Call It What You Want...

And so we went, off to the Indiana State Museum to see the fabulous traveling Lord of the Rings exhibit. This impressive exhibit of all things LOTR is the authorized LOTR exhibit and has toured the world's major cities, including Boston, London, Sydney, Singapore... and Indianapolis.

The Dunces and the Noblesvillians happily forked over our admission fees and made our way to the third-floor galleries that house this exhibit. There we feasted our eyes on stunning costumes, armor, jewelry... Wow. That stuff, the real stuff from the movie, right there. We got to try out some green-screen effects (the Dunce was a Gondorian soldier, the Noblesvillian was an elf, and I was an Uruk), feel the incredibly light-weight but real-looking chain mail (the boy liked that a lot), wander the gallery seeing familiar objects, check out the scale-models, and try out some other special effects as well. And how much cooler was it when I met up with a buddy from my own museum, who is now working at the state museum supervising this very exhibit?

It was also mighty cool to try out the scale model trick they used to make Frodo look that much smaller than Gandalf on the cart heading into the shire. The video screen showing it as we did it looked pretty funny, but the photo (two pictures, trading sides so each party gets the chance to be big, for $6. But it's a one-time thing...) was even more impressive. Wowie, look at the GIANT BABY!!! (And his tiny duncey uncle!)

Yes, we got to be tiny, too.

And yes, there was a gigantic model of the cave troll. (Bigger than Uncle Dunce, that troll.) The small boy was particularly impressed with the giant monster. Frightened? Oh no. He stared up at the creature's hideous face. He talked to it. He waved at it. As we left the gallery, he turned back to the cave troll, waved, and jabbered at it.

Bye Bye, Cave Troll