New Times - San Luis Obispo

I made a cheese and fruit platter for Jessica Simpson. I was her roadie. I was a carnie, a Hot Dog on a Stick dipper, a cotton candy spinner, a pig weigher and ear tagger, an hombre de basura. Yes, I went deep - DEEP! - undercover and waaaay behind the scenes to bust open the real story behind the Mid-State Fair.

Just what does it take to bring you big-name live entertainment, deep-fried foods, livestock shows and auctions, and rides and prizes all provided in a clean environment? I'm here to tell you, it's a heck of a lot of work employing a cast of hundreds and the sort of organization and planning we could have used in our Iraq exit strategy.

Last Sunday, New Times sent a team of crack investigators (well, photog Christopher Gardner, my good pal and personal assistant Jenny Anthony, and me) to the biggest little fair anywhere and set us loose to find the real story on what makes the Mid-State Fair a great place to spend a day.

We arrived 90 minutes before the fair opened, just in time for fair employee Rob Orcutt to load us into an ATV and cart us over to the grandstand where Jim Jennings (aka J.J.) was directing a crew of about 20 guys to unload Jessica Simpson's three trucks of equipment.

J.J.'s been "doing the stage" since 1992, but he's been working at the Mid-State Fair since 1980. He's never seen Simpson's reality show "Newlyweds," and though he'll probably get to meet her, it's "no big deal" to him. Heck, he's been there to forklift Britney Spears on stage, so Jessica Simpson barely rates.

I started carting off case after case of equipment, and let me tell you, that stuff's heavy! One of Simpson's crew told us where onstage to wheel the boxes filled with a huge video screen, extra lighting and sound equipment, and smoke machines.

Jenny stood in the middle of the stage and looked out over the nearly 15,000 seats in the Grandstand.

"It's making me nervous just being up here," she said. True enough, it's an intimidating feeling imagining all those seats filled with squealing fans, most of whom probably never think about all the people - roadies, electricians, sound and lighting experts - who worked all day to bring them a show. And all these behind-the-scenes folks need feeding, so we were off to catering.

Cal Poly food-science graduate Bonnie Bardin, 24, runs a makeshift kitchen set up near the Grandstand stage.

Bardin giggled, "No! God no! Every cow that runs into the arena goes right past the silver wall right there."

"Cowboys ride past and look over the wall and say, 'What's for breakfast?'" added one of Bardin's workers.

"After this story we'll probably have the Health Department out here," said Bardin.

Attention Health Depart-ment: It's very clean in here, and Bardin made me wash my hands up to my elbows before making Jessica Simpson's cheese and fruit platter, of which I sampled some cheese and lived! Don't bother Bardin and her crew. They're very busy.

"We prepare food - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - for Jessica Simpson and her crew, our crew, all the tech guys," said Bardin. "We also cater food to the Sky Box, hospitality tents, backstage at both free stages, the VIP tent. We make about 50 deli trays a day."

Bardin let me take a look at Simpson's rider, her list of food demands. Carb Countdown milk?

"It's a low-carb dairy product," said Bardin.

Bardin's weirdest requests?

"ZZ Top wanted Easy Cheese that squeezes out of a tube and Big Macs for the road. People can request anything and we'll send runners to get it for them. LeAnn Rimes wanted fig-scented candles in her dressing room. Blink 182 wanted vegetarian chicken nuggets."

Vegetarian chicken nuggets? Oooookay. Does Bardin pal around with these performers?

"They do come and eat in the tent . well, some don't. But I don't like to get involved. It's too easy to get caught up. I'm here to cook and make really good food."

Enough about star-quality food. What about chow for the average Joe and Josephine Fairgoer? I headed over to Hot Dog on a Stick where Emily Latronico trained me on how to dip the franchise's famous corndogs. I donned Emily's special red, yellow, blue, and white cap, got into the glass box, and looked out at the gathering crowd of hungry corndog fans.

INVISIBLE MEN
No one notices the Mid-State Fair's cleaning crew, but without them fairgoers would be knee-deep in trash.

"You dip the dog in the batter, spinning it until it's completely covered, then pick it up and let the excess drip off. Hold it up high so people can see," instructed Latronico.

Hot Dog on a Stick is a lot of show, a show Latronico regularly puts on at the Visalia Mall. The hat, the uniform, the dogs held high - it's all a little embarrassing, but Latronico sees it as showmanship. She doesn't even mind her crazy uniform.

"I sometimes wear it to the grocery store after work or something. People always say, 'Oh! You work at Hot Dog on a Stick!' Everyone recognizes it. Of course, I get made fun of a lot, too."

After my dog-dipping experience - and by the way, Latronico says I'm a natural - I was sent to a slightly less visible job: trash man. With a crew of six guys, all Spanish-speaking Mexicans, I walked around the fair emptying trashcans. These guys might as well be invisible. Nobody pays any attention to them. But without them, trashcans would quickly overflow.

