Gotta love a place with half nude women, bawdy songs, little children, juggling and josting, and more half nude women. It always surprises me that young women wearing a minimum of clothing are shocked when dirty old men such as myself look at them.
I’ve always loved the combination of sprawling tattoos and a full Renaissance costume. The normal clothing optional aspect of most Ren Faires often makes people watching the best part-and Ren Faires do attract all kinds of people.
The Oklahoma Ren Fest is in Muskogee, OK-which is about thirty minutes South of Tulsa. The motel I normally stay at when I work in the area was filled with the performers and vendors from The Faire. I saw a few of them when I was checking out. I always think that I could be a performer at a Ren Fest, I can do the accent, and I do know a number of bad jokes.
Right-at any rate, the OK Ren Fest is one of the best ones I have been to. I would rank it among my favorites, right up there with the KC Ren Fest and Scarborough Faire. For one thing it was pretty big, lots of space and lots of people selling odds and ends and lots of stages. Though a couple of the stages were a bit on the hidden side and you actually had to do a bit of hunting to find them.
Among my favorite acts were Willie’s Wenches (I especially like Lolita and her bare midriff), Captain Thom Bedlam, The Jolly Rogers, and Bob The Incredible Juggler-who doesn’t have quite the web presence of Bob The Juggler. I’ve never seen Bob juggle anywhere but at Ren Fests, where he always complains about the lack of clothing-his own-and says that he wears the tights as a contractual obligation. I love Bob’s routines, but I have to wonder, outside of Ren faires, where exactly, does juggling pay?
As with all good Ren Faires, there was never enough time to see every act and we missed most of them. The ones we did see where a lot of fun and I got pulled up on stage two or three times. Always a bit of fun for a ham such as myself. Lovely ladies and dashing gents and the occasional buffoon that went to Clown College.
Among the cool things I have not seen elsewhere were flexible dragons that look to have been made from fishing lure materials-The Wife bought one she has named Gilbert. Another neat idea was Bud’s Root Beer selling refillable glass bottles of Cream Soda or Root Beer. With $1 refills on many sizes it was a pretty good deal at usually pricey Ren Faires.
There were the usual suspects of people selling swords and armor and incense and turkey legs and all manner of Ren Faire costumes. There was one fellow there selling Steampunk hats and goggles and capes and the like. Great stuff, but I can’t seem to remember what the name of his shop was. I like all that steampunk stuff-if I ever do audition for a Ren Faire, I’ll likely have a Steampunk angle.
The best parts of the shows are the improve bits-because once you’ve seen one of these shows-you’ve really seen them all. The player pretty much never use any new material. Captain Thom, for example, does a really good Balls and Cups routine-but is there anyone alive who hasn’t seen the bleeding balls and cups routine? He was dead funny, but as soon as he went into his act-we all zoned out. The Skills are often like the figure part of figure skating, why bother?
One of the more amazing fellows was Logsdon The Escapologist-a sort of modern Midieval Harry Houdini. His opening bit was to have a small child bind his hands with a chain, and he put his hands into a bag and was instantly free of the chains. Absolutely unbelievable. The rest of the routine was kind of a let down after that, but he was pretty incredible at getting himself un-tied.
I’ve always been impressed by the talent and skills of the Ren Faire performers I have seen. I remember one woman I saw years ago who had a Vegas caliber slack rope routine-and the Ren Faire put her in a tiny corner of the fair with two benches. She should have been one of the headliners with seating for a hundred.
But that’s kind of the whole story of the Ren Faire, these are people that could have been Big Time Stars in the age of Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson. As it is, they have a small following, make an ok living, and occasionally have to share a cheap motel with people like me.
