stinkydog

I'm back from Tyler. As suspected, we ended up being way too busy to see much of anything, but turns out, I didn't need to go very far to find the weirdness. Tuesday night we went to dinner at this country club right outside of town. We were a bit early to meet our host, so I opted to wander the halls and look around. I'm strolling down the corridor and instead of the usual pictures of debutante classes from the 1950's they have this series of beauty queen portraits dating back several decades, except these beauty queens are wearing the most hideous dresses you can possibly imagine. I mean, there are TAPESTRIES of TENNIS RACKETS on these dresses kind of hideous. I run back to our group and say, "OMG you guys, you would not believe how ugly they dress the beauty queens here!" and they all sort of look at me and say, "oh, I see you've found the Rose Queens."

Tyler, as it turns out, is the Rose Capitol of the World, and every year they have a Rose Festival. For each year, they select a Rose Queen. Apparently, there's not a pageant or anything--I can't substantiate this, but from what I'm told it's kind of a Who's Daddy Has the Most Money to Spend $100,000 on the Worlds Most Eye-ball Searing Gown" sort of thing and the hideousness is actually on purpose, I mean, supporting a theme (whatever). They said most of these dresses cost more than the average college education.

I really wish they had more about this online (I looked and didn't find much), but I managed to get some shots of some of these dresses for you. Sorry about the flash in some of them. I was trying to be all sneaky-like, but the hall was dark and I had to use the flash. I think you'll get the idea. So here you go, your East Texas Weirdness, as promised. (and I wasn't kidding about the tennis rackets).