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| Me and Claire!! |
Holy cow, that whole experience is already
over, and I’m back at work and on my way to having a near-normal schedule
between the two jobs. It’s astounding
how much it cost us just to drive to and from the festival. I had anticipated using one full tank of gas
(about $25, for Zoë) per trip. This
ended up being perfectly accurate (see yesterday’s anecdote about my empty gas
tank) but the toll roads ended up costing more than twice as much as the
gasoline. Even though we bought no
souvenirs, this was an expensive trip!
The faire itself was quite fun, although I
was thoroughly disappointed with the jousting demonstration; of the 30-45
minutes we spent watching, perhaps a minute or two consisted of actual
jousting. The rest was all over-the-top
theatrics, knights trash-talking each other, and constant bids for cheers from
the audience. I wanted to see some
horses running at each other, dammit!
What else?
Past experience with blogging demands that I mention everything that I
can remember, because I’ll likely regret it deeply if I don’t. It took a lot of effort for me to not buy
anything, because there were dresses and corsets and leather and journals and
dragons and swords (I legitimately almost bought a sword) and these beautiful
shiny necklaces with matching earrings (which I came very, very close to buying) and a lovely velvet cloak of forest green and
brown that was exactly what I was looking for around Halloween last
year. I have already looked up the
vendors for these last two items (The Fairie Tailor out of Massachusetts and
Princessories) and have found their websites, although one of each would run me
well over $100, hence my reticence to purchase them at the faire. I must control myself, because Dad. Dad and Scotland. Maybe I should stick a picture of Dad to the
back of my debit card. Self-control,
ENGAGE!
While I did not seriously consider
purchasing a drabbit at the faire, it was impossible not to notice the woman
shouting in repetitive monotone in the middle of the street that led to the
jousting field. Every time we passed The
Imaginarium Gallery, we could hear her calling for takers for the nightly
drawing, where you could pick up a raffle ticket (“COMPLETELY, TOTALLY,
ABSOLUTELY, 100% FREE!!!”) and possibly
win your very own drabbit. What is a drabbit, you ask? A drabbit is, of course, a cross between a
dragon and a rabbit. It is a small
dragon-like creature with a fluffy, feathery mane and tail that spends its
time, once you have shelled out the money, sitting on your shoulder looking
adorable. Or terrifying. Or sad.
In fact, drabbits can be found in almost any combination of shape,
color, and personality, and were indeed found on the shoulders of at least half
of the faire’s child visitors (I can only imagine how many cumulative hours’
worth of whining our fairegoing parents withstand each weekend at the hands of
this particular vendor.) The one feature that the creatures all share is a long
stick that is stuck down the back of its wearer, under his or her clothing. In addition to stabilizing the drabbit (I
assume,) the end of the stick contains a small medallion that can be secretly twisted
to move the drabbit’s head from side to side.
Not quite life-like, but rather ingenious nonetheless.
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| Miniature Chicken Little seems very out of place |
The clear popularity of this particular
product makes it worthy of mention here, but there was something else the
Imaginarium Gallery boasted that enticed me more than their extensive
collection of drabbits. Within the shed
that houses the store is a hallway loaded with a glass-enclosed assortment of
iconic creatures of literary and filmic fame.
The faces of E.T., Gollum, the Cryptkeeper, Master Yogurt, Medusa, Admiral
Ackbar, and the Terror Dogs (of Ghostbusters fame.) I was unsure if we were allowed to take
pictures in the gallery, but I could not resist taking one of the stunningly
realistic, life-sized figure of Mohawk, the
spiked-gremlin-turned-oversized-spider and one of the primary antagonists of Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
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| Jason tries on a helmet in the Pirate's Treasure Ship |
Claire made sure that she got us onto the
Pirate’s Treasure Ship (take a hard right after the castle gates,) where I
experienced the aforementioned urge to purchase a sword. They had a special
wherein if you bought a film replica sword (Sting, for example, or Andúril, of Lord of the Rings fame,) you could
get a dagger-sized replica for free (mix and match, if I’m not mistaken.) There was also a $20 raffle ticket for sale
with an impressive blade as a prize at the other end, but it seemed even more
financially irresponsible than just buying a sword outright. Moreover, Claire declared her resolution to
not purchase a sword herself, citing financial responsibility, and I was forced
to grudgingly assent that I did not need one either.
