Summerfest

Last night I helped some of my closest friends peel 2 billion mangoes. I now firmly believe that mangoes are the most satanic fruit of all the fruits. What was the fruit God told Adam and Eve not to eat? Mangoes. Fat, juicy, sticky, awful, horrible, mangoes. Mangoes are the snakes of the food world. If they could move on their own, they would probably slither. And then scare the hell out of you when you are trying to run down City Creek Road in Salt Lake City. And cause you to jump 10 feet into the air and scream like an 12-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. And abandon the innocent young lady you're running with to fend for herself in the now dark canyon.

Sorry, Hannah. I hope they find you soon. 


I didn't always feel this way about mangoes. But after peeling and chopping 2 billion of them, I am convinced that if the Germans could have gotten a hold of them, World War II would have turned out differently. Mangoes have the skin of cooled tar but the body of pudding. While peeling them, I felt like I was engaged in some kind of experimental therapy. Like, the kind where you try to perform a frustrating task until eventually it breaks you down and causes you to run through the entire gambit of human emotion within 2 minutes because the Queen of Colors ruined your childhood.

When the 7 of us started peeling and chopping the 2 billion mangoes, we resembled the 7 dwarfs. Our "Hi Ho" harmonies were moving. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir tried to have us shut down.

Each of our singing voices faded out one-by-one until finally all you could hear were frustrated sighs and Anna quietly humming the soundtrack of Schindler's List.

20 minutes after that Emma was throwing mangoes violently against the wall while Daniel stood on top of the table nonsensically screaming at noone in particular, "you don't know me! This is MY life! MY life!"

With each Mango I peeled, the rage that built up inside of me took the world back 3 steps on accomplishing world peace.

Sorry, Miss America.

But, alas, at the cost of our happiness, all 2 billion mangoes are peeled and ready to go for a big event this weekend. My dear friends Anna and Emma will be setting up an island food stand this year at Summerfest in Bountiful, just north of Salt Lake City. They, along with their faithful fans and enthusiastic volunteers, Daniel, Isabel, and me, will be manning the station from Thursday evening to Saturday evening. I'm about to fulfill my childhood dream of serving food to strangers.

I'm really not kidding that that was a childhood dream of mine. My best friend Sam and I used to have endless conversations about how cool it was going to be to one day start working at a fast food restaurant the exact moment we turned 16. For reasons that are still totally unclear to me, we thought this would be the most fun that any person could possibly ever have. Ever.

What we didn't know was this: working is hard. Add food and now it's hard and dirty. Add customers and now it's hard, dirty, and frustrating.

I'm sure you're getting the point. The more things you add, the more miserable working is.

It is for this reason I never want to be jack of all trades for a living.

Well I never did get to live the fast food dream. But here I am, 60 years later, and I finally have the opportunity to live part of it for a couple of days. And I'm as excited as I was when I was 10 years old.

And I would love to see all of you there. Well, not all at the same time. Like, maybe you could start a sign-up sheet and stagger a little. Our stand is called "Island Hopper." Please stop by and say hello, even if you're not hungry for island food. Your pretending to patronize our stand will make us look super popular and will probably help us make a lot of friends that we can get to sign our yearbooks later. Which is all we really care about.

Bonus points if you show up with your cat. Extra bonus points if you show up with more than one cat. And 5,000 points if you show up in a Snuggie. I'll keep track of the points. So far I have the most. Over 200,000.

Entry to Summerfest is free and apparently the performances and food are all really great. And you can find info on it here. I will be there during all of Summerfest with the exception of Friday during the day until about 6:00 that evening.

Please come and drink mango juice. It was made with hate.

~It Just Gets Stranger