PFAz
Mood:  d'oh
Now Playing: God of Anger


Thats better...

PrincessFazzzz
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Piglets Big Adventure
Okay, it's raining. It's Saturday. It's raining. Did I say it was raining...AGAIN!??? Why does it have to rain every day? Why does it have to be wet and sticky??? (it's sticky!). I hate it!!! Only watching the STiff trailer repeatedly yesterday got me through, thanks to MIS> :D maybe a picture will cheer me up...

make_it_stop
Now Playing: Red Sox vs. White Sox (in the laundry, that is...)
PFaz, somehow you'll have to grin and bear it...People have lived through worse than Sharpe videos. Just close your eyes, and think of England.

Well, David's pizzas are completely safe from me. Everybody has one "horror food" that they'd die rather than eat, and olives are it for me. Yellow, green, brown, black...they're all highly toxic, fleshy death orbs. I realize that people do eat them, and they are considered food in some parts of the world, but no olive shall ever voluntarily cross my lips. I'd happily eat floor sweepings instead.

Strangely enough, I cook with olive oil constantly and use it in salads. It's the little spherical containers I have a problem with.

On a less gruesome topic, I donated blood this morning. The questionnaire is getting longer and longer. Now they're screening for SARS and West Nile virus, as well as AIDS, hepatitis, syphilis, Cruezfeldt-Jakob (aka Mad Cow), hemophilia, insulin use, drug use, prostitution, etc. They didn't ask me whether I'd eaten any olives recently, which they should have, IMO. Recipients should be tested for oliveglobulin compatibility. What if I'm in a car accident, they give me a tranfusion, and I get a terrible reaction from someone who ate an entire jar of tapenade before donating?

PrincessFAz
Mood:  party time!
Now Playing: the field...
Okay, I am preparing for a visit by my older sister, Boromira. She is going to drink wine and watch all the Sharpes. I love Sharpe, I do, and I love Bean, I really do, just not as much as David. And I must say, after watching hours of Sharpe and hearing the sighs, gasps, chuckles, etc over by my sister, it gets a little old. Give me just a few minutes of Richard Shorkinghorn or a quick viewing of the VH interview, please!!!! Guess I'll have one or ten drinks, extra olives on my pizza, and grit my teeth...



Faramir, give me the strength...

The ROTK Video Game
Hm, that was one odd morning. I still haven't figured out what to do about the car key. (See previous entry, below.)

In the meantime, let's talk about the Return of the King video game from Electronic Arts. Faramir is one of the secret characters that can be unlocked, along with Pippin and...uh...some guy....and some other guy...... *makes mental note to do better research next time* There's an interview with David Wenham that is accessible to players who reach the topmost level. I've seen transcripts around, and am trying to track one down so I can post it here.

I tried this game out on my sister's laptop at Christmas. It quickly became apparent that I had no chance of ever unlocking any secret characters, let alone seeing the interview. I was worse than hopeless at it. The sequence of button pushing needed to operate the swords was beyond me. I couldn't even get past level 1. Frodo kept getting carried off by Nazgul. Sam kept falling down, attacking the masonry, or trying to stab Frodo. The dozens of vaguely Faramir-ish Rangers running around the place were also distracting. After several hundred premature deaths, I finally grasped that staying out in the open, beneath the Nazgul, wasn't a good idea. It made the characters weaker and more susceptible to death blows.

Eventually, with only a few severed arteries, I succeeded in herding the characters into the sewers, only to find a metal grate blocking the way. As I hunted in vain for some kind of switch thingy, the screen went black. It was like one of those nightmares where something's chasing you and you can't open the door to get into your house. Or, you're trying to get out of your car and the key snaps in half.

So instead, I've had to rely on the kindness of others to find out what David says in the interview. The gist of it is that he believes Faramir is a good character to unlock because he has an ideal combination of fighting skills. Evidently David succeeds in killing a bad guy, because he holds the controls and yells "Yesss!" Or it could be good acting.

Having now played the game, and compared it to the movie, I have to give super props to David for 1) not stabbing his own men 2) not falling down and twitching when confronted with Orcs at Osgiliath 3) not leading Sam and Frodo into a dead-end grating. It ain't easy remembering to press shift-control-A-tab-left arrow-left arrow-blue-up-delete-tab-space bar-X when the cameras are rolling and the bad guys are in your face.

make_it_stop's morning
This morning, I performed an emergency plastic-ectomy on the cat, who was doing his level best to swallow a 12" wad of cling wrap; elbowed a bowl of salsa onto the kitchen floor (and walls, and cabinets, and ceiling); snapped my car key off inside the door; and discovered that somebody cracked into the office server last night and is using it to store gobs and gobs of porn.

Some days, I feel as though I'm trapped inside a Murray Whelan novel.

Brain Wedgies
Now Playing: A little decorative piano
Send help.

For the last 10 days, I have had the theme from "Seachange" playing in my head. Not the main theme, but the catchy, reggae-flavored end theme. La la, la la la, la la la la....

This isn't the first time it's happened. After I watched A Little Bit Of Soul, "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" reverberated in my cranium for the next month and a half. It displaced "Open All Night" from Better Than Sex, which in turn displaced "Into the West" from ROTK, which was at the top of my mental charts for roughly 800 weeks.

Scientifically, tunes that get stuck in your head are known as "ear worms", "song plants", or "brain wedgies". Nobody knows why certain people are more susceptible than others. The only cure is to replace it with a fresh tune, or to pawn it off on someone else by humming it under your breath. My musical stream of consciousness gets set off by the slightest stimulus: a snippet of music, a phrase overheard in conversation, reading a road sign.

