Hello darlings. Sorry to have been a week a way, but trust me; a really serious birthday party would have left me unable to communicate for a month, yet here I am, as lucid as I get, barely a week after turning 110. You should look so good at my age. Can you remember back to when you were a mere slip of 110? I didn't think so.
Perhaps the most bizarre gift I received came from one of my surviving friends, young Jeffrey Swanson, who gave me a book! Can you imagine! Have you ever received a book for a gift before? What kind of fantasy world must such a deluded person live in, to walk right past the vodka shelves into a bookstore, and buy me a book, when Jack Daniels is still at large? Incredible!
As for what kind of fantasy world, that was made pretty clear by the book itself, which is The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien, his first new novel since The Silmarillion in 1973.
As I grow ever older, I find myself more and more interested in the achievements of The Dead. So many people take Death as an excuse to kick back and do nothing but rot. But not some. The Headless Indian Brave has had more adventures since his death than he ever had as a living person. Instead of living in a tepee and dining on butchered buffalo (admittedly with a head, and able to have sex at the drop of a loincloth with any squaw willing to squat), now he lives in a glamorous movie star mansion, and is routinely splattered with the cream of Hollywood's cream. Oh Death, where is thy sting?
So I gotta admire the literary persistence of JRR Tolkien. The man has been dead for 34 years, and here he has another novel out, and a best seller to boot. What has your dead grandfather turned out lately?
However, it is one thing to admire a man who can write a complex novel despite being dead, but it is still quite another to actually read it. I mean really; taking up valuable drinking time, reading a book? Hey, I'm not dead yet, you know! God, is there a duller way to spend an afternoon than by reading a book? Just ask the guy who read my book, My Lush Life. He will tell you what a grueling experience reading can be. In fact, the reader reviewers on Amazon.com clearly have nothing better to do with their lives at all but complain at length about how much they hated my book. Who forced them to read it?
Some of you may have read a posting I put up on this flog back on Thanksgiving last year, Gratitude Imparting Day. If you haven't read it, click on this link and do so. In it, I list JRR Tolkien as one of the things I'm grateful for, in a blatant attempt to lure fanboy readers in. It was Little Douglas who suggested it. He's actually read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. He has no life. (You knew that.)
I, of course, have not read these overlong tomes, or even their treatments, but then, while I may not have read Tolkien, I have done him, can you say that? Take a look at the shot above. That's darling Reuel and I, the day I inspired him to create the Lady Galadriel. Reuel looked at me and said, "A lady thousands of years old, still beautiful, but, instead of a drunken slut, she's a magical elvin queen! It will work!" Ah Reuelly, you big, curmudgeonly, Ludditish lug, when you thrust your magical talisman deep into my fiery Crack of Doom, You showed me what Fantasy is all about! You were my favorite Bad Hobbit.
But read him? Have you tried recently? I'm told that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are quite readable, and even funny at times. But Reuel darling, your prose style died with the rest of you. Good God, talk about turgid.
And a gigantic disappointment awaits readers when they hit this paragraph in chapter two: The Battle of Unnumbered Tears, a title which describes the poor reader four pages in:
"Then, in the plain of the Anfauglith, on the fourth day of the war, there began the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (You knew that.), all the sorrow of which no tale can contain. Of all that befell in the eastward battle: of the routing of Glaurung the Dragon by the dwarves of Belegost; of the treachery of the Easterlings and the overthrow of the host of Maedhros and the flight of the sons of Fëanor, no more is here said."
Needless to say, at this point I hurled the book at the wall in frustrated fury. It slipped through an open picture window, and plummeted into my hedge labyrinth, The Befuddlement, where it smacked a Japanese hedge trimmer on the head. The poor man had been trying to find his way out of The Befuddlement for three years, so I adjudge the book putting him out of his misery to have been a blessing to the man. If I can only do a Little Good each day, I am happy, as long as I'm also drunk and with my brains freshly screwed out.
