It was a dark and stormy night. So of course one thinks of Korean food. We love the intimate family style of this restaurant. The owner always takes time to help us with the menu. We started with the pre-dinner chopstick practicing. I got my usual egg cracked into a bubbling pot of stuff and Jeff got the fish. A whole fish. And he liked it. Jasmine and I spent the rest of dinner trying not to look.
Jeff got this ad in the mailbox advertising a new restaurant; claiming to have “boardwalk fries” and even naming it the restaurant. Now Jeff literally worked on the boardwalk at Rehobeth Beach, DE making such fries so the bar was set pretty high. While they were not quite at the level one expects on an east coast boardwalk, the fries were pretty darn good. And they also had the new programmable soda machine with a touch screen. You can now pick say, Mt Dew and add vanilla to it (why one would do that, I have no idea, but you could if you wanted to.) Can flying cars really be that far behind? With all that power I still got a diet coke, but I went a little wild and added cherry to it. Jasmine went crazy with the Fanta option.
Of course there was an adult costume contest. Halloween only comes once a year. Most pulled out their Ren Fen clothes so there were lots of hobbits – some of whom said funny things – like “I’m the 3rd cousin twice removed of Bilbo’s mom”. Then there was the Nazgul – who talked in growls and gasps – pretty imaginative. The audience digged that one and two fighting Urikai – who hammed up the crowd. Then, of course, you can’t have a Tolkien costume contest without the obligatory Gandalf.
One of the key reasons for us attending was to enjoy contests for best costumes. We put together an impromptu elf costume for Jasmine but she declined to enter the contest.
One kid stole the show, he approached the commentator meekly in a rather average dinosaur costume – the MC asked him what character he was – the kid roared SMAUGGGGGG! – it was so loud and unexpected the audience cheered. Here are a few more kids being cute in their costumes.
After finishing the 3+ hr Fellowship of the Ring and lunch we decided to skip the other two movies (especially since they are scarier). But the Tolkien festival had lots going on.
We went to the ballroom to catch some of the Hobbit performances. They had a great sound effects section. Listen to some of the videos. Really amazing.
