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January 16, 2002 - January 28, 2002

Monday, January 28, 2002
Report From A Golden Globe Viewing Party - Strider @ 16:44 PST
Here's how things went for the Golden Globes viewing party in Los Angeles. People began arriving shortly before 7pm at the Cat n' Fiddle pub in Hollywood. This is a great little place tucked away from Sunset blvd. complete with an outdoor courtyard containing trees and a fountain, an inner bar area and restaurant, dart board and juke box, and a private room for parties, like our own. On Sundays, they have a live jazz band perform in the courtyard, and the lead singer of the band was interested enough in our party to buy a raffle ticket.

Everyone began ordering food and drinks, as the Red Carpet ceremony got under way, and TORN staffers Calisuri and Quickbeam helped me to get the raffle and auction items unpacked and on display. We sold raffle tickets for most items at just $2 a ticket, and held a silent auction for the two bigger items we had. LOTR may not have won anything at the Golden Globes, but party attendees walked out of the pub with posters, TORN shirts, bookmarks, and Sideshow figurines. All funds received went to TheOneRing.net server fund, but I'll have to let Calisuri give you the final figure as he collected all the money.

By the end of the evening, we had some 50 people or more sitting and standing in the room. I'm going to have to move my Oscar viewing party to a larger venue. Yes, you heard me right, an Oscar viewing party. I'm not even waiting for the nominations to be announced, I'm starting to plan right now, so I can have a party twice as big. In fact, I'm issuing a challenge to all Line Party leaders, or anyone else for that matter, to host an Oscar party of your own. Let's see if we can get a party in every major city that will be showing the Oscars, even if it has to be the night before or after, and raise a little bit for TheOneRing.net. Salt Lake City, are you with me, I know you had the biggest Line Party out there. New Zealand, this is your night to shine, I expect you to throw one doozy of a party. London, the Oscars may be on at an ungodly hour for you, but you party early, then crash at someone's house to stay up all night and watch. With a bit of planning, getting ahold of a few prizes or what not, you can make one heck of a big party, have fun, watch the awards show, and raise a bit of money to make sure we don't crash TheOneRing.net's server when Two Towers comes out.

That's it for now, expect some pictures in the near future, and details for the LA Oscar party to pop up pretty soon as well.

Garfeimao

First off, a big TORn thank you to all who attended the party and got into the spirit of things. Also, I'd like to point out that we're not mentioning our plight for a new server for the fun of it - we really need one! So if any of you out there would like to donate anything at all to our new server, please do with the following link: Help Support TheOneRing.net.

Lord Of The Rings Street Names - Strider @ 16:23 PST
Garfeimao sends in an account of how the names of some streets nearby were inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Here are the LOTR themed streets in my neighborhood. Shadowfax is a bit blurry, sorry. I was not sure about Buckland, as I don't have my copy of the trilogy around, my sister has it. By the way, that's my street, I live on Gondor, too funny, eh? I guess I was meant to be a Tolkien fan when we moved here. Anyhow, these streets are about 25-30 years old, as near as I can recall. One of these days I may look into the city records to see who it was who was responsible for naming the streets in the area.


Sunday, January 27, 2002
LOTR Premiere: Poland - Xoanon @ 21:48 PST
From: Ejka

Just a short note. Polish release of "The Fellowship of the Ring" is February 15th but the first official pre-showing is midnight 14/15th February in Cracov, cultural capitol of Poland.

The non-official pre-showing is the 9th of February and it's all organized by radio RMF FM . Polish LOTR supporters are RMF FM, television TVN, Viva! (the same traitors who helped Harry Potter :), Lee, Pizza Hut and inteligo. We have been waiting here for ages, you know. So the time has come at last. Not many of us waited that long- we've been visiting our neighbours- Germany and so on- for over two months. And we still want to see it again and again- as you do ;) Ah- almost forgot- the greatest news is that there will be no dubbing- just the original language.

Tolkien Tribute At Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - Strider @ 10:43 PST
I'm sure you've heard of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - the one memorializing a stunningly awful Victorial prose stylist, who began all of his works with particularly tortured opening paragraphs.

