Turning an Epic into a Short Subject

I've been re-watching Lord of the Rings lately. While it's as awesome as ever, the whole Gandalf summoning the birds at the end always seemed like a huge cheat, especially after I found the following early draft of the script. I don't want to say that your life will be in danger after reading this top-secret leaked script, but I have heard that Peter Jackson's people can be quite ruthless. Enjoy, but don't tell anyone where you read it.

Scene One. interior, Frodo's house
Gandalf: "Frodo, this cursed ring's power is mighty and horrible. You must destroy it. You have a choice. You can either walk for months, facing terrible monsters and going up against great odds. You will lose friends and the comforts of home, but you will also learn about friendship and have the satisfaction of doing the right thing. Or I can use my wizard stick to summon these huge eagles, we can hop on their backs, drop the ring in the lava and be back in like an hour or so. Your choice, really."

Frodo: "I think I'll take that second one. The one without the monsters."

Gandalf: "Good Choice."

Scene Two. Their task done, Gandalf and Frodo are eating magical ice cream from a constantly refilling bowl back at Frodo's house.

Frodo: "This ice cream is great. Magic is the best thing ever!"

Gandalf: "It sure is, my little friend. It sure is."

End

Scenes from the Class Struggle on the R5

You wait around a lot when you're poor.

I used to have to ride the bus home from work. It sucked. Although the schedule clearly said that a bus would arrive each half hour, it was not uncommon to wait an hour and a half for a bus if I happened to leave work late. So I'd wait there in the heat or the cold, listening to my MP3 player and trying to avoid eye contact with the other people waiting, because that would then be an invitation to talk or get stabbed.

Actually, the worst were two co-workers who shall not be named. Several times both of them would gang up on me, one on each side, talking to me while I turned my MP3 player up louder and brought my book up close enough to my face that Helen Keller could tell I wasn't listening. You'd think that they'd take the hint or realize that they could talk to each other without me standing there in the middle of their monologues like a totem pole, but they never seemed to catch on.

So after a while, the R5 might show up, and I'd get to sit down for the 30 minute ride home. Usually.

Sometimes the bus driver would stop in front of Publix, get off the still running bus and walk into the store. He'd be gone about 10 minutes while he bought his smokes and messed with my TV watching schedule.

I'd look around at the defeated bus riders. Didn't they realize that this guy just tacked another 10 minutes on to our ride? Were they just going to sit there and take it? Shouldn't we all be rising up? We were people, working people, not cattle. Was I going to have the balls to walk to the front of the bus and put it in drive? I'd get us all home in record time, and I wouldn't have to stop for my filthy habit.

Then the driver would trudge back on the bus, put it in gear and slowly drive away. My revolutionary fantasies would be put on hold. This time.

The Monster Mash-Up

There's this little old lady who comes into the fiction department fairly regularly. She's about 4 feet tall and has to be 100 years old. She loves supernatural romances and will go through piles of them in a week. She's exhuasted our collection and has had to use the interlibrary loan system to get her fix from outside the area.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as supernatural romances, but they all seem to involve some sort of vampire/werewolf/ghost hunter woman who ends up falling in love with a monster. And I have inferred from the back cover descriptions that they have a lot of sex.

Now, I'm a fan of both monsters and the erotic arts, but I don't really think the two should be mixed. Plus, when did werewolves become sexy? Werewolves are the lamest of all the classic monsters, spending most of their time as humans whining about their curse. You don't see vampires or Frankensteins doing that, do you? Hell no, they embrace their monsterness. And why can't a Frankenstein monster get some love? Nobody ever makes movies or books about getting poor Frankenstein some action. Hell, even his own bride rejected him. If you ask me, there should be more erotic fiction concerning poor, unloved Frankenstein. Somebody needs to get on that.

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the little old lady. So she says, "You know the books I'm looking for. Anything with ghosts, werewolves, vampires, anything like that."

"Well, let's see what we've got. Any thing in particular you're looking for?"

"No, just as long as it's kinky."

I Saw Me a Music Festival

In what will probably be my final stop in the Divorced Guy 2009 North American Tour (unless anyone wants to write me a grant), I went up to Chicago to the Pitchfork Music Fest.

I've been to exactly one big outdoor festival before. I had a great time, probably because the line-up looked like a mix tape I would have made in 1995, but still don't really get the whole seeing music outside in the daytime. In fact, the quote I apparently used was, "I don't want my rock'n'roll mixing with sunshine and picnics and bumblebees and shit."

