A few minutes ago, I was listening to Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp (actually, I think he was John Cougar back then), and it made me reminisce, as it always does, about my senior year in high school. That’s because my senior yearbook quote was “Hold onto sixteen as long as you can.” Which might seem odd, because I was 17 when I graduated, not 16 — but that’s precisely the point! At 17, I was still trying to hold onto 16 — and even now, at 23, I still am, at least to some extent. :)

Anyway, it occurred to me to ask my blog audience two questions: What was your senior quote? (If you had one, and if you remember.) And, if you were going to be in a yearbook or something equivalent, what quote would you choose today?

As tempted as I am to go with “Those Catholic girls start much too late / Sooner or later it comes down to fate / I might as well be the one” by Billy Joel :), I think I would probably pick something from Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, my very favorite Tolkien quote wouldn’t work too well in a yearbook… and the most obvious, yearbook-ish possibility, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us,” is from the movie, not the book. And I’d want to quote J.R.R. Tolkien, not Peter Jackson! The best possibility from the book that I can think of is:

The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the Road has gone
And I must follow, if I can.

That’s still a bit bulky, though. So maybe I wouldn’t quote Tolkien, after all. Perhaps I’d quote Garth Brooks (”Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you’re standing outside the fire”) or the Indigo Girls (”We’re better off for all that we let in”) or Great Big Sea (”As long as the river still runs to sea, hey lucky you, lucky me”) or Paul Simon (”After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same”) or… or… something else. I’m leaning toward the Garth Brooks quote at the moment, but really, I’m not sure. Also, I might just stick with the same one I used in 1999! I really like that quote! :)

If I think of something better, I’ll post it in comments. In the mean time… what say y’all?

Once upon a time, Becky and I had a serpent sea star. It was one of my favorite creatures in our initial batch of aquarium-dwellers, and it looked like a giant spider, so I gave it a nerdy Lord of the Rings name: Shelob.

Alas, Shelob died, like all of the “original 13″ except Ugmo, the hardy mandarin fish. But today, Becky and I bought a new serpent sea star. (It was selling for $10 at an aquarium store right across the street from us, which, amazingly, we just discovered today.)

I contemplated naming the new sea star Shelob II (much like Nemo II, our new clownfish), but instead settled on a far better, cooler name. So ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Ungoliant:

We’re acclimating her to our water right now, but stay tuned to the FishCams, because in a few minutes, we’ll be releasing her into the aquarium.

UPDATE: The aquarium’s a bit cloudy right now, because of something Becky inadvertently did with the sump, but we’re trying to wait till it clears up before we release Ungoliant.

UPDATE 2: Becky has summarily decided that Ungoliant is a stupid name, and the new sea star should be called Shelob after all. So, Shelob II it is. :)

The live (Java) FishCam was screwed up during Shelob’s grand entrance into the aquarium, but here’s an AVI video (1.1 MB).

Because Becky’s away and I’m bored (and still awake because I didn’t wake up until ridiculously late this afternoon), I’m watching Return of the King on DVD… and I’m reminded of something bothersome about the last two LOTR movies that I’ve been meaning to comment upon for a long time: both King Th�oden of Rohan and Lord Denethor of Gondor have wildly overactive senses of pique with regard to one another, and no one ever bothers to correct them.

(more…)

Tolkien was right!

And the Trilogy Saturday party is over! :) (Just a little under 13 hours after it began.)

We had nine guests total (or maybe ten? I’m not sure) at one point or another, plus me and Becky, of course. Not bad, methinks, for such a specialized, nerdy event. :) Thanks to everyone who came! Special kudos to Alex, who stayed for the entirety of all three movies, and Patrick, who arrived less than an hour into Fellowship and stayed till the end. Dmytro wins the bronze medal, having missed Fellowship but watched all of the Two Towers and Return of the King.


Alex and Patrick, left picture, and Patrick and Dmytro, right picture, watch the climactic scene of Return of the King.

There are three audio posts below. The first is a recording of our reaction to a funny line in the Mouth of Sauron scene, the second is Aragorn’s “Stand, Men of the West!” speech, and the third is Sam’s “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” scene.

For me, this was the second time I’d seen all three movies in a row (the first was Trilogy Tuesday in Albuquerque, of course), and the first time I’d done so with the Return of the King Extended Edition. I really enjoyed it, and it gave me a great opportunity to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses (mostly strengths) of all three films as I saw them “as they’re meant to be seen,” consecutively, as a single work of cinematic brilliance.

