This is the Ren Fair I used to go to in Mass. There was no jousting or anything in NJ, but a f*ck of a lot of this...
Before we walked into the Ren Fair (this year has a Pirate theme, God help us all) we were approached by a woman who was ranting on about how horrible and what a ripoff it all was. She was pretty irate, but we chalked it up to the fact that the weather was ghastly. NJ is the moistest state in the nation by far and unless you're down at the shore, Summers here are intolerable.
It definitely sucked this year, but no more than usual, I suppose. They all seem the same to me- inept, goofy, cut-rate- but any break from the relentless ennui of NJ suburbia doesn't have to try too hard to divert me for an hour or two. But the weather just naturally makes you all the less forgiving of it all. My daughter loves it and the boys used to enjoy it as well, so it became a kind of tradition for Father's Day. Maybe next year we'll save the money and try the big one in upstate NY in September.
I was struck by how ill-advised it is to plan these things in the horrid NJ summer when most of these people are wearing about 35 pounds of clothing. Maybe other Ren Fairs try a little harder, but I'm also struck by how little effort is put into this particular shindig. It's basically a grammar school field day with sweaty, well-nourished underacheievers who don't seem particularly motivated to create a convincing environment. They seem more interested in staging the excruciating type of mock-comedic theater you see a lot at cons, but just as long as it doesn't distract them from their Wii's or their Taco Bell time. There was the usual Madrigal chorus but no one- not a single person- was attempting to sing in harmony and no one knew how to project. I was standing about 20 feet away from a chorus of about 20 people and I could barely hear them.
It's easy to rag on Ren Fair people but I think the concept can be reasonably entertaining if done well. It can be a good family outing that can offer a nice kind of hippie vibe, if run by people who aren't simply out to take your money and force you to listen to their wretched accents, which often seem to be drawn solely from repeated viewings of Monty Python and The Holy Grail. These people need to try a little bit- well, a lot- harder especially when the weather is so assaultive.
What's interesting in the light of this blog is that the original concept of Ren Faires was to recreate the time of Queen Elizabeth I, which of course is when England fell under the sway of occultists like John Dee and Edward Kelley, as well as Rosicrucian/Neo-Templar master schemers like Francis Walsingham and Francis Bacon. So much of the curvature of world history came be traced to that era, when the idea of a worldwide British empire was first conceived.
At the same time, Shakespeare was creating the prototype not only for mass media but also the English language as we know it today. Soonafter, we had the King James Bible which would shake all of Christendom to its core, and then Freemasonry and its attendant revolutions. So even in as humble a setting as a Ren-Faire, you have the Mysteries lurking behind the curtain.
As to the NJ Kingdom people, a word of advice- spend less time in the off-season at Wicca meets and more time in the library. Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for these people, but just because you make a nice costume doesn't mean you have a competent fair.
As to the NJ Kingdom people, a word of advice- spend less time in the off-season at Wicca meets and more time in the library. Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for these people, but just because you make a nice costume doesn't mean you have a competent fair.
