Today, Tina and the girls and I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, an annual event in my home state that I’ve always longed to go to, but never attended.  In many ways, I still resent that my parents never took me there, though I’m sure they thought it was overpriced cheese.  

As a kid, I used to gave longingly at brochures, imagining a place where you’re literally transported back in time to the high middle ages — where knights joust and well-meaning kings and queens hold court over cheerful peasants, urchins and the like.  It looked like the next best thing to slaying dragons, or drinking grog from a tankard.

The reality, however, is something more akin to a theme park with all the overpriced food, souvenir vendors and shows, but no rides.  Well, unless you count a free pony rides, or the chance to climb onto the back of an elephant.  It was a mile walk from the overflow parking lot, through thousands of automobiles parked in the grass.  But once you passed through the faux castle facade, it was hard not to feel charmed by the place.

With a do-it-yourself medieval aesthetic, and vendors with handmade crafts that were vaguely medevil, or at least in the mold of Gary Gygax’s vision of the middle ages for AD&D, you get the sense of what attractions like this used to be — made by real people and not corporations with high-priced imagineers.   A lot of love and care went into the construction of the mock village, with its permanent buildings and thick, lush forest of trees.  If not for the thousands of attendees, one could feel that you were on the set of BBC’s Robin Hood, or maybe a grown up version of the old Enchanted Forest amusement park.

And a surprising number of attendees — sometimes whole families — actually dressed up themselves.  In fact, there were so many people in costume that it was hard to figure out who was an employee of the park and who was a guest.  Even our girls donned flowered circlets, or “princess hats” as we called them.  A part of me looked at the leather armor and hand-crafted wooden swords longingly, wishing for a moment to take part in the full experience, before I regained my senses and realized how ridiculous I’d look.

The only downside to the day was the pony ride, so loved by my girls, but sadly, those poor broken down old ponies filled me with terrible guilt.  All day long, three ponies walked a small endless circle of mud, carrying hordes of small children.  The track was on the side of a hill, and the ponies stumbled slightly on the incline, and at times some refused to walk, requiring the encouragement of their handlers. I have never seen such unhappy animals up close in my life.  My mother’s neighbors keep horses, and they are beautiful, spirited and well-kept.  I’m hardly a PETA activist — I’m a meat eater, a wearer of fur and leather, etc. — but I know that we were participating in the exploitation of those ponies, and I felt terrible for it.

Still, overall I enjoyed my time at the Renaissance Festival.  I even sampled that most historically accurate of all medevil treats, the deep-fried Twinkie.

I’m not the biggest Al Franken fan in the world, but I found this ad amusing: