Getting Medieval on Saturday Knight

On Saturday, Mike, Shana, and Mike's friend Tara ventured to Lyndhurst, NJ to check out Medieval Times, a family-themed dinner-theatreesque show full of violence and bad acting. The show ended up becoming the meat of our travel sandwich, as we used Lyndhurst's central location to (re)visit Red Bank and (rerere)visit New York City.

So I wisheth thou art ready for a recapeth of our day...

eth.

Red Bank

The first stop on our mystical journey was Red Bank, NJ. As you probably do not recall, we visited Red Bank back in February. If you need a refresher, feel free to check out http://whatdanlearned.blogspot.com/2006/02/money-in-red-bank.html first. Just skip the part about White Castle, since I don't wish sympathy pains upon you for reading about my lower intestine's battle with the Sliders.

Ok, done? Sweet, onward we move.

Now we returned to the town to show Shana and Tara the Secret Stash and the Quik-Stop. Yes, we once again traveled an hour-and-a-half to show off a comic book shop and a convenience store, both because of their relationship to Kevin Smith. But this time, Mike and I had an ulterior motive. We wanted to introduce our guests to New Jersey's favorite son...

That's right. Jackoff the Clown, in all his masturbatory glory.

Since last time's visit with Jack came out of nowhere...

Ok, really poor choice of words.

Since last time's visit with Jack was our first encounter with said clown, we were only able to get a drive-by picture. This time, we designated this as an official stop on our trip. So being the only human beings alive wanting to get our picture taken with a 20-foot self-gratifying clown, we...well...got our picture taken with a 20-foot self-gratifying clown.

The "God Shot" (a/k/a, my COMMS degree finally getting put to use after four years)


Mike, doing his best impersonation of JTC

My Photoshopped prototype of a JTC action figure.

On a side note, complete boredom not only led me to Photoshopping fake toys. I also Googled "Jackoff the Clown" to discover that yes, I am the only documented person to have come up with the name "Jackoff the Clown." However, that wasn't the funny (sad) part. I urge you to also Google our circus freak friend, if only to see the site's "Did you mean..." suggestion. I laughed for a good five minutes straight, but that's likely tied into my complete and total lack of maturity.

Alright, let's move forward before the last remaining shreds of my dignity are shattered. That's for later in the blog.

Medieval Times

After our quite-brief Red Bank excursion, we made our way to our "official" destination, Medieval Times. Now despite the fact the show starts at 4:00 PM, the tickets curiously told us to arrive by 2:30. Well, because we spent an inordinate amount of time with a cardboard clown and buying expired fried rice at the Quik-Stop, we were running a bit late. Fortunately, a quick phone call to the restaurant let us know that our impending tardy arrival was "no problem." We only ended up arriving about 15 minutes late, as we officially arrived at...

*Trumpets Blaring*



Glorious, isn't it?

Once we arrived, we went to the front entrance to turn in our medieval tickets (that were printed off the internet). A buxom wench greeted us at the front door, who was obviously very much into her character:

"Welcome my lords and ladies to Medieval Times, where..."
*Another employee mentions something to her*
"Put her wherever, I don't give a shit! (turns attention to us) Now if you..."
*Blank stares from us*
"Uh, sorry. Now if my lords and ladies would go to the front desk, they will take your tickets."

You're probably wondering how we responded. Believe it or not, we were actually very well-composed...

Until we entered the next room. Then we laughed our asses off.

Before the show started, we discovered why the tickets recommended that we arrive an hour-and-a-half early...that gives you 90 full minutes to waste your money on medieval merchandise, including medieval cups with medieval spinny lights that cost 10 medieval dollars. Unfortunately, they did not have the life-sized catapult I wanted. Maybe it was on backorder.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention ye olde restroom, which featured the most awkwardly placed urinal in modern (or medieval) history. So of course, I had to get my picture taken with it...

I don't know about you, but I tend to get "stage fright" when I'm peeing right next to someone washing his hands.

I guess I forgot to mention that we were each given Burger King-like crowns when we entered the place. Now each crown corresponded to the "knight" we were Pavlovianly (it's a word now, ok) supposed to cheer. Apparently, the coordinators never saw a Crayola box with more than four crayons, as the colors of the six knights were: red, yellow, blue, black, red-yellow, and black-white. Cute. Color ambiguity aside, we proudly wore the crowns throughout the day, mainly so we could capture more stupid pictures like this...

