The Tulip Festival is this weekend, and no, I don’t plan to attend, even though the festivities happen two blocks from my apartment and avoiding the festival takes more effort than attending it. I’ve been to the Tulip Festival before; as festivals go, it’s not bad. There are usually a couple bands worth seeing, and Washington Park is a nice place. One year I played hacky sack in the grass, and had a perfectly lovely time. And the tulips are always pretty stunning.

I’m sure the Tulip Festival is just as charming and delightful as ever, but in recent years I’ve developed a hatred of fairs, festivals and parades. There was a period of my life when I worked the weekend shift at this paper, and once the weather got warm I could expect to cover a fair, festival or parade every weekend. Something happened to me during this period; I developed an allergy to fairs, festivals and parades. I would interview people and ask them whether they were having a good time; then I would ask why they were having a good time. Invariably, they would tell me they loved the food, the social scene, just being outside. The more time I spent at fairs, festivals and parades, the more I wanted to shake these people and tell them they’d been duped; surely nobody really wants to wait 30 minutes waiting in line so they can buy a blooming onion or plate of fried dough. Today if I spend more than a half hour at a fair, festival or parade a weird sort of agoraphobia sets in, and all I want to do is flee.

This weekend my parents will be visiting, and I think we’ll head to The Arkell Museum in Canajoharie on Saturday; I plan to meet them in Clifton Park, where they’ll be staying with friends, rather than make them come to Albany to meet me. After my parents leave I may attend a Tulip Fest after party. And there are some good local bands playing downstairs at Valentine’s on Saturday night: Eric Margan and the Red Lions, Ben Karis-Nix, etc. So there are plenty of entertainment options this weekend. I just don’t consider the Tulip Festival one of them.

If you love fairs, festivals and parades, feel free to tell me why. At this point, it’s something I just can’t understand.

Number 46 on the list of things I don't care about: Miley Cyrus’ provocative photo spread in Vanity Fair. I didn’t even know who Miley Cyrus was until a few months ago, and now I’m supposed to view these suggestive photos as yet another sign of a world that has lost its moral bearings? Hmmm. I think I’ll worry about something else instead. Like the economy or the thousands who were killed earlier this week in the cyclone in Myanmar. I’ve tired of this ghoulish fixation on young starlets and singers; I hope that by writing this little item I’m not contributing to the problem. To me, it seems like we’re entering a familiar tabloid cycle. Last year we squawked about Lindsay Lohan, now we’re squawking about Miley Cyrus and next year it will be someone else. It’s a puerile and hypocritical sort of moral indignation, but it sure does sell a lot of magazines.

Little known fact: I’ve actually attended a Britney Spears concert. I went to the concert for the same reason I do a lot of unlikely things: My newspaper told me to go. This was back when Britney was seen as a somewhat provocative teen performer — she had sort of a Lolita thing going on, if I remember correctly — but several years before she completely flew off the rails, and my editor wanted me to talk to parents about whether they thought Britney was an appropriate role model for kids. (Many of the parents I talked to preferred Britney to Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit, the rap-metal acts that were popular at the time.) I wandered around the corridors of the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex interviewing parents on their way to the bathroom or concession stand. A thunderous din reverberated throughout the building, and eventually I stopped to watch Britney and her back-up dancers. It was all pretty awful — I couldn’t believe how bad the sound was — but then I reminded myself that the music wasn’t really the point.

Friends are still e-mailing to tell me about their first rock concert; you can read about my first concert here. I thought I’d post my friend Cindy’s first concert memory, because it made me laugh. She wrote: “Mine was the Nelson twins — you know, Rick Nelson’s sons. I remember big blonde hair and screaming ‘I want your body.’ I was 14.”