One of the first things we saw
upon entering the faire was the Historical Glassworks demonstration. Jason was enthralled by this, and we stopped
to watch the master glassblower work his magic.
We didn't get to see much of the demonstration, but the way he and his
assistant stretched the glass thirty feet or so before it cooled, then broke
the long, thin tube cleanly into short segments, was pretty astounding. Jason mentioned offhand that he thought it
would be a cool thing to learn how to do, and suggested that we try it as a
couple's activity (although later I learned that he is more interested in the
demonstration than in the learning – and there went a great Christmas gift
idea.)
I feel like we didn’t look at a lot of the
food vendors (it almost seems as though there was an entire street of food that
we didn’t get to see.) Jason got some
pulled pork with sauerkraut and something that was supposed to be a potato
pancake but was actually a hash brown, mostly because he was hungry when we got
to the pavilion where Tartanic was playing and the German vendor was the only
one nearby. He was set on having a
turkey leg from the beginning, and on Sunday Claire knew exactly where to go to
get them. I had planned to just nibble a
bit on Jason’s, as I was understandably nervous about getting one for myself
and leaving a large portion uneaten after coming up against fat and tendons and
gristly bits. However, an odd thing
happened when Jason ordered his leg. He
asked for one, and paid for one, then the cashier shouted, “Two!” down the
counter, and suddenly Jason had two turkey legs in his hands instead of
one. Unsure of the protocol when one is
handed a spare turkey limb, and quickly becoming crowded out by other
fairegoers looking to gnaw on the classic drumstick, he determined that a
misunderstanding had taken place somewhere down the line that could not be
easily rectified, and handed me the spare leg.
It was a fortunate circumstance not only because we technically got our
legs for half price, but because my particular leg was fantastic, and I was
able to eat nearly all of it without encountering any significant amount of
unappealing squooshy bits. (I’m
realizing as I write this how many photo-ops I missed out on during this
weekend. I might need to start tearing
pages out of Cindy’s book and snapping pictures any time half an opportunity
presents itself, because a picture of Claire and Jason working through their
turkey legs would have been priceless.)
On Sunday, before the Human Chess Match,
Jason bugged me into getting an overpriced (and frankly subpar) lemonade, and
an similarly overpriced (and frankly delicious) chocolate-dipped banana on a
stick. And… that’s about it for our
food-related experiences. We stopped at
a place called the Queen’s Confections, which sold desserts, and a place called
the Swashbuckler Public House that sold Scotch eggs, but the prices at these
places stopped me from wanting to get anything.
Show-wise, we saw/heard the last three
songs of a Tartanic set, as I mentioned, which was pretty awesome, and Jason
surprised the crap out of me by saying that he actually liked their sound and
casually suggesting that he should get one of their CDs. We caught a teeny bit of the Royal Falconer’s
act, and teeny snippets of a few others, on Saturday. The only show we saw from start to finish was
the “Ultimate Joust” at the end of the day.
As I have said, this was a jousting event that contained very little
jousting and a considerable amount of scripted back-and-forth quibbling between
four men in armor. Jason and I happened
to sit on the left side of the audience, which was by tradition, we learned,
conscripted to cheer for the “bad guy” knights, Tristian and Robert, who fought
not for chivalry and honor, but for blood and glory. When Tristian came out speaking with a
brogue, and the vaguely Orlando Bloom-esque Robert appeared shortly after, I
was content that we had chosen a good side.
Their fervently declared thirst for murder and their flagrant male
chauvinism toward the queen, however, I could have done without.
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| King Henry addresses the audience and the mounted knights. |
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| Don't blink, or you'll miss the actual jousting! |
Before too long it became awfully
difficult to take any of the knights very seriously. Their clearly enunciated, clearly scripted
shouting, designed for the sole purpose of activating the audience, reminded me
very much of the wrestlers I watched when I worked with Al at Mega Championship
Wrestling years ago. Then, after the few
hot seconds of actual jousting we got to see, there was a relatively epic
battle between the king’s players and the street ruffians that supported Robert
and Tristian (also reminiscent of MCW.)
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| Looney Lucy and Ploppy |
Claire offered to guide us through the
list of performers at the Sunday faire.
