Red Sox beards vs. Dwarf beards from The Hobbit
Who is Fili and who is Napoli? Balin vs. Buchholz? Ori or Ortiz?
Here's a "Beard Blueprint" --- my guide to the Red Sox vs. Hobbit dwarf beards.
According to The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield, head honcho of the dwarven company, had the longest beard. He also wore a sky blue hood with a large silver tassle. On the World Champion of American and Canada Red Sox squad, known to wear Navy blue war helmets and caps, I'd give Fullest Beard Award to Mike Napoli, Grayest and Wisest Beard to David Ross, Wildest Beard to Jonny Gomes and Creepiest Leprechaun Beard medal to Clay Buchholz. (For those making the Gandalf = Manager comparison, Sox skipper John Farrell resisted the urge to get all hirsute on us.)
Yes, these beards rule. But I can't help but think it's a shame that Ortiz wouldn't weave into his whiskers some silver or gold bling, or that Pedroia wouldn't let his grow into a great braided loop a la Bombur.
Note: Since this chart, some of the Sox beards have gotten even longer. And weider. And wilder.
Geek love
Geek love
Can a gaming and fantasy fanatic find romance outside his realm?
By Ethan Gilsdorf
[originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine]
In a famous scene in the 1982 movie Diner, Eddie (played by Steve Guttenberg) makes his wife-to-be pass a football trivia quiz before he’ll agree to marry her. Me, I’m a fantasy and gaming geek, not a sports freak. I may not know how many yards Tom Brady has passed for this season, or the Red Sox bullpen’s average ERA last season, but I can name all nine members of the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings, and I can tell you that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
This has caused some problems in my dating life. Not that I’ve pulled a litmus-test stunt on prospective mates, like: Do you prefer DC Comics or Marvel? Can you name the houses at Hogwarts? Rather, it’s me who’s felt tested. Should I admit I once played Dungeons & Dragons religiously? That I was president of my high school AV Club? Revealing my dweebishness hasn’t always produced the best results. “Huh . . . interesting,” more than one lady has said on a first date during my epic quest for damsels, one that has taken me from Star Wars cantina-like dive bars to the heartless land of Mordor.com, er, Match.com. “I never knew Chewbacca was from the planet Kah . . . how do you say it?”
“Kashyyyk,” I muttered, sipping my ale and deciding I’d not sing my hobbit drinking song – not until at least the third date.
Because these utterances have at times been deal breakers, I’ve often mulled whether couples can bridge the differences. Can partners hail from opposite ends of the hipster-to-geek continuum or the nerd-jock divide? Need they share the same geekery to make love work? As a decorated veteran of the Dating Wars, I’m here to report the answer is mixed.
One woman I was obsessed with seemed cool with the idea of watching The Fellowship of the Ring with me. In bed. We barely made it out of the Shire. When I proposed a marathon, 12-disc extended edition viewing of the trilogy (including the “making of” videos), with Middle-earth themed food, she de-friended me. I went out with another woman whose online profile declared, “I’m a sci-fi geek.” We met up at a sports bar, where my “Han shot first” reference met a blank stare and my Monty Python jokes fell flat. It seemed her professed geekiness was only skin deep.
I once met a couple who found a solution, though. Both through-and-through geeks, they resided, surprisingly, in opposing Dorklands. He collected Star Trek action figures and built reproduction props from movies and TV shows likeBattlestar Galactica. She baked medieval period bread, wore bodices, and kept a pseudo-Middle English blog. Still, the marriage worked. Maybe the solution to a successful relationship is not so much mutual participation in tunic-sewing and wizard rock as it is mutual respect for each other’s kooky infatuations. Yes, even that Captain Kirk command chair that dominates the den.
At least geeks today aren’t as ostracized as I was back in the Reagan administration. Boys and girls of all ages get down with Wii. Plus, as it turns out, hipsters, sports nuts, and fashionistas are really geeks in disguise. Dwarf-bearded men smitten with fixed-gear bicycles have appropriated nerdy glasses. Ex-jocks play fantasy baseball. In fact, a collection of action figures has a lot in common with a shoe fetish – the main difference being it’s OK to take your Manolo Blahniks out of the box. Whereas Voltron stays in his plastic bubble, forever. Plus, D&D players, adept at role-playing, make great lovers. Wizard, barbarian, or naughty secretary – what’s the difference?
As for the woman I’m currently seeing, she didn’t have to pass an Elvish exam. She’s no geek. She’s a former jock who set a couple of track records back in the day. Her passion is art and graphic design, not graphic battles with orcs or zombies. But she’s cool with my playing Risk with the boys. And she’s seen me in my tunic. Recently, she agreed to accompany me on a journey to my geek-friendly ancestral home. Before I had a chance to ask, she offered, “Hey, I’d love to watch the trilogy with your family. What can I bring?”
