December 23, 2002

Several Items of Varying Interest
Everett

First of all, in FOTR, Gandalf says that dragons' fire cannot destroy the One Ring, only the fires of Mount Doom.

Secondly, I'm not sure which rock band it was that wanted to make a movie of LOTR, or even if the rumor is ture, but if I had to venture a guess, I would say that the group was Led Zepplin. Many of their songs, including Stairway to Heaven and The Battle for Evermore contain overt references to LOTR (The drums will shake the castle walls./ The Ringwraiths ride in black.).

Thirdly, can we give the Elves a break? Yes, their conduct during the first age was at many times abhorrent, but one advantage of being immortal is that you learn from these things. Wisdom is good judgment based on experience, both good and bad, and someone who has lived for thousands of years has had a lot of both. To equate the Elves at the end of the Third Age with the Elves that impetuously went off on the crusade to recover the Silmarils is vacuous at best as it discounts thousands of years of experience which contribute greatly to the knowledge and actions of the Elves. It took the War of the Silmarils and all of its untold destruction, including the loss of the Silmarils and the death of Feanor and his sons, as well as Fingolfin, Ecthelion, Glorfindel and countless other Evles, for the Elves to acquire the wisdom to complement their great prowess in the working of metals and jewels and their battlefield expertise. They came to recognize their limitations and sought merely to preserve what they had, forestalling decline for as long as possible, before finally returning to the Undying Lands, their sins atoned for. The fact that they the Elves won't stroke your ego, Annatar, does not give you the right to spread these viscious calumnies.

Finally, I'd like to explain my Nick Bakay comment from my last post. Every week, ESPN has one of their personalities, Nick Bakay, "bet" on a selection of NFL games. Then, on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, they play a segment where he shows how he did. Nine times out of ten, he loses.