February 21, 2013--For Immediate Release

For more information, contact Marita Coombs, Somerville Public Library,

617-623-5000 x 2942, mcoombs@minlib.net

More info here: http://www.somervillepubliclibrary.org/blog/?p=1563

"Teens have something important to say":

Free Teen Creative Writing Program at Somerville Public Library

Are you a teen who likes to write stories about aliens, blogs, flash fiction, or poems? Are you interested in becoming a novelist, short story writer or poet?

Somerville Public Library's Teen Creative Writing Program will offer teens writing exercises to flex their writing muscles in a fun, low-pressure, supportive environment.

The Somerville Public Library is pleased to announce the start of a free Teen Creative Writing Program, designed for any teen aged 13-17. The program will be offered once per month on Sundays, beginning Sunday, March 24, from 1pm to 4pm. Seven three-hour, stand-alone sessions will be offered.

The sessions will be run by Somerville writers Ethan Gilsdorf and Becky Tuch, who will lead writing exercises in a variety of genres, from fantasy fiction to lyric poetry.

No previous writing experience is needed. Students are encouraged to come as they are and need not attend all seven sessions. Materials and lunch will be provided.

Advance sign-up is requested. To register, please contact Marita Coombs, Somerville Public Library, 617-623-5000 x 2942, mcoombs@minlib.net. Additional program dates are Sunday, April 14, Sunday May 19, and Sunday, June 9. The final three session dates will be announced at a future time.

More info here: http://www.somervillepubliclibrary.org/blog/?p=1563

"We'll provide unexpected writing prompts to get teens to generate as much new work in as short a time as possible," said Gilsdorf, an essayist, journalist and author of the book "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks." "Teens have something important to say."

Both Gilsdorf and Tuch are published writers, and teach at Grub Street Writers, Boston's independent creative writing center. Both have extensive experience teaching teens creative writing.

"Nothing inspires me more than my students, at all ages and all stages of their writing careers," said Becky Tuch, a fiction writer whose work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and has taught fiction to kids, teens, and adults throughout Boston. "As a Somerville resident myself, I can't wait to teach and learn from the young writers in the area."

The Teen Creative Writing Program is funded by the Somerville Arts Council, a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council, as well as the Friends of the Library.

More information about the instructors:

Becky Tuch has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Somerville Arts Council, awards from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine, and The Tennessee Writers Alliance, and her fiction has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize and Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award. Other stories and essays have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Hobart, Quarter After Eight, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website which has twice been listed by Writer's Digest as "Best of the Best" among 101 Best Websites for Writers. She is also one of the founders of the writing and publishing blog, Beyond the Margins. 

Ethan Gilsdorf is a journalist, memoirist, critic, poet, teacher and geek. He wrote the award-winning travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories, essays and reviews regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, wired.com, PsychologyToday.com, and WBUR's Cognescenti blog. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe and is the film columnist for Art New England. An award-winning poet, he has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, and The North American Review, and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) and teaches creative writing workshops at Grub Street, where he also serves on the Board of Directors.

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Ethan Gilsdorf | www.ethangilsdorf.com | Grub Street, Inc., Boston

1) "Joan Didion and Bob Seger Meet in a Bar" Exercise

Goal: What didn't happen is as fruitful a road to travel as what did. But, too frequently, writers of nonfiction tend to write only about the actual details of their lives, and neglect the goldmine of regrets and "what if" musings that (to me, anyway) seem as "real" as real life. This exercise forces nonfiction writers to reflect about possible/probable outcomes in their lives, had they made different choices. The goal also is to get writers to include imaginary "what if" scenes and passages of musing and specialization about their choices and actions.

Method: Make a short list of key moments/choices/actions/conversations /turning points in your life. Now, choose one and begin to imagine how things might have been different had you made a different choice or had (or did not have) information at the time you made the choice or took action. Ideas for topics include: that you married a different person; that you spoke up when you remained quiet; that you took back something you said; that you had been courageous instead of fearful.

Now, begin to free-write for minimum of 15-20 minutes using one (or more than one, if you want) of the following lines as the first line for an extended passage of writing. The passages you write should include real details from your life but also speculate and imagine a possibly different turn of events and life you might have had. In addition to exposition and musing, you are encouraged to include imaginary scenes with imaginary dialogue in this exercise.

