Las Vegas night on tv last night. Between CSI and Las Vegas, it was quite an exploration of geeky sub-cultures. Mimes, computer science students, college students in general, clowns, crack addicts, sci-fi fans. I am really starting to warm to Las Vegas. Not so much the main plots, but the characters around the edges. I am afraid I am entirely too acquaintances with far too many geek sub-cultures. Maybe that is why I hated high school so much. I always thought Louis Theroux had missed out on one of the great weird spots of Americana by never doing a weekend with those re-creationinsts. Not just the ones that live the Star Trek dream (and Mel can tell you all about the 'Klingon' that tried to pick her up in a Karaoke bar the first time her and the H split), but also those civil war buffs and of course, my particular skeleton, the Renn Fair types.

I'll admit I always wanted to go to Faire when I first heard about it during my impressionable teens when all I wanted to do was leave tehachapi and live the life of a la teenager. However, I was never quite organised enough to make it on my own. Story of my life, I can rarely get organised to do the vast majority of stuff on my to do list. But then I met Mel. Who I love. She and her mother were faire junkies and the next thing you know, I'm in San Bernadino home of the mullet and meth labs, spending my hard earned cash to get laced into a bodice. Laced tight enough to hurt. Laced tight enough to have a hard time getting breathe into the body. Strangely enough, I still own said garment and have worn it on more than one occasion.

The Best Faire experience was Mel's birthday. We drank a lot of mead (Mel brought her mom so we could have a designated driver). We sang. Badly. Irish folk songs about drinking. I remember walking around a corner, coming to the end of a verse and the barkeep at one of the taverns shouting out, "You look like you need a drink!" I remember large people with video cameras pointing them at us. I dimly remember talking/badgering/annoying Sound and Fury to sell me one of their posters for a friend (she wasn't drunk enough/shameless enough to spend a hour badgering some poor guy in tights). I feel I should get a share of their subsequent poster selling profits. I had to work the next day too.

You have to combine the Renn Faire with a retreat at a monastery in Santa Barbara (have I mentioned that the H thinks I am godless and is always trying to change that) and you end up with the whole Pansycon saga. Really. And it is a saga. I think we are well over 100,000 words now. But I haven't looked at it in ages. Partly because I can no longer remember my password to get into the file.

There are of course more skeletons in the closet than simply a tightly laced corset. There are even more renn faire skeletons in the closet. And I don't actually like mead that much. Rather have some vodka. I probably am godless.