The Oppenheimer Report - 1/9/00 ...
I
watched a commercial for one of those Medieval Feast places
the
other night, and by golly I want to go.
For those of you
who
don't live in a large metropolitan area, with a glut of
entertainment
options, you probably don't even know what a
medieval
feast place IS. This is basically a
fun-filled
evening
for which you pay an all-inclusive admission fee to
sit
in an auditorium, eat meat with your hands, and watch men
on
horseback try to spear each other in a
mock jousting
match. Occasionally, there is the odd hand-to-hand
skirmish
and maces and balls and chains are called for,
but mostly
it's
just skewering. Picture yourself tearing apart an
unmanageable
slab of cheap, underdone cow meat (heaven
knows from what part of the cow), as you watch chainmail-clad
knows from what part of the cow), as you watch chainmail-clad
horsemen
try to impale each other with giant pool cues. If
that
isn't enough excitement, their galloping horses fling
large
gobs of mud and saliva up into your food
as they race
by.
You have a front row seat for all the feudal carnage and
savagery
you can stomach. Relive the good old
days for
one,
very
reasonable, all- inclusive admission
charge. Fun per
dollar,
I don't know how you can do better than this.
Call
me a testosterone-choked moron, but I love crap like
this.
It's not that violence turns me on, it's
more that this
is
simply such a ludicrous concept. It makes about as much
sense
as watching the Foot Surgery Channel on TV
as you sit
down
to your spaghetti dinner.
I
am reminded of a funny experience I had a long time ago,
when
I spent a semester studying abroad in
Dublin, Ireland.
I
and my classmates were taken on a field trip, as part of our
cultural
experience, and one of our stops was dinner at a
place
called Bunratty Castle. It was a genuine,
ancient stone
castle,
dating back to Celtic times, which had been
transformed
into a rather bizarre restaurant. First, we were
served
mead wine by real wenches, and then, once sufficiently
lubricated,
we were led into a large banquet hall for a good
old-fashioned
throw-the-bones-over-your-shoulder medieval
feast.
They BRAGGED about this.The feastitorium seated about
two
or three hundred, but on the night we were there it was
only
about half full. The tables were long, seating between
forty
to fifty diners, and each place setting consisted of a
serrated
knife and a plate, but no other
utensils. For the
tour
group of geriatric bible thumpers from Iowa, this must
have
seemed quite a primitive feast, but to my study
group,
made
up in large part by scoundrels of
questionable Irish
decent,
armed with their somewhat muddled interpretation of
what
was proper medieval decorum, this was a green light to
party.
After
several more tankards of mead wine, we realized that
the
folks at the next table were a rugby team visiting from
England,
and that they too were getting into the spirit of
things.
Once our slabs of animal flesh had been served, it
wasn't
long before the mother of all food fights broke out.
It
was instant mayhem, the likes of which I doubt the managers
of
Bunratty Castle had ever anticipated or even imagined.
Entertainment
during our feast was supposed to be a quartet
of musicians playing music from the period, and they were all
of musicians playing music from the period, and they were all
dressed
in those balloon pants and those funny hats with big
feathers. I'm sure they felt silly enough dressed like
that,
but
no words can describe how silly they must have felt
fending
off projectiles of beef with their lutes and drums.
Amidst
the chaos - and let there be no mistake, this was
CHAOS,
there sat the Iowans, calmly eating their meals with as
much
dignity as they could muster, (remember they have only
knives
with which to eat), ducking occasionally to miss the
odd
incoming roll or slab of meat.
Needless
to say, we, the School of Irish Studies and the rugby
team,
were summarily escorted out of Bunratty Castle before we
could
finish our medieval desserts, but not before leaving our
indelible
mark on the patience of these tourist trap
imposters.
Covered with food, we were bussed back to our hotel
where
we spent the next four hours drinking even more and
embellishing
what was already a slam dunk in the "memorable
experience"
department. By the way, I grudgingly admit that
the
rugby guys won the food fight.
Now,
whenever I see an ad for one of these Joust-O-Rama
places,
it triggers fond memories of that Bacchanalian
orgy
in
which I was so blessed to have participated.
As
I approach that stage in my life to which I loathingly
refer
as "approaching respectability" ... that point where I
would
never in a million years dream of behaving with such a
careless
lack of decorum, I look back on my
Bunratty
adventure
as one of the high points in my Irish
experience.
Sometimes,
while eating dinner with my wife at a fine
restaurant,
I'll toss an olive at her, just for old time's
sake
. In response, she will look at me as if
to say "I
married
a single cell organism" .... or,
worse yet, she'll
simply
ignore my token nostalgic gesture. That hurts. In my
mind
there can't be enough of these medieval feast places to
satisfy
the base needs of men all over the world.
It's in our
nature
to be this way, and all this rubbish about the rules of
civilized
behavior is totalitarian hogwash, foisted upon us by
prudes
like Emily Post and Miss Manners.
Oh,
to be medieval again! Honey, do you know where I put my
good
feather? It's time to feast!
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2000 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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