(FORTUNE Magazine) – The pitch was irresistible: Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, announced that the theme of its county fair this year would be "Hayrides and Hard Drives." There'd be prizes for Bill Gates look-alikes and a modem-calling competition. For a journalist, this was catnip: yet another opportunity to prove that Silicon Valley is a profoundly geeky place. No fewer than eight media outlets (FORTUNE among them) took the bait and traipsed out to a dusty patch of California farmland. The fair, however, was emblematic not of the region's techno-weirdness, but of journalists' appetite for stories emblematic of the region's techno-weirdness: The press outnumbered Gates clones and modem callers combined.

On opening weekend I went to the the modem-calling contest, hoping to see hordes of chirping, beeping techies. But the sign-up sheet was barren. "Forbes was here yesterday taking pictures, and the local news is airing something tonight," said an organizer. Right, but what about the contestants? "There are no contestants," another organizer shot back. "We had a couple of people yesterday, but they sucked." They finally rustled up three competitors: The winner was my friend Barney, who came along because I'd promised free carnival rides. His modem rendition was accurate, melodious, shrill; the two losers sounded more like jammed toasters.

When I arrived at the Bill Gates look-alike contest the following weekend, a pack of journalists was already swarming around the contest site. Forbes and Business Week were there. There were two TV crews, a reporter from the local arts weekly, and a guy from the German magazine Stern. Media head count: nine. Contestant head count: four, including a guy in a bird suit who'd been hired to amuse the kids.

"We had about ten to 15 people calling during the week, asking about the contest," said the fair's PR woman by way of explaining the teeming mass of no-shows. "One guy," she added, offering up the sort of anecdotal fodder journalists love, "said he would show up dressed as Darth Vader." But there were no Darth Vaders. Just a goat named Billy Goats (Get it?), which the photographers snapped from every imaginable angle. The winner, a guy from San Jose who looks more like Steve Jobs than Bill Gates, was mobbed by a bored and desperate media horde and won a weekend at the Hyatt in...San Jose (brunch included!). Woo-hoo.

--Melanie Warner