Knights of Mayhem, Review of the Reality TV Show

Troupe of jousters in Carcassonne, France - Summer of 2011

This past week I watched two back-to-back episodes of the National Geographic Channel's reality series "The Knights of Mayhem."

I do not normally watch that channel and was not even certain if my satellite television subscription carried it. I learned of the series due to a blog post by Steven Till that included a video clip from CBS News Sunday Morning about jousting and two dramatically different styles.

One group is led by Jeffrey Hedgecock and is the force behind the Tournament of the Phoenix. The other group is the Knights of Mayhem led by Charlie Andrews.




Jeffrey Hedgecock cares about historical authenticity and safety, whereas Charlie Andrews gleefully declares, "This ain't no dinner show, this isn't no balsa tipped re-enactment. This is the real deal." (sic)

Danger is part of the allure of the sport for him.

"And if you come in here to play you will get hurt. The only question is when and how bad."

To prove that point Charlie lists the following injuries suffered by his type of jousting: concussions, broken collar bones, separated shoulders as well as his own broken ribs that led to a punctured lung and a pulmonary embolism.

Nice.

The major difference between Jeffrey Hedgecock's style of jousting and Charlie Andrews is the lances. Andrews' lances are solid hemlock poles whereas Hedgecock's are tipped with balsa wood so that they are designed to break easily on contact. Also unhorsing your opponent is encouraged by Andrews and penalized by Hedgecock.

I have watched many displays of jousting in the last ten years. Yes, they were choreographed, but that does not mean they are without danger. One exhibition had a knight being hospitalized because a lance injured his groin.

Ouch.

No amount of choreography can control what happens when a lance splinters. King Henry II of France learned that the hard way when he was jousting at his daughter's wedding and a stray splinter flew into his helmet's visor slit and penetrated one eye. He died from an infection brought about by that injury. That sure put a damper on the wedding festivities.

The potential for injury is not why I enjoy watching jousting, but the violent aspect of the sport was borne out by the two episodes of "The Knights of Mayhem" that I watched. One of the knights is named Brian and he was thrown from the back of his horse in a tournament in Sonora, California and suffered a concussion. He was taken by ambulance from the fairgrounds to a local hospital where he was treated and a brain scan showed he had suffered from bleeding on the brain.

That's really nice.

The following episode, Brian discussed his injury and what it could mean to his family if he were to be injured again. But then he decided to forget about further risks to his health and safety out of a desire to win money. He took part in a tournament in Texas because he wanted to win $20,000.

In that tournament Brian was unhorsed two more times and risked getting further concussions. I thought of the recent medical investigations being performed on former professional football players and how repeated concussions have impacted their health years after retirement.

The risk to benefit ratio for concussions/prize winning seemed awfully skewed to me in regard to this extreme version of jousting that Charlie Andrews advocates. Twenty thousand dollars while a lot of money is a drop in the bucket when it comes to paying medical bills for those kinds of brain injuries.

Another aspect of the show that bothered me was the treatment of a new recruit named Joe. He was ordered by Charlie to suit up and joust against him without having been properly trained. Joe does not have extensive equestrian experience and was fumbling with his reins and lance while the horse refused to go near the lists.

Charlie then hurled expletives and insults at Joe as if humiliation would make him an expert horseman.

I was flabbergasted at that display and began my own verbal outbursts at the screen.

"He needs to practice with a quintain first!" and "How can you expect him to joust when he can't even ride?"

Besides that, knights who jousted had their hands full with the lance and shield. They had to be able to control and guide their horse with their legs. This newbie certainly could not control his horse and did not have even the beginning skills of how to hold a lance. To ask that someone that inexperienced to suit up and joust was stupid and cruel.

Then again, when it comes to the formula for successful reality television series you need to have a villain to root against. Charlie Andrews with his foul mouth and ego driven personality seems to be the central casting choice to be "the heavy" in this series.

His counter balance is Patrick Lambke who appears to be the softer and more humane co-founder of the troupe.

However, in the second episode there was a purchase of a new horse. Charlie states that he is the source of the funding of armor and transportation of the horses to the various sites of competition. He is the one bankrolling his brand of sport and his troupe. He complained about the high cost of this new horse, and then was disgusted when the horse was delivered. He felt it was too small.

Are you kidding me? He bought a five thousand dollar horse without seeing it first? Really? Did he just go by online pictures or a video?

Patrick was shown engaging in a soliloquy about this new horse and hoping that he would forge the bond between horse and rider that Charlie had with his.

That is a nice sentiment and aspiration. The problem I had was that Patrick tried to compete with that horse, but without ever mounting the horse wearing full armor.

Once again, are you kidding me? You get a new horse and you don't bother to train with it before wanting to enter into a competition?

ARRRRRGH.

A horse is not a car. You cannot simply get on a horse's back and hope that it will respond like a car will when you depress the gas pedal.

If using solid hemlock lances are more dangerous to the competitors than balsa tipped lances used by others who joust, then you should be more and not less concerned with the fundamentals of horsemanship *prior* to engaging in an activity that can harm your health and safety.

And this ragtag group of foul mouthed biker dudes is who the National Geographic Channel chose to highlight with a reality series. I wonder if the cable executives considered any other troupe to create a jousting series.

If given the opportunity to see either troupe perform in person, I would prefer seeing Jeffrey Hedgecock's rather than someone who egotistically proclaims, "I am the merciless god of this universe."

I fully understand why Charlie Andrews' troupe has only a few members.

There is one benefit of my viewing this reality show: Charlie may help to inspire my writing of my antagonists Mandricardo and Rodomont, because he is utterly without honor.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2011/11/knights-of-mayhem-review-of-reality-tv.html

(P.S. The photograph at the top of this blog post was taken during our trip to France this summer. I did not want to use any photos from the National Geographic Channel or the KoM, because I did not want to ask for permission to use their copyrighted works.)