Some call me a prophet.

But I had an amazing time last weekend. First of all, there were 20 plus Gainesvillians up for the thing, so there were tons of cookouts and hanging out. Seeing about half a bar singing along to Radon songs while the rest of the bar looked on in boredom and bewilderment was pretty awesome. Here, check it out.



I discovered that Mexican food scientists have made giant leaps forward in their beverage division. Sure, they could have stopped with the cinnamon goodness of the horchata, but they felt that they needed something in the alcohol catagory, something sweet, yet potent. For the good of all mankind, they engineered The Bull, a mixture of rum, beer, sugarcane and something from Mexican Heaven. Look how happy it makes people.



Oh, and they also show Bruce Lee and Godzilla movies in the bars up there. Did I design this city?

To be honest, I didn't care too much about the actual music fest, about 90 percent of the emails sent between participants focused on eating and drinking rather than the music. But man, I gotta tell you, it was pretty great. First band I saw was a reunited Jesus Lizard (if they come anywhere near you, drop what you're doing and go), and I caught a fair amount of other bands throughout the weekend before finishing it up with an absolutely amazing performance by the Flaming Lips, who were all full of balloons, good times and confetti. I still get happy just thinking about it.



Once again, I am amazed that I have such an awesome group of friends, and that people are still willing to put up with me. It's a pity the Divorced Guy 2009 North American Tour will have to end. But wait! Does it really? Surely if all five of you reading this site can dig deep and donate, you can fly me somewhere in this great country of ours. If you don't do it for yourself, do it for the children.

Graffiti Bridge

So I'm riding the Baldwin Trail and get stopped by the slowest moving train in the history of trains. It doesn't seem that long, so I figure I'll take a break and wait instead of doubling back and riding a bit more.

I stand there getting sort of hypnotized by the slow-moving train. I start wondering how hard it would be to ditch my bike and hop onto one of the cars, living my life as a hobo, wandering from town to town, stealing pies off windowsills and getting into adventures. True, it would be a radical change from my piles of library money and the respect one gets by being a city employee but I'm beginning to think the adventures might make up for it.

I'm also checking out the graffiti on the sides of the cars. A couple pretty cool looking big pieces, along with the usual smaller graffiti. Then, on one of the last cars, I notice a smaller piece, two words hastily spray painted on the side of a car.

"The Cuntz."

I'd like to imagine The Cuntz are a tough female hobo gang, dirtier riot grrrls who ride the rails, having the adventures I was dreaming of, only with a bit more smashing of the patriarchy and girl power.

My Favorite Song That I've Never Actually Heard

Charles Mingus, "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive-Ass Slippers."

I don't even want to hear it. I just don't see how any music can live up to that title.

In Olden Days

Have you ever thought, "You know what, things were a lot better in the old days. People had more manners and the kids weren't all LOLing their Ipods and the twitters all the time. Back then there were rules, and everyone respected the rules. We'd all come together as one to fight Nazis and plant victory gardens. Yeah, those really were the days."

You know what will cure you of those notions with a quickness? A trip to an antique store. I'm a veteran of those dusty old places. My parents dragged me to so many of them that driving up to North Carolina 20 years since they drove me up on vacation, I was able to remember perfectly each one on the way to their house, and could even remember the scale of boringness of each establishment. Between garage sales and antique stores, my parent's house was full of olde tyme relics.

Growing up these places represented nothing but boredom to me. I mean why spend $100 on some old fashioned radio when that money could be used as a down payment on a stand up Donkey Kong Jr. game to put in the garage?

However, now that I'm old I've been known to check around the odd antique mall, even though they contain creepy dolls that will steal your soul in the middle of the night. Part of the coolness about these places is that you never know exactly what you'll find. Perhaps that Husker Du boardgame your mom threw out. Maybe something haunted, or a bad-ass cane that turns into a sword. Or perhaps the most disturbing painting I've ever seen.



Seriously, what the fuck? At some point, someone was sitting around and thought, "I've got the perfect idea for a painting." Then he (and I'm assuming it was a he) had to actually take the time to paint it. At some point after that, someone else had to see it and say, "That painting really speaks to me. The way the angry golfer is pasting his wife in the chops for bringing him some drinks is just hilarious. I'll put it in the den."

Now it sits in an antique mall in Jacksonville, Florida, waiting for someone else to buy it. Perhaps you? Just don't invite me over.