2003-01-29 - 12:34 a.m.

I've found an addiction I could all too easily slip into.

Not Cold Duck. While that still remains my libation of choice (and the choice of a new generation), I'm hardly addicted to it. Truth be told, I've hardly been able to down more than three bottles at a time since that time I took five bottles and a bunch of other atomic cocktails and the heady delights of the theatre all at once and went on a cerebral vacation while some previously unseen hobgoblin from the small of my mind went joyriding around in my corporeal form, finding new ways for me to drunkenly abase myself.

I'm not even rightly addicted to the sleek black goddess that is my PS2. I've frankly been a bit disillusioned with her since I found I've got a scratch on my Kingdom Hearts disc which causes the ending animation to freeze and I've slightly burned myself out on the nigh-infinite wonders of Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth.

No, I think I could become addicted to dressing up like a Moody Blue and strolling around dusty parkgrounds with hordes of variably-clad turistas and atrocities of anachronicity, watching liberal arts graduates displaying an absurd mishigoss of accents perform a wide variety of beautifully useless artistries for Sacajawea dollars and the smoky acclaim of a dozen peons.

These faires, theye have theire charmes.

I have no valid explanation for this phenomenon (although Julieclipse takes a more palpable stab at it than I am about to). There's just something about the whole show that really gives me, to partake of the vulgar vernacular of a sadly bygone era, a "good vibe". I like the smoke that gets in my nose and my clothes. I like looking at the costumes and the peace-tied swords and the giant hats and the horsies and the lutes and the burnished armor. I like the marketplaces, heavy with dangling crystals and bunches of herbs and paints and fortunetellers and booksellers and weapons in wood and iron and leather and the turkey legs and the bread bowls and the drinking horns that double as blatting horns for lovably drunken louts who I would be more likely to describe as "damn-fragging-bastard stupid-ass drunks!" if I were to meet them in any other context.

I really, really like it.

I like seeing the Empty Hats over and over and over. I like listening to the groan-inducing routine of Emrys Fleet, Ratcatcher, even when I'm the only one in the party guffawing. Perhaps especially then. I even liked working at the Ringling Festival as a lowly turkey-leg wiffler for the right hon. Jacob Rimer. I got this great yellow jerkin, and a hood. Man, I loved 'em. My current outfit is much more simple, although I'm hoping to get a nice bright yellow shirt as soon as I get enough money.

Did you read that, citizens?

I'M HOPING TO BUY A BRIGHT YELLOW MEDIEVAL RUFFLY SLEEVE-TYING SHIRT FROM AN OVERPRICED MEDIEVAL VENDOR AS SOON AS I HAVE ENOUGH MONEY.

And why?

SO I CAN WEAR IT AT OTHER MEDIEVAL FAIRES!

...

Ahhhh, shaddap.

Yes, I enjoy the whole folderol. The whole whack-a-folderol-la.

I've even given over far too much of my valuable fancying time to imagining what fun it would be to become one of those hapless rats who scurry after the faires and sop up the crumbs. Possessing no particularly notable skills of my own, I'd have to either enlist as an extra with one of those historical reproductive companies, putting my degree to good use as I put on a blue tabard and stood as a pawn for King Ethelred the Unready in the human chess match ... or making up my own act to somehow attract attention without being able to play anything, walk on anything high, juggle, swordfight, sing, or make anything disappear.

I think I'd be something like the Wandering Scholar, offering historical information, dramatic poetry readings, geography lessons, biographical sketches, geneaological musings, divination through a wide variety of non-Tarot/crystal-ball-free methods, humorous asides, viperous insults, and a wide and devastating array of puns. Sort of like Merlin from The Sword in the Stone meets Oscar Wilde and Groucho Marx. Hell, if I had some sort of furry thing to sell, I'd be a smash hit.

I'm certain I could offer more entertainment than the Hopeless Romantics, and they've got their own damned stage show thrice daily.

But that's nonsense, because the people who do these faires are lunatics, and do so at the peril of their finances and their sanity.

Of course, that's what's so damned appealing.

And I will of course see you knaves and knackers and ka-nig-its at the Bay Area Festival, as it will be the LAST of this noble breed of faires held at Largo Central Park.

Hurry, or you'll miss Emrys Fleet. If you ask nicely, I'll let you have some Cold Duck out of my wineskin.

Odd's bodkin! What a travesty I have become!

And by my halidom, I love it!

MORE MEAD, WENCH! MWAHAHAAHA ... ... ahh ... scratch that ... MORE COLD DUCK, WENCH!

*****

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