Fortress Party 2014 Retrospective, Part 5: Nefer-titi Bar and King Tut's Last Science Fair

 

The Nefer-Titi Bar was a self-service drink station deep in the age of the Pharaohs. 

We still had these giant wooden boxes leftover from a Penny Seats show, and they were too big to get out of the basement without taking the doors off their hinges. In 2013, they had been painted to look like Super Mario Brother blocks. This year, we stood them upright and covered them with hieroglyphics.

The ancient Egyptians didn't understand perspective very well, but they had a nice hieroglyph for Fortress Party.

A mummy with all of it's organs in jars, labeled lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines. 

This convenient chart helped savvy worshippers pick the ancient Egyptian deity that was the best fit for their lifestyle. It also becomes clear that that monotheism allows you to get all of your needs in one place. You know, like bundling your insurance policies. 

The Egyptian theme continued into the next room, King Tut's Last Science Fair. The judges were Cleopatra, Imhotep, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Horace (god of vengeance, sky, and kingship), and Ramses II. 

Everyone knows the Ancient Egyptians were scientifically advanced for their era, and these 4000 year old middle school science fair posters prove it. 

Can the Hom-Dai Curse discourage looters? This was a qualitative study that showed that tomb robbers felt discouraged by the curse, especially when subjected to locusts streaming from mouth, being mummified with flesh-eating scarab beetles, or being swallowed by a great beast made of shifting sands. 

Using crowd-sourcing to pick the best style of nose for the Sphinx.

This precocious young author invented a new Egyptian card game.

 

This study compared the efficacy of sloped versus step-shaped pyramids for attracting UFOs.

Fortress Party 2014 Retrospective, Part 4: German Park and Hungry Hungry Hip Hop

There is a farm outside of Ann Arbor that hosts an enormous outdoor picnic called German Park three days a year. 

We aimed to recreate a German bier garden in that style, complete with oompah music, pretzels, beer, and German-style board games.

By this point, the conspiracy theory room in the basement had opened up, so a lot of guests were wearing their aluminum foil hats.

I think Greg may have been the first bartender. The outfit did not get any less sweaty as it was passed to the other tapsters throughout the night.

Hungry Hungry Hip Hop was all about old school rap. 

The best original content was the giant foam boom box that Skippy built. You can't tell from the picture, but it was about 4 feet across the bottom, which means it was too big to put on your shoulder.

There was also a giant Flava-Flav gold necklace with a clock on it. 

 

Old school rap cassettes were turned into bling necklaces.  In this case, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

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The light up dance floor was back, and popular as ever with the kids.

Lauren and I had custom Fortress Party shirts made, but they weren't very good. 

There was plenty of rap karaoke. Most of it was old school.

But occasionally there were newer works, such as Lauren and Brian's rendition of the Hard Taco song, "A Man and His Jeweler."

Fortress Party 2014 Retrospective, Part 3: The Bridge to Canada

Welcome to The Bridge to Canada. We found a video of someone driving each way across the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit and Windsor, and projected them from the outside of those onto the living room windows.

The bridge had a lane for cars, a lane for trucks, and a lane for Zambonis.

Naturally, Bullwinkle J. Moose worked at the Currency Exchange. 

Guests who weren't being frisked were invited to peruse the racks of Canadian souvenirs at the Duty Free Shop. 

This room proved attractive to Canadians, who tried to be friendly and agreeable to the rude American guests.  

For instance, if you have some Canadian money, you could buy Ryan Gosling's beard.

A giant Zed, and some Rush cassettes, labeled as, "A Complete Collection of Modern Popular Music." That said, the ambient music playing in the shop also included Bryan Adams.

A typical Canadian breakfast. 

Lightly-singed Vietnam-era draft cards.

Canadian men's formalwear... A Maple Leafs jersey with a necktie made out of a mink pelt. 

A list of the most popular Canadian baby names.

Fortress Party 2014 Retrospective, Part 2 - It's All Connected

 

Did you know that there is an international web of treachery that connects the JFK Assassination, chemtrails, and Elvis Presley's falsified autopsy report? You would if you spent any time in Fortress Party 2014's hidden room,  It's All Connected. 

There was no "After 9pm" room that year. Rather, we hid all the annual fortress sign-in sheets around the house, and each had a QR code on it. When a critical mass of guests scanned all 12-ish codes, it would send me a message to come down to the basement and take down the bright green sheet that blocked passage to this room. 

In addition to being a showcase of interconnected conspiracy theories, It's All Connected also included aluminum foil for guests to built their own mind control-proof hats. 

Example hats were provided, including "The Classic," "The Peasant Girl," and the "Robin Hood."

The Post-Its were added by guests during the party. It was nice to see people were finally opening their eyes to the global confederacy that faked the Moon landing and the September 11 attacks.