Jay Cross [Sept 15 2002]

Until this year, we had, by a tradition honored [and sometimes enforced] by the Pennsic committee, always had a Monday show at about 6 PM. This year, we arrived to discover that the Pennsic program had us listed for three separate times to do the same show, but that only one of these times was correct. We had been moved to Sunday night at 8:30. The rationale was that we were essentially the opening act for the Pennsic Theatre, which was opening a night earlier this year. The choice of time was a good one. We drew a crowd of over 500 to see a show in a tent that only seats 225. To compensate for the mistakes in the program, we posted flyers in the 370 portable toilets on site, which encouraged people to 'mend your life with mighty mickle mirth'.

This show included cat-fights [with Jennifer Kobayashi & Catherine Crow] to start acts 2 & 3. The Act 3 fight morphed into a bull-fight & lion tamer act. The crowd loved it. As Jennifer fled the stage carrying her chair, we threw it up in the air so it went above the curtain, and crashed some other chairs together for sound effects. This didn't get caught on tape.

We video-taped this show, and gave a copy of the tape along with an autographed flyer for our long-time supporter Aelfwine, who couldn't be there. He passed away thirty-four days later. To the end, he was perhaps the most constantly happy man on Earth.