1) If I only knew then what I know now ...

2) If I had only X (done something, made a different choice, etc ) instead of Y ...

3) Begin with this line by Joan Didion (from her essay "Goodbye to All That”) and see where it takes you: "It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends."

4) Here's another Didion line: "Of course it might have been some other city, had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different..." Think of a "city" from your personal experience, or substitute "city" for some other noun: person, summer camp, car, father, college, wife, etc.

5) And because I could not resist: Use this line from the Bob Seger song "Against the Wind" as a way to reflect on your own life. "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then ..." (it's a double negative, so take a sec to figure it out.)

2) Where I'm From
(adapted from http://georgeellalyon.com/where.html and http://www.swva.net/fred1st/wif.htm)

Goal: Often nonfiction writers worry that they need to make their personal experience "universal," and in that worry, they can sap all the specific, local and personal details from their prose. This exercise gets nonfiction writers to include specific concrete detail from their lives into their writing: actual names, phrases, local information, family secrets and stories, period products, species of plants, etc. This exercise teaches the power of a simple list in creating a rhythm and lyric quality in prose. On its own, this exercise also makes a lovely, stand-alone self-portrait.

Method: "If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going," said Wendell Berry, voicing the idea that we need to understand our roots to know our place in the world. This prompt has a way of drawing out memories of the smells of attics and bottom-drawer keepsakes; the faces of long-departed kin, the sound of their voices you still hold some deep place in memory. You'll be surprised that, when you're done, you will have said things about the sources of your unique you-ness that you'd never considered before. If you remember the silly fill-in-the-blank word game Mad Libs, then you'll love this exercise. It's completely foolproof. Follow this template, but feel free to improvise or stray from the categories once you get the hang of the voice and rhythm -- just be sure to make your examples specific and concrete.

The Where I'm From Template

I am from ________________________ (specific ordinary household item), from ________________________ (product name), ________________________ (another household item), and ________________________ (common household odor from your childhood).

I am from the ________________________ (home description: adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

I am from the ________________________ (plant, flower, natural item), the ________________________ (plant, flower, natural detail)

I am from ________________________ (family tradition) and ________________________ (family trait), from ________________________ (name of family member) and ________________________ (another family name) and ________________________ (family name).

I am from the ________________________ (description of family tendency/trait/habit) and ________________________ (another example).

From ________________________ (something you were told as a child) and ________________________ (another example).

I am from ________________________ (representation of religion, or lack of it). From ________________________ (further description).

I'm from ________________________ (actual place of birth and/or family ancestry), ________________________ (two food items representing your family).

From the ________________________ (specific family story about a specific person and detail), the ________________________ (another detail or anecdote), and the ________________________ (another detail about another family member).

I am from ________________________ (location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

Sample: Where I’m From, by Ethan Gilsdorf

I am from plungers and wood bins, from the Downy bottle that scared me from across the kitchen, straw brooms and the smell of cat urine. I am from the rotted floorboards of a house built in 1803. I am from the lilac hedge, and chives, and garden tomatoes. I am from going to the movies on Thanksgiving, from the land of avoidance, from Florences, Briggs and Normans, from a triumvirate of mothers: Alice, Sara and Susan. I am from keeping your options open. I have climbed from deep trenches of passive-aggression. I am from keeping your expectations low and having a Plan B (better yet, Plan B and Plan C). I am from the church of the forest, the cathedral of sandpits and swift rivers. From the Teachings of Yoda and Gandalf. I'm from Lee, New Hampshire, and from surviving pot roasts and meatloaf made from your bare hands. From the cousin who robbed a bank, they say, the mother who learned to smoke in her high school play, and the father who finally got away. I am from the round box that might have housed an elaborate hat, or perhaps a drum, which I keep in my office, under a pile of books, and look at only when I dare.

Where to Go with "Where I'm From"

While you can revise (edit, extend, rearrange) your “Where I'm From” list into a poem, you can also see it as a corridor of doors opening onto further knowledge and other kinds of writing. The key is to let yourself explore these rooms. Don't rush to decide what kind of writing you're going to do or to revise or finish a piece. Let your goal be the writing itself. Learn to let it lead you. This will help you lead students, both in their own writing and in their response as readers. Look for these elements in your WIF poem and see where else they might take you:

• a place could open into a piece of descriptive writing or a scene from memory.

