Sans Pachyderms

John and I went to the Bristol Ren Faire on Saturday. If you were invited and did not go, more fool you, because it was awesome. Alright, not really awesome, but fun. We saw the joust, we saw the swordsmen, we went to an dungeon with animatronic torture dioramas. We saw Christophe the Insultor, who was very entertaining, yet still overpaid. He had a magnificent racket: you give him ten dollars, he insults your friend. The more money you give, supposedly the more insulting he is, though this was not neccessarily the case. Then at the end of the show, one person in the audience is selected and the whole crowd is encouraged to pitch in. In the course of a forty-five minute show, Christophe pulled in about five hundred bucks, and while funny, a lot of the material seemed pretty recycled. But hey, I can't fault the guy for turning a profit and having a good time, especially since I only coughed up two bucks.

The wenches were a bit of a letdown. Not too many chicks in bizarre bondage gear on public display (except for one who outweighed me by a Daisy and was a good head shorter than me. She was the winner of the Least In-Touch With Reality Award for the day), the barmaids had lost the zeal they had at the beginning of the summer, and the only faeries around were fellas. I mean men dressed as tree faeries, not ... well, they probably were that too. One young maid did offer to escort me to the Pig & Whistle tavern, which was flattering, but I have discovered that Elizabethan style Virgin-white cake make-up with Cosmetic Mole is actually a bit of a turn-off for me, so I politely declined.

I skipped the elephant ride this year when Heidi and Daisy and I went for Heidi's birthday, and I regretted it, and I especially regret it now, as this trip, the elephants had been replaced by camels. Don't get me wrong, camels are fun to ride, sure, but there's no real sense of accomplishment from riding a camel. Ride an elephant? Now that feels like you've done something, like something important has happened. That is something that is truly awesome. I tell you, friends, with the voice of experience: never let the opportunity to ride an elephant pass you by.