Let’s talk about Oktoberfest, Elysian Fields, irony and Texas.

There is a certain purity about Oktoberfest, a time when leaves are changing colors, when the air is crisp and cool, when people are gathering to drink metric ass-tons of beer. There are necessary elements have a full rendition of this Munich festival, like sausages, schnitzel, funny Bavarian leather outfits … and beer. You can’t, for example, have a reggae Oktoberfest: Steel drums, palm trees, rum runners and Gregory Isaacs doing a polka doesn’t work. You also can’t, for another example, have a – I’m just throwing this out there – Texas-themed Oktoberfest.

And this is where I have a problem with Texas.

It’s too big here. It’s too hot. Things just don’t make sense, such as when the left shoulder of a highway is wider than the actual driving lanes, or when you see a beat-up, rusted-out pickup truck slowly driving down a drag-racing lane, or when Texas tries to advertise an Oktoberfest by using a steer’s head as the logo. There are enough traditions in this state – rodeos, pickup trucks, big hats, excessive state pride – and it’s just not necessary to appropriate other sanctified traditions and pervert them.

Which is why I’m so torn between two opposing explanations for Texas: Either the people here are hipsters of the highest order, people who appreciate irony even more than, say, me, or … they’re just horribly misguided.

We have Oktoberfest as one example. Do Texans find it ironically amusing that they have taken and tampered with something for which they have absolutely no use? Or are they blissfully ignorant, preferring to remain parochially isolated and insular, unaware of the consequences of their actions – thus the wholesale robbery of a completely foreign tradition?

Example the second: As I said before, it’s too big in this state, too hot, too spread out. While this wouldn’t be the last place on the planet I would choose to make my own personal Eden, it’s certainly not in the top 100. Thus a town called ‘Elysian Fields, Texas’ strikes me as another manifestation of either this hipster irony or poor, shortsighted planning. Such a town does exist – see the photo – and I’m pretty sure it’s not populated with the slain souls of the heroic and virtuous, as Homer described in the Odyssey.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m in Louisiana now. And I got a speeding ticket getting here – that’s how much I couldn’t wait to get out of Texas. Since my boss weaseled his way out of a ticket just a few days ago and I’m the one who got nabbed today, I guess that sense of Texas irony is a little harder to shake than I thought.

Damn Texas and its damn perverted Oktoberfest.