Fortress Party 2023 - Afterlife Jam

It turns out, four of the five people you meet in Heaven are the Golden Girls. 

After that, it's basically a big karaoke party where only dead musicians are allowed to perform. 

If you look at the walls when the videos pan across the audience, you will not images of many of these dead musicians on the wall, along with a song quote that explains their situation. For example: 

"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. (I was a cadaveric donor.)"

- George Michael, Wham

Well, the years start coming and... eventually they stop coming. 

- Steve Harwell, Smashmouth

Here is a list of recommended singers for karaoke performances. People did a pretty good job sticking to this until about midnight, and then it devolved in the usual mess of The Killers, Fallout Boy, and Avril Lavigne. What can you do?

A

AC/DC (Bon Scott era)

Alice in Chains

The Allman Brothers

Louis Armstrong

B

The Beastie boys

Tony Bennett

The Bee Gees

Blind Melon
The Blues Brothers

Boston

David Bowie

Jimmy Buffett

James Brown

The Byrds

C

The Carpenters

Johnny Cash

Ray Charles

The Clash

The Cranberries

Crosby Stills and Nash 

D

The Doors

E

The Eagles (Glen Frey)

F

Ella Fitzgerald
Aretha Franklin

G

Marvin Gaye

The Grateful Dead

H

George Harrison
Jimi Hendrix

Billie Holiday

Buddy Holly

Whitney Houston

I

INXS

J

Michael Jackson

Jefferson Airplane/Starship 

Janis Joplin

L

John Lennon

Linkin Park

Lynyrd Skynyrd

M

The Mamas and the Papas

Bob Marley

Curtis Mayfield

George Michael

The Monkees

Motorhead

N

Nirvana

Notorious B.I.G.

O

Sinead O’Connor
Roy Orbison

P

Tom Petty
The Pogues

The Pointer Sisters

Elvis Presley

Prince

John Prine

Q

Queen

R

The Ramones
Otis Redding
Lou Reed

Kenny Rogers

The Ronettes

S

Selena
The Sex Pistols

Tupac Shakur

Frank Sinatra
Smashmouth

Dusty Springfield

Soundgarden

Sublime

Stone Temple Pilots

Donna Summer

W

Barry White

Amy Winehouse

Z

Frank Zappa

Fortress Party 2023 - Hades

The realm of Hades is guarded by the ferocious three-headed dog, Cerberus, shown here from several impressive angles. 

One of the more famous residents of Hades was Sisyphus, whose eternal punishment consisted of pushing a boulder up a hill. Nate Kurcz helped bring this vision to reality with the help of a treadmill that has made a few Fortress appearances in recent years. 

This room also held the bar, tended by various incarnations of the god of the underworld himself. Drink options included Persephone's Promise, Sweet Tartarus, Netherworld Punch, and the non-alcoholic option, The Temple of Shirley.

 

Drinks were free, but if someone wanted seconds, they had to go to one of the bathrooms and get one of the Fortress temporary tattoos. My mom's cousin Lisa (shown in the background below) came to Fortress Party for the first time this year, and she approves of this tattoo placement. 

Fortress Party 2023 The Great Beyond

At the top of stairs to the second floor was a bingo spinner filled with red and white ping-pong balls. A sign asked guests to spin it three times. (This picture is actually a hand replacing on of the balls.)

 

If they had two ore more red balls, they would be directed to the left, to cross the River Styx into Hades. If they had two ore more white balls, their good deeds outweighed their sins, and the could proceed to the right into the Heaven-like Afterlife Jam.

I didn't save a complete list with all of the good and bad deeds, but here are are some examples. 

Sample Red Balls:

Boring Pickleball Talk

My Dog Don't Like You

Toilet Seat Up

Calling Buddha Fat

No Turn Signals

Saying "Give 110%"

Gender Reveal Party

"Literally" meaning not

Karaoke Hog

Grammar Policing

Not Refilling Brita

Vaguebooking

Pen 'Borrowing'

Zone 3 Boarding With Zone 2

Writing in All Caps

Last Cookie Take

Peeing On Seat

Notes In Library Book

Seat Kicking

Posting Food Pics

Saying "Expresso"

Secret Santa Fraud

Singing Baby Shark

Being a Nerd No!!!!

Being Martin Short

Quoting Joe Rogan

Unicorn-icide

Saying "Totes"

Napkin Dabbing Pizza

Clickbait Sharing

Nerf Herding

Yeast-iality

Clamslaughter

Moving My Cheese

Slant Rhyming

Saying the "R" Word

Doing Much Crime

Wordle Spoiling

Covers Hogging

Loud Chewing

Movie Spoiling

Meme Spamming

Pizza Pineapple

Coffee Snobbery

Drink From Carton

Late Clinic Notes

Ignoring Pager

Loud Chewer

Dish Piling

Leave Seat Up

Reply All Email

Double Dipping

Comic Sans Using

Milk Before Cereal

Movie Talking

Too Much Cilantro

TP On Backwards

Leaving Lights On

Too Much Cologne

 

 

 

Sample white balls:

Sharing tacos

Kindess Spree

Pun Master

Complimenting Chef

Penny Seats Donor

Brings Brownies

Places Bugs Outside

Resurrecting the Dodo

Fortress Cleaner Upper

Gives Up Bus Seat

Replacing Cheese

Decent Hygeine

Cute Accent

Funky Socks

Cop Hugging

Cheering Up Pluto

Fortress Party 2023 - Vert Der Verk

Welcome to Sweden, featuring our very own animatronic Swedish Chef.

