Intrigue. Relevance to you, to your day. On the first of every month, we bring you an original Hard Taco song, and this digest, a two headed worm of relevance and intrigue.
The first two or three episodes of Wandavision were in black and white, so we tried to reproduce that by having everything in the room be in various shades of grey.
I even painted the fire extinguisher because of COMMITMENT.
We had a neighborhood scene projected onto the window from outside the house.
The highlight was the music videos that would start at the push of a button. We called it VH1da-Vision (as in a mash up of VH1 and Wandavision). If you've been following the Hard Taco Digest, you know that I had already released 9 of these videos between February and April of 2021. We made 7 more just for the room. Here are the previously unpublished videos, now restored to full color:
Fortress Party always has a live music room, and we get bands and performers to sign up for 30 minute slots. At FP '21, the overall attendance was lower than usual, and there were not a lot of volunteers. Fortunately, Lauren was able to convince about half of the cast of the Penny Seats production of "Summer of Love" to sing karaoke versions of their songs, and it was awesome. Knowing they were available informed the decorations of the room.
Here were the unnamed horses, getting ready to race.
We had all the Kentucky Derby races from 2008-2021 on continuous loop. Meanwhile, guests got submit suggestions for the names for each of the six horses. At midnight, we picked five names out of each box, and the audience voted on the best names. The winners got to take home the horse they named.
Except for horse #6. That one was a loaner, and we had to return it after the party. People still got to name that horse, but they put their suggestions in the shredder instead of the suggestion box.
The 'guests' sat behind this window, each with a giant hat or fascinator.
Even Mitch McConnell was there.
And of course, we had a bourbon bar, featuring Kentucky-inspired beverages served by distinguished southern gentlemen.
There are many horrors at Chuck E. Cheese, but the worst is the animatronic animal band.
This video is my family's least favorite part of Fortress Party. If you happened to walk by and see it during the party, it is quite amusing, but when the house is otherwise quiet, and you hear these dozen or so saccharine birthday songs over and over, it makes you want to drown yourself in a ball pit.
But the real reason for this room was the home-made video game cabinets. Sean and Andy worked on these diligently for the weeks leading up to the party, and they worked like a charm. They included mashy my favorites such as Gauntlet, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Elevator Action, and Q-Bert. My only regret is that I forgot to ask them to install Moon Patrol.
We borrowed a pinball machine from a guy named H, who had loaned as the Mystery Machine a few years prior. I bet that if we did a study, we would prove that people with one-letter names have the coolest stuff.
A visit to Chuck E. Cheese would not be complete without a wall full of useless crap that you can spend your tickets on. We weren't actually dispensing tickets, of course, so nobody was able to buy any of this stuff, but the candy was free. (Note that the first bowl actually has Lactaid pills, and those were not free. Neither was the Ivermectin, which was available in case anyone caught COVID19 at the party.)
We bought a treadmill during the pandemic, and frankly, I didn't want to have to move it, so we built a room around it. The room became a Star Wars-themed gym, with Peleton (Pelpeton?) trainers on the big screen in front of the treadmill.
The highlight of the room was the videos themselves. There are two workouts, one led by the Mandolorian, and one led by Emperor Palpatine (which starts at 12:37 in this video.)
There was also a starship console, of sorts.
The light sabers were taped to 5 point weights, making them "Not-so-light sabers."
Since it's a gym, there had to be a water cooler. In this case, it was water from the Bacta tank.
This is hard to read, but it says, "Luke Warm Water."
Finally, the walls of the room were plastered with with motivational signs.
When we're brainstorming about room ideas, we usually start by reviewing our available resources. This year, our list of assets included a surplus of mannequin parts. Over the years, we have acquired close to 10 mannequins, but I don't always take great care of them. In a few instances, the widgets that affix their legs to their torsos have become denatured. So what does one do with a mannequin with unattached legs?
Well, something having to do with the Donner Party, obviously. Unofficially, we called this room "The Oregon Trail," because all the signs leading to the room were modified from the old PC game. But of course, with the focus being on cannibalism and dismemberment, it probably made more sense to call it the Organ Trail.
The Stranger Things room was the first thematic repeat we've ever done at Fortress Party. We liked it so much at our London Family-only Fortress Party in 2020, we brought it back in 2021. Here are some pictures from each:
The alphabet wall. Note the demogorgon coming out of the wall in 2021.
Robin (a.k.a Lauren) serving up ice cold scoops. Note the You Rule/You Suck dry erase board that was only in 2020.
Will the Wise and his D&D stuff.
Eleven in 2020
Eleven in 2021 (we couldn't afford the actual actress this time.)
At the 2021 party, one of the guests started playing a trumpet for some reason.
And the ice cream slinger wasn't always Robin. Sometimes, it was Steve.
We knew we couldn't have people in the house in December 2020, but we wanted to keep the streak alive, so we went ahead with a London-family only party. We limited it to the basement, and to save myself time, I hung walls, but no ceiling sheets.
Each family member was given a $100 budget and free reign to design one room.
Lauren's room was Puppy Bowl. Our new pandemic puppy, Ozo, was direct beneficiary. Here he is shown with his friend Franklin "Frankie" Burke, the only non-London who was invited to Fortress Party.
Frankie's family waited outside while this was filmed. They were told we needed to borrow their dog for a few minutes, but they didn't find out why until this video was used as part of the Fortress Party 2021 invitation 11 months later.
Malcolm's Room was called The Adventurer's Tavern.
He wanted it to be the type of place that swarthy dungeon-crawlers would mingle between dragon slayings. And naturally, that meant there would be a map on a table that someone had stabbed through with a knife to indicate the location where many villagers had mysteriously disappeared.
Scarlett's Room: Stranger Things
We ended up reusing this idea in 2021, so I saved most of the pictures for a comparison montage in a subsequent posting. But here's a demogorgon materializing out a wall, as they are wont to do.
We ended up spending a fair amount of our respective budgets on costumes. Lauren and Scarlett were characters from Stranger Things (Robin and Elle, respectively), Malcolm was the barkeep, and I was the Puppy Bowl referee.
There were no other human guests, but we were able to give our cousins the Zoom Fortress Experience.
We kept several of the longstanding Fortress Party traditions alive, including the sign-in sheet and the stickers with (pandemic-themed) fortress puns.
Finally, no Fortress Party is complete without a lively rendition of "Cigareets and Whiskey."
