We finished the evening off with the director's cut of Legend. It's fascinating to watch, especially since it holds up so well against the almost completely computer generated fantasy films of today.

Carrie's description is more eloquent than mine:

Here's what I did. Eric has been totally sucked into this computer game called Neverwinter Nights, which all the geeks round here say does the best job they've ever seen of making D&D "real." So with the geek assistance of some friends, Kevin, Skye, and I turned their apartment into the Neverwinter world for the evening - lots of candles, rough linen on the table, simple food, creepy objects around. The living room was the tavern, where Eric was instructed to meet me, the princess (you knew I'd find another excuse to wear that tiara, didn't you?), to be sent on a quest to find the stolen Stories of Numfar, stolen from my family's home by three men wearing blue, with spider insignias on their belts. (Yes, there's a geek reference there that will be explained momentarily.) His first task was to go to the Spine Mountain Inn (yes, I did look up the game's geography on the web. Yes, I'm excessive.) and investigate, since that's where the robbers stayed. Skye played the innkeeper, and passed along a "wand" (actually a Chinese yo-yo) they'd left in their room, "only made by one person, so you should go see him." Kevin played the drunken wandmaker, who traded the wand for a backscratcher - only he couldn't figure out what it was for, and did Eric want it? Yeah, he'd seen the guys. Kevin got a little crazy with this character, and suddenly the villains became not guys wearing blue, but spider-headed smurfs. !! It was funny, anyway.

Then Eric had to come back to the tavern, and I sent him to see a sorceress who helped the bad guys; not a very good sorceress, she had an accident with a transfiguration spell, but he should go see her. This was Skye, wearing a bat hat. That's not an expression. The hat was made up of a little black skull cap with googly eyes on, and a seven-inch bat wing on each side. I cannot believe she agreed to wear that. :) She got to be peevish and explain how some idiot was passing by with a bat who was projecting a cone of fear just as she was trying her transfiguration, and well, it got its chocolate in her peanut butter. (This is an inside joke from the game - Kevin and Eric were playing it one night, and this guy's bat's cone of fear kept scaring away the rest of his party! Not helpful.) She allowed as how she sold the bad guys an Orb of Abba (a mini disco ball), and for a sufficient bribe, she'd sell Eric the other one. Skye gets a million style points for her totally hilarious improv as cranky bathead sorceress.

Next he returned to the tavern to find the princess gone, but the family skull (& locus of the princess's grandfather's ghost) there to answer questions. The skull said he suspected his brother, Crazy Tom, had helped the robbers, and sent Eric to his seacost hideout with the family sword, so CT would talk to him. CT (a squeezy plastic skull with dangly eyeballs) tells him oh, yeah, I was bored, I helped the robbers. They gave me spiders. Spiders are cute. CT wouldn't talk until Eric helped him - since he's just, you know, a skull, he has a lot of trouble functioning, and all his minions are short. Did Eric have anything they could use to get the spellbook off the top shelf? Eric got all deadpan here, pulled out the backscratcher, and said, "Let me consult my thinking stick here..." Kevin flipped out appropriately, took the backscratcher, and revealed that the robbers left the treasure over there in that cave, guarded by trolls. The trolls can be fought, or scared away with shiny spherical objects (gosh, who'd have one of those?). Kevin played both skulls, and did a hilarious job.

Then Skye and I, making troll faces and wearing "Hello, my name is... TROLL" nametags, growled and waved claw-hands at Eric till he dazzled us with his disco ball. Then he found his "treasure chest" (thank you, party store, for the cardboard box with the treasure chest design on) full of fun -- stickers, chocolate coins, and Buffy episodes on DVD. (The geek reference is that Numfar is the character that Buffy creator Joss Whedon played on Angel. Did I mention I'm extreme?) Then we sat down, ate a simple meal (two kinds of bread, three cheeses, fruit, cold cuts, olives, and little pickles), and Eric opened presents from his mom and another friend.

Later we went to Blockbuster and rented Legend. (I don't recommend the director's cut; the music is lamer, and the plot comes out much more "willful women suck and need boys to tame them." Stick to the original version.) We finished the evening with a fruit tart. Eric had a blast, and felt plotted for. Even though we ran short of time and the plot didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped, I felt cool, and was declared an exemplary geek girlfriend. :)

9:05:25 PM  (comments [])