren’t meant to be fried.  I know; I’m as shocked as the next Chicken McNugget addict!  …now fried oreos on the other hand…  it’s like somebody wrapped up heaven in a nice little pouch of powdered sugar and delivered it straight to the state fair.  :: contented sign ::

ANYWAY
This is clearly not a consummate guide to the Great New York State Fair.  In fact, it’s not even a consummate guide to the FOOD of the New York State Fair.  And that’s about all I covered.  If you consider neon chickens food.  Which clearly I do.  But the bottom line is you just need to go explore on your own.  Find your own neon chicken.  Find your own fried PB&J.  And maybe even find something at the fair that isn’t food.  You never know…

So if you don’t know that hip-hop artist Drake is coming to Bing U on October 1st, you obviously haven’t been Facebook stalking me.  Which is frankly unacceptable.  Start right away.

Drake is famous for a bunch of reasons. He can sing, he can act, and he was a regular on Canadian teen drama ‘Degrassi:  The Next Generation’.  But perhaps the coolest piece of trivia I’ve discovered about Drake is that he’s become so famous as a singer/rapper that his real-world persona is actually referred to by name by CHARACTERS in the 2010 Degrassi TV movie.  Characters who knew the guy that Drake PLAYED on the show.  As in, “ ‘Hey, let’s go see Drake in concert.’  ‘Wait, you mean the hip-hop artist slash actor who pretended to be our wheelchair confined high school friend for all those years?’ ‘Yeah, him!’ “

Trippy.

Anyway, if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years.  Or if you’re one of those people who “only listens to Morning Edition”—yeah, I know who you are—here’s a YouTube of one of Drake’s big singles…

Even though the news of his impending concert was leaked to some OTHER news outlet first—ahem, I don’t hold a grudge—I asked BU’s “Lord of the Concert” Aaron Cohn for a brief interview about how one gets a mega-gigundo-hyper-famous superstar rapper to come to lil ole Bing.

PS: If you need any proof of how fabulously famous Drake is, a recent free South Street Seaport show to promote his new album had to be canceled when it attracted 25,000 fans instead of the expected 10,000.  Of course, Drake was supposed to perform in conjunction with Hanson.  So you take your pick as to who the real draw was…  I mean, that Kevin Jonas is dreamy.

What’s that, you say?  Kevin’s not in Hanson?  Then who the hell are the Hansons?

Oh crap.  That ‘Mmmbop’ song.  25,000 people?  Just think how many more would’ve shown if they had canned Hanson in advance.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: BingPop has received assurances that Hanson will NOT be appearing with Drake at BU.)

I always wonder what the politics of choosing an act for a college show are like.  Is there a vote? Is there a smoke-filled back room?  Do you flip a coin?
Haha.  There are certainly politics involved, and the smoke-filled back room with just a few people used to be the place these types of decisions really were made. It was hit and miss.  In the last year, however, we’ve started leveraging technology and making the process more data-driven, with online surveys distributed to the entire student body.  In short, we figure out what the ticket price of various shows would be, and we ask students to rank each of our choices from 1-5.  Needless to say, Drake finished pretty darn high.

Beyond that, things like artist fee/value, tour routing (if they’re coming through NYC, the northeast, etc., we can usually get a much better deal and the artist is more likely to accept a college date), and little things like artist buzz play a factor.  I also put a lot of weight on the gut instincts of my concerts chair and entire programming board…often times they’re the deciding factor when we’ve got tough choices to make.

Of course, the other half of the coin is the greater Binghamton community.  We really haven’t figured out a great way to gauge what they would like to see.  So on that front, we kind of need to go with what the students want (since that’s what we can obtain data on), and hope the community gets excited as well. 

What are the dirty details re when tickets go on sale to public vs students; and prices?
You got your story right- tickets are on sale online 10am Thursday, September 2nd.  There will be a nice big link on sa.binghamton.edu.  They’re all general admission.  We managed to keep the prices really fair for this one- $36 each (plus a $2 facility fee and $2 convenience charge).  That said, this show is 2 days after two sold out dates at Radio City Music Hall, where the cheapest ticket to be had was $56 and the good seats were $106.  And since the Events Center isn’t that big, everywhere in the building is going to be a good view.
Since BU undergrads pay an activity fee for events like these, their tickets are slightly cheaper- $28, and also available atsa.binghamton.edu.

