Society: The Arizona Renaissance Festival

I felt this deserved its own page. It's a bit of an aside, and once you throw a bunch of photos into an essay it kind of breaks up the flow, you know, bro? Ok. Let's go. The Phoenix Renaissance Faire is held in Florence, AZ, at what appears to be a permanent structure of medieval-faced buildings, both wood and stucco. They have a jousting arena and three pissed-off-looking falcons in cages. I presume they get to come out and rock at some point, but I didn't witness this.

Know first that I'm a little depressed that I don't have the Frozen Princess Latte photo, so don't expect it here. Most of the Faire consists of capitalismtastic stuff where you can buy often-anachronistic things:

(which is a word I often mispronounce and am corrected by my hippie students)

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Some of these things do not, of course, exist. There are faeries. One guy dressed up as an Aqua Bat (I asked him), whatever that is. Friend Jon showed up with his Guinness t-shirt (with script in Gaelic). This got a surprising number of compliments. Possibly the crowds thought he was a half-giant sporting elvish runes on his tunic.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to come to one of these. Proximity's one: there aren't so many festivals like this within ten hours of where I grew up. And even in high school, during the main phase of my geekery, I wouldn't have gone to one of these. I thought myself better than flimsy stuff like this, either because of my poseur anti-capitalist leanings, my superior knowledge of wizardry, my fiesta of acne, my Mountain-Dew-inspired sloth and slovenly appearance, or my impressive goth t-shirt collection that, while appealing to show off, make you sweaty in the girl-filled outdoor sun of the social world. Still. There's something awesome about the effort involved in this event and this world even if what it amounts to is a hodgepodge of eh. Though even those with the most impressive garb still found their ways of buying crap to bring home:

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As for me, I drank a beer or two and ate an anachronistic crêpe. Jon wrung his hands at all the Ye Oldes that adorn shops (shoppes) in this place. If I hadn't crapped out of my old english class at ISU I might have known what Jon says, being that the Ye comes from the thorn(e) glyph which looked like a Y but was pronounced th, so even at the time it would have been pronounced the, not ye, that is, if anyone could read the signs or if they had signs to begin with, not even to mention the fact that Olde is meant for an audience of us, not of them. Still, it's one of the tropes of anything Medieval that you throw on some extra ye's and e's and double the price.

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Walking around and running out of cash more quickly than expected, you went through most of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Eventually you became disillusioned and lethargic and sat down on whatever steed you could find and anticipated text-messaging your friends about this.

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Eventually you were rescued by the Very Popular and Honorable Duct Tape Knights (rearview only).

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It is a pretty good time, but if you go in wanting any kind of semi-believable authentic or even period-appropriate experience, then this Renaissance Festival (and possibly all of them) is not for you.

Admittedly it's not taken all that seriously. One sign reads:

The Mud Stage

Huzzah!

Three Guys & a Bunch of Drums

Wyldmen

Huzzah!

This stuff is easy to mock, sure, but it still means something.

There is an abundance of flutes, or perhaps floutes. Most likely these are recordingse of floutes. Yet there is a giant horse, the Piccolo Pony, sans piccolo.