Another meeting coming up, back at the Embassy. We're repeating the theme of last meeting - this time we'll actually get to it. Reality vs Metaphor
In The Hobbit, the Rock Giants are portrayed as real in the films, but many believe
they are just metaphors - what are are thoughts on this? And are there any other instances of this in the stories?
Rock Giants - are they real or did Bilbo imagine them?
So, if you're keen on a good fun afternoon with a bunch of fellow coffee
drinkers and cake eaters, come join, and add your $0.02 worth to the
discussion - or just come and sit back and enjoy the bun-slinging.
Usual time, usual place: 2:00pm, upstairs at the Embassy cafe. Entry is
free and gives lifetime membership as a Welly-mooter, but bring money
for coffee and cakes.
The group met at the Embassy Cinema today, and although our intentions were to discuss the set theme of Reality vs Metaphor (were Bilbo's Rock Giants real or were they a metaphor for something entirely different?), in the end we kinda never got around to it. The discussion went a lot of different ways instead, everything from politics (VERY briefly), various educational models around the world, Bela Lugosi's role in early horror films, and yes, some Middle-earth.
The group was pretty relaxed about it all. Coffee was drunk, cake was demolished. Last week was Armageddon, so that was a nice catch-up since most people had been to it - Wellington's annual Sci-Fi and Fantasy convention at the Westpac Stadium. And speaking of Sci-Fi, the Wellington Sci-Fi group came and sat beside us in the cafe and started their monthly meeting as well. Looks like a good place to hold these things, I guess.
We'll be meeting again in a few months, perhaps we'll get around to the theme then! The silver lining of today's meeting - it's great to see that this is such a social event, and I hope it always stays that way.
Due to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention Armageddon being held over the same weekend as our original Welly-moot scheduled meeting, we've decided to change our moot day to June the 11th.
Apart from the date change, we now also have a fun theme for the discussion:
Reality vs Metaphor
In The Hobbit, the Rock Giants are portrayed as real in the films, but many believe
they are just metaphors - what are are thoughts on this? And are there any other instances of this in the stories?
Rock Giants - are they real or did Bilbo imagine them?
So, if you're keen on a good fun afternoon with a bunch of fellow coffee drinkers and cake eaters, come join, and add your $0.02 worth to the discussion - or just come and sit back and enjoy the bun-slinging.
Usual time, usual place: 2:00pm, upstairs at the Embassy cafe. Entry is free and gives lifetime membership as a Welly-mooter, but bring money for coffee and cakes.
The
Welly-moot group met yesterday at the Embassy Cinema. We have new
members whom we met at the Middle-Earth movie marathon in March this
year. Welcome Kay, Molly and Helena!
Unusually,
we didn’t have a specific Tolkien topic for this meeting. We started as usual with a round
table discussion, with updates, and we shared our experiences of the movie
marathon. After that, it became a very enjoyable non-topic discussion.
We discussed the upcoming Armageddon Expo in Wellington next weekend; the excellent Hobbit Location
Tour "Hairy Feet Hobbit Locations" in Piopio Waitomo; the latest Superhero movies (X-man, Avengers, Captain
America, Superman vs Batman, etc), TV shows, costumes, etc. The Welly-mooters are a wealth of geeky knowledge, and we had no problem filling the afternoon with a wide range of movies, TV series or characters.
Some
updates for everyone.
There is a Middle-earth-themed LARP event (Live Action Role Playing) in Queenstown later this winter. We will update as soon as we have more details, on
this site. In the meantime, if you're interested, follow them on facebook.
The new Rivendell Rebuild project for
Welly-moot is the Bilbo bench/statue in Kaitoke Park. We have
two wonderful Sculptors to give us a hand. We will be pushing this project forward this year!
We're also organising a Welly-moot craft meeting, hopefully for later this year. The idea is to have Kim Beaton (who you may have met at the Marathon) show us how to sculpt a beautiful miniature Hobbit door, to decorate your garden with. There will be somecosts associated with that, so will keep everyone updated as we go.
The next Welly-moot meeting is to be a mid-winter party like we did last year. The date will be Sunday the 31st of July. It will be fun so don’t miss it.
Also, some Welly-mooters are going to the Armageddon with their own costumes this weekend. We (Alex & Jack) will be going on Monday the 6th, if all goes well. See you there!
That sounded wrong. I don't mean the end of the world is nigh - Armageddon is Wellington's annual fantasy convention. This year, it was held at the Westpac Stadium (where some of the Lord Of The Rings' sound effects were recorded, back in 1999).
I'd spoken about the event to Annabel Graham, the jeweller who has created our gorgeous badges for us (see right-hand side-bar, here on our blog). Annabel had offered a bit of wall space from her Whovian Jewellery stand for our banner, and I had two days off between LOTR-touring to help her out a bit, so I decided to take her up on her offer.
The event started today (Saturday), so on Friday we came to set up the stand.
The Welly-moot banner was still on bamboo sticks from the last event, which I thought might help hold it up, but in the morning it had fallen over. Luckily I'd brought some tacks in with me, which solved the problem completely.
Pic: At 8:30am, the queues had already started; the show wouldn't open until 10:00am!
I spent a fun (if tiring) Saturday with Annabel, discussing rather a lot of Doctor Who with rather a lot of Doctor Who fans.
I didn't take photos of all the Doctor Who fans, but here's a few special visitors for the Welly-moot. Pay special attention to the last two photos! :)
Pic: Welly-mooters Erin & Erika were the first to say hello, and promptly bought their Welly-moot badges
Pic: Welly-mooter Wayne soon appeared as well, in appropriate attire.
Pic: Welly-mooter Cinnamon came to say Hello as well. Apparently Ash was there as well but I arrived too late with my camera.
Pic: Oh, and did I mention Radagast the Brown? Radagast the Brown also came by.
Pic : Although what possible appeal a Doctor Who Jewellery store would hold for Sylvester McCoy is beyond me. ;)
All in all, a fun day, and we got to meet some awesome people. Apart from the obvious, we also ran into "our" Riventroll sculptor Kim Beaton who was doing live sculpting demonstrations with the newly named concrete "Pal Tiya", and Weta effects wizard Gino Acevedo. If you are in Wellington for the next two days, make your way to the Westpac Stadium - over the next few days there will be a lot more Hobbit actors around!
