Okay. As a goofy grade-schooler, when being 'cool' was something you let people like Arthur Fonzarelli worry about, my buddies and I used to pretend to be a lot of stuff over lunch hour...from jedi knights in various skirmishes w/ stormtroopers to our favorite rock band, KISS, locked in battle w/the robotic werewolves from 'Phantom of the Amusement Park'. We pretty much ditched that once girls armed w/ those obscenely large 'Lip Smackers' fruit-flavored lip-balm started chasing after boys to put it to good use.
We also spent a few years playing old-school RPG's like Dungeons & Dragons. While I still have my original Player's Handbook, Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide tucked away in a box in my folk's basement somewhere...and I could probably flip through a copy of the original Fiend Folio, reminiscing like I was looking at a High School yearbook...I think we abandoned our graph paper and charisma points for close-dancing w/ Junior High chicks to something wack like Wham or Kajagoogoo.
In my older age, i've become comfortable in my renewed geekiness and I look back on those innocent days with fondness. For the folks in the trailer above...they never seemed to leave any of that behind. 'Monster Camp' documents a year in the life of several members of a chapter of the New England Role Playing Organization (NERO), one of many live-action role-playing (AKA 'LARP'ing') organizations in the US. Players create their own identities selecting from a variety of races and classes, similar to D&D or World of Warcraft. Participants actually dress up and are involved as either player characters, non-player character or plot Members...whatever that means.
Watching the trailer, I find myself both frightened and sympathetic by/towards these folks. As you can tell, i'm all for letting your freak flag fly and firmly believe that if something makes you happy (and it doesn't involve killing anybody or will raise gas prices any further)...screw what people think. That said, I find the whole concept amazing, don't get live role-playing unless it involves getting laid and think this will be a frightening glimpse into a very detached (and kind of funny) 'reality'.
It's been floating around at various film festivals since 2007, but I think it just received major release last Friday. Until then, I find this the PERFECT opportunity to post the following gem from Comedy Central's 'Reno 911': 'I'M WEARING BOOTS OF ESCAPING!'
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