Tall guy in short throne + Short guy in tall throne = comedy

What can I say? We're tourons (tourist + moron) at heart.

Once we finally entered the "arena", we sat at our dinner table to discover that the rumors we heard were quite true...there were no medieval utensils in sight. Ever try to drink vegetable soup out of a bowl without a spoon? Ok, me too, but that was in the privacy of my home. Anyway, that was the first course. The waiters/servants/buxom wenches then brought out our main course, which consisted of a spare rib, a potato, and a chicken that could be best described as "freaking huge." Seriously, I want to know what growth hormone this clucker was on. Hmmm, maybe ingesting some HGH-riddled chicken gave me a sudden growth spurt.

*Runs to the mirror*

Nope.

The show itself was pretty damned entertaining, especially because of the King who randomly slipped between a British and an American accent. And our ambiguously colored knight pretended to do well for awhile, but got his ass fake kicked by the black-white knight. I can say the word "fake" with 100% certainty, considering half the knights went straight for the bar after the show (still in costume, mind you). It was at the bar where Shana tried to politely make small talk with the Red Knight, who let us know that he's doing this to work through college. He also let us know in no uncertain terms that he gets paid jack to pretend to get stabbed by a sword. I didn't want to ask, but I think it's a safe bet that he's a COMMS major. I just didn't want to be the one to tell him that he's reached his career peak.

After the Medievalness, we hopped into our chariot (a/k/a, Mike's Neon) and made our way to New York City. Fortunately, we had plenty of time for our nuclear chickens to settle, as we went smack dab into Lincoln Tunnel traffic. Of course, anyone who knows anything about NYC traffic knows that assholes are going to cut you off left and right. And of course, anyone who knows anything about me knows that I have no qualms about flipping off the culprit and taking a picture of it...


I'm a classy gent, I tell ya.

After making it through the endless tunnel of suck, we eventually found a parking lot where we were told in no uncertain terms that we better be back by midnight, or else. Well, the attendant didn't say, "Or else." His English wasn't THAT good.

Shana suggested that we go see the David Blaine "exhibit" at Lincoln Center. Considering I'm always eager to see grown human beings drown themselves for seven days, I was game. Now with my psychology background (i.e., I took a Psychology class in college), I'm guessing Blaine didn't get a lot of attention as a kid, so he consistently feels the need to "act out." Normally, I'm guessing the right course of action would be to ignore the child (or, in this case, grown man) and hope that he learns to find more rational ways to garner attention. Or you can do what we did and stand in line for 20 minutes for the opportunity to take pictures for five whole seconds...




Now as I type this, Blaine is about 60 minutes away from attempting to hold his breath for nine minutes while escaping the bubble, wrapped in chains. If he survives, here's to hoping that he can find himself a hobby...like not immersing yourself in a water-filled bubble for a week. Or Chess.

After that little excursion, we walked around Times Square, which of course means an automatic visit to the Toys R Us. Right outside the store, Mike and I became uberexcited when we saw Spiderman on the sidewalk, so much so that Mike practically bowled down half of Manhattan to get a picture with him. Granted, this Spiderman was about 5'6 and had a gut, but hey...it's still freaking Spiderman. Unfortunately, our uberexcitedness turned to uberdisappointment when he informed us that a picture with him would cost 2 bucks. If his Spideysenses were tingling at this point, it was probably because I was sending telepathic messages that he could go screw himself.

After hitting Toys R Us (and wishing bad things upon shriveled-up magicians and homeless superheroes), we continued our walk through NYC, bouncing from subway to subway to justify our $7 all-day pass. Of course, Mike + Dan + Subway = Mike and Dan balancing bottle caps on their heads (much to the chagrin of Shana, who witnessed our patheticism on our last NYC trip). Now rather than give you a blow-by-blow recap of "Capsize", I'll just give the Cliff Notes version:

Winner

Not the winner

Tara eventually joined the fray as well, though I'm not sure if she'd want that picture plastered on the internet (and I sure as hell wouldn't blame her). As for me and Mike...well...do we look like two guys who give a shit?

Didn't think so.

Until next time...
Dan

Postscript:Though it's not up yet, be sure to check out Mike's inevitable recap at http://soupnyc807.blogspot.com. He'll likely fill in the details that I'm less likely to admit.