Fairly magical

Good grief, Godfrey.

You don’t really expect us to buy this, do you? You’ve already guessed the lead headline in Wednesday’s Register-Guard, and you’ll reveal your guess that day on the local TV news at the opening of the Lane County Fair? How is that even possible?

“Well, I can’t tell you my secret,” Godfrey said last week during a phone interview from the San Diego area, where he lives. “It’s part illusion, it’s part being a good guesser from being a magician. And there’s some other stuff involved.”

Yeah, we’re pretty sure of that.

Godfrey said he made his headline predictions Friday and sent them by UPS to KMTR-TV in Springfield, which he said will keep it in a “safe and secure location.” The station is expected to broadcast Godfrey’s headline predictions during its 5 p.m. newscast Wednesday.

Godfrey’s Comedy Magic Show is just one of many acts gearing up for the annual Lane County Fair that starts Wednesday at the Lane Events Center and runs through Sunday.

A six-day event for decades, this is the second straight year of a five-day fair in these still-harsh economic times.

And once again, the emphasis is on getting as many people through the fair gates in those five days as possible by offering as much free entertainment as possible.

For the fifth straight year, daily admission to the fair for adults will be $9, and there are no separate ticket prices for the evening musical acts for the second straight year.

Daily crowds at the fair have dipped in recent years. The fair used to count every single person, including those working the fair, who came through the doors, every time they came through the doors, so overall attendance numbers would register more than 150,000 for the six days. But after sparse crowds during a week of sweltering hot weather in 2009, fair officials said attendance was not calculated that year because the fair board was no longer interested in tracking that number.

Last year, paid attendance for the new five-day version of the fair was 49,070 — an average of almost 10,000 a day, with a big final-day turnout of about 21,000. In reporting those numbers, fair officials then said that paid attendance in 2009 had been 47,769, or an average of just less than 8,000 people a day for what was then still a six-day event.

Rachel Bivens, director of marketing and sales for the Lane Events Center, said there is no set goal for fair attendance this year, only an aim to “provide free, family entertainment” and an atmosphere that will make people want to “come all day and stay all day.”

If Godfrey, who is known for driving cars and tractors blind-folded, has anything to say about it, and he does, he’s got a crowd prediction to go along with his headline prediction: “The fair is going to break last year’s attendance by 10,000 or more,” he declared. Some of that postcard-perfect weather we’ve been enjoying in Lane County recently, more of which is predicted (not by Godfrey, but local meteorologists) this week, should help the cause.

Godfrey — who performs three times a day at the fair — does have some other predictions, however.

“At least four kids will eat too much at the fair,” he said.

(Really going out on a limb there, huh?)

And this intriguing foretelling: “The five of clubs will be part of an amazing trick throughout the entire fair.”

As for newspaper headline predictions, Godfrey says this will be his third such attempt.

In 2008, at the Maricopa County Fair in Phoenix, Ariz., Godfrey said he predicted a future headline to run in the Arizona Republic on April 9, 2008, as, “Iraq rekindles debate.” The actual headline was “Iraq report rekindles debate.”

Missed it by one word, eh?

In 2009, at the Pinal County Fair in Casa Grande, Ariz., Godfrey predicted two headlines in the March 27, 2009, Casa Grande Dispatch, writing down, “Obama has plan needed for recovery,” and “Crackdown on violence border,” days in advance. The actual headlines were: “Obama: His plan needed for recovery,” and “Crackdown on violence on and from the border.”

As for his prediction here, Godfrey had tried to convince The Register-Guard to allow a copy editor who would be writing Wednesday’s lead headline to participate in a 7 a.m. radio show on KPNW on the Friday prior to the fair. When approached about this, R-G copy editors, whose shifts begin at 3 p.m. and end around midnight, laughed heartily.