Tag Archives for trilithon

Spinal Tap, Our 100th Post!

taphenge-5

from the movie Spinal Tap

When you say Stonehenge replica, people say Spinal Tap. And something about dwarfs. This rock spoof movie has etched the idea of Stonehenge replicas into the public consciousness, for better or worse. We run into it everywhere in our searches, often from folks who think they are brilliantly original to think of it. *wink*

spinaltapAt least one real band did use a Stonehenge replica as a set back in the heyday of boomer rock, one so large that it didn’t fit into some venues. Which band? We’ve seen two or three mentioned but we’re told it was really Black Sabbath and that Ozzy Osborne is still paying for its storage in a New York warehouse. If we could get a picture, it could be a post of its own!  The story of the Spinal Tap replica is shown in the video below.

Many thanks to our readers and contributors for making our first 100 posts possible! Score for the Spinal Tap relica: 5 druids. It’s just a trilithon, after all!

[Note: after the next couple posts, we hope to slow down to just a few posts per week. Surely the number of replicas is not infinite! Right? Right!?]

Stonehenge in der Oberpfalz

oberpfalz-henge

photo by Alfred Schaffer, with permission

In southern Germany near the Czech border stands the simplest of Stonehenge replicas, a single trilithon. We do realize that a trilithon doth not a Stonehenge make, but in this case the circumstances of its creation qualify it as a replica. Once again the imperative to build at least a bit of Stonehenge had its way with the people it needed to make it happen. You can see it on Google Maps:

As far as we can make out by the use of automatically-translated pages (what fun!),  this trilithon was built as a project for a documentary film series about world cultures. Two hundred people helped to move and place the three 40-ton granite stones using methods similar to those the builders of Stonehenge may have used, and all of it was caught on film.

This is not the only German replica. The same nation is responsible for (guilty of?) the best strawhenge ever (and there have been many strawhenges!), Strohhenge. We’ll post more on that another day if we can get more information. Score for the Oberpfalz henge trilithon? Only 5½ druids for it as a Stonehenge replica, but as a monument, what’s not to like?

Stonehenge, the board game?

stonehengeboardpreview

promotional photos from Titanic Games

Here’s a fun angle on the Stonehenge reproduction: a board game in which plastic trilithons are pieces. (Is that not a druid we spy below?)

stonehenge-board-game

Actually, it’s five games or more. The game company gave the board and pieces to five game designers and each wrote a game, then all sets of rules were included in the game box. Since then, not only was an expansion with more games and pieces released, but players have designed their own games and submitted them to the Titanic site (here) for others to try. They even have related puzzles online, like this one.

Well, we admit that it looks like fun. Any excuse to set up a Stonehenge replica in the living room when friends come over has a certain appeal for us. If anyone out there has this, please let us know how you like it.

The replica doesn’t appear to be very accurate, but we like the idea, the appealing game board, and the fact that there are many ways to play just as there are many ideas about how and why Stonehenge was invented. Score: 6½ druids, and it appears they can add one of their own. Oh, those druids, they must have a great PR group!