Pour Me A Story, Vol. 47
Renaissance festivals, the strangeness of being home alone, and more
what’s up everybody! we’re back with another edition of Pour Me A Story, your third-favorite beer-themed weekly-ish newsletter.
after taking Monday off work to hang out with the kiddo while Alex was out of town visiting friends, my week was so overloaded with work that I simply did not get out of my head long enough to locate a special guest, so you’re stuck with me.
the good news is, I don’t have any back injury-related complaints this week! I even went for a run twice Thursday, a mile each way to my physical therapy appointment, and I lived to tell the tale. it gives me hope that one day in the near future I may be able to resume training for a race, which I’ve tried and failed more than once in the past few months.
Sunday morning, while Alex was away, me and the baby took a walk around our neighborhood along a major thoroughfare that made up part of the Flying Pig Marathon course. when I saw so many spectators goodnaturedly cheering runners along the course, playing music and enjoying food and drink, it lit the fire inside me again. truthfully I was fairly overwhelmed with emotion, and knew in that moment that I have to get my body right so I can get back to running distance, because I miss that feeling of eating the miles. that, and I’d love to be cheered by a crowd even though I’m an old slow dude.
A Taste of Old Times
it dawned on me today that, in the few weeks this little dispatch was on hiatus, life was reasonably noteworthy at various points. by noteworthy I simply mean “stuff I could probably fill an interview-less newsletter segment with.”
for instance: Alex and the baby took an extended weekend trip to Denver at the beginning of October to visit with friends and get a couple lungfuls of that fresh mountain air.
that, of course, left me to my own devices for four nights. as one could reasonably expect for a 36-year-old dad home alone for the better part of a week, I stopped at the sensational Findlay Market on the way home from the airport to pick up a rack of ribs and a ribeye to grill over the next couple days, and had an adventurous trip through a very nondescript drive-thru beer store to grab a couple of six-packs without having to get out of the car.
but outside of that and going a little overboard on ordering takeout, it proved to be a very quiet few days. it was almost surreal to go from a lively apartment with a very active and chatty toddler running around to 1,400 square feet to myself. silence is incredibly unfamiliar after 18 months of parenthood, but that’s what I found myself in.
I spent most of my time on Saturday and Sunday idly watching TV, endlessly scrolling Twitter and partaking in either cold ones or edibles. Monday through Wednesday, of course, were work days and I ended up using what free time I had left after that doing freelance work. I’m a real party animal, y’know?
in any case it was certainly relaxing, but a very strange sensation to be ultimately transported back to the pre-parenthood days, where “time alone” was a regularly scheduled occurrence. and while it was nice to tidy up the living room and have it stay tidy, I sure did miss having my girls around making me laugh all day long.
A Taste of Ye Olde Times
speaking of throwbacks to the old days, the weekend after Alex and the baby returned, we jumped into the car on Sunday morning and hit the road for Waynesville, Ohio, the home of the Ohio Renaissance Festival. Alex’s mom had bought us tickets for my birthday, and I confess to being a little wary when I opened them. I admit that the idea of visiting a medieval theme park where the attendees dress up as ornately as the staff do had not often crossed my mind, but said mind is an open one, so I’m willing to give it a whirl.
when we arrived at Renaissance Park, an enormous swathe of land about 45 minutes northeast of us, we found my absolute favorite thing as a parent of a young child during month 18 of a global pandemic: an enormous line. perhaps the biggest I’ve ever seen. there had to have been a couple thousand people queued up out front, the line snaking across the field starting from the castle gates. oh right, did I mention? the entire front of the festival grounds was the wall of a castle.
as someone who runs an annual festival as a side gig, I can no longer attend similar events without immediately having Organizer Brain kick in. I’ll look at bar setups, distribution of food vendors among artists and whatever else, even restroom facilities, but this time it was the entry itself that had my absolute awe.
we had printed tickets with QR codes, and I imagine most folks were also toting folded-up squares of printer paper or screenshots on their phones as well. knowing full well that scanning each ticket can take us 30 seconds apiece at the seafood festival, I was entirely stunned when we moved through the line and through the gates in very short time. I wanted to ask the ticket scanner what she was using so I could investigate for our event, but they were moving folks in so fast I didn’t want to hold anybody up.
once we were inside, the clock struck 11 and it was time for dad to get a beer. oh look, a pub!
again I was amazed at the scope of the place. I was definitely expecting a field with tents, but it was full of permanent (and themed!) structures, multiple stages for entertainment and vendors selling everything from chocolate-dipped cheesecake on a stick to chain mail, enormous turkey legs and ornate leather pieces.
overall I had a great time, and I remarked to Alex that if I’d known about these festivals as a childless man, I’d have found somewhere to stay near the festival grounds and got very, very drunk. cold beers on a warm fall day outdoors with people real-life jousting and sword-fighting and running on the Wheel of Death? sign me up.
I will say that the oft-recommended smoked turkey leg wasn’t really my thing. I’m not big on eating messily in public anyway, so trying to neatly gnaw on four pounds of meat and cartilage at a picnic table isn’t high on my list of favorite things. but they did make a mean sausage roll!
Worthy Consumables
a few months ago I went to see a movie, the title of which escapes me (maybe Fast 9?), and during the trailers I caught the preview for No Time To Die, prompting me to tweet the following.
earlier this month I saw one of my more movie-intelligent friends post somewhere that No Time To Die was a must-see and that Spectre, the Bond film preceding it, was important viewing in preparation. “fuck it,” I said. “let’s check out some 007.”
I started with the Daniel Craig flicks, and watched all four of the streaming-ready ones in the space of a week or so (which is no mean feat when you have the time for approximately 90 minutes of TV-viewing a day.) and lo and behold, I enjoyed them!
I think I was expecting James Bond himself to be more closer to a superhero and MI-6 to be more inspector-gadget high tech, but the fact that it wasn’t that was actually good. there was enough dry humor in it to keep me amused, and I liked the deferential nods to older movies even though I haven’t seen any of them.
so if you’re like me and have never bothered to wade into the world of James Bond, I would recommend the Daniel Craig versions. I tried starting Goldeneye last weekend and was too heavily “cheesy 90s action movie” for me. your mileage may vary.
oh, and Quantum of Solace stinks.
Parting Note
the hardest part of these no-guest editions is thinking of a song, honestly. and since I don’t know any of the James Bond title themes, here’s one from another spy thriller franchise. more specifically, the soundtrack to Mission: Impossible 2, which happens to have been filmed in Australia.
thanks as always for hanging with me, friends. enjoy the weekend and I’ll see you next week, coming live and direct from Philadelphia. that’s right, the Windy City!
— adrian ✌🏻