Zombies bring wholesome family fun to the Ren Faire

For some reason my brothers and I have always found something inherently amusing about Sansabelt slacks. We have a similar attitude toward dickeys, to the point that my brothers sometimes wear one, Cousin Eddie-style, at Christmas, just to amuse themselves.

One holiday season I discovered there was a Sansabelt shop in Woodfield mall, and I decided to visit while we were doing our Christmas shopping. My brother John and I walked through the door and were almost immediately struck with what can only be described as the giggles. We were rendered nearly speechless within moments of walking into the shop, and when a smiling young woman approached and asked if she could help us we just lost it. I mean, lost it--trying desperately to maintain control, I managed to croak out a "no, thank you" in a voice that sounded very much like Squeaky-voiced Teen from the Simpsons. John started shaking and snorting, and we wheeled about and practically ran out of the store. Once we cleared the exit we fell apart, punching each other and laughing like loons.

I mention this because I discovered this is nearly the same reaction I have when I walk through the gates of the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Within moments of arriving at the Faire, before I even had a beer in hand, I became giddy to the point of stupidity. At first I thought it was all the cleavage on display. I know that always has an effect on me. But it was so much more than that. The heady combination of sights and smells, walking around in the sun, the flesh on display, the sheer exuberant hokiness of it all...

It turns out I really enjoy visiting the RenFaire. There. I said it.

Of course, I had an excuse for visiting. The only reason we were there in the center of that den of iniquity was that our eldest was helping out at Plague Day, the first zombie event held at Bristol. Nora was helping out with makeup for people attending the event who hadn't zombie-fied themselves in advance. Her friend Geoff, the man behind Kitty Zombie, organized the event.

And what an event it was. I'll just get right to the pictures from the day. MizBubs kept me out of trouble by preventing me from approaching anyone sporting a combination of near-nudity and chain mail, so these pictures are all SFW.

One of the things I love about the RenFaire is the people who show up with random bits of fantasy wear--I saw fur tails attached to several ample rear ends, bondage gear, Weimar cabaret costumes, gladiators and Orcs. Last year I saw a group of Klingons visiting, but they must have gone to the Dells instead this year. I half expected a group of Civil War reenactors to show up in uniform, claiming a professional courtesy discount.

This guy decided to wear some vaguely SWAT-ish vest, black jeans and musketeer boots:

There were acrobats

Faeries

Living statues

And living statues with obnoxious shirtless drunks



There was a disturbing moment when the Royal Court roamed the grounds, seeking a suitable male child to take away with them and raise as one of their own

On to the zombies.

There was a fine collection of living dead at the Faire yesterday. I am especially impressed with people willing to put in freaky contact lenses to complete the undead effect:

Nora, horror's girl next door, stayed busy making up the not-yet undead



Kitty Zombie is seen here working out costume contest details with Lord Bedlington-Fop (not his actual name--I just like saying "Lord Bedlington-Fop". The actor did a fine job of announcing the contest, and was quite funny.)

There was a costume contest. The medieval tranny zombie did quite well and made it to the finals. See if you can spot her.

And a zombie pinup contest. I have to say that some of these gals were more goth and steam punk than they were medieval, but I still enjoyed the show.

It was a good day.

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I found an article in my email this morning, sent to me by my friend Bawb the Revelator. You will want to remember this formula:

Want to know why? Because that formula is the mathematical formula for surviving a zombie attack:

“An outbreak of zombies is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead,” the authors wrote. “It is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble...

“Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time,” they concluded.

And if we don’t act fast enough?

“If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead,” they wrote. “This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert.”

How fast do we need to deal with the outbreak? Here’s the equation they used, where S = susceptibles, Z = zombies and R = removed. If an infection breaks out in a city of 500,000 people, the zombies will outnumber the susceptibles in about three days.

We are now working on committing this equation to memory, in between target practice and alphabetizing our canned goods stockpile.

Hope y'all had a good weekend!

Good times

Hey, where'd everybody go?

I miss em, the crazy bastards.

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The party Saturday was a blast. We had a great time, and I can't say enough to thank everyone for showing up and having a good time with us. It made us very happy to see all of you. Our guests are an extremely generous bunch. We ended this party with possibly more booze than we started with, we've got new tiki accessories and a vintage album by cocktail comedian Woody Woodbury titled "Booze is the Only Answer." Beautiful cheesehead pastry chefs showed up bearing sweets. People brought desserts and more desserts, and more wine. To those of you who couldn't be here, well, hopefully next time?

I think, counting kids and teenagers, there were about 60 or 65 people in and out. We managed to have enough food, enough ice, more than enough beer and sangria (anyone want to stop by for a drink or three?) and everyone seemed to get along fine. It's always fun to introduce people who've never met and then see them talking away later on. We had bakers, writers, cops, artists, entrepreneurs, sign language interpreters, engineers, internet musical geniuses, social workers, unofficial mayors of Chicago, IT professionals, HR marketing professionals, stay home dads, stay home moms, sophisticated European businessmen and mysterious beautiful women who asked not to be identified on this page in order to protect their privacy.

Here's the thing about parties. You do all this work, you get ready, make lists, clean, cook, all that stuff. You set up places to eat and drink, you arrange chairs in a way that you hope will encourage people to socialize. You worry about how you're going to deal with all the garbage when your cans are already half full from housecleaning, and all the food packaging you got rid of. You wonder if anyone will show up, because this might be the time that people realize they're just tired of your bullshit.

Then the party starts, and at some point--Saturday it was about an hour in--the number of guests hits a critical mass and the party starts. And, quickly after that, you lose control and the party becomes almost a living thing on its own. The chairs you set out get moved around, people end up hanging out in places you didn't think they would, your guests start to find their way around your place as they get comfortable and things just seem to run themselves. I love that ride.

So...it turns out that there's always enough food, and if it all gets eaten that just means people liked it. You can always find a good-humored kid who'll take a buck or two to climb into your garbage and recycling cans wearing a pair of your daughter's rain boots and jump up and down, compressing your trash into more manageable piles. When that one defective firework misfires and nearly hits a young girl in the head, setting her hair ablaze, her father doesn't punch you in the face and she actually turns out to have been excited about the whole experience. Lord, I hope so anyway.

See you later, alligators.

Differences between men and women: 4th of July Edition

According to MizBubs, it would never even occur to a woman to do something like this. Which I think is too bad.