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 Hard Taco song for January 2023 is called "Unwalked." I only had one week between Fortress Party and heading out of town for a long vacation, so this one is a bit... experimental. That means it involves burps and animal noises because that's what we had on hand.
And since I borough up Fortress Party, I have a lot of content to share/document for posterity. If you're curious, but not ready for a deep dive, here's Scarlett's annual video tour of the Fortress.
And if you're ready for that deep dive, take a deep breath and plug your nose, because here are room-by-room pics and videos.
One of our steering committee members moved to Australia for a year. Rather than crying about it like a whiny little baby, we decided to leverage this to set up simultaneous forts on both sides of the world. But before you could get to Australia, you had to get completely flipped upside down so we built the hallway like some kind of gravitational vortex.
Our starting time of 7 pm on Saturday was 11 am in Sydney, so they built a moderate-sized fort and zoomed with us all afternoon.
Eventually, we had actual Australians join the call, too (not shown). The rest of the room was filled with quintessential stuff from Down Under.
The sign on the left announced that these were famous Austeralian celebrities. In fact, they were regular non-Australian celebrities or characters with their heads on Australian animals. DINGO Starr, Aaron KookaBURRa, Michael CANE TOAD, Alan AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD, Keegan Michael KIWI, KOALA Yusufzai, The CROCK, KANGAROO-dy Giuliani, TASMANIAN Neville, WALLABY-one Knowles, and Kar-EMU Abdul-Jabbar.
Shown here, both U.S. and Australian Fort-Builders pointing two clothespins hanging from their T-shirts.
One of our Fortress Party Steering Committee members collects and refurbishes old fans. It seemed like a good fit fort Fortress Party, which is often stuffy and warm.
The original concept of FanFiction was that fan-headed mannequins would take on the roles of famous literary characters from popular culture. Eventually, we decided to leave them as mute models, but they certainly provided additional air circulation.
Beverage options included FAN-ta, SpinDrift, and Beer on DRAFT.
A TV displayed a constantly cycling video of literary characters from pop culture with fans instead of heads.
And before the TV an enticing bright blue button. When pushed, it would display a narrative story featuring two or more of these fan-headed characters.
Here are all of those videos, including "Some Friendly Neighborhood Pig," which was inadvertently left out of the
"Indiana Jones and the Cryptid's Revenge"
"Little Avenger Annie"
"Saved by the Hannah Montana"
"Untitled Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Harry Potter Battle"
"With This Ring"
"Deadpool Knows He's in a Fort"
"Some Friendly Neighborhood Pig"
(Despite being the longest and most character-driven, this one was inadvertently left off the playlist at Fortress Party, so it is being seen here for the first time!)
In 2022, everyone was playing Worldle. We built a dictionary of five-letter words that related to Fortress Party or past fortress themes, and built Fortle. Rather than using a keyboard to enter letters, Fortle utilized 4"x4" cubes with fluorescent letters on one side, and a QR reader on the back.
When he game ended (either with a win or loss), a definition and picture of the word was displayed. Often, but not always, they would include actual pictures from previous Fortress Parties.
This room was mostly an inside joke, but I knew there would be a lot of people at the party who were in on it. The University of Michigan neurology residents operate their consult service out of a glorified closet that hasn't had a good purge in years. People pin things they think are helpful, funny, or cheerful to a cork board, and they just stay there forever.
Over the prior month, I photocopied or stole everything from that cork board and built a replica of it in my living room.
A giant pager showed a variety of "urgent" messages.
The highlight was a rotating playlist of short music videos starting puppets and many of the actual University of Michigan neurology residents and rotators. None of them knew exactly why they were being filmed, but went along with it anyway, because they are good sports. (And blah blah power dynamics blah blah blah. I'm going with good sports.)
Most fortress rooms are noisy, well-lit and activating, but some guests prefer a room that is more calming... a place to escape the din of flashing lights and shouting mannequins. This year, that room was The Belly of a Whale.
The journey started at the other end of the whale's digestive tract and worked it's way up to the belly.
There were checkpoints at the sigmoid, ileum, and jejunum. Once you get to the duodenum, there was a partially-digested Pinocchio.
The Belly room was lined with soft pink and red sheets covering comfortable surfaces. A giant beanbag served as the tongue. White sheets were rolled up and used to imply ribs around the ceiling and walls.
And projected onto he window from the outside of the house were underwater scenes through an opening and closing mouth.
The rest of my family was very disturbed by the fact that teeth of this mouth appeared to be human teeth, rather than baleen. I had to remind them that some whales have teeth, and some of them just have better dental hygiene than others. Here is the full video.
The first of our three U.K.-themed rooms was the Tower of London. At the top of the stairs there was a tower, the Crown Jewels, the decapitated heads of Henry VIII's wives, and ravens.
A rotating cast of Beefeaters tended the bar.
There was a menu of five prefixed drinks, many of which were gin-based. (Though we didn't actually use Beefeater branded gin. Shhh.)
The drinks and garnishes were kept backstage in the bathroom.
The Queen of England died in September 2022, so the timing seemed right for a tribute concert. The centerpiece of the room was a an open-casket with the Queen's remains. We set up a functioning treadmill in front of the casket, so guests could efficiently view her lying in state.
The lineup included a variety of British pop stars, including (but not limited to) Amy Winehouse, Nick Drake, Paul McCartney, Prince Harry, and others.
Lauren and I did a set as "Tulled Spices," the Jethro Tull/Posh Spice mash-up. Thankfully, I don't think any video footage of that performance survived.
