Iowa State Fair Board may banish erotic corndog contest

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http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071002/NEWS/71002030/1001/NEWS

Iowa State Fair Board may banish erotic corndog contest
October 2, 2007

The erotic corn dog-eating contest at the Iowa State Fair might have to go away.

The competition, which is organized by a Des Moines area radio station and tends to draw a raucous and appreciative crowd, is too tasteless, according to at least one fair board member.

After the topic came up Monday during the board’s critique of this year’s state fair, fair manager Gary Slater said he hasn’t seen it himself.

“I just heard it was kind of disgusting,” Slater said. He quickly added: “It was nothing that was sanctioned by the fair.”

KGGO-FM has held the contest right outside the doors of the Administration Building for four fairs in a row.

Iowa State Fair Board President Jerry Parkins on Monday suggested getting rid of the contest, so state fair staff will tell KGGO’s organizers that it’s inappropriate, Slater said.

If the radio staff don’t agree, “then we’ll take it back to the board and see if they’ll be invited back next year,” Slater said.

The news was tough to swallow for Steve “Round Guy” Pilchen, one of the radio personalities who invented the contest. But it wasn’t a shock.

“I was waiting for that,” Pilchen said this morning in a telephone interview from the Urbandale radio station. “While it’s very popular and, I think, ingeniously creative, it makes sense that this would be just the thing that conservative, politically-correct people would be up in arms about.”

Pilchen said they don’t intend to go away quietly.

“I would hate for it to have to end, because it’s gained so much notoriety,” he said. “Our take on it is that we’d like to continue to do it and will, up until the state fair board tells us we can’t.”

Competitors — so far it’s only been women, and all were required to be at least 18 — are given 30 seconds to demonstrate erotic techniques on the staple state fair treat.

“We stress technique,” Pilchen said. “There’s a lot of simulation.”

Condiments are available if the women want to get creative, he said. “We had ketchup and mustard, but the big hit was mayonnaise.”

Audience applause selects the winner.

Pilchen said he and KGGO radio personality Brian James knew their idea was “something completely sexist and completely inappropriate,” so they offer prizes to make it worth the women’s time and potential embarassment.

At first, everyone thought it was a hoax, but the audience size has grown substantially since fairgoers realized “it’s on the level and there’s some visual candy to go with it,” Pilchen said.

Six women competed this year and drew a “very enthusiastic, very responsive” crowd of about 200 adults, including some who watched from the porch on the west side of the Administration Building. KGGO parks its “rock shop trailer” on the lawn there.

“No one’s been forced to participate or view,” Pilchen said.

Lacey Schmidt, 24, of Ames licked the competition to win Alice Cooper concert tickets this year, but she and another contestant, Shannon Simmons, 23, of Ames, already had second-row seats, so they sold the prize tickets.

Radio station staff shooed away children, Pilchen said. When he asked a small group of young boys leave, the parents assured him that they didn’t care if the boys watched. “I said, ‘You know what? I care. Get ‘em outta here,’” he said.

KGGO seemed determined to bring an edginess to the fair that you don’t see in, say, the Elwell Family Food Center.

The radio station also offered a “White Trash Scavenger Hunt,” where contestants had to find photos of fairgoers with a mullet haircut, a fanny pack, missing teeth, visible thong underwear or a lower back tattoo they called a “tramp stamp.”

The corndog contest is meant to be a clever marketing gag.
“It’s a little notoriety,” Pilchen said. “A fun event for the station and its listeners.”

“We were about to move it to the Bill Riley stage it was getting so big. The grandstand was next,” James said. “I got several comments about an erotic taco-eating contest for next year.”

[Xylob the Destroyer]

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