Thursday, December 12, 2013

Happy Hobbit Day!


Guess what I'm doing at midnight?! Sorry, that was a pretty obvious question. Of course I'm going to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and of course I'm a giddy mess about it. But I'm also trying to fight off a cold, so my head is rather foggy, and all I've wanted to do for days is sleep. All day at work I was planning on coming home and taking a nap before the midnight madness, but seeing as it's already past 7:00 it's pretty unlikely. I'm far too easily distracted, and if I get warm and comfortable now I might not wake back up (and then I would cry). Instead, I've been listening to past movie soundtracks to get in the mood, occasionally whispering things to my replica of The One Ring and perfecting my Gollum voice (the phlegm really helps).

I've also been thinking about what a big Tolkien nerd I am, and all the wonderful times I've had fully embracing that. Because being a nerd is awesome (just ask Will Wheaton). I first saw LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring on my 18th birthday. Aside from my immediate family, the only person who remembered it was my birthday that day was my best friend Heather. I pretty much spent the whole day in a mini depressive state (the fact that January is a terribly cold and grey month really never helps) and I'm sure I was wrestling with the notion of being a legal adult and what that was supposed to mean to my life. I think I had already made up my mind that I was moving away for school, but I know I was never fully comfortable in my 'home'. So instead of going out and buying porn and cigarettes to celebrate my 18th, I went to the theater and bought into a whole new world. I was hooked.

Cue LOTR poster on my dorm wall, soundtrack memorized note for note, replicas of as many movie props as I could reasonably convince my parents I needed. I'm such a big nerd that I even took a class at college on Tolkien and Lewis (it was an Honors class, and I read soooo much). But this was also the thing that got me hooked on midnight screenings and gave me a love for super crazy fandoms. I remember planning to see Return of the King with some of my cousins who were all going to be coming to a family gathering in KY. There is nothing in that town but a mall and a not-so-fabulous movie theater, but they were having a midnight show, and we were going. Except that they had had a twelve-ish hour drive (compared to my three) and had all decided to pass out (aka sleep. Weaklings). I had been looking forward to this for a really long time, and my dad could see that I was kind of crushed. So he took me. Confession: my dad's also a pretty big nerd, but more on the X-Files government conspiracy I-think-Roswell-has-aliens spectrum. We get out of that theater around 3:30 AM completely jazzed up, crawling out of our skins with Mt Dew overload, and looking for something to eat. And there was NOTHING open. No gas station with munchies, no grocery store, no fast food, no doughnut places, NOTHING. So we go back to the house (where there were people sleeping all over the floor, yay togetherness and cheapness) and try to find something quiet to eat in the kitchen. Well we're not quiet together, we're giggily, especially at that hour, and I don't remember what we found to eat, but I remember being shushed several times and thinking the whole thing was hilarious, and what a great time I had with my dad. The next afternoon I went to the theater again with my cousins to watch it a second time, and that was the first time I saw the same movie twice in less than 24 hours (but not the last). That was a pretty fantastic day.

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