I launched a full bag into the back of the trailer and one of the guys asked me if I knew how to do this job: "¿Usted sabe a haga este trabajo?"

Jeez, I can't even do this right. I apologized for making them do extra work, posed for a photo op, and walked back toward the livestock barns. About 10 minutes behind my crew was another, and that's all these guys do, one crew after another.

Jenny, Chris, and I waited for Rob to return to the ATV to take me to my next assignment. We sat in front of a burger joint by the beef barn.

You can also eat a burger while smelling cattle. Just then a little girl walked past holding her nose: "I can't stand that disgusting smell," she lamented to her father.

For most fairgoers, the livestock displays are as close as they'll ever get to a farm. I realized just how disconnected we are from our food supply. Little did I know I was about to get a step closer. Rob returned and said, "It's pig weighing time!"

I assisted Brian Roberts at the pig weighing station, handing him the ear tags, which he stapled into pigs' ears as they came off the scale. Now I know what they mean by squealing like a pig. People, pigs don't like getting their ears pierced.

Jenny loves bacon, but after a few minutes of screaming pig-ear stapling, she was ready to give up God's perfect food.

Our most problematic pig was Fabio, owned by 14-year-old Los Osos resident Alisa Sharp. Brian tried to tag that pig three times, but the pig struggled, screamed, and bucked. The tag wouldn't stay in.

"When he was young, I had to squeeze his penis to make him obey," she said, making a pinching motion with her fingers.

Rob trucked us over to the midway, where we were introduced to Shawnee Merten, who's helping Davis Enterprises run this year's carnival. Carnies are a breed apart, leading a peripatetic lifestyle and living in a closed culture most people will never pierce.

I learned, for instance, that carnies have their own language, though most carnies these days no longer speak it.

"In the '30s, '40s, and '50s, it was spoken a lot," said Shawnee. "That way we could talk in front of marks without them knowing what we were saying."

Yes, to carnies
we people "out there in the other world" are marks; rubes waiting to be fleeced, explained Kris Kristensen, a carnie for 30 years. Even in English, carnies have a vocabulary unto themselves. I learned that taking down the carnival is called slough, that a doniker is another name for a restroom, that
if carnies yell "Hey rube," all the carnies in earshot come
running because trouble's afoot. If you're walking down the midway and a carnie's trying to lure you into a game, you can say, "I'm with it," which means you're with the carnival, hence you're no mark.

Shawnee took me into the commissary, a trailer provided for the carnies to provide basic necessities like toiletries and candy.

"If I was going to hire you, the first thing you'd have to do is take a drug test," said Shawnee.

Shawnee set me up with a red shirt and blue and white tie-dye hat that read, "It's Carnival Time!" and took me over to a balloon and dart game. My carnie mentor was David Mack, a carnie since he was a kid.

David had a couple marks - two pudgy boys - on the line. One threw and missed, and David offered a tip on how to throw the dart. The kid's next shot hit a balloon. The game was a "build up," meaning the more balloons a mark pops, the bigger the prize. In this case, the prizes were framed pictures of famous people like Carmen Electra and 50 Cent, Playboy Members Only signs, sports team logos.

David's mark wanted to try for a bigger prize, so he bought more darts with a 20-dollar bill. David handed the kid his change, and the kid started to stuff it in his pocket.

Just then Dan Raney, who runs the game with David, returned. He's a third generation carnie. His dad ran a "mirror joint," a place with prizes like these pictures, for 30 years, and his grandfather did it for 50 years. Dan's a college student who stops in to carnie on his school breaks.

Since they're on commission, a carnie can make pretty good money; some make up to $1,500 a week.

After running the game for awhile, Shawnee led me over to a "floss joint," a cotton candy vendor, so I could try my hand at spinning cotton candy, but before we got there we ran into Sharie Davis, the carnival owner.

"Truly, at night with all the lights and kids running around, there's a really special feeling at a carnival, but it's not much of a moneymaker. Maybe in the old days there was money out there, but now it's more a lifestyle," she said.

She raised three kids in a trailer, on the road, in the carnival. It's a life I couldn't imagine, but for carnies it's perfect.

I finally spun some cotton candy - tricky! - and Shawnee bid us goodbye. Chris headed back to the paper to pick out the most humiliating photos of me he could find, and Jenny and I headed over to palm reader Sherry Marino's trailer. I wasn't allowed to listen in on Jenny's reading, but when she emerged she looked visibly shaken, saying she'd gotten good news and bad.

"Come on, Sarcastic Sam," and with that Jenny pulled me down the fair's main drag to one of the many watering holes, where we proceeded to drink enough to make Jessica Simpson look smart in comparison.