Tuesday 08 October 2002

Sam and I regularly check out the official LotR films website - if you don't know it, it's www.lordoftherings.net, and so worth a visit - as there are regular updates and features, new trailers and downloads (everything from trailers to featurettes to desktops/screensavers and the like). Definitely a family fave. Anyway, t'other night Sam downloaded the latest trailer thingy for The Two Towers and oh wow oh wow oh wow.

Previous (initial?) trailers and previews have been fantastic; the set-up of the link between Barad-dur and Orthanc; massive armies of Uruk-hai, well, massing; scenes of the battle of Helm's Deep; Sam and Frodo and Gollum (Frodo continues to look haunted and plasticky-pale, *yawn*); Merry and Pippin; the divine Aragorn along with Legless I mean Legolas and Gimli; teasing flashes of the Mark of Rohan; more horses; Shadowfax glowing; the return of Gandalf ... All fabulous stuff and designed so perfectly to get one more and more worked up and excited and prepared to queue for hours on 18 December when TTT is released.

The one thing that I've been positively drivelling, drooling, pawing and snorting over is for a look at the ENTS. The Ents and Treebeard are amongst my most beloved characters in TTT (along with Eowyn, the only female character with any guts or personality as opposed to just drifting about looking ethereal and beautiful and aloof; and then of course there's Faramir played by Australia's David Wenham, so any drooliness for Viggo will go bye-byes instantly) and the role they play is pretty crucial, really. But how on earth, I thought, is Peter Jackson may-he-live-forever, genius that he is, going to bring them to life? I mean, they're basically trees.  Fourteen foot tall tree-people thingies.

Thus far there has not been a hint of an Ent in any trailer or teaser or preview. There's been a possible reaction-to-Ent by Merry and Pippin, but that's not what this pervy hobbit fancier has been after.

Well now, wheeeeeeeeeee. Peter Jackson has finally given us Ents. Ents, my dear friends, Ents. In the latest trailer/teaser. Admittedly, a very quick flash of the bottom half of an Ent as it sweeps Merry and Pippin in its "arms", thus giving a view of all four arm-and-leg type limbs (as well as branches and twiggy bits and foliage), but an Ent. Wheeeeeeee!

I'm incredibly impressed - as I have been by all of the cultures and races and characters in the first film - at how Peter Jackson and his crew have visualised and brought to life this creature, perhaps one of the most difficult to make realistic and not just a man in a bark suit. So wow, I'm impressed. And I haven't even seen the top half and face yet. *Swoon*

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Sam, the darling, also found and downloaded for my desktop the gorgeous, beautiful, ethereal, wild and glowing Shadowfax. Swoon swoon some more. That is one gorgeous horse. "Acted" by an Andalusian stallion called Domingo, apparently. There ya go.

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I am so very pleased with my hair, you guys. It's looking really great, and for me to compliment myself on anything, well that's kind of unprecedented and wow. It's long and smooth and shiny and wavy. Yes, long, but for fuck's sake don't tell my mother. See, she has this thing that long hair on an adult woman is un-becoming and silly, and that I should have a perky sophisticated 'do.

Now, for a start, perky doesn't suit me, nor does short, because I have a round face and very fine (but lots and lots) wavy hair which does it's own thing and gets very very cross if you mess with it.  As for sophisticated, you know that sound when you spit Guinness halfway across the Crown Saloon because someone's made you laugh and snort and choke all at the same time? That's the reaction to me and "sophisticated". I don't do sophisticated.

So I'm growing my hair again, all one length with some layers around the face, and like I said it's very pretty and now about two inches or so above bra back-strap level. I really do want it to be well down my back if not to my waist by the time I see the mother again because she is under the impression (what, me? lie by omission? never) that it's short and perky. Hee.

I love my long hair. I can do it straight and smooth and shiny in that shampoo-ad way, or in long ringlets/waves a la Nicole Kidman, without any product and hardly any styling/hairdryer-ing, just depending on the way I towel-dry or finger curl it or brush it out or whatever.

I am totally uncoordinated but I am teaching myself to braid it. How the holy fuck do you people with long plaits stop getting the three different hunks from getting muddled up, can you tell me? My hair is most likely the culprit because it still has a few layers and the waves and kinky bits tend to stick out. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I like my hair.

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So last weekend was JournalCon, held in San Francisco, US of A. It's difficult to describe JCon (particularly when you didn't go) but it's basically a gathering of loads of online journallers to party and discuss interesting topics in a conference type atmosphere (at which they are mostly too hungover to know what's really going on).

I have grown to fucking loathe JCon in the past four years or whatever it is. It ends up being a great big lovedydovey in-jokey exclusive egotistical masturbatory you're-not-one-of-the-cool-kids lovefest gross-out.

This year I had my pouty face and sour grapes all ready. And at first, reading various JCon entries which I had sworn not to do because it makes me paranoid, I was not disappointed. The usual rockstars and princesses of the universe all gushing and crushing all over each other, it'd make you bloody chunder, mate.

But then I read a few others, like Selila's and Jill's, and emailed with a few lovely USAn people who feel kinda the way I do but had gone anyway and had a good time, and I lost my bitterness, man. I'm glad you all had a good time. I can ignore the nauseating rockstars and masturbators and princesses because that's just life, and maybe if I'm ever in the neighbourhood at that time of year, this particular Aussie/Irish person, in spite of not being one of the cool kids, will attend and have a good time too. 

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