the underwear drawer

out with the old, in with the nucleus

So we're trying something new now. Obviously, now that my schedule is pretty busy, I've been pretty poor about updating regularly. Or at all. Anyway, I'm sick of having to update four pages every time I want to post something. Hey, I'm healing your children by day, why can't I get a little break when I get home in the evening?

So we'll try this for a while and see how it works out.

So last night, on one of our rare days off together, Joe and I went to Blockbusters and rented the second Lord of the Rings movie. I guess to be all technical about it, I should call it "Lord of the Rings: The Two Tower," but we just kept calling it "Lord of the Rings II." I was trusting Joe to explain the plot to me, since he supposedly read the trilogy in high school, but I think he may have lied, because he didn't seem to know what was going on any more than I did. (In fact, halfway into the movie, he turned to me and said, "You know, I'm not actually quite sure that I really read Lord of the Rings. I think that all these years, I may have just thought I had read it when I really didn't" Aha, the truth comes out.)

I got the rough brush strokes of the plot: nasty Elijah Wood has evil ring, must destroy ring by bringing it back to Evil Land, other people trying to help Elijah Wood, ugly bad monsters trying to kill Elijah Wood and take the ring, Viggo Mortensen is the dreamy leader of the good guys, etc. But what the hell was all that other stuff? What was that nasty Golem character's deal? What the hell was he saying, I couldn't even understand him half the time. ("Precious..." OK, we get it, you like the ring, God.) And why were the bad guys so keen on taking that dumpy little town? It was tiny! Not exactly some strategic outpost, or a big city that you'd actually gain something from conquering. That's like Saddam Hussein trying to destroy Nyack, NY. I mean, you can do it, but...why? Also, what the hell happens when those elves run out of arrows?

I also could not help drawing parallels between LOTR and Harry Potter. Gandalf = Dumbledore. Annoying, naked Golem = Annoying naked Dobby. Goofy sidekick Sam (was he that kid in "Goonies"?) = Goofy sidekick Ron Weasly. All LOTR did for me, aside from making me look forward to the third Harry Potter movie, was make me want to take a trip to New Zealand.