Tuesday morning in Paris: a museum with history, art and engineering

On our first full day in Paris our first object was to get a cup of coffee.

Hotel Dieu offers room service at 8 Euros per person, but we thought that was a bit pricey for espresso and a croissant. We decided instead to find the cafeteria ourselves. It was one floor below where we normally would exit the elevator, and it was small. Cozy to put it nicely.

I ordered deux cafés et deux pain du chocolate. Hey, we were in France I wanted to take advantage of consuming as much fabulous pastries as possible. I forget the amount, but it was about four or five Euros. Far less than what we would have paid for having it brought to our room.

I prefer regular coffee to concentrated industrial strength shots of espresso. Later, I discovered if I ordered café au lait that I would get the volume and dilution I desired. Of course that was done with merely adding milk to it.

The chocolate laced croissant was wonderful. In fact, I do not think I had a bad croissant anywhere in France. C’est manifique.

Then we set off. We walked outside and were giddy to see once again Notre Dame Cathedral greeting us.

I had a few guide books of walking tours of Paris and so I knew to look for certain things that I would not have otherwise known. One was Number 10 Rue Chanoinesse where the famous couple Heloise and Abelard met and became lovers.



Abelard had been her tutor and after it was discovered that she was pregnant, her uncle was none too pleased. He hired some men to teach Abelard a lesson and in the process he was castrated. Heloise entered a convent, Abelard a monestary, but they continued to write letters to one another for years.

I will quote a small passage from a letter Heloise wrote to Abelard.

God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself; I wanted simply you, nothing of yours. I looked for no marriage-bond, no marriage portion, and it was not my own pleasures and wishes I sought to gratify, as you well know, but yours. The name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word mistress, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore....God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess forever, it would be dearer and more honourable to me to be called not his Empress but your whore.

-- From The Voice of the Middle Ages: in personal letters 1100-1500 edited by Catherine Moriarty, Peter Bedrick Books, 1989, page 166.

That was not something I expected to be written by a woman who took the veil. With passion like that, no wonder their love letters are still read to this day.

After taking that small detour, we continued on our way by walking over a bridge to the neighboring island of Isle Saint Louis. It is a small island which has a street that goes on its perimeter, one down it center, and others that bisect it. We walked down the center of the island looking at the various shops and restaurants just to get a sense of what was in the neighborhood of where we were staying.

We then crossed a bridge to the Left bank and had to stop to take a picture of Notre Dame from a distance.



Our first stop was the Institut du Monde Arabe. It is one of the many museums covered by the Paris Museum Pass which you can purchase for two days, four days, or six days. They must be consecutive days. I had at first thought of going to see the Conciergie on Monday afternoon until I realized that if we bought our pass on Monday that would not cover what we planned on seeing Friday. So, we waited until Tuesday morning to buy our four day Museum pass.

Negotiating our purchase of the passes and assuring the woman that we wanted to see the special exhibit was difficult enough for us to manage using only French. I did not try to ask if they had any English speaking tour guides. I wanted one, but felt a little intimidated.

I wanted to appear as if I belonged, and did not want to stand out like a sore thumb as an American tourist. Even though I was one.

The special exhibit is still going on until this Sunday and it is incredible. It is entitled
Furûsiyya: Chevaliers en Pays d’Islam – Collection de la Furûsiyya Art Foundation.

We walked downstairs and saw magnificent examples of weapons and armor with fine artistic detail. The image they chose to adorn their program is of a warrior's mask.
The exhibit included jewel encrusted daggers, ornately decorated shields, intricately carved ivory horns, as well as archers rings.

As we entered we not only saw the incredible art, but a camera crew. They were setting up and were soon began filming interviews. We had to watch where we walked for fear of tripping over electrical cords.

My husband was afraid to take out our camera for fear that museums did not want pictures taken of special collections. Since we were surrounded by a camera crew, it was not the time when we could simply blend in. In fact, the film crew would have probably preferred not to have any people milling about in the background and we did not want to give them any excuse to kick us out.

We were not sure if they were from a television station or if there was a documentary being filmed. Either way, rather than push the issue of whether or not we could take pictures, I settled for holding on tightly to the program and bought a book about the collection.

We did however, sneak two photos from the exhibit.


One was of an ax with amazing artwork adorning its blade



Another was of a pommel for a sword



Most of the artifacts were from past the time period for my novel which is at the beginning of the ninth century. However, since about half of my characters are from North Africa, it is important that I try and get a sense of their world as well as that of the Franks.

Later we went to see the regular exhibits of the museum and had to take the elevator upstairs. The building itself is a marvel of glass and steel. Trying to walk up the stairs can give you a strange sense of vertigo due to the monochromatic look. One exterior wall is filled with a series of apertures that vary in size and are regulated by motors. My husband is an engineer and he was fascinated by this.

Here is an image of one large panel.


Here is a close up of one aperture.



The motor that is behind the mechanism can be seen here:



The full impact of these panels can only be appreciated from the outside. My husband thinks that it resembles a Persian rug.



The beauty of the building is matched by the beauty of the artwork and artifacts from all over the Islamic world. There are examples from Africa, the Arabian peninsula, as well as parts of Asia. There was pottery, sculpture, mosaics, jewelry, and rugs.



Both the mosaic and the statue of Eros were from Tunisia in the 2nd century AD. Clearly the Roman influence was felt in North Africa as it was in Gaul.

Too soon we had to leave because we were hungry for lunch, and we had many more sights to be seen that day.

If there are any readers in France who will be in Paris before this Sunday, I urge you to go see this special exhibit before it ends.

Next time, I'll show you sights from the Musée Carnavalet.