Some New Year's Musings from the Dragonmaster

Sir Clisto Seversword and I were chatting by phone the other night, and he was grumbling about Renaissance Magazine's recent listing of the Top 100 Renaissance Faires in North America, based upon annual attendance per year. Ol' Clisto was not happy, as he detected a certain degree of bias on the part of Renaissance Magazine's publishers at Queue, Inc. I have already put in mine own ten cents concerning this, and frankly, when you have actually 105 Faires in that list, and 17 groups of Faires tied with the same number of yearly attendance, obviously something's wrong.

Now, I don't wanna get off on a rant here, but I knew from the first that these listings would eventually spark an in-print and onlnie backlash; Faire organizers even now, I suspect, have sent along hate letters and hate e-mails to the Renaissance Magazine offices saying how wrong these listings are, etc. The sad truth here, dear children, is this: not everyone will be pleased by what they did here. I'm certainly not. But it is not wise to grumble loudly and instigate a corporate Renaissance Faire internal conflict, lest the general public start picking and choosing.

I don't tackle those things; I simply observe and record, so that you, the visitors to this blog, can get the right idea from my perspective and (hopefully) properly understand.

Now we're coming up on the New Year; and your Dragonmaster has much to consider: the Super Bowl; Oscar Night; the Games of the 30th Olympiad --- and on and on and on! It's gonna plum tucker me out (again!), so be not surprised if I don't have too much of a spring in me step as I had in years previous; as ever, there's both a burden and a price that go with being New York's Unofficial Wizard. My only hope, dearests, is that everybody lets ol' Blackwolf do his dirty work in peace --- because I don't take too kindly to grumbling unless I need to!

Happy New Year, Mortals!

Master Blackwolf