Today saw the return of an old tradition for me. An Olde Tradition, you might say -- the Colorado Renaissance Festival. For eight weeks every summer, the town of Larkspur Colorado (noted for being halfway between Colorado Springs and Denver and, well, for hosting the Renaissance Festival) hosts this long-standing event. It hardly changes at all from year to year, but hey -- for a once a year thing, it's quite a lot of fun. I had not been for seven years, having missed it the summer I moved to Virginia and (of course) every summer since. But now I'm back, and so it was time for the RenFest.
Seven years and, just as would have wished for, it hadn't really changed. Ded Bob was still there, bonking rule breakers on the head. The same joust script was being followed, with the crowds chanting the same cheers.
And the "Vegetable Justice" booth was still there, challenging people to hit a master insult artist with a tomato. ($5 for 6 throws.) The man hurling the insults today was a true master of his craft.
For the fat: "Is it hard throwing food away from your face?"
For the "butch man," trying to throw too hard: "Keep throwing like that so we won't know how small your penis is."
For the incredibly short guy: "Shouldn't you be off guarding a pot of gold somewhere?"
For the petite, wimpy-armed woman: "It's okay, it's probably hard to throw wearing a training bra."
For the precocious child that tried to "counter-insult" as he threw: "You know, I was almost your father, but the dog beat me up the stairs."
And on and on. We stood near the booth, watching in awe of this guy's verbal skill for nearly 45 minutes. He never repeated an insult once. And though of course much of what he said had to have been coming from a vast "playbook" he'd built up, he displayed improvisational skill as well.
When the fat man in the neon orange t-shirt stepped up: "You look like an enormous traffic cone."
When a man who'd been hurling fastballs had a poorly thrown final shot that went near the arm instead: "Oh, at the end you went all soft and aimed for the wrong hole."
If this guy's still there next summer, I might have to make a second trip to the festival just to sit and watch him all day.
5 comments:
Ah, nostalgia. There's a Renaissance Festival in upstate New York, a couple of hours north of Ithaca, and I had gone a number of times. Not every year, certainly, but probably 6 or 8 times in all. But when I moved to Virginia it had already been several years since my last trip.
Your Colorado Festival sounds remarkably like the New York version -- doesn't really change much from year to year -- except I don't think there was a "master insult artist" there. The troupe of "villagers" had a number of acts that were considered "bawdy", but nothing as explicit as you relate.
It's been a while since I even thought about the Renaissance Festival, and now I miss it.
several years ago they had a similar thing at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, in the Threadneedle Fair area they had a dunking booth with talented insulters. it used to be a certain highlight of any visit. that part of the park is not there anymore and sorely missed, but this brought back some fond memories.
- the mole
Funny link for my friend Evan Lorentz -
http://www.g-wood.net/billy/26758083_e1b85338b9.jpg
If I knew how to spell a "Peter Griffin laugh," I would. :-)
I have to third this. I loved the insult guy that appeared every year at the Ohio Rennaisance festival. Ah the joys of cutting down another human in front of his laughing peers.
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