A young girl, about 25, approached us as we stood in line for our first show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  “I have to warn you,” she said, “this show is highly offensive.”

As the father of two American teenagers who watch a lot of cable TV I thought: How bad can it be?  “The program says the show is rated 14+,” I said.

“Yea, we rated it before we saw it,” the young girl said.  “Once the festival organizers actually saw the show, they changed the rating to 18+.  Anyway you should know that the show is highly offensive.  And I do mean highly offensive.”

It was 10:30 at night.  We were miles from the apartment we had rented. We had tickets.  How bad could it be? My kids have watched South Park. They watch Family Guy against their mother’s wishes.  And then there’s a whole host of Discovery Health “documentaries” about people with the most freakishly horrific conditions imaginable.

How bad could it be?  This bad.

Within the first ten minutes of The Inconsiderate Aberrations of Billy the Kid, we were exposed to matricide, necrophilia and statutory rape.  It went down hill from there.  It will be a long time before I can erase the mental image of the pregnant man in full bondage mask being whipped by a band of “lesbian angels.”

Though our first show was an abomination, the rest of the Fringe Festival and our ten days in Scotland were not.

“The Fringe” bills itself as the world’s largest arts festival.  Last year’s festival sold nearly 2 million tickets to 35,000 performances of 2,100 shows in 265 venues.  The Fringe averages 1,300 performances per day over 25 days.  There are 19,000 performers from 60 countries.

After our initial misfire we were fortunate to see a South African musical about young man who dreams of playing for the national soccer team; a troupe of ten talented performers who put on a completely improvised musical each night; a musical comedy about the days leading up to Barack Obama’s election as President; a concert featuring “Scotland’s James Taylor“; and an amazing circus performed “en promenade.”

We did see one other dud:  Joe Power, The Man Who Sees Dead People.

Evidently, in the weeks before the Fringe, a national investigative TV program had labeled Power a fraud.  About 20 people turned up for his show in a theater that sat 200.

Power took the stage to pounding music, then told the audience – “I have a gift, and I can’t turn it off.”  Soon he made connection with the spirit world – he had a message for someone in the audience.

“Head lice.  I’ve got head lice coming through – does that mean anything to anyone here?”

Sheesh.  As if the dead don’t have more important things to talk about.

There are more Fringe Festival photos here.

In January, Dani and I were approached by Bethesda Magazine to share the story of the our family’s trip around the world.  Together, we edited our blog posts into what we hope is a reasonably interesting, readable article.

Thanks to Steve Hull, Lisa Shroder and Maire McArdle at Bethesda Magazine for transforming our pedestrian prose into a really great looking editorial package.  If you live in suburban Maryland, you can pick up a copy at Whole Foods and elsewhere.

If you don’t live in the area and are interested, you can download a PDF copy of the article here.

In the year since we returned from our RTW adventure, we purposely stayed close to home. But this past March, as the kids’ spring break approached, we looked for an opportunity to take a vacation as opposed to travel.

Our choice? The polar opposite of a ten-month round the world trip:  A four-day Carnival Cruise.

Part Vegas, part Branson and all Mall of America, Carnival is build around the concept of “The Fun Ships,” relentlessly focused on giving Middle America a taste of the high life.

Carnival packs plenty of “activities” and “shows” in a four-day cruise, but for us, the main event was people watching. There was plenty to observe.

The first night aboard the Carnival Imagination we were escorted to our dining table where we met the families who would be our dinner companions for three nights.  When we were seated, we joined a mother, stepfather and son from Wisconsin enjoying their second cruise.

Soon, a second, more intriguing family was seated:  Four Bulgarian expats now living in Montreal. It was their first cruise.

The father spoke in heavily accented broken English: “I worry… I am too soft on my sons, bringing them on a cruise like this.  They do not know hardship.  When I was their age, the Soviets took me into their Army and I was sent to Chechnya.  I was made to do things they cannot imagine.  But it made me a man.”

I asked if he had visited Bulgaria recently, if it had changed.  He said: “Last year, I saw my father for the first time in 20 years.  I would like to do something like this for him – but how could I? He does not know such things exist.  If he saw all this…”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked away.

“Be sure to order the chocolate melting cake for dessert,” the stepfather from Wisconsin said, wandering aimlessly into the conversation. “You can order two.”

There are more cruise pictures here.

Conor and his friends enjoy their annual pilgrimage to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and frankly, so do I. Is there a better place to people watch?

I wonder, though, what do these “enthusiasts” do during the week?  And where do they keep their costumes the rest of the year?

Nothing quite like a little leather and lace.

More Renaissance Festival pictures here.