As I reported on Monday, the 70th Heart of Illinois Fair is happening this week.
It started on Tuesday and it will go on until this Sunday. I’ll be having my Saturday night dinner there, so look for that report this coming Monday.
Today however, we’re going back four years in time to the 2015 Heart of Illinois Fair.
I was invited to the pre-press party that year and showed up a little early. So I did what anybody would do to kill a little time, I went and got made up to look like Gene Simmons from KISS.
I had about a half an hour to kill until the party started so I was wandering around the fair grounds and I happened to see this face painting booth. There was a poster with the different designs you could get painted on your face and one of them was Gene Simmons from the band KISS. I thought it might be fun to go to the press party painted up like Gene Simmons so I went and talked to the woman painting faces.
She said she could do it, but I’d have to go to the end of the line. Well the line was all pre-teen kids and it was pretty long and I didn’t want to wait in it. I asked if I could talk to her away from the crowd and we went around the corner.
I took a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and asked if that would move me to the front of the line. She grabbed the bill, we went back to the main area and she told the children waiting in line that she was going to have to paint my face first.
The children collectively groaned their disappointment at this strange old guy cutting in line, but hopefully they learned a valuable lesson: Money talks and bullshit walks!
Here I am getting made up to look like Gene Simmons.
I wanna rock and roll all night…and party every day!
Ron Johnson, a photographer from the PJ Star was wandering around and saw me making my Gene Simmons moves and asked if he could take a picture of myself and the face painting woman and we happily obliged. You can see and read the entire MBIP post from that day by clicking here.
And that photo ended up on the front page of the Local & State section of the paper the next day. I had it framed and it now hangs here on this wall in the MBIP World Headquarters.
The funny thing that happened that day was I called my mom that afternoon and asked if she had read the newspaper. She told me that she did and I asked her if she saw my picture in the paper. She said that she didn’t and asked where it was. I told her to go to the Local & State section and she’d see it there.
She got the paper, went to the section and said, “I don’t see you, there’s just a picture of two crazy looking people.”
I told her I was the crazy one on the right and after I told her the makeup story we both cracked up.
And that’s my slice of KISStory from over four years ago!
Have a fabulous Friday and go visit and support this year’s Heart Of Illinois Fair!
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