Brenternet (The World as seen by Brent Moore)

Trying to appeal to the highest common denominator. I can't give you 110% effort, but I will give you 107.4% effort. If you're a spammer and leave me a comment, I will make fun of you. I use twice as many semicolons compared to most other bloggers

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Location: Smyrna, Tennessee, United States

As the title implies, I am Brent K. Moore. I married MariLynn Simons on Sept. 25, 1999. we attend Stewart's Creek Church of Christ. We have five pets, a dachshund, Slinkie, a malamute, Juno, and three rabbits, Ebunny and Ifurry, and now Houdini.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival

At the beginning of the year, the RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival, held every year in Bell Buckle, TN, was my #1 priority of the event I wanted to see this year. Admittedly, I'm not really a huge fan of either RC or Moon Pies, but this festival is, in my opinion, small town southern charm at its best. It was held Saturday, June 21, 2008.

Bell Buckle was established as a railroad town on the Nashville to Chattanooga line. Now, in the center of town is a line of storefronts for antiques and arts & crafts. This is the sign that welcomed visitors.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival

There was entertainment all day long. I went to check that out first, and saw this lady with a moon pie hat.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Moon Pie Hat

The first act I saw was a clogging group. In this scene, the head of the group asked for a volunteer, and this boy stepped up. The guy in the bottom corner was the official videographer of the festival.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Cloggers

Want your picture as an RC Cola can?

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival

There were plenty of food vendors, notably those who will deep fry a moon pie and sell it for $3. You could also buy bottles of RC for $1.50. I'm not sure I had seen that anywhere before, so I indulged in one bottle. I really liked this sign.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Vendor sign

This hippie-looking guy made balloon animals for the kids.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Balloon animal guy

With the fun hats, I liked this one, too.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Pig Hat

Anywhere you find a sizable crowd, you're also likely to find politicians looking for your vote.

Looking for Votes

I wanted to get close enough to get their picture, but not close enough that they would ask for my vote. On a related note, I'd like to stop and take a moment to thank the people at Canon for making such a fine camera with a super-zoom lens.

On the left is Mike Padgett. He is a democrat, one of several who was seeking the party's nomination to lose against incumbent Lamar Alexander. On the right is Jim Tracy. He is a republican, is currently the Tennessee State Senator from District 16 (which includes Bell Buckle) and won re-election this year.

It's a good thing they weren't running against each other or they might have started throwing empty cola bottles at each other. :)

A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTMARE


For me, the highlight of the RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival was a was a play starring the locals. It was low budget put on by volunteers, but I liked it as they put in a lot of effort and attention to detail. It had a lot of small town charm that I like. The story was essentially the pairing of Mr. RC Cola and Miss Moon Pie loosely set to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream. For no apparent reason, most characters acted their parts while standing in a wading pool.

This guy was one of two stagehand type characters, had some acting responsibilities, but was also responsible for backdrop scene changes.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 2

Several of the kids threw moon pies into the crowd, and then lightly tossed a can of RC

A Midsummer's Nightmare 3

The King in the play was of course played by the town's mayor, Dennis Webb

A Midsummer's Nightmare 4

This was the King's assistant

A Midsummer's Nightmare 5

The Queen was played by the Mayor's wife.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 6

In this scene, the fairy and the Assistant Director character use paper bag puppets

A Midsummer's Nightmare 7

for one scene, the boys were dressed as frogs and the girls were flamingos.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 8

The Courtship of RC Cola and Moon Pie. They're in love and they're two great things that go great together!

The Courtship of RC Cola and Moon Pie

In this scene, the evil Ms. Goo-Goo Cluster plots to break up RC Cola and Moon Pie.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 9

The story's antagonist was Ms. Goo-Goo Cluster. Since a Moon Pie isn't fattening, but a Goo-Goo is, she wants to break up RC and Moon Pie, and make the world a more fattening place.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 10

Mr. Coca-Cola is secretly in love with Moon Pie, and works with Ms. Goo-Goo to help break up RC and Moon Pie.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 11

Moon Pie is upset because RC didn't arrive for the date they had planned.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 12

The Queen is thirsty

A Midsummer's Nightmare 13

The Queen wishes to drink RC from the royal goblet, but can't because it is a hole-y grail and all the RC leaks out.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 14

A Midsummer's Nightmare 15

For this scene, the young girls as flamingos and the boys dressed as frogs came back.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 16

A sleepy dust was spread onto RC and he fell asleep on the tree. As Goo-Goo continues the scheme, Puck develops a secret potion that will cause RC to fall in love with the first thing he sees when he wakes up, and it won't be Moon Pie.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 17

RC is so soundly asleep that this is signified by the stage directors to be sawing logs.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 18

Ms. Goo-Goo's plot backfires, and the love potion is actually cast upon Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola falls in love with the first thing he sees, which is Jack Daniels. That's why Coke and Jack go so well together.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 19

Ms. Goo-Goo's plot fails. RC wants to celebrate by having a dance with the Queen of this years festival, Dr. Phyllis Qualls-Brook, who is the Assistant Commissioner of Tennessee Community and Industry Relations.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 20

The king is speaking a riddle, which must be translated, the rest of the cast listen in.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 21

Several try but fail to interpret the king's riddle, such as the boy rapper.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 22

Those who attempt to translate the king's riddle make no sense, thereby confusing the rest of the cast.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 23

Finally someone is found who can interpret the king's riddle. It takes another king to do it. Elvis is ready with his peanut butter and banana.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 24

The Hole-y grail is fixed and enlarged. I'm not really sure the plot explains this part.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 25

For the final number, all the kids are dressed as RC cans and give us their best disco move.

