https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/cheese-sculpture-2026.jpgThe annual cheese sculpture from Sarah Kaufmann, “the Cheese Lady” — another 1500 pounds of temporary art, later donated to charity.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and it all comes down to this: all the other pics fit to print. Obviously we had to lead off with the cheese sculpture.

Next up: the entrants in the annual CANstruction contest! The charitable organization holds eponymous events nationwide in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other to build the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not ordinary stacks with boring titles like “Oh No, We Overordered Mushroom Soup Again”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families. Thus these temporary installations live on only if everyone takes pictures of them.

Rather than the fair’s official theme of The Year of Baseball, the CANstruction competitors celebrated the Harvest Pavilion’s headline exhibit, “Rewind: A VHS Revival”. So this year, the cans are all about the movies!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-stay-puft-marshmallow-man.jpgCanned Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-charizard.jpgCanned Charizard from the world of Pokemon!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-star-wars.jpgLuke and Leia in a canned galaxy far, far away.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-jaws.jpgCanned Jaws!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-sheriff-woody.jpgCanned Sheriff Woody!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-lion-king.jpgCaned Timon and Pumbaa are a bit rough to make out on either end of the display.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/canned-jurassic-park.jpgCanned Jurassic Park!

The cheese sculpture and CANstruction entrants shared the AgHort Building with the year’s largest vegetables, which returned this year after a brief relocation to the Coliseum.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/745-pound-pumpkin.jpg745-pound pumpkin!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/119-pound-watermelon.jpg119-pound watermelon!

After their success sponsoring last year’s music exhibit, the good folks at Indy CD & Vinyl brought their pop-up shop back to the Harvest Pavilion. Ironically, they had exactly zero CDs on hand this time. I consoled myself with a used copy of WKRP in Cincinnati Season 1. I didn’t get the show as a kid because I didn’t recognize any of the music or have any real appreciation for music-biz behind-the-scenes jokes. Now that I’ve gotten into AOR and classic rock a bit more in my advanced years, of course the DVD set’s back cover carries some saddening fine print: “Some of the original musical content has been edited for this DVD release.” BOOOOOOO. Sure, I understand the legal hassles of re-licensing all the original tunes. Nevertheless: BOOOOOOO.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/use-your-illusion-tribute.jpgTheir coolest display: an agamograph of the covers to Guns N’ Roses’ double album Use Your Illusion.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/state-fair-train.jpgNew this year: the tiny State Fair Train! It choo-choo’d laps around us while we sat and sampled the street-corn pizza.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/swings-silhouette-mural.jpgI’m not sure if it was new; if not, we’d never noticed the silhouette mural in the south entrance tunnel from the parking lot.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/bee-on-phone-cozy.jpgAlso arguably new this year: more bees than ever!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/bee-back.jpgAs we sat at one of Black Leaf Vegan’s tables, this bee was bee-dazzled by Anne’s phone cozy…

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/bee-on-dish.jpg…and the leftover spices from her smoked drumsticks.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/carousel-triceratops.jpgDefinitely not new: the two-story carousel by the south entrance. Still cool, though.

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/corn-dog-anne.jpgAnne’s a dancing corn dog!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/indiana-state-fair-jazz-hands.jpgMandatory Indiana State Fair jazz hands!

https://midlifecrisiscrossover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/anne-in-baseball-helmet.jpgLast gentle reminder of their low-key theme “The Year in Baseball”.

…and then we left around 4:00, inched home through rush-hour traffic, collapsed for a while, and did some Googling to verify the new red splotches blanketing my legs were most likely exercise-induced vasculitis. That’s since faded, but the happier new memories and photos remain.

The End. Thanks for reading. Lord willing, we’ll see you next year.

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour, Worst to Best

Part 2: The Year in VHS

Part 3: The Year of America’s 250th

Part 4: The Year in Cakes

Part 5: The Year in Lego

Part 6: The Year in Art

Part 7: The Year in Antiques

Part 8: Morning Midway Meandering