Sherwood

For the last 10 years or so, I’ve been going to the Colorado Renaissance Festival every summer. It had sort of become a tradition to go with Sar, but I’ve also taken most of my (now) ex-boyfriends and originally started going with my family. Even when I was living in Iowa I made room for the Renaissance Festival in my summer trip home.



Most of these trips are filled with fun memories and laughs (save one summer where I fainted from heat exhaustion…go figure, early in the day, one beer, sitting in the hot sun for an hour, and poof, I’m blacking out and falling all over myself. We were still able to salvage a great time though) and getting into the spirit of the festival is all part of the fun (if you aren’t a good sport about wearing a kilt and being called a Frenchman in a skirt, like my awesome ex Peter (he refused to buy sword), where’s the joy in that?). Where else can you buy pickles from a wheel barrow, get called m’lady 10 times an hour, use fun words like ye and ol’, and throw rotten fruit at “criminals.” All at about 8,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies…pine trees, fresh air…mmm.

In the past decade I’ve accumulated a few pieces that make this day of revelry more…in character. I don’t dress up in costume like so many others, but I love donning a comfy sun dress, a flower tiara, and tons of jewelry (almost all acquired at the festival) and roaming around quaint shops peddling their medieval wares, smiling at children riding elephants and camels, ogling gorgeous shirtless men pushing the giant swing, purchasing deliciously unhealthy and overpriced food, and attending shows (comedy, acrobatic, and jousting).



The shows in particular are one of my favorite highlights. The jousting is always fun, especially if you catch the last show…where someone dies in a joust to the death! OOOH. One year, Sar got picked to put ribbons on the lance of her knight, which of course embarrassed her to no end.



In the past there have been many juggling and acrobatic shows to wow and entertain, but those have either fallen off a bit, or else they’re having difficulty getting decent acts. And then there are the best shows: the comedy shows. I (and I know Rhonda as well, because he tours up to the Renaissance Festival in Detroit) thoroughly enjoy the Ded Bob show; who wouldn’t want to be Bobmatized? But my absolute favorite, no matter how many times I see it, is the Puke & Snot show.



Even though I’ve seen both their shows numerous times, there’s always some fun change-ups in the political humor and I’ll never forget how close I came to crying from laughing on more than one occasion. Although these jokes lose a lot in translation, I managed to spend hours amusing Kellie, my co-worker from my Linens-N-Things days with a bit on Sherwood Forest.

Robin Hood is explaining the location of their hideout.
Snot: “So will you tell me where the hideout is located?”
Puke/Robin Hood: “Sherwood.”

Hopefully you can see where this is going, but you’ll be surprised how many times you say “sure would” in a day and how after this sketch it always makes you (and Kellie of course) smile delightedly.

I didn’t end up going to the Renaissance Festival this year…no one to go with. Sar ended up going with her new boyfriend (understandable) and my parents said they needed a year off. So, I though, hey…one year off sounds alright. It will make the Puke & Snot jokes all the more funny after a longer hiatus.

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Renaissance star 'Snot' dies at 58
By Joey Bunch
The Denver Post

Article Last Updated: 08/12/2008 08:30:15 PM MDT

Gary Mazzu, artistic director of the Colorado Renaissance Festival, will always remember how early and how quickly the stands filled for Puke 'n Snot at the Larkspur show.

Monday, Joe Kudla, who has played Thomas Snot, the comedic sword-fighting Shakespearean foil to partner Ralph Puke, played by Mark Sieve, at the annual show in Larkspur, was found dead in his Minneapolis home. He was 58.

"They were first-rate professional, they were very funny and everyone, all ages, loved them," Mazzu said.

Puke n' Snot performed to full houses in Colorado the past 26 years, including the 32nd annual show that wrapped on Aug. 3, which drew an estimated 225,000 fans.

The cause of Kudla's death was not immediately known. He was single and survived by an adult daughter, friends said.

Sieve posted a statement on the duo's website Monday.

"Snot left us today," he said. "I'm still processing it, hasn't really hit me yet. It was sudden and totally unexpected. Probably a heart attack, we don't know yet. The Great and Formidable Thomas Snot, 34 years working the dirt circuit, and he didn't even say goodbye.

"This morning he finally had a good excuse for missing rehearsal."

Jim Paradise Jr., the marketing director for his father's Colorado festival, said he grew up with Puke n' Snot.

Though he enjoyed walking along the roads around Larkspur, Kudla did not always take care of his health and he was famous for his gallows humor, his friends said.

"Joe was one of those guys who was brutally honest, he just told it like it was," said H. Rali Gilchrist of Castle Rock, Kudla's friend for 15 years who had dinner with him the last two nights of this year's show.

"Whenever anybody died, he wouldn't say they died, he would say, 'They're taking a dirt bath.'"

Paradise said Sieve constantly nagged Kudla to eat right and watch his health.

"Mark said Joe told him when it was his time to get out of the canoe, he would get out of the canoe," Paradise said. "That was Joe to a T. He lived life by his own rules."

Sieve and Kudla began working together as Mouldy and Wart in 1973. Besides acting, Kudla had also worked as a college professor.

"He called himself a reformed English teacher," Gilchrist said. She apologized for laughing Kudla's jokes, then confessed, "I've been crying all day."

Puke n' Snot had fill-ins who would perform show Kudla called, "Puke n' Snot, Send in the Clones."

Sieve has told Paradise and Mazzu he intends to continue the act.

With their gross names, Puke n' Snot were a natural draw to young fans, but those fans kept coming back year after year well into adulthood, until most of the audience was filled with adults more enthusiastic about the show than their younger counterparts. Mazzu said grownups would show up a half hour before each performance to jockey for good seats.

Lisa Botkin, a paralegal from Stapleton, was a Renaissance Festival "concubine" in 1984 and returned to the show every year. "Puke n' Snot" was a must-see, she said.
"In some ways it was the same show, but it was never like seeing the same show," she said Tuesday, saddened by the news.

Kudla was the perfect comedy foil, the straight man to Sieve's needling jokes that constantly changed and usually involved the audience and current politics, she said.

"I just enjoyed their ribald humor," Botkin said.
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Goodbye, Snot. I’ll miss you.