A Midsummer's Nightmare 26

At this point, I know you wish you could see the play for yourself. Well, you're in luck. In between pictures, I shot about 6 minutes of video and put it on youtube. Now, I'm not an expert video director, but hey, it's free.



Even better (but I'm not sure where you can find it) There was a DVD made of the entire festival, and they recorded the entire play, and it only cost me $10.

OLYMPIC GAMES

amid all of the entertainment, they also have several games.

The first contest is the Moon Pie Toss. The gentlemen pictured below are participants in the fine sport of a Confection Distance Thrust.

Moon Pie Toss Conestant A
Moon Pie Toss Contestant B

These are the 1st, second and third place winners from the game of "How far can you throw a moon pie"

Winners!

The Blue Ribbon 1st place winner in the 80's-style cutoff shorts and pump-it-up reeboks says he came all the way from St. Louis. That's real dedication to participate in a fine sport of confection distance thrust. I'm thinking he undergoes a highly regimented cross-training program for this sort of all year long. I think his throw went about 200 feet and would have gone further if it hadn't have hit a tree branch.

The Red Ribbon 2nd place winner appears like he's trying to look like he's too cool for this.

I asked MariLynn to describe the expression of the daughter of the third place yellow ribbon winner. She said "Been in the sun too long"

This next contest is the RC Cola Dash. The "Dash" part is a little misleading as this was not a speed contest, but more focused on skill and accuracy.

The Rules: Take an open but full RC Cola can and balance it on your head. If you can make it all the way to the finish line (about 20 feet away) without dropping it (or steadying it with your hand - which would be cheating) you go on to round two. In round two, you stack two RC cans on your head. 4 contestants made it past round two onto round 3 stacking 3 RC cans on their head!

RC Cola Dash Contestants 1 RC Cola Dash Contestants 2 - RC Explosion

In the picture above on the right, on girl dropped her can and it seemed to explode really big.

RC Cola Dash Contestant 3 RC Cola Dash Contestant 4
RC Cola Dash Contestants 5 RC Cola Dash Contestants 6
RC Cola Dash Contestants 7 RC Cola Dash Contestant 8
RC Cola Dash Contestants 9 RC Cola Dash Contestant 10 - Deep concentration
RC Cola Dash Contestant 11 - passing round 1

On to round two with two RC cans stacked.

RC Cola Dash Contestants 12 RC Cola Dash Contestant 13
RC Cola Dash Contestant 14 RC Cola Dash Contestant 15 - Splash!
RC Cola Dash Contestant 16 - about to lose it RC Cola Dash Contestant 17

I've got to hand it to this guy for finding the vintage RC T-shirt!

RC Cola Dash Contestant 18 RC Cola Dash Contestant 19 - Splat!

Now it's on to round three! 5 contestants, all kids, were able to do it with two cans. How far can they get with three cans stacked?

RC Cola Dash Contestant 20 RC Cola Dash Contestant 21

This girl could practically do anything with two cans on her head, such as dance. For whatever reason, she couldn't get three to stay at all.

RC Cola Dash Contestant 23

This girl is your winner! She went all of about 3 feet with three cans stacked up.

RC Cola Dash Contestant 22 <the Winner>

The final Olympic contest was an old southern favorite: Watermelon Seed spitting contest. It's not as photogenic of a contest as some of the others, which is why I'm posting all of one picture of it. Most of the contestants were kids, but the tall men were the winners. The girl on the left is just happy to be eating watermelon.

RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest

I had to leave before seeing this, but they also every year have the World's Largest Moon Pie, which they cut into small pieces and give to the crowd. Of course there were a bunch of exhibitors, artists and craftsmen selling their wares throughout the day.

3 Comments:

Blogger Eartha Kitsch said...

Wow....that film is incredible. The photos are great too. I feel like I might could bring home a prize in the Moon Pie toss. I better start training!

You know, you've got to love townsfolk for letting themselves get all campy like this!

8:44 AM  
Blogger BrentKMoore said...

the corresponding Myspace bulletin:

This summer, I went to the RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival in Bell Buckle. On my blog, I put stories, pictures and a video of the day's events. They had a play about RC and Moon Pies loosely based on a Shakespeare play, followed by southern olympic games

Check it out here:
http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/11/rc-cola-and-moon-pie-festival.html

If I didn't mention it earlier, I also have been posting many of my fair photos to my blog, I separated them into 6 seperate posts, which you can find here:

http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/10/100-things-to-see-at-fair-part-1.html
http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/10/100-things-to-see-at-fair-part-2.html
http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/10/100-things-to-see-at-fair-part-3.html
http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/11/100-things-to-see-at-fair-part-4.html
http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/11/100-things-to-see-at-fair-part-5.html
http://brentkmoore.blogspot.com/2008/11/100-things-too-see-at-fair.html

These would be perfect if you had 6 hours to spend cooking a turkey!

Brent

6:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wanted to make the festival this year but already booked for the Georgia Peach Festival. Will make it a priority for next year. Enjoyed your blog about it!!

Roiella

9:04 AM  

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