Literally.
So, today* the whole gang headed northwest from Houston to the Texas RenFaire — except of course, for those of us who headed southeast from Austin. Myself, DrHeinous, the Stainless Steel Brat (aka Katie the Stampede), The Mack of Steel, and Master Plan headed up there to meet with (p)Resident Evil and Mrs. Evil, who drove down from Austin. While Mrs. Evil ran off to do some shopping with her Evil Henchladies, the rest of us walked about, eventually ending up at some show that I don’t remember the name of, but the gist of it was you paid the performer to insult someone, generally a friend. (Well, a friend prior to the insults anyway.) The more you tipped him ($10 minimum) the better the quality of the insults and and the longer he’d spend insulting your soon-to-be ex-friend. At the end of the show, he would pick one poor sap out, and the whole audience would be invited to tip for a grand series of insults to be delievered to the hapless “winner.”
Now, an opportunity like this just could not be allowed to pass by. Not by our group! Even before the performer had finished explaining how the show worked, we had our heads together determining who was going to be the target. We quickly settled on (p)Resident Evil, each of us kicked in $$ (except the Brat, of course). Yep, Mr.Evil kicked in too; y’see, after we had all the money in hand, we told him we’d change the target to DrHeinous if he paid in also. DrH objected but since Master Plan was holding the money, he was out of luck. So once MP has the last of the money, he turns to me and the Mack and suggests an entirely different change of target: Katie, the Stainless Steel Brat! I’m going “Wha-?” and the Mack is cracking up, “Do it! Do it!” Katie thought it was funny too, so I said, “oh what the hell, go for it.”
Yes, folks, that’s right. I (and my friends) paid $40 to have a grown man insult a thirteen-year-old 8th grader. 😛 What can I say? We’re rat bastards.
There were an awful lot of $10 insults being bandied about and a few $20 tips as well; the performer was delightfully sarcastic and the show was quite funny. (I’ll never think of the words “crusty sheets” without snickering again.) One poor sport got up and walked off when his friends singled him out, but he was the exception. Finally it was Katie’s turn. The performer was a little surprised, but had probably seen a bit of everything over the years. The crowd (about 150 or so at that point) didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or wince. The exchange went something like this:
Performer: “Katie, how old are you?”
Katie: “Thirteen.”
Performer: “I see — Katie, where are your parents?”
Katie [points at her father]
Us: “HE CONTRIBUTED!”
DrH: “They told me it was going to be him!” [indignantly points at p(R)esident Evil.]
Us: “Suuuuuuuuuuure we did! Uh-huh!”
Perfomer: “Your own father?” (something to the effect of DrH not winning any good parenting awards.)
Mack of Steel (to performer): “This is also about messing with you!”
Performer (good-naturedly): “Like I give a damn! This is my job, and I’m damned well going to do it!”
Well, unsurprisingly, he went easy on her; while a number of his other jokes had been rather bawdy, he simply did an extended riff on fart jokes, with Katie laughing through the whole thing. Of course, geting her insulted was only the first part of Master Plan’s master plan…. Once the end of the show rolled around, he announced to the crowd, “Normally, I would select three candidates and let the audience pick which one would be the target for whom they would get to contribute for me to me insult. HOWEVER, I feel that this time, one candidate would surely run away with the vote — so, without further ado, I shall select the target, and ask you to donate generously; remember, the more you give, the more I insult him…..”
“Katie, dear, what’s your father’s name?”
Heheheheheh. Ah, yes. We’re evil, yes we are. Although the crowd had thinned considerably by this time, it raised $228 towards having DrH insulted, in return for contributing to his own daughter’s insulting! And although I was somewhat disappointed when I later realized that I had missed an opportunity to make a “Hey, are you asking a little girl ‘who’s yer daddy?'” joke at the performer’s expense, I had a chance to make up for it when we were departing the festival.
Master Plan: “Are you guys going to stop and eat anywhere?”
DrH. “We’re definately going to have to do something about supper.”
Me: “Why? We already roasted you!”
Ba-da-boomp! Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here until Tuesday….
*(“Today” true only for certain values of today found in time zones well to the west of here….)
