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About a month ago, I got dragged to the Colorado
Renaissance Faire
near Larkspur on Palmer Divide. A
daughter had to work there selling mugs and plates for a
local potter that day, and she insisted I'd enjoy the
jousts and jugglers.
Plus, everybody that works there is supposed speak
old English,
she said.
Patiently I explained that Old English is a highly
inflected language much like Old Norse, and no one would
understand it. Well, like the English in Shakespeare's
plays,
she said. 'I, your humble servant, thanketh
thee, milady, for the pleasure of serving you, and prithee
comest thou again to sample our wares,' that sort of
thing.
Hours of pomp and pageantry among varlets, villains,
knaves and fools, and even some pleasant scenery provided
by a scantily clad young woman who touted her rack of
pretzels with get your hot, twisted bread from a hot,
twisted wench
-- there are worse ways to spend a warm
Sunday.
(Martha observed that the faire's dress code is sexist. Many wenches wore low-cut dresses, which are historically accurate, but why weren't any varlets sporting codpieces?)
It certainly wasn't renaissance.
Medieval was
more like it. Many stands sold wizard and dragon goods
(haven't the right-thinkers of Colorado Springs discovered
all this encouragement of occult sorcery just 30 miles out
of town?), and the historic renaissance was a time when
Europeans were putting that behind them in favor of
rational science from Copernicus and Galileo.
One fellow at a stand confessed that Essentially, all
this is just a big shopping mall. And if a regular suburban
mall treated people this way -- made them park miles away
and wander around in the dust with hardly any shade,
charged a fortune for anything to eat or drink, offered
toilets that aren't much of an improvement on medieval
Europe -- it wouldn't last a week. But this is insanely
popular. Must be the theme-park aspect of it.
He was probably right, and when you think about it, there are abundant commercial opportunities just waiting to be exploited:
· Perpetual Woodstock. In '69 they had the real thing, three days in the mud eating bad drugs several miles from the stage. Glad I missed it. Little wonder that the 20-year celebration in '89 was a bust, but word is that the 25-year re-enactment this year will work out.
If that's the case, then why not an every-weekend
arts-and-crafts fair that we baby-boomer parents can take
our kids to and say that's how we lived long ago when we
were your age
?
Geezer bands like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles could spare themselves the trauma of touring with semi-permanent gigs on the big bandstand at Perpetual Woodstock, which would be the rock 'n' roll equivalent of Branson, Mo.
As you wander around the grounds and dodge the
Frisbee-catching dogs, long-haired folks in tie-dye and
bell-bottoms will try to sell you far-out love beads,
revolutionary underground newspapers and groovy pills which
might be righteous peach doubledomes
or bummer
strychnine cut with methedrine.
· Ozzie & Harriet Heights. Join your guides, Pat Buchanan and Marilyn Quayle, as they show you the halcyon 1950s where everyone is white and middle-class.
No winos, pan-handlers or street-hawkers here, not among the ivory picket fences and close-cropped verdant lawns of stable two-parent families where Dad goes off every weekday morning, leaving Mom to bake instant-mix cookies for Sally, Dick and Jane.
Sally once wanted to be a doctor, but now she knows that girls can only be nurses and she's secretly hoping young crew-cut Dick will get a secure job at a big company with good benefits someday. We know that all three will grow strong and tall because they eat fluffy Wonderbread, fortified with a dozen vitamins and lots of exciting preservatives just discovered by the American scientists who lead the world in everything.
Go downtown, where the local merchants are closing in favor of chain stores in shopping centers on the edge of town and where they're down to one train a day and the public transit system just folded, and hang out at the malt shop with Archie and Veronica and convince yourself that this is the way things should be and that nothing should ever change. Then you'll be ready to join Focus on the Family or maybe even the Republican Party.
· Coloradoland. Enter the wondrous land that you've experienced in the reincarnated Colorful Colorado Magazine: greedy ranchers who destroy wildlife with poison, countered by virtuous Colorado readers who live in upscale mountain real-estate developments with heated marble floors.
These exclusive homesites, of course, do not damage
wildlife habitat. And honest, the wild animals love it if
you visit any of the hidden
spots touted in the
magazine. Plenty of undiscovered bed-and-breakfast
boutiques here so you can buy organic Lycra, stone-ground
mountain bikes and preservative-free real estate.
Yes, you can have it all -- conspicuous consumption of the romantic Colorado image -- with a $98 day pass to Coloradoland. Why are you waiting?
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