But while I simply can not get enough sorrow in my entertainment, honestly, if you'd invested the four days necessary to reach page 56, only to find out that you'd suffered literary bait-and-switch, wouldn't you have hurled your copy at the wall also? To read about the flight of the sons of Fëanor has got to be the reason most people buy the book, isn't it? How do those elf boys fly? Do they sprout wings? Do eagles pick them up? (Reuel's favorite manner of delivering his heroes out of otherwise Certain Death situations.) Are they partly Kryptonian? Have they absorbed the Power of Flight from hugging Adrian Pasdar? (Certainly Little Peter Petrelli forgot he had absorbed the Power of Flight, and could have flown HIMSELF out of New York City, and saved the world and that damned indestructible cheerleader - who doesn't really require much saving, given her recuperative powers - without killing off the adorable Adrian. Slipped his mind in the crush of the season climax, I guess.)
And then there's "The overthrow of the host of Maedhros." I know that, when hostessing myself, I have often overthrown myself, tumbling down stairs, falling into the pool, plummeting off Tumescent Tor. Who needs overthrowing?
But maybe Maedhros is steadier on his feet than I am. In any event, overthrowing your host is the height of rudeness. I'm putting the Easterlings on notice: "Easterlings, you are no longer welcome in Morehead Heights, unless you're really well hung, and ready to put out on the spot. I will not tolerate overthrowing! This is a No Overthrowing Zone. And Maedhros, stop by anytime for a pity shag, you wild, nasty he-elf."
And just who is Maedhros, some of your Tolkien virgins ask? Get an education, dumbos. Any 7 year old kid knows that Maedhros is one of those flighty sons of Fëanor. What? Who is Fëanor? Good grief! Don't they teach you ignoramuses anything in school any more! Fëanor, obviously, was the eldest son of Finwë, and he, as every homeless schizoid on earth knows, was the half-brother of Fingolfin. That's right, THE Fingolfin! I bet you feel fairly foolish now, don't you? And if all that isn't enough, may I remind you that it was none other than Fëanor himself, who created the Silmarils! You look pretty sheepish now, don't you? Forgetting that Fëanor created the Silmarils. I mean honestly, they were the jewels that set the whole Silmarillion in motion. Why are Tolkien's largest works always about jewelry? He writes pretty turgid, macho prose for a man obsessed with bling.
The villain in The Children of Húrin is good old Morgoth, the nasty God-in-mortal-guise who lorded it over everybody in The Silmarillion. Morgoth's name comes from the old saying "The Morgoth, the Merrier," which is not only very similar to the title of my flog, but is also Anne Rice's motto.
Morgoth changed his name when he went into villain business, like you do, from his original given name, Melkor. Well really, Melkor is a lousy star name. Morgoth has so much more pizazz, like "Vicki Lester," "Rock Hudson," "Tab Hunter," or "Englebert Humperdinck." I was lucky. Tallulah Morehead is my born name. Imagine if I'd been named Melkor Morehead. I'd sound like the villain in a porn version of Doctor Who.
Anyway, I discovered when asking around, that Reuel also wrote the treatment that my darling Peter Jackson turned into his epic, Oscar-reaping movie King Kong. What Douglas? Oh. Sorry. It seems that Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. (Did you know that? You see? You learn so much here.) I wrote King Kong. But he never wrote back. (Oh Kong, Kong. You were the King, Kong, you are the King! Talk about hung! Call me Kongy, I miss you.)
Did you know I was in The Lord of the Rings? I was, but I was cut from the theatrical release version, and from the extended DVD edition, and from the upcoming, super-extended, hyper-long, extra-inclusive DVD version which runs 24 hours. "I just have no room to shove you in." Peter told me, although that's not what I said to him on a certain moonlit night in Aukland, when Peter fell prey to my charms, and I to his. Hobbit sex can be wild!
