Joanna's Birthday Photo Redux

These may be a bit late in coming, but for those of you interested, here are some of the photos from Joanna's surprise 30th birthday Victorian murder party (now there's a title for you).



This is one of the gorgeous table settings put up by my crack team of decorators. Kristen, Andy, Christina, Ingrid, Kathie, Holly, and a host of others set up seating for 20(!) as well as decorated the house delightfully with only a few hints from me. It was like a French bistro; I seriously considered just opening a cafe when the whole thing was done using these folk as my staff.



One of our few group shots. This is not everyone but is a representative sampling of the partygoers. Everyone is, of course, paying rapt attention to me here.



Whoops! And there I am! Your host for the evening, Samuel Jenkins, Esq., personal barrister to the late George Sweet, 5th Earl of Coddington. In this shot I'm apparently trying not to laugh at Christina, Kristen, and Kathie rolling around on the floor, giggling themselves silly about something. Either that or I've got a live frog trapped in my mouth and I don't want him to escape.

Wait--who was this whole thing about again? What? It wasn't me?



Oh, right--it's this lovely lady. My beauteous wife as Josephine Jocelyn Sweet, third wife of George, aka "Babylon JoJo, Dynamite on Legs." Yes, I set my wife up as an adulteress, an exotic dancer, and a murderer all in one sweep. That's just the kind of guy I am. She's wearing the beautiful gown Christina fashioned for her on the sly, entirely without being able to get a fitting. It was perfect and Joanna loves it.



Speaking of Christina, here she is, along with her "special friend" for the evening, Mike. She's sporting the fabulous dress she made for herself at the same time she was making my wife's. (I told her she was crazy for doing this--I think she now agrees.) Mike did a tremendous job, playing both George Sweet as an obnoxious crude murderous adulterating boor (before his untimely demise) and his own son, William Sweet, an obnoxious pretentious dilettante ballet artiste. My favorite bit about him, from a police report profiling the murder suspects: "Though of the masculine gender, is often seen prancing about in his undergarments, kicking his legs in the air. Calls himself 'a genius artiste of thrilling physicality.' Deserves to be locked up on these grounds alone."



Here we see Kristen as Dawn Sweet, the Earl's second wife, who always suspected her ex of murdering her father in cold blood. With her is her "special friend" Andy, the man who not only played the snooty Lord Blenkinsop, but was the head chef for the entire overly complex meal I had planned. Other than a few preparations, he cooked every course and kept the kitchen humming. I've never seen this done so well outside a professional restaurant. Beth, if you can convice Kristen and Andy to move to Oregon, you could have a tremendous chef for your catering business.

Our menu for the evening was as follows, served in courses:
Cream Cheese, Celery, and Walnut Tea Sandwiches
Creme d'Asperges (cream of asparagus soup)
Salad of Baby Greens, Pears, Walnuts, and Bleu Cheese with Dijon Shallot Dressing
Beef Scallops with Mushroom and Rosemary and Carrots Vichy
Raspberry Fool
Cheeses and Cream Puffs with Coffee

Now I'm hungry again. It was an insane menu to put together for a surprise party, but these two pulled it off with aplomb. The evening wouldn't have been half so successful without them.



Here we see Tim as P.C. Coppit, our constable and general muscle, as well as the photographer for the evening (you can thank him for these photos). And, of course, we cannot leave out Mr. Dan as our intrepid sleuth, Inspector Addison Crane of Scotland Yard ("Flying Crane of the Yard?"), without whom the murder would have gone unsolved. I knew casting Dan as a detective was a good move, even if he didn't have a magnifying glass.



This is Chuck, the oft-mentioned engineer at many of my Voicetrax classes and the man with The Voice we all wish we had. He came up to play Captain Philip Ratliffe, man of romance and adventure (he was wooing all three of George's former wives [including one who wasn't former when we started]). Poor sod--he didn't know what he was in for when he came. He did a great job, and I love this picture, showing his worldly disdain for the goings on. He ended up getting engaged to my wife by the end of the evening. Even more impressive, he stayed after the party until 1am to help me clean up. Sadly, there weren't any pictures in this batch of my other Voicetrax compatriots, Mary and Deb, who put in fine performances as the gardener and the maid and also helped out tremendously. I have some pictures in our camera that haven't been uploaded yet, and they should be in there--I'll post them as time permits. All these folks were great, and stayed into the next day.



And here are two other helpsters--Kathie as Dr. Christine Hammer, who treated George for his debilitating addictions, and Holly as Rebecca Hope, the Earl's biographer who was too afraid of the Earl to leave his house for two years. She ended up holding all the important documents throughout the evening--a very shrewd cookie.



And, finally, one last shot of the top couple for the evening. As you can see, Joanna is still bright and bubbly after five hours; I'm clearly about to collapse. In my defense, I only got about three hours' sleep a night for the week before this all went down. I had fifty pages of notes and instructions to deal with, and though everyone else did the actual work, I did a lot of the figurative work. That's my excuse, anyway.

There are gallons more photos and plenty of other characters, but I don't want this post to blow up any further than it already has. I'll see if I can post the rest elsewhere for interested parties to check out.

So there's more than you probably wanted to know about that. I bet you folk who turned down my offer to run one of these things at Christmas are sad now, huh? It was a great time and I hope to do another in the future (though not a surprise one this time, thank you).