Well, the 2001 contest winners were announced on July 9, but I don't recall seeing this priceless bit reported here.

In the fantasy category, the runner up was this piece:
"I could tell you stories about this road we shall be traveling," the old man told his young companions as he leaned on his staff and stroked his silver beard, "of how it was built by Dwarves of the Barad-dur in the days of Thranduil the Great, numberless years before the Elves of the Ered Luin left their silver woods in Lindon, sailed their ships over the Western Sea, and passed from the knowledge of men, but what would you learn from these tales, except that I squandered my college years reading far too much Tolkien instead of meeting girls."
-John La Torre, Sacramento, CA

You can see the winning Fantasy entry (plus all the other howlingly funny winners and also-rans) at:

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2001.htm

Scroll down about 20% of the way to see the fantasy section. The competition's main page is at:

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com

Hope you find this as new and funny as I did,

Iante

Wednesday, January 23, 2002
RIVENDELL DISCUSSION of J.R.R. Tolkien This SUNDAY - Xoanon @ 13:47 PST

From: David Lenander

Our next meeting is a joint meeting with Second Foundation on Sunday, Jan. 27. It will be a discussion of Tolkien and it will be held at Dreamhaven Bookstore. Dreamhaven Books 912 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408 (612-823-6161) 1:00 p.m. There is plenty of free parking in the back of the store. And Dreamhaven is a great place to buy some books! http://www.dreamhavenbooks.com

We'll be able to dissect the movie, I suppose. If you can't make the meeting, please forward some comments for me to share!

NOTE that January 31 is the deadline for advance registration at Mars Con at the lower advance rate of $40 (see below for more details).

Future 2002 Rivendell discussions.

For our February 16th (Saturday) meeting at 1:30, we'll discuss the television mini-series of Marion Zimmer Bradley's _The Mists of Avalon_.

We'll plan to watch at least some excerpts on video, so if you missed it, you could plan to just reread some of the book (or read it for the first time). In February we traditionally meet as the Friends of Darkover Council of St. Valentine-of-the-Snows. While this isn't really a Darkover book, one of our members called _Mists of Avalon_ "King Arthur on Darkover." Again, at Dreamhaven.

March 1-3. In March there are two local Science Fiction conventions. On Aragorn's birthday (also St. David's Day for any Welsh nationalists), March 1, and the two days following, is Mars Con. This is a fairly small con, I gather, but quite pleasant and worthwhile, according to those who've attended. It inherited the famous Drum jam, and some of the other traditional Minicon activities when Minicon downsized a couple of years ago and spawned both MarsCon and the much larger CONvergence, which is in July.

March 16. I've tentatively reserved Saturday, March 16, at Dreamhaven for a Rivendell discussion of Peter Beagle's _Tamsin_. It's possible that we will decide to defer this meeting to Minicon--or perhaps even MarsCon.

March 29 weekend is this year's Minicon, with ex-Twin Cities locals Emma Bull (_War for the Oaks_, _Finder_ and other books) and Will Shetterly (_Elsewhere_, _Dogland_ and other books) as guests of honor. We will be proposing discussions of both writers at Minicon as Rivendell and Second Foundation meetings, but may not know for a while if these are accepted by the program committee at Minicon.

April. The farther out we go, the more tentative things become, but we're thinking of trying to organize a meeting at the Children's Literature Research Collections in Andersen Hall at the U of MN campus to discuss Harry Potter in April. We may start things off with a panel discussion, featuring several local experts.

May. Currently the "printing on demand" operation of Stone Dragon Press is switching printers. Until this is resolved, availability of copies of _Autumn World_ may be uncertain (so get your copy at Dreamhaven while they last!--Actually, Uncle Hugo's probably has some, too). But, assuming that this is resolved by May, we may discuss _Autumn World_, probably along with at least several of its authors.

UPCOMING Twin City LOCAL EVENTS & DATES OF INTEREST, mostly from the latest Einblatt listings:

Jan 25-27, SuperCon 8, Rochester, MN. http://come.to/supercon

Mar 1-3, MarsCon 2002: The Magic of Fantasy, Airport Hilton, Bloomington, MN. GOHs: Peter Woodward, John Levine, Lyda Morehouse, Robin Wood. Adults $40 to 1/31, $50 ATD, $15 supporting. Child $15 to 1/31, $25 ATD, $15 supporting. FFI: 612-724-0687 or 2002info@marscon.org.

