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.