At the push of a button, he would either recite an actual Muppet show Swedish Chef monologue or sing his own rendition of an ABBA song: 

• Dancing Queen
• Fernando
• Gimme Gimme Gimme
• Mamma Mia
• Super Trooper
• Take a Chance on Me
• Waterloo
• Money Money Money

We also labeled everything with Ikea tags, a throwback to a sub theme had played with at Fortress Party 2011. 

We raised small red fish for about 2 months just for this one gag. They are still alive and doing great, by the way, but the bag isn't in the tank anymore. 

Fortress Party 2023 - Pelts

The Penny Seats had borrowed several boxes of roadkill pelts from the Monroe County Historical Society. (Which tells you a lot about what the people of Monroe County deem to be historically significant.)

The dining room was a maze, but for some visual interest, we labeled and hung the pelts of these lesser known forest dwellers.

Clockwise from top left:

Soft-Fanged Fur-Haver

Speckled Groundmunk

Great Frinkle

Crested Vexler

River Scrote

Twilline Fossit

Mottled Mush Ox

Sable Glint

American Lummox

Shovel-Tailed Pigeum

Russet Squibbler

Not shown:  Northern Aardmoose, Velvet Scurrier

Fortress Party 2023 - Cocaine Bear

This is the kind of room that people will remember for the rest of their lives, or at least a few months until they forget that Cocaine Bear was a movie. 

Key features: There is white powder on his nose and dismembered legs all around him, and he is chomping on a bottle of bear spray, because he's so unbelievably high. 

And like all good campsites, we had snacks!

Fortress Party 2023 - Foil Party

Foil Party was in the deepest, hardest-to-find room in the fortress. This brave knight stood guard at the the threshold between the sheet realm and the foil realm.

Inside was the home of Ryan Reynolds (Wrap) and Olive Foil.

All of the tables had rolls of aluminum foil, which guests used to make themselves hats, necklaces, and other accessories over the course of the evening. 

The refrigerator was filled with silver snacks: Hershey's Kisses, York Peppermint Patties, little silver candy balls, and silver-wrapped caramels.

Covering the fake plant (foreground) with foil was probably the most time-consuming craft in the entire fortress this year. That stupid fake plastic plant had no business having so many leaves. 

The reflective effect was somewhat diminished when there were people in the room, but it was great to see so many people with Fortress Party T-Shirts in one place!

Fortress Party 2023 - Googly Eyes

This wasn't a particularly creative or original idea, but the space was more of a pass-through than a full room, so I forgive myself.

Fortress Party 2023 - SNL Auditions

We leaned pretty hard into the "green screen lips" technology this year. 

In this case, the lips were Malcolm's. The concept was that this guy with a balloon for a head was auditioning for Saturday Night Live by doing a series of accents and impressions. Some are simply fantastic, and some are intentionally horrible. The reason it works so well is that he doesn't even pause to take a breath between them. 

Here's a clip as it appeared to passersby.

And here is the entire video that was being projected on the balloon. Malcolm was reading off a script, but I have to brag about the fact that he did this whole thing in one take. 

Here's a rare behind-the scenes photo of what Malcolm looked like when he recorded it. Next time, we will try to find a mask that matches the color of the make-up a little better. (Sorry, Brendan, I know that was extra work for you in post!)

Fortress Party 2023 - These Are the Voyages

We love doing fortress rooms based on the kind of things that people like to cosplay about... Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and the Marvel Universe. So it sort of felt like doing a Star Trek room was... what's the word for it, the final frontier?

Welcome to the Bridge of the Enterprise. We had two full walls of cheesy science fiction paneling, a large screen with the obligatory button in front of it, and Jean Luc Picard himself standing in the corner, looking appropriately bald.

Seven of Nine is a character from Star Trek Voyager, not the Next Generation, but I had a silver onesie and rubber ocular implant lying around. Plus, she was in the Picard series, so there some canonical overlap there.

Here is the complete series of push-button videos, including the "Backwards Man" bit that was not, to my knowledge, shown at the party. All scripts by actual Trekkie Jason DePasquale. 

Outside the room was a map of Ann Arbor, and a map of the Star Trek Universe, as well as a small bin of pushpins. We did a similar gag a few years ago, but we didn't have the Star Trek map then, so I didn't feel terrible about bringing it back.