Nice Marmot...Lebowski Fest: Friday

We spent the morning plotting our plans for the Saturday costume bowling party...after some deliberation, Lee decides not to dress up, but rather build a mechanical marmot.

The "marmot" scene in the movie is hilarious, of course. And according to the Lebowski Fest book "I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski," the "marmot" in the tub was a stuffed animal mounted on a stick, rotated at high speed with a power drill. So Lee figured he might find a cheap cordless drill, a stuffed animal, and recreate the device.

I opted to dress as the Sam Elliott character and narrator of the movie, "The Stranger." So I needed to locate a white cowboy hat, a blue shirt, and a brown vest.

We found most of what we needed in the local WalMart, which I am normally averse to shopping in, due to the anti-union, anti-healthcare attitudes of management. But we also couldn't spend a lot on the costumes, in reality, so WalMart it was.

Lee got a cheap Black and Decker cordless for $20, a wooden dowel, a small brown and white stuffed collie or Sheltie, rubber cement and sewing stuff. I bought a cheap brown Panama hat for $10, a can of white spray paint, some brown ribbon for a hat band, and a long sleeve blue shirt.

The marmot needed some surgery. First, a hole in the nether regions to accomodate the dowel. Cement on the dowel, then insert through the newly minted canal . Then the limbs sewn together for streamlining. Lee darkened the white limbs with a black Sharpie. He placed his computer in its bag on top of the marmot to help the cement set.

Lee was pretty much done; I had two remaining issues: The Stranger has a large gray handlebar moustache and wears a brown leather vest. Cheap leather vests were nowhere to be found, but Lee found a ladies' sleeveless brown shirt in a clearance rack for $7 that I was able to strip down with scissors into something that looked like a vest from a distance. I then fashioned the moustache out of strands of gray yarn on top of a piece of gray cardboard, using the cement to hold it together.

Having successfully obtained our costume accoutrements and achieving the minimal task that was our charge, we went bowling.

Walking around the hotel following bowling, we could see that other fans were beginning to check in. Mostly young and geeky. And mostly men, though we saw several couples. I guess the demographic could have been predicted.

The Fest itself began later that afternoon at 6, kicking off with a hotel conference room screening of a new documentary called "The Achievers," a tribute to Lebowski Fest and its fans. It was nicely done, and Lee and I had arrived early enough to get decent seats.

The gates for the outdoor party opened at 8 pm, and Lee and I arrived around 8:30, in time to check out the merch table and buy some t-shirts and buper stickers. The party was held on the grassy area across from the bowling alley, and probably held 600 or 700 people. The musical act Pleesee-a-saur opened at 9. It consisted of an entertaining costumed guy dancing and singing in front of two small white screens that displayed changing images related to the songs. Think of a cross between Devo, Talking Heads, and performance art. I liked it. We both thought the music was too repetitive, though...every song sounded the same...techno-style disco.

Brian Posehn was the following comedy act. He was pretty good; crude, self-deprecating. I had no idea he was so big...6'6", and heavy. I may get his new CD.

The final event for Friday was an outdoor screening of The Big Lebowski. This Lee and I did not plan ahead for, so we were chairless, and blanketless. The yard was not that big, so we were forced to watch from the increasingly buggy edges of the property, and at a tough angle. By the time Posehn was wrapping up, we decided to hightail it back to the hotel. We ended up watching some the movie from my laptop and turning in around midnight. A fun day, though, and we are excited about tomorrow.