Oh, hi there, everyone! So first of all, thanks to all the people who have dropped me emails over the last two weeks, asking when I was going to update the journal again, and wondering if maybe something new and crazy was going on with me that was keeping me occupied. Unfortunately, it's the exact opposite that's been preventing me from updating recently; that is, there's been so little going on in my life the last couple of weeks that it didn't even seem worth sitting down and informing people, which is really why you haven't heard from me in awhile.

October turned out to be a bit of a weird month for me, actually, in that this was the first October in four years that I wasn't in the middle of some big creative project (travel books the last two years, my book on Chicago's sexual swinging community in 2002). And so that was a little strange, having all this time on my hands this October that I usually don't, thinking a lot about how I was supposed to be in South Africa instead, writing my latest travel book, which in reality has been pushed to this May because of money issues, unsurprisingly enough. For the last three years it was these projects that propelled me to journal through the month of October, and it was the exhaustion of finishing these projects that inspired me to shut down the journal altogether again until the following January; so, yes, it was a little odd and sad to not have such a project going this October, and to know that I'm going to try to keep my journal active this holiday season even with not a lot of things to report.

So what have I been doing with myself the last couple of weeks? Well, actually, I do have one kind of exciting thing to report, although so awfully goddamn slacker-cliche that it might as well be a line from a Simpsons episode - for the first time ever I finally got a chance to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in a row, and for the first time to comprehensively view all the supplementary material included on the DVD sets. And as anyone who owns the DVDs can tell you, this is no mean feat - after all, you're talking about an almost 12-hour movie to begin with (after adding all those deleted scenes), then a fucking 18-hour documentary about the making of the movie (six hours per film), then nearly 10,000 still photographs and other static material, and then another 48 hours of audio commentaries from such people as the director, writers, design staff and actors, almost all of which I ended up watching or listening to over the course of two weeks.

Fuck! Man, I swear, those Lord of the Rings discs are like the moviegoing equivalent of Infinite Jest or something - a feat you're legitimately proud of if you actually finish, but can't share with others because it's just such a complete fucking dorky thing to do. Anyway, at least it was something I found thoroughly entertaining - and especially seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff from Return of the King, which I hadn't seen before this recent marathon viewing session. And as is typical with me, the process also inspired a number of thoughts and side-activities, some even geekier than the viewing process itself...

If you're like me, for example, a common thought that goes through the brain while watching the LOTR documentary is simply, "Why?" Why go to the insane lengths that the movie's crew did when creating all the sets and props - the chainmail handmade out of actual chains, the leather armor made out of actual leather? Why carve a Rohan symbol on the inside of Theoden's chestplate, where not once is it ever going to actually be seen? Why carve intricate illustrations on the underside of chairs? Why go to the massive trouble that crew did, for what essentially is a movie about a bunch of nerds with pointy ears running around the forest swinging swords at each other?

This answer really never becomes clear until actually sitting down and watching the entire 12-hour epic in a row, and remembering the words that director Peter Jackson says near the beginning of the entire production (faithfully recorded in the documentary) - that his intent for LOTR was to create a world that felt like it actually once existed, that what they were actually doing was filming a historical epic, and that the crew was lucky enough to get permission to shoot at the "actual" ruins where the events from the movie actually took place, thousands of years ago.

It's something I've talked about here before, and especially with the new Star Wars movies coming out at the same time the LOTR ones originally did; and now the DVD of Episode III has finally come out as well, meaning that it's been in the public consciousness quite a bit recently, so I guess it's appropriate to talk about it again. And the fact of the matter is that moviemaking is not a science, and will never be one either - anything involving the arts is always going to rely a certain amount on "magic" to truly succeed, no matter how mechanical that particular artistic medium is or how many technical aspects there are to that particular endeavor.

And what do I mean by "magic?" Well, that's the tricky part of being an artist, isn't it, because there's no real definition of what "magic" is or how to go about achieving it. In general I mean that moment when an artistic project stops being a collection of mechanical processes that you as a fan admire, and starts becoming real - the moment you forget that the characters are fictional, the moment you truly believe that singer was writing about you, the moment you forget that there were cameras and sweaty union guys standing two feet away from what you're watching onscreen. And in the case of movies, as we all discovered when these six films originally came out, "magic" is an especially ephemeral thing to achieve - an inhererently undefinable combination of sets, costumes, writing, directing, acting and the like, all of which must be spot-on to truly succeed, any of which can ruin a movie just on their own, no matter how good the rest of the elements are.

Ultimately, George Lucas had what seemed like a winning idea when he first sat down to create the new Star Wars movies - to create almost every visual element of his movies in a CG environment, supposedly paving the way for a "New Age of the Fantastical," where it was promised that filmmakers could literally put anything on the screen that they could imagine. But we all Know what actually happened - even though the new Star Wars movies are technically flawless, they still come across as soulless when actually watching them. And this is what becomes abundantly clear during the LOTR documentaries, when keeping this subject in mind while watching them - that Jackson understood this about computer graphics, and understood that the only way to truly achieve movie "magic" was to physically create as much of the movie in the real world as possible. I mean, multiple crew members throughout the documentaries actually say things to this extent, explicitly and out loud - for example, that the reason the Rohan symbol was carved on the inside of Theoden's armor was for no other reason than to make the actor playing Theoden feel like a fucking badass, to see that carving and know that he's the only one who's ever going to see it, just like would be the case of a real king in that situation thousands of years ago.

