BARRY COURTER: Lisa, I don't know about you, but I'm only about halfway through the list of festivals Susan Pierce compiled in Sunday's paper. Once again, the fall season in our area is eat up with festivals.

LISA DENTON: I always like looking at that list to see what direction I may be heading weekends in the fall. Today, we can go to the Arts in the Park Festival in Collegedale or to Mule Days in Ider, Ala.

Of course, I'm more interested in a couple of things where food is the focus. Today, you can grab a barbecue plate cooked up by the Red Bank Masonic Lodge at the Red Bank Community Center or by the Signal Mountain Lions Club at Althaus Park behind Signal Mountain Golf and Country Club. Then Saturday, The Hot Chocolatier is helping Creative Discovery Museum present its first Chocolate Festival.

BARRY: Just to give folks a sense of the options, the list yesterday was more than 100 inches of copy. This column is usually around 13 inches. If you can't find a festival to your liking in the next several weeks, well, go back to your video game.

Coming up this week there is a festival celebrating fried green tomatoes in Niota, Tenn., Mountaineers in Tracy City, Tenn., and arts and crafts in places like Cannon County in Tennessee and Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.

In Charleston, Tenn., in two weeks, they will hold the Cowpea Festival and Cook-off. It's funnier to say than to read. A cowpea is a legume, another funny word, and they will be throwing a big fete in its honor.

LISA: Tee-hee. You said cowpea. And fete? What's up with fete? Somebody's wearing his fancy pants today. Which seems strange when you're talking about a festival for a country crop.

Maybe you need to head to McDonald, Tenn., to watch polo, "the sport of kings." Matches featuring internationally ranked players will take place Saturday and Sunday at Bendabout Farm.

BARRY: It is part of the enigma that is me. Laughing at one word like a fourth-grader and showing off with a more highfalutin one at the same time.

It's reflective of the whole list of events really. Like you point out, we have polo one weekend and cowpeas the next. When you break them all down, they are each a chance to put on your best Ralph Lauren shirt and your pressed overalls, get out, see people, eat, drink and have a good time. What's not to love?