Mar 29-31, Minicon 37, Mpls Hilton & Towers, Mpls, MN. GoH's: Emma Bull & Will Shetterly, Arthur Hlavaty, Rick Berry. Adults $30 to 12/31, $40 to 2/14, $70 ATD, $15 Supporting. Child $15 to 2/14, $30 ATD. www.mnstf.org/minicon/minicon37/

Jul 5-7, Convergence 2002, Radisson South, Mpls, MN. GoH's; Mark Altman & Robert Meyer Burnett, Nene Thomas, Phil Hester. Adults $25 to 12/31, 2001; $35 1/1 - 5/15, 2002: $50 ATD. Children 6-12, $15, 5 and under, Free. www.convergence-con.org

Jul 26-29, Mythcon 33 in Boulder, Colorado. [not local, but our national association conference] Theme: "A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare and Fantasy" Author Guest of Honor: Connie Willis, Scholar

Guest of Honor:

Alexei Kondratiev . $60 up to 12/31/01. ($50 for members of the national Mythopoeic Society, in other words, a $10 members' discount). There're package deals on room and board, too, and tickets to Shakespeare plays, etc. Check out the web-site at www.mythsoc.org

Oct 31 - Nov 3. World Fantasy Convention 2002,

Minneapolis, MN. GoH's:

Dennis Etchison, Jonathan Carroll, Kathe Koja. Stephen Jones, Dave McKean. Hilton Minneapolis & Towers, Mpls, MN. Memberships $100 through 2/28/02, $120 thereafter. If you would like to register with a credit card, call us TOLL-FREE at: 1-800-379-0657. This number is for credit card registration only, please. For questions regarding memberships, please contact Beth at bjf@wavefront.com. FFI: wfc@dreamhavenbooks.com

Ongoing Information Minn-STF Hotline: Provides latest information and accepts messages: 612-824-5559; web site at: http://www.mnstf.org/. Minicon web site at: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon/.

Gamesday Players: Board & card gaming almost every Friday evening. FFI: Richard Tatge at 612-827-3228.

Filk Circle: open to all who like to participate in music with f/sf lyrics. 4th Saturday at 5pm: 3236 Cedar Ave South; FFI: 612-721-6076. Cats.

Dagorhir is a medieval LARP similar in some ways to SCA, but using padded weapons. It is an active sport, is safe, and is great fun. Misc Area Parks on Sundays. FFI: belarionmaliwen@hotmail.com.

Einblatt is posted on Usenet groups rec.arts.sf.fandom, alt.fandom.misc, and mn.sf // Einblatt from July 95 to date is on the web at
http://www.mnstf.org/einblatt/. Einblatt is distributed via e-mailing-list - send e-mail to einblatt-list-subscribe@mnstf.org.

This Einblatt was edited by Scott Raun with the assistance of Denny Lien (publishing news) and Mike Pins (conventions).

Einblatt is a monthly publication of the Minnesota Science Fiction Society, devoted to news of the local SF community.

E-mail same to einblatt@mnstf.org, or send to Scott Raun, 3928 11th Ave. S., Minneapolis,
MN 55407; or call him at 612-822-0451. Email submissions most preferred, no phone calls after 10pm. // Next Einblatt!

Deadline: 11:59PM January 24th, 2002 sharp!

Line Party Report: New York City - Xoanon @ 01:07 PST
From: Lightwards

On December 18th, a group of 120 Tolkien fans gathered together in New York City at thge lowes theater on 42nd street right off Times Square, to see the midnight showing of The Fellowship of the Ring. Valen (the man destined to win the 'iron man' prize for the evening) started our line at 10:30 in morning. At 2:00 om (the official start time of the line) the line quickly grew and soon a hardy gang of Tolkien fans was braving the cold and cheerfully crowding the sidewalk on 42nd street. The line entertained themselves by playing several rounds of a Lord of the Rings themed version of the classic party game 'Mafia', renamed 'Ringwraiths', in which the mafia became ringwraiths, the cop became an elf, the doctor became a wizard, and the innocent townspeople became hobbits of the Shire. (just goes to show Tolkien's universality).