• your parents' work could open into a memory of going with them, helping, being in the way. Could be a remembered dialogue between your parents about work. Could be a poem made from a litany of tools they used.

• an important event could open into freewriting all the memories of that experience, then writing it as a scene, with description and dialogue. It's also possible to let the description become setting and directions and let the dialogue turn into a play.

• food could open into a scene at the table, a character sketch of the person who prepared the food, a litany of different experiences with it, a process essay of how to make it.

• music could take you to a scene where the music is playing; could provide you the chance to interleave the words of the song and words you might have said (or a narrative of what you were thinking and feeling at the time the song was first important to you (“Where I'm Singing From”).

• something someone said to you could open into a scene or a poem which captures that moment; could be what you wanted to say back but never did.

• a significant object could open into a sensory exploration of the object-what it felt, sounded, smelled, looked, and tasted like; then where it came from, what happened to it, a memory of your connection with it. Is there a secret or a longing connected with this object? A message? If you could go back to yourself when this object was important to you, what would you ask, tell, or give yourself?

Remember, you are the expert on you. No one else sees the world as you do; no one else has your material to draw on. You don't have to know where to begin. Just start. Let it flow. Trust the work to find its own form.

TIM AND ERIC”S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE

Directed by: Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim

Written by: Heidecker, Wareheim, Jonathan Krisel, Doug Lussenhop, Jon Mugar

Starring: Heidecker, Wareheim, Robert Loggia, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis

Running time: 93 minutes

At: Kendall Square

Rated: R (nearly every bodily and sexual function and dismemberment possible)

by Ethan Gilsdorf

[originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

If you enjoy the off-kilter, sketch-based humor of “Kentucky Fried Movie,’’ Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life,’’ and anything that cranks up the Farrelly brothers’ raunch factor to 11, then “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie’’ should please you.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, co-creators of the TV series “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!,’’ wrote and directed this celebration of bad taste. The movie has Heidecker and Wareheim playing Hollywood newbie filmmaker morons, who have squandered a billion of the Schlaaang Corporation’s dollars on a rom-com dud. Tommy Schlaaang Jr. (played by cantankerous Robert Loggia) wants his money back. Tim and Eric shave their soul patches, toss their designer jeans, and fire their spiritual guru, a pony-tailed Zach Galifianakis (uncredited), who pops up in Obi Wan-like visions to say, “I’ve got some poetry about regret I’d like to share with you.’’

Eric and Tim, our wholly unlikable and clueless protagonists (think “Dumb and Dumber’’), skip town, determined to make back that billion dollars they owe by resurrecting the Swallow Valley Mall, deep in the middle of somewhere. Our heroes, remade now as the Dobis PR company, literally jog across the country, as Aimee Mann’s “Two Horses’’ plays and their journey is intercut with slow-motion footage of stallions.

They arrive at the decrepit, squatter-filled mall to find stubborn entrepreneurs selling swords and recycled toilet paper. The mall is run by creepy Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell, also uncredited), who occupies himself in a back room endlessly watching “Top Gun’’ on VHS. Among the best performers is John C. Reilly (yes, uncredited) as the sickly, sore-covered Taquito, Damien’s henchman, abandoned by his family at the mall decades ago. “Also,’’ Damien warns, before handing over the operation to Tim and Eric, “You’re going to have to look out for the wolf.’’ A wolf stalks the mall. And the “Yogurt Man’’ haunts the defunct frozen yogurt kiosk.

You could view all of this as a bold, thinly veiled critique of the current economic depression. Or an exegesis of a nation driven by cable access infomercials and self-help shams. Or you could simply enjoy - if enjoy is the right sentiment - this gross-out comedy that graphically depicts masturbation, defecation, body piercing (you can guess which parts), grannies getting their fingers chopped off, and every smooshy and farty sound-effect possible. See it in the right sick frame of mind, and “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie’’ can be shockingly and terribly hilarious. Or not.

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

UPDATE TO THIS REVIEW: Edward Lee Elmore -- a black man who faced execution after he was wrongly convicted of killing a white woman in South Carolina -- was released from prison today after serving nearly thirty years. His release comes after numerous appeals and as the direct result of a plea deal negotiated by his attorney. Elmore's story is the subject of Raymond Bonner's new book ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE. Bonner, who was present at the Greenwood SC courthouse at the time of the announcement, said “It can hardly be called justice when, in order to obtain his freedom, a man had to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit.”

