It’s August and we need a fair amount of weird

My longtime colleague, Nikki Tundel, has long entertained us with her insistence that the Iowa State Fair is head and shoulders above the Minnesota version.

And she may be right. She makes a compelling case on the strength of the unpretentious weirdness of the events in Iowa. Minnesota’s fair is a ton of fun, but aside from the usual people-watching, you don’t see a lot of things that are distinctively weird.

On her Facebook page today, which you can’t see because it’s protected, she provided a short video of yesterday’s chicken-calling contest — the women’s division. Judges, by the way, aren’t allowed to look at the performers, lest they be swayed by the beauty of it all.

Here’s a sample from a few years ago.

See? How are we to beat that?

There’s some comfort, we admit, to the fact that somewhere in this land, people will still sit patiently to watch humans making chicken noises.

For Minnesota, it’s county fairs that bring the weirdness and today Forum News Service provides a perfect example — backseat driving.

Thank you, Murray County Fair.

It’s fair time in the Midwest. And we need more weird.