GK: Lots of new things at the Fair. A grief counseling booth: (SS SOBBING) for people who feel overweight. (SS: Why did I eat all those cheese curds? Four corndogs. Cotton candy. Oh my God.) FN: You're okay. Tomorrow is another day.) They also do tattoo removal. (TR: I got this spiderweb on my face. I was so drunk. Help me. FN: Hold still. ZAPPER. THEN BLOWTORCH.)
There is a Lutheran Fortune Telling Booth now.
SS (MINN): Well, I see a cold winter for you but I don't think the schools are going to close. I think you'll be happy, especially if you eat less and volunteer more. I think you're going to take a little vacation this winter and I recommend you leave the water running a little so the pipes don't freeze. College tuition is going to go up. And your kids are going to ignore your advice and go their own way and there's not much you can do about it. I'd check my motor oil if I were you.
GK: There is a booth in the Grandstand where you can get GPS monitors for your car. One has Hillary's voice (SS: The route that you are taking is not an easy route but I believe that persistence will enable you to reach your goal and that this experience is one you will learn from.) and the other has Donald Trump's (TR: You are so lost ---- what a loser ---- I can't believe how many wrong turns you have made ---- and if I were driving this car, I would've been there two hours ago. So sad.)
Labor Day is important in Minnesota: it marks the end of allergy season (SFX) and the beginning of flu season (SFX). But sometimes the two can overlap for a few days and that can have disastrous consequences and that is a sound you don't want to hear. It's the end of canning season. Eat what you can, can what you can't. It's the beginning of marching band and in every town someone is practicing the clarinet (SFX) and the tuba (SFX) and the bass drum (SFX). It's the beginning of Native American Summes. And also the big weekend for the last of the garage sales. Your last chance to purchase Jell-O molds, Lutheran church cookbooks selling for 10 cents a pound, a metal detector (SFX) ----it works! ---- . polka mix cassette tapes (SFX), duck calls (SFX), weed whackers (SFX).
GK: And soon after comes winter, or what the folks at Hazelden call "the busy season," as the days get shorter and shorter, except for Thanksgiving which, if you spend it with your family, is a very long day. A lot of people move away in November. They go to Arizona (GOLF SFX) where they live in senior communities where everyone around you has prostate or hip or knee problems or all of them (FN OLD: Yeah, I'm supposed to go in a week from Thursday, I think. I forget. Say, what is the flower that grows on a branch with big thorns on it? Huh? What? A rose. Right. HEY ROSE, WHEN DO I GO IN TO THE DOCTOR'S?) or they go to Florida where every year a few people find out that alligators can travel at speeds of up to 40 mph (SFX). Compared to being eaten by an amphibian, snow shoveling does not seem bad to me, but anyway, many people here are heading south after our show and I just want to say to them:
God be with you til we meet again
May your winter not be soured
By being attacked and then devoured
God protect you from amphibians
And doctors' mistakes, and poisonous snakes
God be with you til the Fair next year.