The Renaissance Festival
(Joe you bastard, this is all your fault!)
I was hooked! Understand - like a lot of geeks then and now, I was an avid player of what was then a groundbreaking almost cult-like game called Dungeons and Dragons. SO when I walked into this amazing, magical place - well baby, it felt like a dream!
The very next week, I went-out and bought a sword, (Of course you have to have a sword to attend renaissance festival right?) put together a costume - I was in!
You know it's funny; The Bay Area Renaissance Festival of Largo has been around 24 years as of this writing. I discovered it in its second year, it's first year at the Largo Park site. Through those 23 years, I never missed attending at least one weekend. Even when I was In the Navy, and stationed far far away - I still managed to get there somehow.
2003 was the last year for Largo fair to be at the old site, It has become an ugly little dump, and I for one am glad that everything is being moved to a newer, prettier site - and that folks will be encouraged to spend money and make the new site beautiful and dreamy as a renaissance festival SHOULD be. But it's still interesting to think that this little patch of reclaimed landfill was the spawning ground of what is becoming the Tortuga Twin Corporate Empire.
There's lot's of folks I could mention in here. I was married, so I should mention my wife Diana, she certainly taught me a lot. Derrick Mims, Jeff Horrick, Scott and Mike, Robb Bechtold, Howard Khoutney, Angela Truman - and I surely must not forget Wendy and John-John! All of these people had their influences one way or another but the next two women really altered my life.
Julie Jacobson is probably one of the best people ever created.
Dr. Julie, as she is now known, is one of the few people in the world that make ME feel insignificant. She supported herself through Medical School on Scholarships, and acting jobs. (Smart, talented, and beautiful) She looks like a hippy; in fact the school she attended had to change its rules after her. They now require students to wear shoes. She kept showing-up to labs barefoot. She created a program while in school that sends second and third-year med students to third-world countries so the students get the experience, and the countries get the medical help. She was written-up in our local newspaper as one of the first western physicians to go to help in Somalia. She was, for a while, a disaster epidemiologist for the CDC. (yikes!) Yet to me she's always gonna be this amazing girl I had a (mostly) un-requited crush on. She also taught me bravery, and came along when I was figuring out that I didn't want, or need to be in the life I had crafted. She was on of the four people I first went on the road with. What Odd paths I have traveled, what amazing folks I have met.
I also dated a truly wonderful poet, dancer, musician, and fighter named Liz Heimburg. I could write for pages and pages on - the ways she influenced me, even to making me a vegetarian. I trained her in Stage combat - (here's a photo of her at Chess Match in Largo) and that may be the only good thing I added to her life I can Honestly say in retrospect; I was just not good enough for her. The last I heard, she was in a Buddhist Monastery - that's the kind of effect I have on women!
If I was to list all of the women I have touched (not like that, get your mind out of the gutter!) or have had my life influenced by it would be quite a list: Diana, June, Liz, Julie, I have already mentioned, I'd have to also name Kim Ferry, Debbie Regalado (evil ex-girlfriend number one) Joey Rowe, Tracy, Ally McKinley, Krys Stathos, Alysia (thanks for helping with the contracts), April (evil ex-girlfriend number two - I should mention her more later), and definitely Ann Morelock - but I don't want this to be that kind of "tell-all" Women amaze me. I have been blessed and cursed with some of the most dramatic women imaginable. I try to have no regrets, again, I couldn't be who I am if I hadn't been who I was - To all the women I have loved, "loved", and LOVED - thanks for the joys and the pain.
When I went into this piece of work, this Bio, I had to try and imagine who might be reading it. I want to be candid, without freaking anyone out. I want to be interesting, and I want to be revelatory. I also try to imagine who will and won't read this. If you imagine specific people will read it, it's going to change what you write. Unfortunately, I know for certain two people who will read this Riki and Jef. But I got to write the truth.
