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Last week, Alison Hallett blogged about going to the state fair; in said blog entry, she tasked me with reviewing the fair's various nerd-centric Lego displays.

Yes: The Oregon State Fair has a Lego contest. I didn't know about it either until I looked up and was all, "Oh, hey, Legos. Those don't smell like festering sheepshit, unlike 99 percent of everything else at the fair. I'll go check those out." The elaborate Lego contest is right next to the cake-decorating contest and the table-setting contest and probably several other contests no one could possibly care about unless they are the sort of person who obsessively enters state fair contests.

When it comes to Legos, there are (A) a lot of them, and (B) both adult and children's categories. The clearly excellent Harry Potter vs. The Aliens, above, was one of the child entries; below, you'll find two others, both untitled, but which, in fine journalistic tradition, I'll be naming Schizophrenic Nerd Epilepsy Attack (Episode IV—A Hope) and Stargate SG-1: A Study in Repose. I couldn't be bothered to read the notes next to each entry, but I believe SNEAEIV—AH was entered in the 13-18 age category, while SG-1 was entered in the "adult" category. Kudos, adult, for your Stargate SG-1-themed entry into the Oregon State Fair's Lego contest. You are living the dream, and I do not mean that nearly as sarcastically as most of Blogtown's snarky readers will assume.

If there's one thing I know, it's that blue ribbons don't lie*: Harry Potter vs. The Aliens is pretty sweet, and totally deserves that much-coveted blue ribbon. THERE IS AN ALIEN LANDING CRAFT HOVERING ABOVE THE QUIDDITCH FIELD, FOR CHRISSAKES. Do you think those aliens are just using their sensors to find the Golden Snitch? Fuck no. In about 10 seconds, Gryffindor Tower's gonna look like the White House from Independence Day, and let's see any patronus try to counteract space lasers. Breaking news, magic hippies: Patronuses can't do shit against that sort of firepower. Neither can the power of love.

The only confusion here, is what the fuck a boga is doing in there. Because that thing's technically an alien, right? But a wizard is riding it, meaning either that wizard's a Death Eater, and the Death Eaters are in cahoots with the aliens, or... actually, yeah, that's the only thing it could mean. Well played, Death Eaters, but maybe next time you should try to find a slightly less entirely embarrassing lizard alien to ride around on.

Anyway, nice work, kid! Also, if an exec at Warner Bros. finds out about your Lego creation, there will be a movie based on it in theaters by this time next year. It will make 400 billion dollars.

MOVING ON. This piece makes me want to kill myself. I present to you Schizophrenic Nerd Epilepsy Attack (Episode IV—A Hope), along with it's accompanying note, which I believe was written by a pint-sized serial killer.

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I cannot, and will not, support this. I don't even know where to start. I can't even get through the note, which seems to be written in some sort of faux military code? This is a good reminder that kids are weird and creepy, and that boundless creativity should be mercilessly wrung out of them at an early age. This is what the Harry Potter vs. The Aliens kid would be like if his uncle gave him some cocaine, and the less we say about it, the better.

AND SO. We come, at last, to Stargate SG-1: A Study in Repose. Do note that it's an original Lego creation—well, not original original, as it's still based on a TV show, but none of these things came from a kit, is my point. The Harry Potter and Star Wars nerds, above, have 4,000 different Lego sets and figures available to plunder from; Stargate fan, here, has the misfortune of loving—I suspect, with all of his goddamn heart—a show that was never popular enough to justify its own Lego merchandise. That means he painstakingly crafted this shit. Look at the detail! Look at how O'Neil, Carter, Jackson, and Teal'c are rendered in infinitesimal detail (by which I mean one of them is black). Look at the time-worn obelisks, the textured, multi-layered sand, the intricately constructed stargate itself. He made a M.A.L.P., for chrissakes. I also like how in the second picture it looks like the stargate is actually just a delivery device for giant slices of watermelon.

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Well done, sir! If only... if only we lived in a world in which, say... MGM would hand the reins of their now-defunct Stargate franchise over to a guy from the Oregon State Fair. If only.

*I have just been informed that blue ribbons do, in fact, lie, and are just the lame "thinks for participating!" sort of ribbons. So... my point still stands, okay? Look. I grew up in a city. I don't actually care what different colors of ribbons mean. Though I guess this explains why PBR can still taste like watery shit but still have a blue ribbon both on its label and in its name.