Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #46 🧙🏼🐉

Local Man Attends Dungeons & Dragons Festival, Regrets It Immediately

QUICK HITTERS:

1. Book recommendation this week is in line with our theme: How to Dungeon Master Parenting, by Shelly Mazzanoble, is a “guidebook for gamifying the child-rearing quest, leveling up your skills, and raising future adventurers.” If you’re not into D&D, no worries, check out her frickin’ hilarious Substack, Middle-Aged Lady Mom.

   

2. I am double-dipping this week and also sharing a BIBO (Book I Bailed On). Chris Hedges’, America: The Farewell Tour, is the 300 pages of whininess you never knew you needed. Although I only made it through about 100. I am not a fan of our current administration, but if you are smart enough to write a 315-page book outlining every which way they are terrible, then you should be smart enough to put forth at least ONE solution.

   

   On the plus side, at least now I know I have old man knuckles.

3. If you are reading these things it is my hope that they bring some level of enjoyment to your week. There are very few places we can go anymore where it doesn’t feel like someone is trying to get you to pay for something, or monetize one thing or another. Consider this your safe space from that ☮️ 😂.

GOING DEEP:

Local Man Attends Dungeons & Dragons Festival, Regrets It Immediately

Around this time last fall I had just started my ‘new’ writing journey. As part of that journey, I was looking for fun and interesting stories I could write about and sell to news outlets. This was before I came to realize how absolutely dehumanizing and tragically unfun that endeavor was.

One of the stories I was excited to write was about the annual Dungeons & Dragons Festival that takes place in nearby Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear about Dragon Days until a few weeks after they had concluded. So, I marked on my calendar to go this fall and check it out.

Very appropriatley held adjacent to a library.

I’m not completely sure why I thought this would be interesting. Growing up, I was more of a run-into-stuff kinda guy than a sit in the basement and play board games type of one. Heck, I didn’t even know what D&D was…I just knew that nerds played it, and I had a hard enough time getting girls to begin with.

This was the level of manhood I aspired to….

Life has taught me, however, that not unlike Mr. Cage, some of the most awesomest people in the world are the ones I thought were nerds in high school.

So, it was with that newfound respect that I found myself walking into Dragon Days Fall Fantasy Festival. And to what to my wondering eyes did appear….

No, not a miniature sleigh OR eight reindeer.

Historical markers of course!!!

Then, 5 minutes later, another!!!

“Wealthy Chicago families” 🤮. Leave it to FIBs to ruin a perfectly good sign.

So far, so good.

My first stop after checking in was to walk through the Fantasy Faire. There were all sorts of tents set up, and I was excited to see what was there.

But first, I needed coffee and a donut. You see, this was a Saturday morning in October. Fall Saturdays are a new thing for me. I spent the first 30 or so years of adulthood involved in football games and had no idea what civilians did on these days.

In my glorified vision of what this entailed, it included a piping hot cup of joe with one of those freshly fried cinnamon-sugar-encrusted, gloriously bad-for-you donuts.

Nope, wasn’t gonna happen. I walked all around this purported ‘fantasy’ zone, and there was only one food vendor, selling pre-bagged popcorn. Eventually I’m going to write a piece about how the pre-bagging of popcorn at public events was the first rung in our country’s slow descent into barbarism.

Then I realized I had no flipping clue what was in any of these tents. In my mind’s eye, I certainly had an idea about how people would be dressed at this thing, and that turned out to be pretty accurate.¹

But what I had neglected to think about beforehand was what would actually be for sale at this place. Into every tent I peered, looking back at me was an assortment of shit that made absolutely no sense to my reptilian brain.

Except for the two merchants selling handmade wooden receptacles of some kind. I’m guessing their intended use was to hold some type of implement used in playing D&D. Playing cards? Dice? Tiny figurines? Wizard beard trimmings?

Ok, so no snacks and paraphernalia for sale that I have no use for. No problem, I’ll just do what every freshman boy in college does when he awkwardly walks into his first party…..

……find the beer.

This was a festival in Wisconsin, so however confident I was that I’d be able to find a donut…I was doubly sure I’d find beer.

Wisconsinites drink at EVERYTHING.

State Fair…

….beer

The Zoo…

….beer

Church Festivals…

…..beer

Deer Fest…

….beer

🍺 (Yes we have deer fest, and yes it is next on my list to visit! Although, while the judging eyes of nerds at Fantasy Days was a pretty easy fear to overcome, attending an event where all of the attendees are armed sounds a little more intimidating.)

Shakespeare in the Park…

….beer

🍺 (We have Shakespeare in the Park??? Who are the people attending this? Shakespeare in the Park is too highfalutin for us. More appropriate would be Laverne & Shirley in the Parking Lot. Complete with Lenny & Squiggy and an ice-cold Heifeweizen from Shotz Brewery.)

Big phallic vibes

As you probably have figured out by now (shit, you probably figured this out before I did), there was no beer. Not all was lost though. My Dragon Days itinerary assured me that there were many other activities at the festival!

However, upon closer inspection I realized that for various reasons I could not, or would not, attend them. Mostly because I am not a child. I also refuse to view and/or participate in larping.

(Don’t know what larping is? Good. Let’s hang out.)

One thing that did sound interesting, however, was touring the house that the creator of D&D lived in when he created the game. After all, that’s the entire reason for this fakakta thing in the first place.

Here are the highlights:

Yup, that last pic is a door. Apparently it was a very special door.

The upside of making the trek to this house was that I passed a small brewery along the way. Being just about noon when I completed the dazzling house tour, I figured this would be a great way to finish my day…enjoy a beer and watch some college football.

The brewery was located inside the carcass of an old church. Check out the t-shirt.

One thing I’ve left out up until this point is the nasty four-letter word of a state to our south: Illinois. And more specifically, Chicago. As a rule, people from Wisconsin don’t like them. (You may have seen the acronym we use for them earlier in this piece: FIB. That stands for “fu*king Illinois bastards.” Midwest nice, huh?)

I should’ve known there would be lots of evidence of FIBs in the area, as Lake Geneva is only about 15 minutes from the Illinois border. As a general rule, I try not to take pictures of things that disgust me, so this is the only other FIB-related pic I took…

Go Brewers.

All of this Illinois influence on the day had me thinking about getting an Italian Beef sandwich. Chicago people swear by these, and I had never had one before (aside from bastardized versions served by friends who shall remain nameless).

I was gonna post a picture of the sandwich I ate, but the photo I took looked bland. And that’s exactly how the sandwich tasted. Maybe it would’ve had more flavor if I had ordered it “wet,” which was an option.

No, I don’t want my sandwich “wet.” Do they seriously think that makes it sound more appetizing?

The word that best described this Italian beef sandwich was, ‘meh.’ For someone who was raised on Philly hoagies and cheesesteaks, it was kind of like a Parisian drinking a glass of sparkling wine at Six Flags.

A reasonable facsimile, maybe…. but I think I’d rather have had some popcorn.

Freshly popped of course.

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1. I did not take photos of any of the attendees. While I would’ve done so in good faith, I don’t know if they would’ve thought that. Pretty sure my appearance was giving off big 21 Jump Street vibes to the true believers.