A Mad Scientist makes a public servant of monstrous proportions

Kaboom! He's still alive!!! For more craziness check out www.exploreminnesota.com/myfavoriteminnesota It's an online feature of exploreminnesota.com where you can get Minnesotans' insights on their favorite places to go and things to do.

It's all about mud and fire.

Renaissance Festival: Shakopee I love this place ‘cause I can speak with a fake English accent all day long and pretend I’m in a Monty Python movie. If you’re a single woman you’re guaranteed to find a knight in shining armor. Ha. It’s a big costume party and you can get hooked up with some period dress right on site. Actors stay in character and the “kingdom” is made up of permanent structures that look totally authentic. It could be Middle Earth if you know what I mean. Everything is “Ye Olde” like the Ye Old giant turkey legs that you can rip apart to the Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe where you can get a Ye Olde latte. There’s a place to whiz tomatoes at unruly peasants’ heads, make funny wax “hang loose” molds of your hand, and I usually never leave without getting an elephant to chauffer me around. It’s definitely a throw back in time. It’s total Ye Olde sweet. See more about cool Minnesota stuff at My Favorite Minnesota http://www.exploreminnesota.com/myfavoriteminnesota/

Potato Days: Barnesville Ah, the feeling of potatoes in your trousers. What else do you need? If you like weird America, this is your kind of action. It’s got a potato sack fashion show, tons of potato related foods and mashed potato wrestling. In fact, it’s where my alter ego, Steve-O Gratin, became the undisputed Mashed Potato Wrestling Champion of the Universe. They fill a pit with taters that’s like 20’ x 10’ big and more than a 1’ deep. Contestants sign up to wrestle their friends for three 2-minute rounds and inject their own ringside drama. A ref gets in the mix and there’s a blow by blow account over a P.A. system. It’s totally ridiculous. Despite it being insanely hard and exhausting to move in the stuff, its hands down the most fun you can have dressed in a unitard or watching something in a lawn chair. I’m returning next year to defend my title so watch out! Get hosed off by the local fire department and head over to the demolition derby for some good old perfectly legal road rage in the mud. Whoo. See more about cool Minnesota stuff at My Favorite Minnesota http://www.exploreminnesota.com/myfavoriteminnesota/

If a boss wears mistletoe over his rear end his employees have to kiss his ass Peeps involved in alpha Michael Atkinson Steve Barone Jeff Chapin Laurie Holtz Blair Johnson Jim Landry John Landry J. David LeCompte Becky Olstad Josh Thacker Sarah Tukua Rick Meyer Tim Whalen