We caught the first half of “Whose Jest is it Anyway?”, an improve show
(obviously) that I would have liked to have seen more of, with six players and
a host, before scooting off to the Boars Head for a brawl. The story involved a chest of gold that was
being guarded for a lord by one very stoic Captain of the Guard and one
slightly goofy yeoman (think Pinky and the Brain,) and the hijinx of the
various parties trying to get their hands on it. The young and inexperienced yeoman was one of
my favorite characters at the faire.
Later in the day we saw “Looney Lucy and Ploppy’s Rated X Smut Show,”
which was awkwardly entertaining. This
was especially true for the poor audience member they plucked from the front
row, unshirted, and subjected to a serious of poetic and, um, very aggressive
affections. Aside from a constant
recycling of vagina-based slapstick, it was a pretty good time.
Ploppy reappeared later in the day with
the Mud Squad for a messy reimagining of William Shakespeare’s classic tale of
murder and madness in a royal Danish family.
Ploppy took on the role of narrator (and king and queen, as needed,)
Ozzie played the plausibly insane Hamlet, and young Snarfy had to make do with
racing back into their burlap-screened shack every several moments to change
personas in order to perform as every other character in the play. *note: during most of this show I was working
through my delectable aforementioned turkey leg, and as such was slightly less
engaged than I might have been*
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| Captain Bertram Powell takes on... someone? (I'm not entirely sure who that is. Apologies.) |
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| A young fairegoer is chosen to square off against at least four adversaries in a game of tug-of-war. |
The Human Chess Match was another very
campy sort of scripted and choreographed mix of skill and brawn. The king and queen sat in their thrones,
presiding over a massive chess board filled with players, including the
jousting knights and many of the characters we had seen that day. Henry and Catherine called out directions to
their living chess pieces, and when two came into the same square they would
face off in combat with swords, pikes, axes, bare hands, etc. The loser
would exit the board as it was reset for the next move.
I was torn at one
point when the bearish Scotsman Finlay Muir (FREE SCOTLAND!!!) stood up to his
English dictator… by insulting not only the queen, but all of womankind. I suppose that’s something I would have to
get used to if I actually want to submerge myself in the Dark Ages.
In the end the queen won the chess match,
but not before the knights, who had been stationed in the four corners of the
chess board, had exchanged a few more insults and the king established the
rules for the evening’s Ultimate Joust Which Will Contain Very Little Actual
Jousting. This, of course, we did not
stay for, having seen the show on the previous night and having not been
terribly impressed with it.
However it disappointed me overall, the joust did succeed in one aspect
exactly as I had anticipated – it made me dreamily revisit my graduation-era
desire to work with jousting horses. The entire experience at the faire,
especially the players interacting with visitors throughout the day, made me
wish that I had succeeded in that pursuit.
In a roundabout way it also helped to re-concentrate me on my weight
loss and body strengthening goals; although I have lost a significant amount of
weight since graduation, I’m still not nearly as strong as I would need to be
for that line of work. Balin’s great
riding (which Claire also noted on Sunday) stirred an oft-suppressed desire
that I am now two decades familiar with.
I want to be in a saddle again.
Maybe I’ll ask Jason for some strength
training advice, if he’s not too annoyed with my too-casual workout philosophy
to want to give it a go. Or, maybe this
is all foolish and I should stick with the much more academic pursuits that seem
to be currently engulfing my life. Or
maybe I should simply put it on the back burner until after I get my master’s
degree, or at least until I find if any of my chosen colleges would be willing
to admit me into a master’s program.
Then I’ll try to get back in touch with Shane Adams. And in the meantime I’ll continue improving
myself as much as I can.
Anyway, Jason and I seem to agree on our overall impression
of the faire. I had not been to one since the summer before I left for
college, and the Geneva Renaissance Festival seems quite small in
comparison to this one, with a ticket cost that grows every year. Assuming that the cost and other logistics do
not get in the way, I would definitely choose to go back next year. Perhaps I would also expand my Renaissance
Festival circle and give tries to a few other festivals that I’ve never been to
(that would probably mean getting my research done a lot sooner in the year so
as to get things planned accordingly.)
Or… perhaps I will not have to pay for a
ticket the next time I go to a festival.
If I can find my way into the traveling barn of a jousting troupe, that
is. A far-fetched dream, perhaps, but one
I have not yet had the strength to let go of.
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| Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire gates, Mt Hope Estate & Winery, Manhein, PA |
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