I was originally cast as Gàlæƒêllåthéöñ, the elvin camp-follower. I am appointed by Elrond (Played by the same actor who impersonated me in his drag act in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He worshipped me!) to accompany the Fellowship of the Ring, assisting the fellows with their Male Needs along the road. Here I am seen accepting the charge of the Ring-Bearer. (Everybody on the set talked this way.)
So in the original cut that no one ever saw (Except one film editor, who begged for the boon of being blinded afterwards. After seeing my performance, he preferred losing his eyes, to their ever seeing lesser sights. The tributes a star receives are strange indeed. I sent him a sweet note on an autographed picture.), I am the tenth member of the fellowship, with tender scenes of relieving each member's member, easing their burdens by taking their loads from them at the end of each day, caressing Gandalf's magic staff (You could probe a Balrog with that rod! Look at the all the virgin boys at their computers, reading that, and typing LOL. LOL. instead of laughing.), restoring Aragorn's "Broken" sword, role-playing as Legolas's personal quiver, being probed for information by the Horn of Boromir, and two minutes each for three of the hobbits (Au revoir, Merry Little Charlie. We'll see Mikhail in hell for drowning you!), and then half an hour for Little Sam Gamgee. Little Sean is a plump hottie.
("What about Gimli the Dwarf?" a few of you virgin fanboys with no life ask. Please! Do I look desperate enough to have sex with a dwarf? I'm only 110, not 1110. Remember the dialogue in the extended DVD version of The Two Towers, when Gimli admits that dwarf women look exactly like dwarf men, and Aragorn adds "It's the beards."? Get a clue boys; Gimli is a GIRL! I may have dabbled in the Valley of Fish, I may even have yodelled in a few, select canyons from time to time, but I have never stooped low enough to do a dwarf, let alone a hairy dwarf lesbo. Yuck! And frankly, when I order a gimlet, I expect something a lot more appetizing to be delivered than John Rhys-Davies on his knees. Besides, I was playing an elf. Elves loathe dwarves!)
But then, along the road, I met HIM! My one great love, the man I felt sure was to be my next, perhaps my final, husband. My dear, darling, passionate Gollum!
Sméagol, Sméagol, my so very precious little ring-bearer. How well I recall our nights of passion out on the Dead Marshes, and shaking our booties all night long in Mordor's hottest night spots. (We never missed "Wet-T-Shirt Night" at Orodruin. Even now, the aroma of Damp Orc makes me damp too.) He may have only worn a ragged little loincloth (Giving one freer access), but underneath it lurked his own, special Barad-Dûr, a Dark Tower that was truly his precious. Bear in mind, he wore Sauron's ring around that magnificent unit for 500 years. It was magic! What a man, or whatever the hell he was!
But, perhaps like all great love affairs must be, ours was not to last. Too soon the shoot was through, and Gollum was off to "other projects," and not returning my calls. And then, every shot of me was removed from the film. (Peter's exact words were "I want every last trace of that filthy woman, even her stench, scrubbed out of my movie! And from my hands! My God, My God, I can still smell her on my hands!!!!" Sadly, he was, like so many before him, intimidated by my magnificence on film, and cut my role rather than risk himself being lost in my corona. Poor, envious man. And it's not like I scarred his son for life. The boy was okay with it.)
Meanwhile a sort of dishy British actor named Andy Sirkis began giving me odd looks on the lot, and avoiding me off set. What was his problem, I ask you? Sure he's cute, but I never really even met him. Why does he act like three of my ex-husbands? If he were gay, instead of a husband and father, I'd be certain he is an ex-husband of mine. Might he be one of my handful of straight ex-husbands? Andy? Were we ever married?
And Gollum, my Gollum. It's like you dropped off a cliff into a volcano. Where are you? I pine for you. I weep unnumbered tears. Sméagol, you are forever my one, my true --- Precious! Your Gàlæƒêllåthéöñ waits ever, yearning for you, as I sail on to Valinor.
Cheers darlings