Backstage riders are legendary.  Any stories you can share about past acts and what kind of fun stuff you had to get for ‘em?  You don’t necessarily have to tell us the NAMES…
We haven’t had anything too legendary in recent years…of course, artists ALWAYS ask for alcohol (often fancy types), which we cannot buy with state dollars.  We’ve also been asked for raw kombucha, goji berries, "non-domestic" chocolate, baby wipes, and deodorant to name a few.  Whatever it takes to keep the artist happy…we pride ourselves on being the most professional programming boards around.

Drake is a pretty big get?  How hard is it to negotiate getting the show to Binghamton?
Again, there’s always a variety of factors, and a lot of times it comes down to routing.  We are fortunate being just three hours from New York City, and that’s how we’ve swung some of our biggest acts in recent years like Green Day and the Foo Fighters.  In terms of the negotiation, it is also tough because we fight hard to keep our ticket prices as low as possible on all of our shows, both for students and the community.  Fortunately, at the end of the day the artist has the same goal as we do; pack the house.  So in terms of negotiation, we usually hit a happy medium in terms of costs. 
 
Funny thing about Binghamton: sometimes people go to a show not because it’s their favorite artist, but just cause it’s a BIG show that’s coming to town and we don’t get that many.  How do you describe Drake too, say, um, your Mom who might want to go see a concert in town?
Drake isn’t your typical rapper in a lot of ways.  Yes, his songs are catchy, and his album "Thank Me Later" was one of the biggest of the summer.  If you haven’t heard of him, take a listen on iTunes- there’s a reason he is so popular amongst young people right now.

But to my mom…honestly I would describe him as a "nice Jewish boy" because he is in fact Jewish (and had a Bar Mitzvah)! He is also Canadian, and started out as an actor playing the character Jimmy, a boy in a wheelchair, on the popular show "Degrassi." To any mom’s who are GLEE fans, I heard someone joke the other day that they planned to show up to the concert in a wheelchair with a "Team Artie" shirt on…thought it was pretty clever.

But in short, it’s guaranteed to be a fun show.  If you’re not familiar with Drake, but just want to head to an energy-filled concert, this may be one to check out.

I have shamelessly stolen this news from local music writer Chris Kocher who somewhat less shamelessly stolen this news from local reporter Chris Strub for the express purpose of getting people to come check out the blog:

DRAKE IS COMING TO BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY.

Also stolen is the fact that tickets go on sale Thursday.

This is all.

PS: For more info on the tour, check out this MTV article.  Yay the word "Binghamton" appearing on MTV.com!

OK, people, let’s consider this a virtually delivered pep-talk.  I’m all about tradition.  Tradition is great; some of the very best events in the Southern Tier are based on tradition: The Spiedie Fest; JulyFest; the Chris Thater Memorial (which, I should add, I will be huffing and puffing my way through this coming Sunday… and if you take a picture I swear to God I’ll rip the negatives or flash chip or whatever it is right out of you damn camera and then stomp on it until it’s dead dead dead.  And then I’ll give you the stink-eye.)  Anyway, tradition is good.  And we have a lot of it.  And we take pride in it.

BUT

The world doesn’t run on tradition alone.  Part of my mission at BingPop has been too highlight the hot; the new; the trendy.  And to point out that some pretty traditional charities/organizations/venues in town are testing the waters with some brand new attention-grabbing adventures.  So without further ado… I present to you… (And I didn’t even need a rhyming dictionary for that brilliant little wordplay…)

REALLY COOL CRAP THAT PEOPLE ARE DOING TO GET YOU TO NOTICE THEM, BINGHAMTON!

COW CHIP BINGO
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF NORWICH
OK, to be fair, this tradition isn’t that new.  It’s 12 years old.  But it’s cool as crap.  Pardon the pun.  Get it?  Cool as crap?  Cause it’s cow chips?  (God, I’m good.)

You can probably figure out what this is all about.  The cows are fed.  Very well fed.  And then released onto a giant board filled with numbers and, well, grass.  Which is the perfect place for cows to, well, “go”.  To the bathroom.  And once the cow has, well, “gone”, the resulting “mass” is examined to determine exactly which numbered box it landed on.  Contestants purchase the numbered boxes in advance for a chance to win cash money prizes.

Cash for poop.  Now THIS is sport.

Well, come on, it’s more interesting than soccer.  Or paint drying.  (Equivalent.)

