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He rises on a workday morning and dons his armor – all 100 pounds of it. Then it’s off to ride, pounding the turf from the back of a half-draft steed 16 and a half hands high. Warmed up, he proceeds to the core of his job: unseating mounted opponents in a joust.

Face it: You may be cool, but you’ll never be as cool as a 50-year-old man who makes his living as a jousting knight.

“It’s the best job in the world,” says Matthew Mansour, also known as Sir Maxximilian, the Jousting Earl of Braden.
Hard to argue.

Mansour and other jousters will provide the entertainment three times daily at the Arizona Renaissance Festival. The festival, a celebration of all things 15th and 16th century, takes place Saturdays and Sundays until April 2, plus Presidents Day, Feb. 20, at its usual site, a sprawling desert space along U.S. Highway 60, east of Kings Ranch Road in Gold Canyon.

The jousts take place throughout the day, while elsewhere in the festival jugglers are juggling, acrobats are acrobating, and throngs of people are paying to shoot arrows, throw axes, gawk at a gallery of ancient torture devices and find their way through a maze.

Welcome to life circa 1500, as reimagined circa 1963. That was the year the first public “Renaissance faire” of record was held in Laurel Canyon, California. Since then, the production of festivals commemorating the arts and lifestyles of Renaissance-era Europe have proliferated into a high-profile business, with virtually every state in the union sponsoring one.