I had quite the adventure yesterday. It was a day of firsts, lasts, questions, answers, and revelations. To begin to tell you about it, I'd have to delve back in time, to a time before such things as the Industrial Revolution, or the popularization of Protestantism. You'd have to go back to the Renaissance, for yesterday, I came upon the New York Renaissance Faire, in Tuxedo Park, NY, and had a world opened up before my eyes, a world of dragons, wizards, knights, and wenches or, in modern times, losers, nerds, freaks, and all around creeps.

Anyway, I'll start at the beginning:

I have a friend, Sarah, who is an aspiring actor and the last 2 summers has taken part in this fair- er, I mean Faire. She and a bunch of other actors do all sorts of shit in the woods, camp out, act like British people. It seems like a fun time. Sarah had asked me and other friends to come up for a while, so my friends Molly, Mary Ruth and I acquiesced and rented a car to make the journey. 'Twas an epic journey. Not really, actually.

Upon entering the Faire, I noticed 3 types of attendees: First, there were the normal folk. Usually families, locals I guess. I'd hate to think of someone travelling all the way from some other state for this. Second, there were the somewhat half-assed participants: those wearing normal clothes, but with maybe a breastplate they had lying around from a Halloween or something. Third: the full on fucking fuckoff weirdos. The people who, though not paid, were full on dressed up in all sorts of shit. Most of these could be characterized as Goths. Like Marilyn Manson fans (does he still make music?) or some shit. I actually did notice quite a lot of hot girls, but slowly figured out that they were high school students here with their 30+ year old boyfriends.  

I saw 2 Motley Crue T-shirts, one Rush T-shirt, one Pink Floyd T-shirt (Echoes tour). I also saw a somewhat racist Gypsy puppet show (implicating that Gypsies have a predisposition for getting arrested and living in wagons… though maybe that's true), a pretty funny production of Lysestrata, the Greek comedy written by some dead guy (Isaac Hayes I think) complete with boners, and some other bullshit. There was a big joust at the end of the day, complete with dramatized riot. Also I saw my dear friend Sarah, along with 5 other women, singing dirty songs (metaphors abound!) in a pub, or inn… tavern? Whatever. They called me up onstage for one song and tied a ribbon to my finger, supposing to mean my penis, or member, or dollywop, or whatever the fuck.  

Anyway, all of this is just small potatoes. At the end of the night, I saw quite possibly one of the most awkward sights of my entire life. Let me back up. So after the aforementioned joust, the Queen (Elizabeth? Kong? Sryche?) invited the entire audience to the "Pageant Wagon" (Wagone?) for some "revelrie". Basically a bunch of people sang songs. Mostly dirty songs similar to those previously mentioned (metaphors still abound!), some of which included Sarah, so we went over. In the midst of these songs, the MC (Medieval Creep) invited a "very special guest" to the stage. Up walked 2 people wearing white shirts and ties. One was a girl with a guitar (her tie was untied, her shirt unbuttoned [undershirt exposed, no tits here!]), and one was a dude with leather armbands to match his office/Mormon missionary wear. The girl was cute, but looked high-school age, and very nervous. The guy looked like some 29 year old who lived in his mom's basement. They proceeded to sing a shockingly overly dramatic duet which was, I soon figured out, about Harry Potter. The conviction in their eyes, the strength in their voices, the utter rock-star like vibes the exuded proceeded to seal their fates in my brain as the creepiest, oddest, most self-contradictory, and thus, completely baffling things I've ever seen in my entire life. The crowd went wild (wilde?). For one thing, they completely disposed of the entire idea that this was period-specific, and for another, what kind of fucking freaks were these? At this point, my friend informed me that all the normal people had left after the joust. We were now stuck in Freak Country (Freake Countrie?). The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, my stomach turned. We got clear of it. The battle had been survived.

Well, look. I've been nothing but negative about this Faire. It wasn't all bad. The Harry Potter song just got me leaving with a bad feeling. Ill just narrow out the pros and cons:

Pros- Beer, Mead, gigantic Turkey Leg for lunch, funny misspelled signs, Comp tickets (Thanks Sarah), some finely corseted boobs

Cons- Loss of ego, loss of dignity, sense of shame, some disgustingly corseted boobs.

All in all, though I've been making fun, I'd say this was a fun experience. Everyone should give it a try. The food was pretty wicked (though the Turkey Leg just exited me a half hour ago and wasn't very wicked, more like wicked bad). Seeing all those Goths made me nostalgic for 8th grade, and the car ride up was home to some great scenery (or at least some scenery other than buildings). The paid actors all did a really good job and kept the whole thing funny with self deprecating humor. Would I go back? I don't know. You'll have to ask me in a year, though, if I can find a suit of armor before-hand, definitely.