In today’s edition of So Totally Not Awesome, we have this flyer from a local weekend event that a friend sent us. Thanks Beth!
See this is the weird thing. It’s central Colorado, it’s summer, and people should be outside, climbing mountains, rafting down rivers, and eating sausage. What, you don’t eat sausage in the summer? Okay, that is weird! Along with our normal summery activities we also have a RenFaire. Or maybe it’s a RenFest! This RenFaire runs most weekends of the summer, or at least it seems like most weekends. Sadly, Mary has never consented to go, probably because I’ll spend all my time ogling serving wenches and eating stuff with my hands, and she sees enough of that at home. The eating with hands thing, not the serving wench ogling. Though, thinking about it, if we had serving wenches at home….
Now if you had a Medieval themed fair with faux serving wenches, faux swordfights, faux minstrels and faux…. oh, hell, just assume everything associated with RenFaire is prefaced with faux, because, and this is kind of important, it’s not really the Middle Ages. And that’s a good thing for pretty much everyone. Because in the real Middle Ages, the average lifespan was something like 16 years, the diet was barley and rotting cabbage, with the occasional inclusion of offal on High Holy days, and their only recreation was going to the local Athenian Golden Age Faire, where they could wear faux togas and eat faux Greek food, while listening to faux orators recite the Illiad.
This particular RenFaire has been running here every summer since we moved to Colorado. So, I think probably about now, the bloom has come off the rose, the twinkle has faded from the eye, and the moon is made of Stilton cheese. Meaning, they need to figure out some new ways to bring in paying suckers customers. What better way than to cross market your medieval festival with Mardi Gras? Why Mardi Gras, you ask? I have literally not a flaming clue. If I had to guess, it’s because Mardi Gras is probably more enjoyable then the festivals and carnivals the Medievalivians actually went to, all of which seem to revolve around a saint that was martyred in some horrific fashion, and which included scourging, fasting, and the stoning of random ‘witches’, and which was still more fun than their everyday existence.
So, yeah Mardi Gras would be a big step up as far as celebrations go. Of course, Mardi Gras is “Fat Tuesday” which is a reference to the day before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins, which is almost always in the Spring. And not the middle of the summer. But I quibble. And quaver and quiver and quilt.
If you’re in the area I’d suggest you drop in, but the Mardi Gras/RenFaire Super Combo Deal was last weekend, so there’s nothing left to do here but eat sausage.