Before I could suggest “Boba Fett feta dip” or “a nice hobbity ale,” I realized she hadn’t specified which trilogy, Star Warsor Lord of the Rings. But I figured she’d be game for both.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning, travel memoir/pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (now in paperback). Follow his adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.
YouTube playlist of Tolkien-themed videos!
These are Tolkien-themed videos I shot in New Zealand: looking for hobbits in Hobbiton (Matamata); elves in Rivendell (Kaitoke Regional Park); Weta Workshop (Wellington); and a mash-up of footage from the "If you want him, come and claim him!" scene (Arrowtown).
More to come. Hope you'll take a look.
Geek poetry contest winners!
The results are in!
We sponsored a geek poetry contest with GeekMom.com and here are the winning poems.
Readers of Geek Mom were asked to submit a poem in any form of their choosing (haiku, rap, free verse, Klingon sonnet) on any geeky topic: Tolkien, Star Wars, Star Trek, gelatinous cubes, World of Warcraft war chants, hobbit drinking songs, odes to Harry Potter, ballads to honor Gary Gygax.
Sample winning haiku:
Samwise and Frodo:
You think they’re about to kiss,
But they never do.
--Natalie Jones
Poems that somehow managed to work in the name "Ethan Gilsdorf" (which, according to legend, is either Elvish or Elvis) were hard to resist. Winners got autographed copies of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.
Hope you enjoy! The rest of the bards' fabulous winning works can be read here.
You can also read the other non-winning but nonetheless worthy entries here
Hobbiton under construction
Yes, it's official. Despite on-going legal battles between filmmakers and the Tolkien family estate, it seems production on The Hobbit is moving forward -- with backhoes. TheOneRing.net and stuff.co.nz reports that "fruit trees are being planted, hedgerows are being groomed and new hillocks are being marked off as the sites of more hobbit homes."
The site in Matamata, New Zealand does not yet seem blocked off, as the folks who operate tours of the Hobbiton movie set, ain't saying they are closed for business. Not yet anyway.
But the pictures of the backhoes etc suggest that the place is all torn up. In Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I visit the Matamata Hobbiton set. You can also get a tour of the place from whence hobbit come in my video.
some fries with that...
the image gallery that goes with my excursion to New Zealand, Welligton, "Wellywood," etc.... 
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
The Author in New Zealand
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Under smoky-blue cloud cover, they raise their ladders, and thrust their siege towers toward Helm’s Deep. From all sides, like a stream of mercury, hordes of orcs pour through the crumbled curtain wall.
In my elaborate reverie of battlefield glory, I vault up the stairs, light-footed, graceful, deadly, ready to face my foes. Of course, I can’t stop them alone. I have an army of heroes on my side. I can’t stop the theme music trumpeting and drumming in my head, either. What fantasy freak can, especially in New Zealand, land of so many memorable film locations? ... read more in my article for the Boston Globe
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
China Miéville on why Tolkien rocks
I saw China Miéville speak at a forum at Book Expo a few weeks back. Smart, articulate guy. Re His take on Tolkien is one often forgotten: Tolkien built the world --- mountains, forests, seas --- and made up languages, THEN wondered who might live there to speak those tongues.
"The order is reverse: the world comes first, and then, and only then, things happen--stories occur--within it. ... So dominant is this mode now (as millions of women and men draw millions of maps, and write millions of histories, inventing worlds in which, perhaps, eventually, a few will set stories) that it's difficult to see what a conceptual shift it represented."
Plus, get this note by Miéville: "Tolk gives good monster. Shelob, Smaug, the Balrog...in their astounding names, the fearful verve of their descriptions, their various undomesticated malevolence, these creatures are utterly embedded in our world-view. No one can write giant spiders except through Shelob: all dragons are sidekicks now. And so on."
Indeed.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/06/there-and-back-again-five-reasons-tolkien-rocks.html
Q&A with Hobbit Director Guillermo del Toro
Great Q&A with Hobbit Director Guillermo del Toro on the Future of Film, in this month's WIRED. Like a lot of future-thinking folks, he's got grand ideas of the way we'll consume content and narrative in the future:
In the next 10 years, we're going to see all the forms of entertainment—film, television, video, games, and print—melding into a single-platform "story engine." The Model T of this new platform is the PS3. The moment you connect creative output with a public story engine, a narrative can continue over a period of months or years. It's going to rewrite the rules of fiction.
Check out his LA lair-------->
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks