Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Hall of Fire 2006 Report & Images - Xoanon @ 21:32 PST

Primula Baggins writes: Wow, I had SUCH a wonderful time and wish to add my thanks to Marcie for hosting the event in her lovely home. The Valar must have smiled on us, because the heavy rain predicted for the Los Angeles area on Saturday October 14th never materialized!

Greeting arrivals in the living room was Kristi's life-sized Gollum statue, sporting an elegant new "Wizard" ensemble in sable and blue that matched his eyes perfectly. The kitchen table was filled with great snacks and desserts, and in the backyard Rohtireth had set up a large tent decorated with wall-sized cloth banners of Rohan design and sparkly lights. Charming!

Kristi's new chocolate fountain made its debut; and it does make absolutely delicious snacks even though it is a bit messy. We'll get the bugs worked out of that and enjoy it again at future events, I hope!

I was happy to see that so many TFers chose to costume and got a shot of a bunch of members in their elven and Rohan finery. Gollum was the most popular photo-op of the evening, as you can imagine.

Rhonda/Meneloth brought her beautiful harp, Michael/Singing Gandalf brought his travelling guitar, and I brought my flutes & whistles; we had fun playing as a sort of chamber music group off and on throughout the event. At one point, "Gandalf" transformed into "John Lennon" (complete with round sunglasses) and treated us to a great repetoire of masterfully-executed Beatles music for enthusiastic sing-alongs.

The Programme for the evening was designed and printed by Nancy/Nenarea, and it is just so beautifully done. Thank you for giving us that memento, Nancy! I'll scan it so the whole Group can see your lovely cover illustration and lettering.

Rhonda MC'd and organized the presentations well, interspersing readings with musical interludes. Several members chose exerpts from LOTR, and this time it seems "The Two Towers" was favored; all of the readings were quite well done and moving.

Tim Callahan chose to read an historic epic poem, Nancy chose some original poems (I especially liked the one about the cats!), and Nicole belted out an acapella duet from "Fellowship! The Musical!" Marcie's parents joined us for a while and were most welcome (especially since they arrived bearing chocolate cheesecake "for the hobbits.") We enjoyed performing "Greensleeves" for them.

We ended up not doing any dancing, really, because it was just too chilly outside although Roh's tent made a great "second living room" for the warmly-dressed.

Altogether, I think the event was a great success and I wish it could have gone on for days! (Work!? To heck with work, we wants more "Hall of Fire"!)

Thanks, "Tolkien_Forever" friends for another great party!