Now I’m perfectly willing to concede I might only find this event “fascinatin’” ‘cause I’m a “city boy”.  Like cow tipping and the idea that cows give milk—cows give milk, can ya believe it?!—it’s one of those things that you don’t learn about when you buy all your chicken from street-corner pushcarts or in styrofoam fast food containers.  PS, now that I’ve realized meat comes from nature and isn’t grown in a lab, it DOES seem odd that it can come in kid-friendly shapes.  Way to go, Perdue!

Now here’s what I think could make this event a BIT more interesting: urban cow chip Bingo.  COURT STREET is roped off from River Read Books to L’aveggio Roastera, spectators can watch from the sidewalk—maybe the sidewalk seating at Sake Tumi—and egg the cows on like contestants on the Price is Right…  Or better yet: Bird Crap Bingo!  In Bingo!  Just release a fleet of pigeons downtown and the numbered squares could just be peoples heads.  The possibilities are limitless.

OK, let’s move on…

WARP SPEED WEDNESDAYS
THE ROBERSON CENTER

If you’re a Star Wars fan, go away.  Any halfway intelligent human being clearly realizes that Star Trek is superior to Star Wars.  Like that time that Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation got trapped on a ship full of stupid people that only kidnapped him because they were too damn stupid to fix their own stupid ship—that’s what I feel like when I’m trapped in a room full of people who like Star Wars better than Star Trek.  And if you’re offended: Hab SoSlI’ Quch!

(That’s Klingon for something terribly insulting.  I’d translate it here but I’ve got too much class.)

Anyway, the reason this is so important to establish is because the Roberson Museum folks have oh-so-wisely chosen Star Trek (over Star Wars) to show before planetarium shows during Warp Speed Wednesdays.  I’m going to assume that’s it not JUST because Hyperspace Wednesdays sounds dumb.

Here’s out it worked: every Wednseday during the month of August, Roberson projected a Star Trek episode on the ceiling of the planetarium.  Besides making you very, very sleepy (from the reclining seats) and slightly injuring your neck (I doubt this is permanent), it was a great hook to get total dweebs like me into the museum.  I gave it a go this past Wednseday, walking into the museum about 5 minutes after the start of the episode—which is a bit tragic, because I was totally looking forward to the warble of the original Star Trek Theme (which, if you’re curious, is best sung by uttering the words “wah, waaaaah, wah wah wah wah wah” over and over again).

The episode shown was “All Our Yesterdays”.  It goes a little bit like every other episode of Star Trek: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam to a clearly dangerous planet with wild, reckless abandon.  The three get separated, usually in a configuration that allows Spock and McCoy to do lots of knee-slappingly funny bickering.  Kirk almost has sex but doesn’t.  Some kind of time travel accident occurs that involves the screen flickering and somebody vanishing—(that was apparently the only special effect available to all of science fiction in the 60s).  And then an alien with a weird head is defeated.  Occasionally the alien with the weird head is also the one Kirk tries to have sex with.

The showing was populated mainly by moms or dads with their kids; I was actually pretty impressed to see how many 8-year-olds sat fascinated, wordless, watching 50-year-old television. That is, until a late-arrival family sat down in the row right in front of me.  The young boy with them, exuberant, immediately exclaimed, “It’s Star Trek!”

Apparently he knew that I missed the opening credits. 

It was pretty cute.  The first time.  The 5th time, it stopped being so cute.  Luckily, his parents silenced him after a bit.  So I didn’t have to move forward my hastily constructed emergency plan to silence him by shouting , “Three of the original cast members are dead, you hear me?! DEAD!”  See how exuberant you are after that, little punk.

Not long after Star Trek ended, the planetarium show began.  I hadn’t been to a planetarium show since I was, like, 5, so I didn’t really know what to expect.  Basically, what I got was a rundown of that night’s sky, narrated by the museum’s expert.  Although I wasn’t immediately inspired to become on astronomer, I did pick up on a few facts I hadn’t known before: 1) If you look the haze of the Milky Way with binoculars, you can actually make out more distant stars (cool).  2) The little dipper is fainter than the big dipper because it’s further away (not as cool, but something you can tell people at parties so they think you’re smart than they are).  3) Children will immediately fall silent and become fascinated by laser pointers and will not speak again until the laser disappears (useful, see above).

