by the Night Writer
…and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Actor Joe Kudla, co-founder and “Snot” half of the Puke & Snot Renaissance Festival comedy team, has passed away in St. Paul at the age of 58.
Puke (Mark Sieve) and Snot (Joe Kudla)
I moved to Minnesota in 1980 and went to my first Renaissance Festival that summer. I didn’t know much about it but thought it might be fun; I thought I’d stay for a couple of hours. It turned out to be a blast and I stayed all day, and the highlight was the performances of the sword-fighting, Shakespeare-mangling, carrot-spraying “Pun”-dits, Puke & Snot. I went to the Ren Fest for years, always making it a priority to catch their never-ending quarrel and ripostes — both verbal and of steel.
I haven’t gone to a Ren Fest for awhile, however, as I found the event to have become too grungy and not as family-friendly. The grunge may be more “authentic” for the era, but it seems as if the overall commitment to authenticity has devolved. I was actually thinking of the Ren Fest the other day and wondered if Puke & Snot were still plying their craft, and if they had updated their jokes, and if they still fit into their tights.
Thanks for the memories and the laughs, Good Snot!
Update:
Additional details in the Strib article.
Puke has a blog! Check out his tribute to his partner.
Scary to think that Renaissance festivals (in which two of my mom’s siblings have worked for a long time) have become LESS family friendly. I still have nightmares of seeing a woman (skin wrinkled pachyderm-like from too much sun) wandering by in a chain mail bikini–and this was back in the mid-1980s.
There are times when a man is tempted to take a second look at a scantily clad woman. This was not one of those times.