Here, tentatively, is my top five list of favorite scenes from the entire trilogy:

1. Gandalf-Nazgul confrontation followed by Rohirrim charge into battle (Return of the King; Gandalf-Nazgul confrontation only in Extended Edition)
2. Frodo-Gollum fight on Mount Doom, Ring destroyed, Mordor destroyed (Return of the King)
3. Theoden’s last stand and the sounding of the horn at Helm’s Deep (The Two Towers)
4. Gandalf vs. Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum (Fellowship of the Ring)
5. Frodo-Sam conversation on Mount Doom slopes ending with Sam’s “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you” speech (Return of the King)

Anyone else want to offer their favorite scene(s)?

UPDATE: Alex: “Yes, I’m a big dork. But it was a lot of fun.”

audio post powered by audblog

audio post powered by audblog

audio post powered by audblog

We’re watching The Two Towers Extended Edition right now. We’ve got six people over right now (plus me and Becky… and the animals :), with more probably to come a little later.

I was going to have a Trilogy Party webcam, but I didn’t have time to set it up. Oh, well. Trust me, we’re having a good time. :)

Come one, come all to my Lord of the Rings “Trilogy Party” this Saturday!!!

As I wrote in this afternoon’s mass e-mail:

The fun begins at 10:00 AM with the Extended Edition DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring. Then at around 2:00 PM, we’ll start the Extended Edition DVD of The Two Towers. Finally, at around 6:00 PM, we’ll begin watching the Extended Edition DVD of The Return of the King. The whole extravaganza should last until a little bit before 11:00 PM. Woohoo! Thirteen consecutive hours of EXTREME DORKINESS!!! :)

You are not obligated, obviously, to stay for all three movies. Feel free to come and go, stay for one movie, two movies, half a movie… whatever floats your boat!

We will have plenty of snack food, plenty of beer, etc. In addition to snacks, we will order Jimmy John’s and/or pizza when people get hungry for “real” food (e.g., lunch time, dinner time, etc.). The only thing I would ask is that you bring a wee bit of cash to pitch in for the sandwiches/pizza, if you choose to partake thereof. Becky and I will pay for everything else. (If you WANT to bring along some snacks or whatever, you are welcome to do so, but there is absolutely no obligation to bring anything.)

Aside from the movie and the company, you’ll have the opportunity to meet our menagerie of animals: our greyhound Robbie, our cats Butter, Sasha and Toby (who will be quarantined in the guest room for the sake of allergy sufferers, but the rest of you are free to venture in there and say hi), and our brand new aquarium full of tropical fish!!! Also, for those of you who haven’t met Becky yet, you’ll have the chance to meet her, too!

We have wireless Internet in the apartment, so if you want to bring your laptop and surf the net while watching the movies, go ahead. Goodness knows I’ll be blogging. :)

If you plan to come, or you’re considering it, please let me know (unless you already did so several weeks ago, in which case there is no need). I have no intention of being a guest-list nazi, but a reasonably accurate count will help me figure out how much beer and snacks to buy. However, if you don’t RSVP, and then on Saturday you have a spur-of-the-moment impulse to come over, don’t let social niceties stop you! COME ON OVER!!! The more, the merrier! Worst-case scenario, I’ll just have to run over to Martin’s during one of the stupid scenes in The Two Towers and buy more beer. :)

If you’re interested in coming to the party, and you didn’t receive my email, leave a comment or e-mail me and I’ll send you the address and directions.

Another Lord of the Rings DVD box set with more deleted scenes? My checkbook says “no,” but my heart says “yes, yes, yes!” :)

I’m on TheOneRing.net! Yay!!

But what’s the deal with that hand in the upper left corner? “Sauron’s arm has grown long…” :)

Becky took this photo of me, for TheOneRing.net’s “Show Us Your ROTK:EE DVD!” gallery, earlier today:

Robbie seemed intent on being in the picture, so there were several bloopers before the final photo was successfully taken. :)

Here’s a closeup of the preciouses (three theatrical-version DVDs and three Extended Editions).

It took a while (like ten months), but I was finally able to find and download a movie file of Billy Crystal’s hilarious introduction at the Oscars, including the clip of Michael Moore being stomped by an Oliphaunt (1.3 MB). It’s well worth the download time, I promise. :)

P.S. If you’re interested, the entire 5-minute intro is available here, for a limited time only! Be warned, though: it’s a long download (36 MB).

LOL… this is great. (Hat tip: Alex.)