How many jokes can you think of for "West Side Nut Club"?

I won a Care Bear. Probably the highlight of the night, and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

Wednesday night I hit the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival (known to us Southern Indiana folks as simply "The Fall Festival"). It goes on down here for a week in the fall every year. For those of you who don't know, it's supposedly the second largest street festival in the United States, after Mardi Gras. Which, by the way, it pales in comparison to (obviously), but it's still a nice little trip if you don't mind parking a mile away and trudging through over-crowded sidewalks in search of just the right food your appetite might fancy.

Personally, I love it.

Let's have a run down of my purchases, shall we?

Sweet potato fries
Frog legs with hushpuppies
Brat burger
Alligator jerkey
Shark fajita
Bread pudding
12 oz. bottled water
24 oz. bottled water

Plus five bucks on one of those silly games where you throw dull darts at under-inflated balloons and pray to win one of the small prizes (because you know that it doesn't matter that the little kid before you won the giant Spongebob...you, a fully grown man, better stick with the keychain-sized items). I won, for the record, a small Care Bear. Bedtime Bear, actually. He kinda has like this lump on the side of his neck for some unknown reason. It freaks me out, honestly. I think I'll change his name to "Lymph Node Bear."

There's something very satisfying that comes from winning something. That's why I'm always playing those crazy crane games at Wal-Mart. I have bags of stuff that I've snatched out of there. Sure, you know you're basically over-paying, and you know that there's no reason for you to have these things at all. But there's something about saying, "Yeah, I won that. Didn't buy it or anything...didn't have to. I just won it." It's a feeling of accomplishment or something. Maybe it's a male thing.

Anyway, add it all up and it was a twenty-six dollar outing. And that, my friends, is why you should add as you go. So when you realize you just spent twenty-six dollars, you don't freak out and throw Lymph Node Bear on the ground and proceed to stomp his fluffy little brains out.

Just kidding. I'd never hurt a Care Bear. Unless I hit him in his West Side Nut Club.