Tonight I'm In . . .

. . . Shreveport, after a v. busy day, large parts of which consisted of sitting still, either while driving or during Visitor's Hours.

Tomorrow, it's up to Magnolia for a few hours, during which I have many chores and errands that need doing. We'll see how many I can get through and still get back to Shreveport before dark.

Meanwhile, tonight I'm reading a v. interesting book about pyramids (had not been aware that each Egyptian pyramid had its own name in antiquity); I've skipped ahead to read the section about the Sphinx.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to start in on a booklet from one of the more notorious entries in the so-called 'Old School D&D Revival', loaned to me by a knowledgable friend. Having not even been aware there was an Old School Revival, I obviously have much to learn.

--JDR

Tonight I'm In . . .

. . . Dallas, having flown into Love Field tonight. My first time to go through Love Field. Seems to be a nice mid-size airport, smaller I think than Chicago's Midway (which I passed thr to & fro on my way to Kalamazoo last year) but larger than Milwaukee's Mitchell Field (at least, that's my impression of it from a brief late night deplaning walk-through).

Another first was going through Albuquerque, a place I've never visited but which is set amid some really striking landscape, as seen from the air.

Next up: heading on to Shreveport tomorrow. My rental car is a Volkswagon Beetle: another first. Turns out they don't put the motors in the trunk anymore. What's up with that?

Oh, and back home the Green River is at Flood Level 2. That is, the stage where they send all residents in the Green River valley, like us, alerts telling us there's nothing to worry about.

Comforting, that.

--John R.

current reading: S. S. Van Dine's THE CANARY MURDER CASE (solved by the dilettante-detective playing poker with the chief suspects to discover which has the right kind of personality and mental processes to have been the murderer).

The Geekiest of the Geeks

Thanks to Janice, for pointing out the following link to me, in which THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT* heads the list of the geekiest gifts of the season:

http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/27/our-geekiest-gifts-this-holiday-season/

Here's what their first contributor, Nikki Rau-Baker, has to say about the book:

"A must for anyone gearing up for the upcoming big-screen version of The Hobbit:"The History of The Hobbit" by John D. Rateliff, covers the beginnings of The Hobbit with such tidbits of information as the original names of the dwarves and the shocking revelation that the leader was initially called Gandalf."

--to which I have just two words to say: Woo and Hoo!

--John R.

current audiobook: THE WAR LOVERS [2011]**

current reading: THE CANARY MURDER CASE by S. S. Van Dine [1927]***

*the new one-volume edition, I assume -- geeks being early adaptors, they'd want H.o.H. 2.0

**(T.R., Lodge, Hearst, &c)

***a re-reading

THE HOBBIT trailer considered

Here, courtesy of Richard West and Kristin Thompson, is a better link to a good site to see the new trailer on:

http://www.thehobbit.com/index.html#

Now that I've had a day or two to mull over things, and move beyond the don't-disturb-this-moment feeling, here's my take on this first trailer.

I've seen most of the little teaser mini making-of documentaries, which have done a great job of engaging the audience from the LotR films into this new project and laid a lot of the wilder rumors to rest. But this feels different: the first whiff of the real thing. They clearly want to do a lot in one short piece.

Foremost among them: to convey to fans of the LotR films that this is more of the same. That it's not just another Tolkien movie, but deeply and directly connected to the first. Thus we get to see McKellan's Gandalf, and Blanchett's Galadriel, and above all hear the sinister whispers of Serkis's Gollum. Even small details, like a glimpse of the shards of Narsil, are included -- something really not v. important for Bilbo's story, but no doubt included for the flashback to the moment between Aragorn and Boromir (and Aragorn and Arwen) in the first film: comfort food, so to speak, for the fans of the first film.

Just as important (or, for me, even more important) is establishing the new cast of this new story. We get to see a lot of Bilbo, and get used to the idea (after the initial shock, and some inner resistance) of seeing Freeman's face rather than Ian Holm's. And all thirteen dwarves are thrown at us in rapid succession, so that the full roster of Thorin & Company is presented right away.

Speaking of the dwarves, it looks like there'll be two contradictory things juxtaposed here. Their looks are quite silly (with the old silent-movie beards and moustachios), yet they turn into experienced killing machines in combat. There was some of that in the first films' Gimli; looks like there'll be even more of it here (To be fair, there was some of this in the original Tolkien too).

The exception is Thorin, whose look and behavior seems locked permanently in the serious battle-mode. In the book it comes as quite a shock when Thorin succumbs to dragon-sickness and becomes Bilbo's enemy. In later writings like THE QUEST OF EREBOR and THE 1960 HOBBIT, Tolkien anticipated those developments by including hints that Thorin was going bad, or at least had the potential, all along: anticipating the end result by drastically rewriting the character (and thus unfortunately losing the shock value of the original ending). I suspect that's what's going on here: Dark Thorin isn't the result of the character's going mad in the end but the essential character all along. I suspect he's this film's Boromir.

