Ok so, THE HOBBIT!!!!
I’m stupid excited about this, folks. I loved reading the Hobbit. I remember the whole ordeal vividly. I was in 7th grade. It was Christmas break. The buzz about the Lord of the Rings movies was getting pretty loud. I wanted to read the Hobbit first, because I had heard that was chronologically correct. I had a low-lighted lamp on the side table next to my bed and an inflatable chair with flowers on it. I stayed up all night and read hundreds of pages and fell in love with Bilbo Baggins and his unexpected journey. It’s one of my most-loved adolescent experiences.
But then I started the actual trilogy. I read the first book and half of the second one before I was bored to tears and disappointed like you wouldn’t believe. Seriously. After 50 pages of wandering in a forest looking for hobbit tracks and nothing else, I gave up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action-packed movies. They’re deeply imbedded in some of my fondest memories. I saw each one at my hometown theater a few times. My sisters and I had long debates about which male character was the sexiest (My sisters pined after Orlando Bloom, of whom which I’m not a fan. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I had the hots for Elijah Wood with his chocolatey curls and big blue eyes. If only he were taller!). Shortly after my high school sweetheart and I started dating, and not long after he had recovered from a collapsed lung that nearly killed him, he told me he acknowledged two regrets in his life during the ambulance ride to the hospital. The first was never asking me out. The second was that he wouldn’t get to see The Return of the King. It was almost bittersweet then when he, his brother, my sister and I went to see the movie together. He had accomplished all that he intended to do in his lifetime. This is another one of my fondest memories. But, my love for the tome certainly didn’t end with the last available showing at the box office. I’ve since participated in those epic 12-hour marathons where you lock yourself in a room with a bunch of beer, several bags of Doritos, a couple plates full of pizza rolls and some donuts and watch the extended versions of each movie with only a bathroom break between DVD swaps. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets them all on Blu-Ray and we do it again in HD. But to this day, I’ve not even once considered finishing reading those books.
And finally, 9 years later, the much lighter hearted Hobbit’s tale is going to the big screen.
“A: Oh my god! Can we go to the midnight premiere?
B: Yeah, for sure.
A: Can we wear capes?!
B: No, I don’t own a cape.
A: I meant robes, not capes.
B: I don’t have a robe, either.
A: We can find some robes.
B: Actually, not having these items was going to be my excuse for not wearing a costume. So I’d rather not acquire them.”
I don’t think John is as excited as I am.
