Being a Wisconsinite, west side, I’ve seen a few people I know pop up at the Minnesota State Fair, now and then and again, but not like this time, with a pop-up-stand artist at a talk show.
I was with a friend and we sat down in the bleachers, and a guest was brought up that turned out to be — someone who I knew from back in Hudson, an artist with a co-op gallery she owned set up in the middle of the downtown a few years ago. When I had moved to that part of town, I crossed paths with her numerous times as she entered her small gallery on the near side of main street, where there are dozens of small art pieces spaced closely together, and stacked high in some occasions, across about 500 square feet, using every inch effectively. I’d say hello when passing by, like to so many people in the entertainment industry, then it trailed off over the course of a few months. Did the Cream of the Crop, the name of her gallery, which also offers framing and art installation, and cool ear pieces that just sound Russian, start with a zip and then become just another veggie? But wait, there would be much more to come, you could say fine art, just as drawn.
At the ever-evolving fair — where there was art drawing attention all around, and even as protest making you think deeply about war and its disruption and pain, like Van Gogh missing an ear, with an earring, and isn’t that brain work what it’s all about — she had attendants set up for her a big pop-up shelf, in addition to her main fair display farther afield. It was set at an angle by the corner of a larger stage set with bleachers, and displayed her wares, from a box with a large number of her pieces, usually about two by three feet in size. There was a Q and A with the artist, Genie Castro, of a few minutes, and I’ve taken note that there’s stuff new afoot at the gallery, an even more efficient path to max out the pieces of art you can view, then the show would go on to the next guest.
I saw the artist again in Hudson the next night, when she was again, scooting across the Main Street to get to her gallery, and yelled that she’d seen me at the fair. I asked, as I had not known she had attained this level of prominence, how the experience went …
“It was great,” she turned her head and said with a smile.
The fair stand that had hosted it, for a Fox9 talk show, had been conducting business like many there, and soon to follow at these same fairgrounds is an event that’s a vintage collectables antiques show over the first weekend in October, and maybe a few of Genie’s pieces qualify as that, and for that, as afternoon passes into late evening. Who knows, if you missed her now, she might pop-up there too? But the Fox9 show had been taking in lines of people who were coaxed to cheer by the sub-hosts, who brought up guests for the main guy again, who let it be said this time quipped and questioned very little, but at this new and news opportunity they were asked to say a lot.
The main host was asking such queries of each guest, the last of which we saw was a man with a website devoted to analyzing eateries, each one brought up for large gaps of time but usually drawing gaffes the size of a plate of nachos. Such as in his case, since this critic and others weren’t giving much in the way of responses, the dreaded one-word-answer scenario, and the host was working overtime to get them to elaborate. It was along the line of, yeah my dog has the furriest big, brown tail. Feigning surprise, the retort, “seriously?” Or to put it another way, “our shop is designed to be intentional.” How so? “It’s done with intention.”
You get the point.
He had some female guest hosts, and together they were said to be quite well known, and carry on with some brashness like people who were regional celebs, people of some import, although it could have just been the fact that they were I gotta say it, I’m assuming prominent Republicans, because that’s how such people act, and that this is Fox. (More on that in a bit.)
The crew had a person or two, dressed with charisma and avidly waving a sign that said “applause,” and trying with overt attention to build a crowd of viewers on the two sets of bleachers forming a square corner by the stage, but their action was a little over the top. The host quipped a number of times, that maybe they could outdo their rival stand, WCCO News. The usually recognized leader in the Twin Cities market, and with quite frankly more interesting content than the Fox show and that is the point here.
My wife called the host over, in full disclosure, to sign the cast on the leg of a little girl she knew and happened to be sitting next to. In fairness, at that moment the host was being called away by a filming crew member to quickly disengage and move on to the next task. He was abrupt and acted like a disconnected politician who is doing something within a crowd only because he is expected to, had the body language of, let’s just quick get this done, and did not make eye contact with the little girl.
Back up on stage, the host referred to the correspondent back on the floor, and she had selected a group of people to quiz from the audience, and one uttered a cuss word. The host blurted out that it was inappropriate for a family show of their type, and over the course of the next few minutes mentioned it several times, and just would not let it go. Enough already. Such words have become part of the language.
The host, moreover, had a presence that was engaging, with a voice that commended your attention and was powerful and forceful. So he responded, about the idea someone would say such a thing, “what in the name of …” So he basically stopped just short of using a cuss word to cuss out someone else who had used a cuss word.
All this sounds too conservative, and after all, this is a Fox station. But someone needs to give this man something to say while on the air. Maybe he could prep ahead of time and have some anecdotes waiting in the background, if the guest stays largey mum. Better than virtual dead air. (Granted, the man has a big job and lots of constraints on his time. Maybe prepping crapped out.)
This scenario sounds like one I encountered when watching Fox at a sports bar, as an intro to their talk show blab, back when President Biden was having his term. How Biden behaves was made blandly boring, not blazing with controversy, no matter how hard they tried.
The host was Tucker Carlson, or is it Carlson Tucker, and as you can tell from the fact I can’t remember, he has got to be the most boring man on television. They were trying to make a point that Biden has a “sniffing” problem and tried to back it up by showing him bending over slightly to greet someone, with a hand on their shoulder, in a still image or two. Is not the average TV viewer astute enough to realize that this was captured in a single moment, and would be different on video, with Biden shortly afterward standing upright?
Someone, give this man some material. Please. Is Fox that desperate?