nothing much

[calimac]

1. Obama gave a speech. I didn't see it; I was at a concert.

2. J.D. Salinger died. I've never read any; didn't sound like my kind of stuff. (I do, however, have a grand-nephew named for Salinger's most famous protagonist.)

Instead, I've been occupying my intellectual time battling the ever-returning evil. (See comment #18 and more further down.)

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

1. I watched the speech, flipped through the channels afterward to see if anyone was saying anything intelligent, found very little, went back to the recording of Modern Family. I gave it about a B+, which I'll round up to an A if he actually does any of it.

2. Read the book far too late to have it influence me.

I saw the LotR movies in the theater, and liked them a lot. Haven't seen the extended versions nor any of the commentary. I'm afraid to. None of the discussions (such as this one) have swayed me from my major critique: The three movies as a unit are a more impressive accomplishment than any individual one. I wanted Jackson to film the appendices.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Tolkien's story is also more impressive as a unit than in each individual volume. That's because he wrote it as a unit. (The three volumes were a publishing decision, to improve sales by not throwing a giant expensive wad of an unknown book at readers all at once.) I don't consider that a flaw, or in the movies either. Except that the movies are too long, and the book isn't.

Had Jackson filmed the Appendices, I expect the parts about the Elvish languages would have come out something like the equivalent of the end of Woody Allen's "The Kugelmass Episode." "He had been projected into an old textbook, Remedial Spanish, and was running for his life over a barren, rocky terrain as the word tener ("to have") - a large and hairy irregular verb - raced after him on its spindly legs."