Blog: April 2015

This is the latest of several e-mails I’ve gotten from Symphony Silicon Valley:

After the breath-taking, sold-out presentation at Lincoln Center in New York City, Peter Jackson’s film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkein’s epic of Middle Earth and one small hobbit’s quest to destroy the Ring of Power comes to San Jose, with Howard Shore’s immortal score performed live by over 250 all-local musicians. Never before has an American orchestra attempted this monumental feat, and the results are stunning. This is not an event to miss.

You know I’m a lifelong Tolkien fan. (I even know how to spell his name.)

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If you should ever wish to confuse and confound your friends (or enemies), challenge them to identify and explain the five main sub-plots in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”.  It’s a very complex movie that was widely criticized for being too simple.  Such is the way of fiction.

In order to be successful and popular every story, no matter how short, must include some complexity.  Complexity is a good word to describe what we cannot describe succinctly.  It is also a smokescreen word we use to hide our distaste for things.  A story is too complex if we don’t like it and it is not complex enough if we don’t like it. (more…)

This was the second year that the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference has had a track in Tolkien Studies, now an official study area of the Association under the chairship of Robin Reid of Texas A&M-Commerce. This year’s conference was held at the Marriott Hotel on the edge of the colorful French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Tolkien track – just one set of items in a huge four-day conference with hundreds of presentations on all manner of pop culture topics – ran all day on Friday, April 3, in one small meeting room with a usual audience of about 20. Here’s my impressions of attending much of it, taken from my personal blog:

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March 2015

Besides much else that has happened in March, I need also to somehow mark the death of Sir Terry Pratchett, or Pterry to many of his fans. Much has been posted about Pratchett in the weeks since he passed away, but as with Tolkien, he leaves his work behind.

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