BOOK REVIEW

by Ethan Gilsdorf

Who are Viggo Mortensen’s heroes? Ask him, and he doesn’t hold back. That’s what we learned when, after a recent interview, we sent the actor some follow-up questions via e-mail. Here are his responses.

1) Who were your heroes growing up as a child, and who are they today?

Okay, you asked for it...

As a child — say, before age eleven — I suppose they were my father, my mother, various horses and dogs, soccer players for San Lorenzo de Almagro (a club founded in Boedo, Argentina, in 1908 by Salesian priest Lorenzo Massa) like “Lobo” Fischer, “Loco” Doval, “Bambino” Veira, “Sapo” Villar and too many other legendary players from that club to mention — Viking Leif Eriksson, fictional gaucho cowboy Martin Fierro, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Odin, Thor, Jesus of Nazareth, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, the character Don Quijote, his horse Rosinante and his trusty servant Sancho Panza, Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, Joan of Arc, explorer Roald Amundsen, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, Thor Heyerdahl, Roger Bannister (the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier), marathon champion Abebe Bikila, Edson Arantes do Nascimento (Pelé), long jumper Bob Beamon, Jesse Owens, Bob Hayes, Emil Zátopek, Wilt Chamberlain, Cassius Clay, swimmers Don Schollander and Dawn Fraser, Peter O’Toole’s impersonation of T. E. Lawrence, the crew of Apollo 11, the recently-deceased rock legend Luis Alberto “El Flaco” Spinetta, Carlos Gardel, Bela Lugosi, Greta Garbo, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Beethoven, Mozart ... I could probably name more, but surely that gives an idea of how and where I dreamed back then.

Although as an adult I have come to see that no human being is perfect, I now would place at the top of the list the many unheralded people whose small acts of selfless kindness and courtesy, of grace under pressure that we come across every single day are there to be noticed and emulated if we simply pay attention. In terms of individuals who are relatively well-known, I would single out Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Helen Caldicott, Dennis Kucinich, Baltasar Garzón, Aung San Suu Kyi, Julian Assange and anyone who speaks truth to power, stands up against injustice and cruelty regardless of any consequential risk of ostracism or personal physical danger. Of course, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, my father, my mother, and some of the others previously mentioned, are still heroes to me. I can also add, among other diverse sorts of heroes, my son Henry, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein, Heraclitus, Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu, Epictetus, writers Marguerite Duras, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Albert Camus, Jonathan Swift, E. E. Cummings, Julio Cortázar, Mario Benedetti, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Juan Carlos Onetti, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Francisco Quevedo, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Haroldo Conti, Oscar Wilde, Knut Hamsun, Saxo Grammaticus, Schopenhauer, Ludvig Holberg, Anton Chekhov, Anna Akhmatova, Johannes Ewald, Euripides, Stanley Kunitz, Theodore Roethke, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad, Osip Mandelstam, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Seamus Heaney, Oscar Wilde, Cormac McCarthy, Edgar Allan Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Heinrich Heine, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, William Burroughs, Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Campbell, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, directors Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson, David Cronenberg, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Luis Buñuel and Yasujirō Ozu, actors Richard Jenkins, Sandy Dennis, Geraldine Page, Meryl Streep, Maria Falconetti, Ghita Nørby, Ariadna Gil, Jessica Lange, Paco Rabal, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Dirk Bogarde, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Federico Luppi, Montgomery Clift, and Robert Duvall, stuntman Mike Watson, sculptors Bertel Thorvaldsen, Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, painters Giotto, da Vinci, Juan Gris, Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Andrei Rublev, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Utagawa Hiroshige, Minerva Chapman, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Diebenkorn, Per Kirkeby, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and photographers Jacques Henri Lartigue, Jacob Riis, André Kertész, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Julia Margaret Cameron, Martin Munkácsi, August Sander, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Garry Winogrand and Dennis Hopper, tennis champions Rafael Nadal, Björn Borg and Guillermo Vilas, skiers Bill Koch, Juha Mieto, Jean-Claude Killy and Bjørn Dæhlie, newer San Lorenzo players like “Beto” Acosta, “Ratón” Ayala, the heroic 1982 San Lorenzo team that came back from the club’s only descent to Argentina’s second division breaking national attendance records along the way, Guy Lafleur and the great Montréal Canadiens teams from the 1970s, the 1969 and and 1986 New York Mets, Tom Seaver, “Doc” Gooden, New York Knick stars Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Bernard King, Oscar Reed, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, “Magic” Johnson, the U.S.A. 1980 Olympic hockey team, the ’87, ’91, 2008 and 2012 New York Giants teams, Danish soccer stars Allan Simonsen, Michael Laudrup, Peter Schmeichel and Denmark’s 1992’s soccer cinderella-story European Champion team, Johan Cruyff, Mario Kempes, Diego Maradona, Real Madrid’s/Schalke’s Raúl González Blanco, Leo Messi, Gonzalo Higuaín, Zinedine Zidane, Bob Dylan, Ada Falcón, Leonard Cohen, Chet Baker, Gustav Mahler, Arvo Pärt, Carl Nielsen and so on...

