I know, I know - it's about time! Honestly, I got all the way through high school and half of college without having even heard of Tolkien. I blame my educators. One day, when a coworker at the library told me he was excited about a movie that was coming soon and said, "I have two words for you: Frodo Baggins", I just gave him a blank stare. Not long after that, I was completely immersed in the LOTR series as each movie was about to be released. As it turns out, I remember seeing The Hobbit cartoon at a church event when I was a kid, but never knew anything else about the books or the author. So thank you, Peter Jackson, for getting me started.

When the movies came out, I read the LOTR books but never read the Hobbit. Now that I've decided to double my productivity while I exercise in the park or on the track, I have updated my card at the local library and have started renting audiobooks. This particular one was narrated by Rob Inglis, whose approach to the multiple characters and songs was incredible. It added so much to the story to hear Tolkien's songs instead of just reading their lyrics, and the tone of the characters was much different than I would have imagined if I had simply read the book. I think I have a hard time imagining when I'm actually reading, so listening to the story made it much easier to let my mind create the picture. And it didn't hurt that, while listening to stories about trees, fields, and horses, I was surrounded by those things in the park. If I can find the books that follow on tape as well, I definitely want to give them a listen.

This book is much more light-hearted than I expected it to be. As a kid I was scared to watch the cartoon depiction of the dragon, and that was the only thing I remembered about the story. Instead of gigantic battles, Bilbo Baggins faces many challenges on a smaller scale, but is always entertaining. I loved his simplistic approach to everything, especially how his motivation was often hunger.

I love how complete Tolkien's vision is, in setting, character, and scope. The journey of Bilbo and the Dwarves goes to so many places and involves so many types of people and creatures, all with their own specific culture and characteristics. The complexity makes me completely ashamed of anything I've ever tried to imagine on my own. I guess that's why some people are writers and some are readers.

I probably don't have anything to say about this book that hasn't already been said, so I'm just going to skip any sort of literary analysis and say that I'm very happy I've finally been exposed to it, and especially glad that I listened to such a great production of it.

Thanks to Brendan's friend Greg, whom I've gotten to hang out with a couple of times recently, we got the hookups at the Grove and got free tickets to see Erasure. I have always enjoyed the singles I heard on the radio, and got their HITS album recently, and was surprised to find out that I knew a lot more of their stuff than I thought, and I also instantly liked all of the songs that were new to me. So when the chance came to see them, I was there, even though I had been moving furniture all day.

Brendan and I met up early, got our "tickets", which were actually stickers we had to wear, and we strolled on in to the front section, where we set ourselves up for the night. My feet were already tired at this point, so it was a long night, but a good one.

The opening band was called Young Love, and they were actually pretty good. They kept up a lot of energy during their entire set and got the crowd moving.

Before Erasure took the stage, we were surprised to see Margaret Cho walk on stage and do a skit with another woman (sorry, didn't recognize her). They told jokes and sang about women's intimate parts. Graphic but funny.

Erasure finally arrived on stage, and the shot you see above is the first thing I saw: glitter, lights, chorus girls, and a giant staircase. It was like a glammed up USO show. The band played all sorts of hits, as well as some more recent songs that I didn't recognize. I probably knew about 2/3 of the songs, which made it fun. There were some drunk girls standing to my right, who were tone deaf but knew every song. It was good to hear how excited they were, but it was the most terrible singing I've ever heard. To my left was a tall woman(?) who knew every lyric and was completely enthralled with the show until she threw roses on stage, got acknowledged for them, and then left. That was kind of weird, since the show went on for some time after she was gone.

It was interesting to see a show without a live band. There was a computer and a small keyboard, and that was it, besides the live singers. For such an electric show, they were able to keep up the energy and the spectacle, and keep everyone thoroughly entertained the entire night. The band played for a looong time. I lost energy sometime after the wardrobe change (into florescent dresses and wigs for the ladies, who were lit by blacklight), but still enjoyed myself. I missed out on Neville Staples of the Specials to see this show, so I'm glad it was worthwhile.

Thanks for inviting me, Brendan!

During the moving process, I watched Blade in bits and pieces. All the talk recently about third generation comic movies got me taking notes of which selections I still hadn't seen, so since this movie kept coming up, I noticed it was playing and TiVoed it. Wow, all that build up and not that much payoff. No one warned me Stephen Dorff was in this movie! The little twat irritates the heck out of me.

Appropriately enough, Dorff plays an irritating little twat with a thirst for blood and power in the vampire world. His enemy is Blade, played by Wesley Snipes, whose mother was bitten by a vampire before she died at childbirth, leaving him as a sort of in-betweener: all the strengths of a vampire, but not a vampire, but fighting the thirst for blood. He also kicks the crap out of vampires.

While Wesley Snipes is perfectly capable of the action scenes in this movie, I never once felt any kind of emotion from him or for him. If there was some kind of inner conflict about being part vampire and killing them, I didn't pick up on it from any of his acting skills. Luckily, he's joined by a typical movie girl and Kris Kristofferson, who give the audience a little more of a sense of connection. Dorff, as I said, is irritating, but I guess that's his purpose in this movie, so... well done, I guess.

Since I saw this for the first time nine years after it was released, I'd have to say it doesn't seem to age very well in respect to action sequences and special effects. The fighting seems slow in comparison with what we're used to nowadays, and the digital blood just made me laugh.

I think I just missed the boat on this one. It was mildly entertaining, but since it felt dated and the lead role wasn't very charismatic and the main antagonist wasn't someone I loved to hate, it wasn't what I expected from all the talk I heard about it. Oh well!

Gringo, Danny, and I recorded a bit on Sunday, a lot of serious stuff on there. It's coming, just haven't gotten around to it. Things have been rough, talking to folks about Mark, hearing old friend's voices, it's been rather crazy these last few days. Most of all I just miss my friend. Work is busy. I get home and I just want to veg out. Hope you are all doing well and embracing life.