learning2fly | twilight has come and the moon rises high

((how weird was it to not sing "Bring on the Starlight" in over a year and jump right in with all the lyrics at the drop of a hat??))

Well folks, the 2003 season is offically over. I'm mostly relieved about it but of course there's that bittersweetness to it. Not seeing most of my faire friends until next May really sucks. At least now I can get rid of this wicked bodice tan I've got goin on...
I went camera crazy this past weekend, so check out my yahoo photo album again for more pics. I especially love Eric (Galla) getting his crotch stomped on by Jenny. (hopefully they aren't huge like last time. You'll have to teach me some things, Eric. This digital photography stuff is confusing.
also, ::ahem:: WHICH MOONIE AND BROON SHOW ARE WE GOING TO? we need to buy tickets and stuff. 5 or 8?? huh?? huuuhhhh??? )
This past weekend overall was really nice. The weather was pretty decent. Good crowds. I had some self control and didn't buy anything...
A lot of people said some really nice stuff to me and my dance troupe. Like mid-day, Dan Marcotte, the music director at faire came up to us backstage and said how impressed with us he is and how great we look and sound out there. Susan Fry made the BBF poster children Sunday morning. I have a piece of it to prove it! (they did NOT do the poster children thing hardly at all this year for some reason. Becky and Tim and tons of other people should have been recognized for their awesomeness, dammit. If we're not getting paid the least they can do is give us a pat on the back or something). Let's see...backstage I passed Joe. I said hi and smiled at him as usual, only this time he stopped dead in his tracks, walked up to me and told me that every time he sees me I make him feel good and that I'm really hot. aawww. The military boys gave us a special thank you for playing with them every day too. And at the end of the day on Suday, Tim and I were intercepted by the wandering minstrel guy on our way to the musican's jam. He promptly serenaded me and got Tim to hold my hand, take me in his arms and me to give him a kiss on the cheek through the lyrics of the song. No one has ever done that to me before, even back when I was a patron. It was awesome. And backstage I ran into Wolfie, who did some things that I was not expecting. Holy crap man.
Saturday night was the graduation ceremony for new rennies. It was freakin awesome this year. Each group goes up one by one and does a skit of some sort- not directly related to faire and under 2 minutes in length. AE gave a beautiful speech based on that "Always wear sunscreen" poem thing from a few years ago. I especially loved her rant about standing up to standards our society has on body shape and promote having roles filled with actors that look like real people. As for the skits, court started off the show by having each new rennie be a muppet and sang the muppet show song. Street showed off their skills by performing their auditions...simultaneously. Except for Terry and Lady Wiggie going WWF in the aisle, that is. The BBF did an infomercial for a 'best of bristol' compilation cd. The mummers sang a spoof on 'because I got high' and sang 'it was too hot', the tumblers re wrote the gummy bears cartoon theme song and sang 'tumbling men' on top of the balcony, and we all made fun of the director of faire's recent medical procedure and re wrote 'do do ron ron ron' to 'snip snip ron ron' and sang 'viva vasectomy' on our way out. We got some laughs. Kids Kingdom took Weird Al's modern alternative spoof song and performed it with puppets. The Town Criers marched onstage with their bells while "For Whom the Bell Tolls" playing, took out hammers one by one, and destroyed their bells. Char was very dramatic by lighting hers with fireworks. And fight cast. Good GOD. Tim O'Brien made us all go blind by wearing shorts going half way up his ass. eeeeeeeeeek.

So. Long story short, I had a great season. The Bristol Buskin Frolic, despite horrible choice of title and some obnoxious people in it, was a great place for me to be this year. I loved working with Steve and seeing my buds Gwen and Brittni all day (and Becky most of the day). I loved the dancing and singing and doing plays and supporting other BBFrs while they did their thang. I found some nice rings, a leather mask and things to spruce up my room with. All in all it was a success. The final day ended quite nicely. One of the (many many) changes this year was a new closing song before going to the gate and kicking everyone out with 'Parting Glass' and the 'our revels here are ended' speech. There was a lot of pissed off rennies over this because it was a long standing tradition to sing 'bring on the starlight'. Personally, I agree that it is a bit on the Disney cheeseball-ish side. But I loved it just the same. This year the music director made a more Elizabethan sounding song called 'Farewell to Bristol' that is pretty but rather durgelike and sad sounding due to the minor keys. Last week on the Bristol discussion board someone made a comment about it and started a huge argument about the whole thing. Performers were dissing it, directors were backing it up. Much to our suprise, when we all linked arms and got ready to sing the durge song, Bring on the Starlight was sung first. All day I was fine and didn't cry at all, but when we sang that song, I looked around at all the people I've spent the summer with, knowing I wouldn't see them again for a very long time and I found myself blinking away tears. The Queen and Sir Edmund gave us some comic relief from all the crying by changing their usual shtick of the queen telling him to pay the musicians and he pretends he spend all his money at the faire so the patrons need to buy the musician's cds to pay them instead. Only this time she pulled out a big bag of fake gold coins and flung them at the musicians and the audience. It was very cute. Then we Lodeeoed up to the gate for the last time and watched Jynx (the hugenormous jester puppet) get knighted by the Queen.
The cast party was nice. Ann Elizabeth was the DJ and rocked the house with It's Raining Men and other great tunes. She rocks my world. I made the rounds and said goodbye to a lot of people and danced for a while. It was a great ending to the season. I even gave Randy a hug goodbye. It's nice to know I won't have to see him for a long long time. I'm semi interested to know what happens with him and his fiancee. They didn't get married as planned, as far as I know. She was wearing a huge poncho sweater thing to the cast party. covering up anything, mayhap?? God I hope for her sake that he didn't get her pregnant. How awful for an 18 year old to go through that. Especially with his irresponsible ass. Speaking of asses, I heard from Megan that Sheena got in another fight with Dale and he broke her nose! I'm going to kick his ass, I swear. I don't care what the circumstances were. That is NOT acceptable.
She's planning on getting an apartment, just her and her baby. I hope everything works out for her.

As for me, now that faire is over, I'm starting working ten hour days 4 days a week, getting Mondays off. It's going to be hard to get into but I think it's for the best. I love having Mondays off.
Heather and I are so freakin happy in our new apartment. I LOVE being on my own and having a good roomie. We have a nice view of a big pond full of ducks, great sunsets and airplanes flying overhead. It's nice to just sit out there and think of nothing. Just be still.
Everything is going pretty damn well. This weekend I get to see Andrew Bird and Kevin O'Donnell Friday night and Moonie and Broon on Saturday night. yay!
Now if I could just find a good time to visit my fabulous miss Liz in NYC....how about tomorrow?? :)

hugs to all.