Sorry to give you such long lists. Could have been even longer...

2) What are your favorite films, or films influential on your career, and/or what actors do you admire, and why?

Movies, to name a few: The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Godfather I & II, A Separation, The Fog of War, The Conformist, Los Santos Inocentes, The Deer Hunter, Casino, Lawrence of Arabia, Tokyo Story, Autumn Sonata, Sunrise, Andrei Rublev, Citizen Kane, A Place in the Sun, City Lights, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Greed, The Night of the Hunter, The Third Man, Gallipoli, Mother and Son, Stalker, Ivan’s Childhood, Red River, Taxi Driver, Frances, Network, Grand Illusion, L’Atalante, Throne of Blood, The Seven Samurai, The Sword of Doom, Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy, Carnival of Souls, Solaris (Tarkovsky’s original)...

Actors, to name a few: Montgomery Clift, Maria Falconetti, Meryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Richard Jenkins, Sandy Dennis, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Page, Robert Duvall, Anna Magnani, Peter O’Toole, Toshiro Mifune, Dennis Hopper, Jessica Lange, James Dean, John Hurt, Dirk Bogarde, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Glenda Jackson, Vanessa Redgrave, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Bergman, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Ulrich Thomsen, Max von Sydow, Bruno Ganz...

3) Did you read much fantasy or science fiction as a kid? Did you ever play Dungeons & Dragons or know anyone who did?

Never have played “Dungeons and Dragons.” As a kid I read Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and a few others. As an adult have admired Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and notebooks.

4) We talked a little about your work as an actor, painter, poet and musician. They all seem linked by story. So I’m wondering what you think is the significance or power of stories? Why are they so important?

We are the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we tell about others, the stories we read about everyone and every thing.

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com

[this originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

He’s best known for inhabiting a haunted and reluctant hero-king. But he’s also been a trailblazing thinker, a vigilante family man with a dark past, a Russian mobster, a swoon-worthy traveling salesman, and one of the last men alive on earth, determined to make sure he and a boy survive.

Artist Casey Jex Smith has been working on a series of works that depict people as D&D characters. Here, Mitt Romney, although unnamed, is shown as Lord Spelldyal, a 21st level warlord with 152 hit points, Boots of Speed and a Helmet of Authority.

The drawing was one of the works in the Dungeons and Dragons On & Ever Onward art show at the Soho Gallery of Digital Art in New York City. The show, which closed Jan 11, 2012, was curated by Timothy Hutchings, and featured works by Casey Jex Smith, Ryan Browning, Sean McCarthy, Rebecca Schiffman, Josh Jordan, Jeffrey Brown, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Chris Bors, Owen Rundquist, Andrew Guenther Jason Phillips, Ketta Ioannidou, Fiona MacNeill, Kitty Clark, Erol Otus, Steve Zeiser, Matt Brinkman, Chris Coy, and others.

And it featured historical selections from the Play-Generated Maps and Documents Archive.

More from Casey Jex Smith's D&D characters series here.

Image courtesy Allegra LaViola Gallery

[a version of this post originally appeared on wired.com's GeekDad]

In the Lucas universe, the typical stormtrooper is portrayed as a hapless soldier in service of the Empire.

Stormtroopers don’t tend to be very yummy, either … we assume.

But this footsoldier (pictured at left) was solidly-built, very tasty, and served not only Darth Vader. He also served several hundred hungry science fiction fans.

