"Livestock, Mind Bending & Live Music" or "My Night At the OC Fair"

Last week I was on my way home from work and I got caught in traffic on the 55 freeway. The traffic was caused by the concert that was scheduled for the Orange County Fair later that evening. I had read that Chris Daughtry and his band were going to be there so I decided to stay in the traffic and go to the fair and see if I could get a last minute ticket to the concert. Besides I'd never been to the Orange County Fair and I thought it would be a good distraction to the chaos going on in Fleaville, uh, rather, my house.

Even though I paid for regular parking I was able to park right outside of the gate. (I later found out that the amphitheater was on the opposite side of the park, but for the time being I thought I had a wonderful parking spot!) The lady at the ticket booth told me that the band had just released their tickets back to the booth and I got to choose from a handful of awesome seats. I chose the seat in the 3rd row after the orchestra pit, dead center. I got my ticket for the fair included with the ticket for the concert all for $29.00. Quite the bargain considering I buy most of my concert tickets on eBay.

I meandered around the fair for a while. It was a beautiful summer night. I didn't even need a sweater.

I saw blond cows, pink and black pigs, goats, huge rabbits, tiny rabbits, turkeys, and sheep.I asked this young lady, "Have you any wool? I have a friend in Texas who would certainly like to knit it up in to something pretty for her niece in Alaska who is still pending." She said, "No, I have no wool but I do have this cool Hawaiian Lycra one piece bathing suit. Would you like to go swimming with me?"
Sorry but I had to take a pass on that. I didn't want my hair to be messed up when Chris Daughtry spied me from the stage and fell in love with me.

I walked around until I found something that I wanted to eat. There was no lack of food available however since I do not eat meat that eliminates about 98% of the food offered. I settled on a vegetarian burrito but I had to eat it with out anything to drink. Apparently Pepsi Co. made the OC Fair Food vendors a deal they couldn't pass up because most of them were serving Pepsi and this Diet Cokeaholic will not drink Pepsi. After I ate my burrito I found the wine tasting patio. There was a man with a guitar singing Jimmy Buffet tunes so I figured that this was the fair gods telling me that I was supposed to hang out there for a while. Unfortunately by the time I got my $6.00 plastic dixie cup of Merlot the singer was finished for the night. So there I sat just me and my wine. The wine was pretty gross for having been an award winner so I threw it away after only drinking a couple of sips.

As I walked out of the patio I saw a crowd of people gathering at a small stage area so I went to see what was going on. IT WAS A HYPNOTIST SHOW!! I LOVE hypnotist shows! I had recently seen a snippet of a show on You Tube where someone was hypnotized in to thinking that he was Ricky Martin and it was pretty funny. I hoped this show would be as good. There were many, many people packed in to this little arena and all of the seat were filled. This is one of the few times that being a small person comes in handy because I just made my way through the crowd and sat on the grass in between the two sections of benches. I had the best seat in the house! I think I was the only one in the pavilion who didn't want to be hypnotized. When the hypnotist asked for volunteers to come up on stage everyone from 6 year olds to 86 year olds were raising their hands. Once the show got going the hypnotist had one big guy thinking that there was a mean dog under his seat and the only thing he could do to console himself was to jump out of his seat and skip around singing the "I love you, you love me", Barney song. He had another guy who would jump out of his seat, swat his own behind and say, "Who's your daddy?", and when he did that his neighbor would slap him on the behind and say, "I'M your daddy!". There were a couple of girls who thought that their butts kept falling off and they would have to run around the stage to find their butts and reattach them. There were guys with tattoos who thought their tattoos were biting them. There were dance contests and air guitar players...it was really fun. The very best part was at the very end as he was telling the hypno-tees that they would not be embarrassed over anything they did that night...he also told them that for the rest of their life they would never, ever get behind the wheel of a car if they had been drinking. I hope that post-hypnotic suggestion worked, and if so I think every bartender in the world should utilize it in their daily work routine.

The hypnotist show ended just in time for me to go to the concert. When I got inside the amphitheater I was shocked to see how enthusiastic the crowd was. I was very surprised to see how many men were there and you could tell that they were there enjoying the concert not just escorting their wives or girlfriends.

Chris Daughtry put on a very good show. He plays to the crowd by hitting his signature high notes that seem to come from the depths of his soul. He threw many of his water bottles out to the crowd and his guitar player tossed at least 15 guitar picks out, too. I'm happy to report that Chris Daughtry is every bit as good looking in person as he was on American Idol. I think they need to do a recount!















When the crowd was not standing...this was my view.
How is it that I am always the lucky one who gets to sit behind the water polo goalie or the starting line backer? It never fails!