No manners berating today, folks.

No me saying, “Do this, not that,” or “Don’t stick that there, stick it here,” etc.

Nope.

I just wanted to share with you guys what I did over Christmas vacation. That’s it.

I get a real swelling of pride whenever I show anyone these pictures. It’s a warm fuzzy feeling, mixed with a little bit of dorky shame.

This past Christmas Vacation my brothers, sister, myself and my girlfriend built a scale replica of the battle of Helms Deep, from the second book of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Two Towers penned by the late, great, J.R.R. Tolkien. Here are some pictures:



This is the zoomed out view. The whole thing was constructed out of cardboard, glue, icing and… well, candy. It clocked in at about 7 feet long by 3 feet deep by 2 feet tall. We used over 500 Gummy Bears as orcs and Uruk-Hai. The Elves, Dwarves and Men were represented by sour patch kids. Most of these were of course corpses.

This is the reverse view. As you can see, my mom has a bitching rug. Also you can see that by this point the evil army of Saruman’s creation has broken through the wall and is streaming in for the sweet sweet sugary kill.

We made some siege machinery as well. The Catapults were Tootsie pops. Leaning against the Jolly Rancher wall is a siege tower made of other tootsie type stuff. There are some red licorice ropes as, well… rope.

Here you can see how skilled we are at cardboard mountain creation. Seeing this again almost makes me aroused at my own awesomeness. Notice the brutal carnage happening on the walls as the men and orcs battle.

Alas! The evil host is through the walls! And up the carefully crafted stairs of Starburst candies. Is there no end to their cruelty? The answer is most definitely NO, as you can see from the piles of dead men and elves. They are covered in the sweetest candy blood we could find (red Nerds and more licorice rope).

One last charge for glory. Theoden and Aragorn charge forth from the castle atop mighty steeds (gummy Target dogs), with mighty spears (toothpicks, not actually candy), into the teeming multitude of evil. I’m pretty sure they’re doing it for wrath and ruin, or something.

This is the hold. My girlfriend, Eileen, did most of this and you can tell because it’s super bad ass. Notice the Nerd graveled path and the brickwork. This shot is dramatic in that last scene from Saving Private Ryan everyone is getting shot and dying sort of way. You’re terrified, but you feel for the characters, even though they are only sugar.

And finally, just like he said he would, Gandalf comes to the rescue. If you look closely you can see him with a wizard’s staff just wrecking shit in the middle of orcs who are getting fucking pwnt. Pwnt is Ent-speak for owned.

So there you have it. Next year we’re building Minas Tirith, all seven rings.

What did you do over the break?

Haha, I really don’t care because there is NO way it was even close to as cool as this.