Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

Geoff Fox:

Since 2002, Geoff Fox has written about the offbeat and dynamic personalities that make Pasco County unique. He is now revisiting them, meeting new characters and sharing more stories. Email

Pasco Links:

Latest blog posts:

Most Recent Entries

Monthly Archives

Local News | Photos

Blurg

Posted Feb 18, 2010 by Geoff Fox

Updated Feb 18, 2010 at 04:17 PM

Somewhere around the third round of his legendary bout with Buster Douglas, Mike Tyson must have realized he was unprepared.

It’s an ugly feeling.

He was eating jabs, taking hooks to the body and being challenged in a way he didn’t expect.

I wasn’t eating punches at the Pasco County Fair this week, but I might have felt better afterward if I had. Turns out the psychology of boxing – the most important aspect of the brutal game, experts will tell you – isn’t much different than the mindset required to accomplish other physical tasks, such as eating your way through the county fair.

You can never stop endeavoring to persevere.

When it comes to devouring greasy fair food for entertainment purposes and bragging rights, this wasn’t my first rodeo. Six years ago, I inhaled pork butt on a stick, an elephant ear, smoked polish sausage, a fried green tomato sandwich, a London broil sandwich and marinated chicken shish kabob.

And I didn’t leave a crumb.

So, I may have been a little overconfident when I strolled up the midway this week, eyeballing all the seductively displayed food in vendors’ windows, the whiff of sizzling sausage, baking pizza and sugary cotton candy mingling in my snout.

But I didn’t want the regular stuff. A couple of years ago, I watched a colleague from the photo department attack a barbecue sundae and felt a pang of jealousy. It looked good, and he seemed to relish every bite.

So, I started with one of those. Served in what looked like a 16-ounce Styrofoam cup, the barbecue sundae has baked beans on the bottom, cole slaw in the middle and barbecue beef or pork on top; I went with beef, and poured barbecue sauce over everything. I finished the $6 item in about four minutes.

While I genuinely enjoyed the sundae, my undoing might have coincided with my next selection: crab rangoons from the Chinese & American Food vendor. I was probably lured by the two-for-$3 deal, although I wasn’t sure what a crab rangoon was. I’m still not sure what one is, but if you’re a fan of cream cheese and grease, you can’t go wrong.

My stomach started to grumble during the second rangoon, and it took me several minutes to finish them.

Next was the sausage and chips plate – sold at European Foods Sausage and Chips – for $6, and I’m as much a sucker for the smell of cooking pig as the next non-vegetarian. I opted for the Polish sausage, rather than Italian, and added onions and peppers. Served straight from the fryer, the chips glistened with grease.

I hit the wall halfway through.

While the barbecue sundae practically ate itself, the sausage, and, particularly, the bun, were caloric hurdles, and I was feeling too fat to jump.

I don’t remember feeling that way six years ago, and I still hadn’t had dessert.

That came in the form of a caramel apple sundae, which featured a sliced apple and soft-serve vanilla ice cream topped with caramel sauce and peanuts. I left only a few spoonfuls of caramel in the bottom of the cup.

I wasn’t prepared for the gymnastics my stomach was about to perform. I watched Robinson’s Racing Pigs beside a trio of snowbirds from Indiana. They graciously laughed at my jokes, but chuckled harder at the gurgling chorus coming from my gut; the grumbles and falsetto screams from which foretold a painful, grueling exit from the fair.

As I fled, I could hear the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” blaring from powerful speakers; a faux Humphrey Bogart was repeating, “Play it again, Sam”; and the white noise generated by hundreds of people milling about.

I was practically too full to breathe.

My stomach swirled.

I passed a vendor selling fried Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and wished, for a moment, that I’d never been born at all.