The Renaissance Festival comes to town every year around my daughter’s birthday, and it has become a family tradition to attend and let her enjoy the glories of being a fairy princess. I enjoy many other glories: the stunning impracticality and ineffable beauty of the costumes, the smell of leather and paper in the journal shop, a beer in my hand, and random role-players seeking to recruit us to a Horde of Evil Minions Who Will Overthrow the King. I like to buy a frozen chocolate-covered banana and then just walk past the role-players while holding it. They can’t resist commenting on it; I’m like a walking straight line given to them by the gods of comedy.
Throughout the fairgrounds there are stages with a rotating schedule of entertainments. Of these, there are only two we make sure to see every year: The Wylde Men and the Birds of Prey show. The Wylde Men are a couple of goofy dudes who wind up rolling around in a mud pit; they do “slow motion” fight choreography and pepper their dialogue with bad puns, and for me it’s a guaranteed laugh.
The Birds of Prey show lets me see raptors up close that I’d never see otherwise. They had a red-tailed hawk, a Harris hawk, an augur buzzard (BEAUTIFUL, don’t let the name fool you), an eagle owl, and a King vulture, among others. Loved it.
Their eagle owl had been stung by bees and lost his right eye. He was still beautiful in flight and healthy otherwise. All the birds in their care were either injured and couldn’t return to the wild, or else were mal-imprints, meaning they’d imprinted on humans instead of their own kind. Either way, they wouldn’t make it on their own anymore, so these fellas take care of them for educational purposes.
I ran across a woman who offered to do a one-card Tarot reading for me. That was fun. Based on the card I picked, she said I’d have something fairly big happening in 8 weeks regarding a contract. Well, um, yeah, I have this publishing contract and I’ll be debuting in April! I know it’s fairly safe and easy to say “something will happen in 8 weeks” but I was mildly impressed that she had the stones to add the contract thing in there and be on target.
Caught the show of Dextre Tripp for the first time—dude is CRAZY. He juggled a torch, a running chainsaw and an apple. He can do some impressive stuff on unicycles. But then he drenched this rope in gas, lit it on FIRE, and walked up it for our entertainment. He’s been doing it for 14 years.
Much of the attraction of the Renaissance Festival is a nostalgia for a past that never really existed the way we romanticize it now. One of my absolute favorite comic issues of all time—yes, I’m going to say it’s my favorite, period—is issue #73 of The Sandman, a story called “Sunday Mourning.” There’s no action, no asskicking, just beautiful writing and beautiful art by Michael Zulli. Hob Gadling goes to the Renaissance Festival with his new girlfriend and meets Death. Death points out to Hob that the Festival should be appreciated for its current emphasis on enjoying life and not criticized for its lack of historical accuracy. I embrace that sentiment wholeheartedly. But one thing I’d like to see is a return to drinking out of flagons. Conan the Barbarian (again returning to comics), when not slaying soldiers or wizards or monsters, was always drinking out of flagons and wenching. The verb “to wench” has fallen out of favor in modern parlance—and rightly so—but I really think we should make a concerted effort to bring back the flagon. It is the drinking vessel of choice for badasses.
Yes, my friends, do not settle anymore for the polite pint! (And most “pint” glasses are not actual pints, did you know? They hold a single 12-oz. bottle o’ beer, but a pint is 16 oz. The bars are bamboozling us!) Demand a flagon of their finest ale and then plot your campaign of plunder along the coast of Nova Scotia! It’s ripe for pillaging, I tell you, and if my dragon ship weren’t in dry dock right now they’d be toast!
And what if the pub you frequent doesn’t HAVE flagons, you ask? Well then, you must bring your own! Give it to your server and have ’em fill it up. When they bring it back to your table, there WILL be envy among the rest of the patrons. They will ask for their own flagons. Thus you will create demand for flagons, and soon enough, the drinking establishments of the world will supply it. Flagons will enjoy their own renaissance if you help me!
To begin this campaign in earnest, I purchased my own flagon at the Ren Fest. They had wooden ones and pewter ones and some very pretty pottery, but I chose a glass one with a pewter lid and a neato-schmeato wolf running through the trees. The glass, I decided, was necessary to clearly (so to speak) demonstrate to people that YOU CAN DRINK BEER OUT OF FLAGONS, and you SHOULD do so if you wish to recall the halcyon days of Conan and feel turbo manly about it. Here is my flagon full o’ beer—gaze upon its glory and curse the fates that you don’t have one (yet):
I will be the first to admit, however, that flagons aren’t appropriate for all social situations where you wish to get your drink on. Sometimes you need a flask. So I got one of those too, made of a very stable pewter and adorned with a Celtic triskelle in copper and gold:
You will notice that my flask is being guarded by some fearsome trolls. They know treasure when they see it. To give credit where it’s due, my friend Alan painted those trolls—I’m not that good. If you Click to Embiggen you’ll see that he even painted runes on the swords! *boggle* You will probably want to download that picture and make it your wallpaper. It’s a one-shot called “Still Life with Flask and Trollbloods.” I also had an opportunity to purchase a drinking horn at the festival, but I let it pass me by; when one has a flagon and a flask, there is no need for additional vessels!
If you’ve never been to a Renaissance Festival before, I highly recommend the experience. They’re friendlier than carnivals, for one thing. People wear bodices and codpieces and call you lord, and you see more wonderful things than you’d expect (and I’m not talking about the bodices and codpieces). Guys in kilts playing drums and bagpipes—eh, I’ve seen that before. But I’ve never seen a woman bellydance to it until yesterday. That’s a delicious cultural gumbo right there. And I got to watch a smith make a stiletto, plus I played around with a war hammer and threw some axes at an extremely terrified wooden target. It was simply fabulous—and my daughter had a wonderful birthday, too. :)