A crew from Boston-based Amanda Oakleaf Cakes worked like crazed jawas for two weeks to complete this 6-foot, 4-inch high, edible Imperial stormtrooper.

Constructed of white cake, Rice Krispies Treats and fondant (an icing made from sugar used to decorate and sculpt pastries), it weighed 300 pounds — and was devoured this weekend at the Arisia science fiction and fantasy convention by some 600 conventioneers in just two hours.

“Everyone assumes that because it’s such a crazy cake we must be ‘cheating’ in some way, but this isn’t the case,” said head baker Amanda Oakleaf. ”All sculpted and tiered cakes you see, be they ours or others, have some type of inner structure as cake simply collapses if staked over eight inches high.”

Creating the stormtrooper wasn’t easy as cake. Much like in sculpting with clay, making this massive dessert required an interior armature to support the cake. Oakleaf and her team made one from iron pipe, wrapped in plastic for food safety purposes. Every four inches (vertically), they inserted a cardboard divider to separate layers of cake, and every eight inches they attached a masonite board, secured to the iron pipe with pipe clamps.

“This does a number of things, including making the cake incredibly sturdy, but also making it easy to slice and serve,” said Oakleaf. The arms were made of solid sugar “because they were too narrow to use cake.” The lower legs below the knees and the bottom of the head were made of Rice Krispies Treats. She said the overall percentage of Krispie was 15 percent or less; the majority of the cake was, well, cake.

“The main reason that we used Krispie at all wasn’t because we couldn’t have used cake, but rather we just wanted to get a head start and Krispies stay fresher a lot longer than the cake does. Cake is a very time sensitive medium, and that is always our biggest challenge. Once it comes out of the oven the clock is running on freshness.”

Amanda Oakleaf started her cake business with her husband Tyler Oakleaf out of their bedroom apartment in 2008. Now they’ve expanded into a storefront in Winthrop, MA (just outside Boston) and currently employ ten cake artists.

Their previous best was a 5-foot tall Dora the Explorer cake for a Food Network Challenge a few years back. “Her head was massive (3 feet wide),” Oakleaf remembered. “It ended up crashing to the ground when we moved it to the judging table when the inner support slipped out of its socket.”

For now there are no plans for other geek-themed cakes. But, there’s always the possibility of a special request.

“We are a completely custom bakery so we take the orders as they come in,” Oakleaf said. “It’s always fun, and always a challenge.”

See a photo gallery of the entire construction process here at the website for Amanda Oakleaf Cakes.

And may the fondant be with you, always.

(photos courtesy of Amanda Oakleaf)

[This post originally appeared on GeekDad/wired.com]

As reported by WMUR, a New Hampshire TV station, a 12-year-old boy with a rare disease called desmoid fibromatosis was made king of his domain this week.

The back yard of his house in a small N.H. town called Epping now includes a castle.

For some five years, David Morasco has been fighting the disease, which causes abdominal tumors that can grow into and even destroy adjacent tissue, organs and  bones, and are often treated with chemotherapy.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Hampshire made his day — and possibly his life — when it pulled out all the stops to create this impressive and possibly impenetrable gift.

As it turns out, the project happened to be the foundation’s 1,000th wish granted to a N.H. kid. Not bad.

“It’s mind-blowing,” the 7th grader was quoted as saying. “It’s more than I could have imagined.”

The 24 foot by 24 foot formidable fortress, which took several months to build, has many of the features you’d want your real or fantasy castle to include: heavy double doors; crenelations, or battlements, at the top of a curtain wall (made of wood); four towers; staircases; a courtyard; two rooms; and a great hall. A catwalk behind the merlons winds around the structure. It’s even made of stone (stone facing, anyway).

The unveiling was a big enough deal to attract N.H. Gov. John Lynch, who showed up, took a tour and stayed around for castle-shaped cake. (Coincidentally, young Morasco lived in the town adjacent to where I grew up, Lee.)

“The anticipation of all this when he’s been through the dark periods, this is just something that’s really raised his spirits so much,” said David’s father, Mike Morasco.

As for King David, he told the TV cameras, “I’ve already started planning wars and parties and stuff.”

Go David. And get out there and slay that dragon.

More information and a video and slideshow here.

[Post originally appeared on wired.com/GeekDad]