And the sign said long-haired freaky-looking people need not apply...

See?

So Seachange it is, for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, I have not yet fallen victim to Machine Gun Fellatio (from Gettin' Square), or the tense opening credits of The Bank. It's only a matter of time.

Generally, I love the music that has been used on David Wenham's films. Better Than Sex has a cool, edgy, jazzy soundtrack that captures the urban, twenty-something atmosphere of the film. A Little Bit Of Soul used Louis Jordan to great effect, as well as one of my favorite Tom Waits tunes ("In The Cold, Cold Ground"). The Seachange main theme, with its steady beat and jangled, repeated slide guitar phrase, conveys the frayed nerves and repetitive daily routines that drove Laura Gibson to flee the city and seek refuge in a remote seaside village. The slide guitar is later used (less frantically) to evoke Pearl Bay's lotus-eating, lackadaisical daily rhythms.

Most notably, there is the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, with its memorable motifs for every place and character. Faramir's theme is a gentle, haunting pan-pipe phrase, heard as he rides out from the city on the suicide charge, and also, more subtly, during his exchange with Denethor. It suits his character perfectly. Rumor has it Howard Shore has created new music for the "Houses of Healing" scene to be included in the Extended Edition. My guess is it will be Enya singing "FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!" in Sindarin.

Sword Love
Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: As Good As It Gets II: The Worsening
I feel your pain, PFaz. I had all sorts of righteous intentions for the summer as well (plant tomatoes, volunteer at the local Audubon refuge, take up surfing), and I'm still waiting for the warm weather to start.

So what IS the deal with no Fara-phenilia at the current LOTR exhibit in Boston? From the sound of it, the exotic Middle Earth races are heavily represented (hobbits, elves, Orcs), with very little Gondor stuff aside from a banner, a helmet, and Dead Boromir In A Boat. Surely they could have made a little extra room for Faramir's beautiful Ranger outfit, and/or his sword (unofficially known as Angstduril, or Walter; since Tolkien didn't see fit to give it a name).

I adore Angstduril/Walter, almost to the point of fetish. The green leather grip, the shiny pommel and beautifully balanced fullering, the two seabirds etched onto the hilt. It has a straight hand guard, whereas the other Gondorian swords all have crescent hand guards. According to the official "Big Geeky Popup Book Of LOTR Arms And Armor", the straight hand guard is characteristic of ancient Numenorean weapons, while the crescent hand guard was adopted in later years. It was said of Faramir that Numenorean blood ran almost true in his veins, and his unique sword design reflects that status.

I'm just floored by the amount of care and attention that was lavished on the costumes, furniture, and props in the LOTR movies. The level of craftsmanship is astounding, considering how fleeting most of the appearances were. Distinct architectural, metallurgical, textile, and woodworking styles were developed for every culture. I'm really looking forward to seeing the exhibit in person.

But it still would have been better with Walter.


For an excellent and incredibly detailed analysis of Faramir's costume, visit Fileg's Toronto Exhibition page.

PFazzzz
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: hard to get
May I vent?? The kids go back to school on the 30th...the *30th*...where has summer gone??? The weather has reeked, time has flown, I didnt do any of my summer proooo-jects thanks to the computer, and now it's almost over. AND Faramirs costume isnt going to be in Boston. Just thought I'd throw that in. I can blame the whole world on that since it is such a huge and enormas loss. I'm fraught and feeling like Piggy...without the conch...

To quote MIS - Where is sanity???

Let's Help The Africa
Mood:  suave
Nice, PFaz. I agree totally.

Today's title comes from a Japlish T-shirt owned by my sister-in-law. I'm a huge fan of Japlish. Japlish is the art of sticking random English words together and putting them onto T shirts and tote bags, like "Big Wednesday" or "Parachuting -- It Seem Casual!" (more examples are at engrish.com) Plus, of course, there are the classic Bad Captions For FOTR, Bad Captions For TTT, and Bad Captions for ROTK

But, I digress.

After vowing from here to Sunday I would never do so, lately I've been dipping into the strange and wonderful world of Faramir fan fiction. There's an entire underground cottage industry of fans who write stories based on Tolkien characters. The tales run the gamut from excellent to downright frightening (two words: "hobbit nipples"). I've learned not to click deeply into a story archive while eating.

Along the way, I discovered the peculiar sub-genre known as "slash", wherein characters of the same sex are paired up romantically (if they aren't already paired up within the story). Frodo/Sam and Aragorn/Legolas seem to be the most popular couples, but sometimes the pairings are completely random, as if the author spun a roulette wheel beforehand. Haldir/Gandalf. Pippin/Grima. Faramir/Sauron. Merry/Nazgul #3. Characters who never spoke to each other in the book, who never even came within 500 miles of each other, are all of a sudden expressing their undying love and humping like rabbits.

What amuses me is that all of this is about as far from Tolkien as you could possibly get. His prose doesn't exactly drip with eroticism. (To be fair, he never said that Legolas DIDN'T have hot gay sex with Eomer.) It's like entering a strange alternate universe where up is down and black is white and Aragorn owns the entire Bette Midler catalogue. My theory is that since the vast majority of slash authors are female, and the vast majority of Tolkien characters are male, slash is a veiled way of inserting themselves into the story.

Stranger yet are the slash crossover fics, where Legolas goes on a date with Achilles, or Giles from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has a nine-way with the Fellowship. In these stories, fictional universes collide, with strange results. I was one of those kids who hated it when the peas touched the mashed potatoes, and crossover fics just squick me out. I'm sorry, but Star Trek people don't belong in Middle Earth. It is an abomination in the sight of the Lord.

But still amusing, nevertheless.