OK. I will be the first to admit that I have done some pretty ridiculous things as a fan of various TV shows, movies, books, etc. When I like something, I have a tendency to go overboard. Most of them involve Star Trek, but not all. Here is but a small sampling:
- I was the director of the Klingon Bible Translation Project. (Yes, I speak Klingon.)
- I have, in fact, gone to Star Trek conventions in a full uniform.
- I put a Klingon battle cruiser on my wedding registry.
- I once watched every single James Bond movie in a two week period.
- I am currently documenting pop culture references in the sitcom NewsRadio. Yes, I know it has been off the air for eight years.
- I collect Doonesbury books.
Nothing I have ever done, however, could compare to what a guy and a couple of his friends did over Christmas break. The modeled the entire Battle of Helms Deep from The Lord of the Rings trilogy in candy and icing. Pictures of the model, which measures 7′x3′x2′, can be seen at his blog, Miss(ed) Manners. They used over 500 Gummy Bears as orcs and Uruk-Hai. The Elves, Dwarves and Men were represented by sour patch kids. My personal favorite is the Tootsie Roll Pop catapults, although using Smarties as stonework in the walls was visionary.
This thing puts every fan activity I have ever done to shame, with the possible exception of the time I build a full size working model of the starship Enterprise (”No bloody A, B, C, or D”) out of pipe cleaners. Yet not even this candy representation of the Battle of Helms Deep is as impressive as the Abston Church of Christ, which is made completely of LEGO building blocks.
I’m feeling inspired. Maybe at lunch today I will build a model of the Devil’s Tower out of my mashed potatoes.
By the way, as an interesting tie-in between two of my obsessions passions, I discovered in a web search last night that Stephen Root, the actor that played Jimmy James on NewsRadio, also played a Klingon on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Unification’.