Which ties into an observation Janice made: this looks more like THE 1960 HOBBIT than it does THE HOBBIT itself.* There are no hints here of the whimsy of the original story, in which the dwarves bring highly impractical musical instruments along for the Unexpected Party, only to apparently abandon them forthwith, given that none of them are ever mentioned again. Jackson & Co. need not be borrowing directly from Tolkien's unfinished re-write, but they're clearly trying to achieve the same goal: recast THE HOBBIT into the style of LotR.

This ties into a point David Bratman made on his blog,** in which he suggested that Jackson is presenting THE HOBBIT as the prequel to LotR. So far as the films go, this is perfectly correct: most people who go see THE HOBBIT in theatres this time next year (and again the year after) are fans of the three-film Jackson trilogy and expect this movie to be just like the earlier films they know and love. That naturally imposes some audience expectations and means the films will probably be quite different from what they might have been like had they been made in chronological order.

---the biggest surprise: no dragon. To have a dragon and not show it is an exercise of restraint I'd not expected.

---the biggest twist: a brief tender moment between Galadriel and Gandalf.***

---the standout moment: the beautiful dwarf-song. Tolkien said Bilbo found it moving; Jackson has found a way to move the audience with it as well. Score One for Team Jackson.****

--John R.

.......................................

*Richard West made much the same point in an email today, in which he points out how Tolkien's book famously starts like WIND IN THE WILLOWS and ends more like NJAL'S SAGA, as C. S. Lewis observed long ago; here it's saga all the way through.

**http://calimac.livejournal.com/566380.html

***this is a good example of the kind of unanticipate-able element Jackson likes to throw into his films.

****it's clearly based on the king's song Aragorn sings at his coronation which, if I remember rightly, was Mortensen's own composition; hope he gets a royalty here!

THE HOBBIT trailor

So, as of seven o'clock tonight, the trailer for THE HOBBIT (part one) is up.

There are many places you can see it online; I watched it here:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=85322

Analysis as to where they are and aren't faithful to the book can come later. For now, it's time to luxuriate in the feeling of seeing this: after years of delay, it's real, and it's coming. One year to go.

I so want to see this movie.

--John R.

Who's Naughty and Nice (Occupy)

So, I haven't posted on the Occupy movement, mainly because I've had too much to say. I've gathered enough material for three separate posts, but sorting out just what to say about each aspect proved entangled to the point that none of the three actually got posted.

Then, when we were down at the Pike Place Market on Saturday, picking up my father-in-law's Xmas present (which shd go off tomorrow, and get there Thursday), I saw a Santa handing out 'Occupy Seattle' stickers. It reads simply "WE ARE THE 99%" and gives the url for Occupy Seattle .org. I've been wearing it on my jacket ever since.

I mean, if anybody keeps track of who the good guys are, of who's naughty and who's nice as the old song puts it, it's gotta be St. Nick. Plus, for those who are into 'the Reason for the Season', the Gospels are pretty explicit about eyes of the needle and all.

Good enough for me.

--John R.

current audiobook: THE WAR LOVERS by Evan Thomas [2010]

current book: ANCIENT EGYPT AS IT WAS by CHarlotte Booth [2008; 2011]

Calendrical (The Long Count)

So, yesterday (Tuesday) the new Mayan Calendar arrived in the mail. I've ordered one of these each year for the past several years now: they're filled with pictures of Mayan ruins, carvings, and artifacts, making them among my favorite wall-calenders ever. Though they have to compete for space on our walls with the Tolkien calendar up in my office and with a simpler calendar we don't mind marking up and writing on in the kitchen. Last year and again this coming one that hasn't been an issue so far as the office goes, with the Mayan art easily trumping Cor Blok's eccentricities.

This year, I was curious how they'd handle 12/21/12, the date at which the "long count" comes to an end. Some folks have made a lot of fuss about this (cf. Y-2k*), as if time itself ends when we reach the end of a measurement of time. I've assumed that, just as a car doesn't suddenly fall to pieces when its odometer reaches 999,999.9 miles, but just turns over and starts again at 000,000.1, so too wd the Mayan calendar.

Turns out I'll have to wait till next year to find out. Opening up the new calendar, and admiring the art therein and the explanation in the front about how the various interlocking Mayan calendar systems work, I discovered when I reached the last page that their calendar for December is unfinished, ending at December 21st (day 13.0.0.0.0 in the long count). After this follows a note about how to order their 2013 calendar ("20% off; . . . offer expires December 21, 2012"--I thought this last touch was a hoot). As an added bonus, the art for that page is the Tortuguero Monument 6 ("the only text in the Maya world known to mention December 21, 2012 AD.").

So, I guess we'll have to wait and see how they handle the start of the New Count. It's rare for a civilization to have a mechanism for marking the End of an Age (as Tolkien wd have called it). The Mayans clearly thought a system that cd cover every date between August 11th 3114 BC and Friday December 21st 2012 was good enough for government work. I tend to agree.

*or, at a slightly less significant but similarly fussy point, folks who insisted the new century and millennium started at 2001 rather than 2000. Or, to harken back a few decades, the dawning of 'The Age of Aquarius'. At least we got a good song out of that one.