PS: Children will also become immediately fascinated by the ENORMOUS Nintendo Wii screen that’s part of the current Roberson Champions exhibit.  And the rest of us will find it to be a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon if we’re too cheap to buy our own Wii.  Which I am.  See you at the Roberson…

BTW, I e-mailed the Roberson’s new marketing director Jason Fuime at 4:45 PM on a Thursday afternoon because I wanted to find out more about Warp Speed Wednesdays.  Also because I’m a bit sadistic and like making good-spirited, hard-working folk work late.  (Thanks for doing this on short notice, Jason.)

* So why Star Trek? Why not, say, Star Wars? Battlestar Gallactica?
Star Trek is a household name.  No matter what age you are, you’ve likely seen some form or version of Star Trek in your life.  Our planetarium guys also have a great interest in Star Trek and helped develop the name Warp Speed Wednesdays.  They were certainly thrilled to showcase some of their favorite episodes during the promotion. 
 
* How’s the attendance been? And who’s coming? Big dorks like me or everybody?
Attendance has varied during the month we’ve offered the free shows, some days busier than others.  We’ve had some positive feedback for providing a show to weekday visitors, since Roberson does not have scheduled planetarium shows Wednesdays or Thursdays.  As far as who’s coming — all kinds of people including the Trekkies.  We saw a bunch of families with younger kids stop in for the show as part of their visit to the museum.

* Any plans to do this in the future… (We hope so.)
It’s too early to say if we’ll do a similar promotion in the future.  But we are hoping to make some upgrades to the planetarium in the near future, which may result in new shows and more fun offerings like this one.

THE DONNER SUMMER DANCE-OFF
FLASHBACKS

Radio DJs, generally speaking, are meet and greet whores.  I myself am no exception.  It’s not that we actually care about meeting the famous person in question (most of the time).  It’s just that we really like posting the photo on our Facebook and have admiring acquaintances say things like, “OH MY GOD, YOU MET ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINK?!”

I, for the record, have not met Englebert Humperdink.  But I have met KC form KC and the Sunshine Band.  Which is awesome.

And if a meet and greet whore tells you he doesn’t count the number of minutes he gets to spend with said celebrity, he’s a dirty rotten liar.

I got to spend 45 seconds with Rob Thomas.  And spend a good 45 minutes figuring out the optimal photo crop to make it look like there WEREN’T 15 people in this photo.

The reason I’m telling you this is because the Donna Summer meet and greet at next week’s Anderson Center is a hot ticket to get.  APPARANTLY her management is demanding that it NOT be a “cattle call meet and greet”.  Which is really nice for the people who can actually win and/or sleep their way in.  It means you might get to spend a full 46 seconds with her.  And maybe the only person cooler to meet and greet than KC from KC and the Sunshine Band is Donna Summer.  Or maybe Elvis.  But that’s just because he’s dead.

Now the reason I’m telling you this is because you have ONE LAST CHANCE to win your way in to the meet and greet.  Tonight.  At Flashbacks.  The Donna Summer Dance-Off.

The other thing you should know about radio DJs is we take a certain delight in making people do fabulously embarrassing things for prizes.  And if there’s anything more embarrassing than wearing bellbottoms and go go boots to a club in 2010, please let me know so I can make it a radio contest.

The action starts at 9.  And if you know what’s good for your sense of superiority, you’ll be there.  In normal clothes.  (If you want to meet Donna Summer though… AND sit in the front row, you’d better be in costume—preferably drunk out of your mind.  I’m still trying to decide if I’m feeling that desperate: stay tuned.)

The DJ running the contest is Q107’s own Heather Black.  She’s a nicer person than I am, so I don’t think she revels in other people’s embarrassment, but I asked her for a quick e-mail interview just to make sure…

* So the poster says to impress with your "groovy moves". What exactly must one do to impress? Are there PARTICULAR Groovy Moves that will be required?
None in particular. One person actually visited a local store and asked for a copy of "Saturday Night Fever" on DVD to do his research! Anything disco, flamboyant, fun, and groovy!

* Costuming: How all out to you expect people to go. Any tips on where to shop around town?
It’s up to the participant. Obviously, we will be basing part of the contest on how retro and fun the costume is, so I recommend bringing out your inner polyester party!

Lots of people have asked if I have ideas on where to shop. I say find a relative who just can’t get rid of anything (even from the 70s!) and raid their closet, or hit up your nearest thrift store. You can always find fun stuff browsing secondhand racks, and you can’t beat the price!

* Will you, in fact, be in costume for said event?
Let’s just say I plan to "dress to impress!"