The fire lasted on, through the Brixton night with a thousand angry looters who knew they were right

Monday morning blog - Renaissance Festival: Weekend 2

This weekend the wife left for Los Angeles, the twins packed up for a sleepover weekend at grandma's house and I was left with a rare, free Friday evening to relax before showtime. It could not have come on a better weekend.

The boys and I did get to spend a good day at home together before the teenager needed xrays and a splint for injuries he picked up in a fight and the twins are showing exactly how unhappy they are going to be in public school by continuing to excel and learn independently.
This week it was math - I introduced the boys to column addition after Owen was playing a math game he got for Xmas and was getting frustrated trying to add 2 digit numbers (I know, he probably shouldn't be able to do any of this, which makes his frustration even cuter and his math ability even crazier) because they were written in a line.

So I showed them putting the numbers on top of one another and adding downward and they LOVED it. For their "treat" after dinner they asked for more math problems. My kids, the geeks. By the end of the night they were adding 4 and 5 digit numbers together and glowing with pride that has no place in public schooling.

The really weird thing is the difference in the two boys - once you show Aidan the rules of what you're doing he can apply them to a number of things and he uses the tools you give him. Owen, on the other hand, actually gets the concept of what you're showing him and understands WHY math works the way it does. He dazzled me with that by pointing out that when a number in the 'ones' column adds up to more than 10 you add a 1 to the next column and if it adds up to more than 20 you add a 2 to the next column.
Aidan was just carrying a one because I had told him to and didn't really get why he was doing it or wasn't entirely clear on when it happens. Owen gets why the rules are there and therefore he knows when to use them, when they change and what they mean.

So they learned addition and 'carrying' that allows them to add numbers into the millions (and they did problems into the billions and laughed at the absurdity of how huge the numbers were. What nerds.) and I found another key difference in my crazy little geniuses.

After that grandma took over and I gathered my things and hit Shakopee for a mellow evening by the campfire with friends, turned in at a decent hour and got up to everything you'd need for a perfect Festival weekend. Clear skies, sunshine, low humidity and temps that were warm without being potentially dangerous if you, for example, dress up like a clown and run frantically around for 10 hours.

This weekend was awesome. I felt energized, positive and was happy to be doing things outside of the comfortable bits I'd been repeating fairly often. It's a strange environment out there because the audience feels like equal parts people that come because you never know what to expect and people that come because they know exactly what to expect and want to see it (and hear it) over and over again. People will come see the same jokes they can repeat in their sleep, the same shows that never change and the same street characters that will always do the same schtick.
So it can feel at times like you're stuck between not giving people what they came to see and getting put in a very small box to do a very small number of tricks. I used to push against that the wrong ways and spent half a Sunday being a completely different clown than usual before George stopped me (knowing he's one of the only people I listen do because of things like this) and said "There are people that got up and drove all the way here and brought their kids back to see you do what you do and your refusing to do it is kinda shitty" - which sounds heavy and dramatic but you only need to spend 10 minutes at our show to know that's exactly true.

This year has been a happy balance of finding new things that are still in line with what I "do" out there that people like and expect from me and pushing in directions that makes sense, running the right way with things. Man it feels so much better.

Saturday afternoon we had one of our best stage shows ever, we laughed hard along with the audience at the seriously weird stuff that we do and got a nice healthy hat-pass along with our warm, happy feelings - which is unusual. It's nice to find the balance between getting a big hat of pity cash for a show that was only 75% there and a show that we enjoyed the hell out of but the tips tell us we didn't take the audience along with us. This was also good and, like my street day, I can't really tell you specifics of what we did or why it works other than it felt right and we hit it hard.

Finished the day hoarse and happy after a close call with a migraine, put the kids to sleep in the tent and spent the evening sitting on our platform sipping whiskey like a couple of old men. It was nice.

Sunday was a repeat performance in a lot of ways - perfect weather, playful crowds that were having a good time drinking and didn't mind saying goodbye to their money. A great Festival day.

We played Vilification Tennis both days this weekend but Sunday was a unique day. Not only were we both feeling 'on' and silly - had a good time with some out-of-character hijinx and being a little more rough around the edges than usual, different pacing, made up a few new bits of material on the spot and delivery was pretty consistently spot-on and we were killing it.

Until Tony Miller, the guy we totally wanted to be when we got into this show, got onstage to tear our faces off and swallow them whole. There was a moment of shock, then total euphoria (as in 'YES, I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO PLAY THIS MATCH') and then the realization that this was not going to go well for us but we were going to have the best time doing it - and it was super super fun until Tony ended the show without question as to whose game it was.

He later told me he loved watching us and wanted to get up and play us - which is about the highest compliment possible for that show from anyone. ever. I am happy. It was fun.

Our Sunday show was equally fun, we laughed a lot and the crowd was deep.
We cut Romeo and Juliet from our regular shows, another case of upsetting some members of the audience that come for the familiar stuff so we can keep finding new material.

The sounds of love were eminating from the giraffe enclosure, there were Muppets and indestructible Danish chainsaw killers...and then things got strange.

I love our show. I love that other people even like our show.

I made it home, got the kids from next door, cleaned up and settled into bed.
When I woke up, my wife was back from California.
I have to say it was a pretty amazing weekend.