Both the new Star Wars movies and the LOTR ones are visually sumptuous, no doubt about that, but their ultimate respective failure and success can be boiled down to a surprisingly subtle detail - that the LOTR actors look and behave in every second like they're actually in that world, while the Star Wars actors generally behave like they're standing in the middle of a gigantic bluescreen set. And when you keep this in mind, you suddenly realize why the LOTR crew went to the insane trouble that they did - the 300 individualized Orc faces, the on-staff linguistic experts for made-up languages. As I said, moviemaking is not a science and never will be, which is where Lucas seems to have made his fatal mistake with the prequels - that by its very nature, it's impossible to just sit down and say, "Okay, add this visual image and this soundtrack and this actor and this line of dialogue, and you automatically have a great movie." Jackson seems to have a much more complex understanding of what makes a movie a "magical" one, and it shows - I mean, freeze-frame almost any moment of the entire trilogy, and the chances are likely that you'll catch something in the background that only appears for maybe a moment, but that took weeks and weeks for the crew to actually create. Now add the judicious use of CG himself, plus the great casting, plus the great acting, plus the post-production digital tinting of the entire thing (which you would never guess would be so important, until seeing the documentaries), and all the other million details that went into making those movies, and you suddenly start realizing why they are so damn magical to begin with, and why they are so obviously going to stand the test of time, which I seriously doubt the new Star Wars movies are going to do.

And of course the other effect of my recent LOTR binge was to make me interested for the first time in the rest of the Middle-world universe, that infinitely rich reference tome that Tolkien created via notes and letters, and of which the LOTR storyline is simply one event. Or, that is, for a long time now I've had at least a passing interest in the Tolkien mythology, simply because it's just so damn overwhelming - ten thousand years of history, dozens of fictional races, half a dozen actual languages that Tolkien single-handedly created, a multi-tiered cosmology that is infinitely more complex than anything you find in the Bible or the Koran. (I mean, seriously, there are people out there who have full-time paid jobs as Tolkien scholars, if you can believe that shit.) Unfortunately, though, up to recently I never had sat down and tried to learn more about the Tolkien mythology, because...well, jeez, have you tried to read those damn books? I know there are millions of devoted fans out there for Tolkien's writing, but I personally just cannot get through that crap no matter how hard I try; between the 75-page digressions regarding Hobbit agricultural practices and the Biblesque "and he begat him, who begat him, who begat hiim" bullshit, Tolkien's writing has always been much more of a chore for me than a pleasure.

Still, though, you don't obsessively watch the movie version of LOTR without at least becoming curious about some of the untold stories regarding the universe. Like, exactly how many wizards like Gandalf and Saruman are running around Middle-earth, anyway? And how did they get there in the first place? Are they higher forms of Men, or an entire race unto themselves? Did Saruman go through a "grey" phase like Gandalf did? Is there another level of reincarnation beyond "white?"

So, you know, thank fucking God for Wikipedia and Tolkien nerds with too much time on their hands! For those who don't know, in fact, an ad-hoc collection of Middle-earth fans have created an insanely exhaustive reference guide to Tolkien's mythology within the overall framework of Wikipedia, complete with just hundreds upon hundreds of entries, all of them cross-referenced via hyperlink whenever mentioned in other entries. With this in place, then, you no longer have to sit through reams of Tolkien's awful Elvish poetry and Dwarvish family trees to figure out what you're seeking - to learn, for example, that there were originally five wizards in Middle-earth; that they're sorta low-rent versions of angels, specifically sent by Middle-earth's god (Eru) to help Men and Elves fight Sauron; that four of them were assigned specific colors and Saruman white because he was the most powerful; that two of the wizards immediately headed to Tolkien's version of Japan when they first arrived, and were never heard from again; that Eru was pissed that Saruman turned to evil, which is why he reincarnated Gandalf after his death and gave him the same powers as the former "white" wizard; and that another one of the wizards (Radagast the Brown or something like that) was actually the one who sent the giant eagle after Gandalf was imprisoned at Isengard, a fact not even mentioned in the movie version because of time restraints.

So as pathetic as it is to admit, this is pretty much the only thing you've missed over the last two weeks of me not updating my journal - just a ridiculous amount of time spent contemplating Tolkien, the details of moviemaking, and how goddamn cool it must be to live in Valinor. (Don't ask.) Yeah, aren't you glad now that you sent in that email urging me to write another journal entry soon?

Okay, more to talk about but I'm out of space, so unbelievably enough it looks like there'll be yet another entry tomorrow as well. (Will wonders never cease?) Thanks as always for the letters coming in during the long downtimes I'm having these days, and feel free to drop a line yourself if you feel like it. More nerdiness tomorrow!