The line continued to grow throughout the day, ably managed by Jamey Christopher Shafer, Zach Parker and Marc (aka "Chops") with additional help from some of the other line members.  By the time I arrived around 7pm, the line was stretching well down the street.  After a quick food run, we held several contests, beginning with a Tolkien poetry recital.

The42ndGuy - "A Chicago boy only recently moved out to the East Coast, I wasn't sure what to expect from a party of New Yorkers, other than an obvious devotion to the works of the good Professor.  As it turned out, the good people of New York could not have pleased me more.  The line party itself and related festivities were pure fun; everyone was passionate, informed, and witty.  What's more, when I needed help getting back to Grand Central at 4 am for my train out of town after breakfast, not only did the partygoers help me with the niceties of hailing a cab in Midtown, they got money together for my fare to boot.  Ten hours was far too short a time to spend with such excellent and admirable Big People.

"The passer-bys were quite entertained by this, and several stopped to watch and listen to The42ndGuy and Lia reciting The Song of Eärendil and The Man in the Moon, respectively. 

Thanks to Decipher and the generosity of two line members, Jim and Stefan, we had many wonderful prizes to give away to the line!  Along with the poetry recital, a fan art contest and superlative votes were held to award the larger items - Decipher cards, LotR hats, shirts, photo guides, "Making of" DVD's and some excellent gaming miniatures from www.Dwarvenforge.com.    Jim played Santa Claus and gave out Lord of the Rings badges, bookmarks and tattoos to the line.

Elanor (not pictured) - While I was waiting, a guy walking by stopped and called my name.  Turns out it was an old buddy who I used to work with but I haven't seen in 15 years!  We start chatting to catch up and he says he should have known he would eventually run into me on a line for LOTR since he remembered how much I loved it.  Then he reminded me I had given him a set of the books for his birthday.  He ended up canceling his plans for the night and joined us on the line!

Another fabulous piece of fan art.

Stefan with the fan art contest winners.

Most Likely to Be an Elf (our very own line wrangler, Zach Parker). Proud winner of a fistful of Decipher cards

Most Likely to Be a Hobbit

Most Likely to Be a Dwarf: Winner of, appropriately enough, a treasure set from Dwarven Forge.

Most Likely to Secretly Be Heir to the Throne (Isildur/Isaac)

"Mostly I was just standing around being kind of cold and talking to numerous psychology students. It seems like everyone was either a psychology student or an actor. Does that have any significance?"

Book Soup Book Signing Report - Xoanon @ 00:39 PST
From: Alyse

I just wanted to quickly let you know about some photos I took of Ian McKellen at his recent Book Soup signing.

There was a huge amount of people there. Book Soup thought it was the largest crowd they've ever had for a signing before. Did you go to this?

I went on a whim and it turned out to be a fun experience. Ian was very sweet to all the children there who were excited to meet 'Gandalf'. While there was no personalizations, he did personal the book for the two little boys that were in front of me, asking for their names.

I told him how incredible he was in 'LOTR' and 'Gods and Monsters' and thanked him for doing this signing. He thanked me for what I said and shook my hand.

In photo 5 you can see my friend Valerie getting her books signed (she also attended the LOTR screening and Q+A with Ian the previous night and I think had emailed your site about the event). She asked him if he was getting tired signing so many autographs. He said, no, that his name wasn't so long and he's used to it. Book Soup did a great job and made sure everyone had a chance without being pushy. You could have as many books as you wanted to sign and up to 3 other LOTR items signed. And you were free to take photos. It was really set up well. Of course, if you were there, you would know all this.

Monday, January 21, 2002
LOTR Ice Sculptures - Xoanon @ 13:39 PST
Jodi sends along these amazing pictures from a LOTR themed Ice Sculpture competition recently. Take a look at the Moria gate...amazing!

Sauron And George Bush - Xoanon @ 12:36 PST
Clark sends along this picture of something very odd...what's this? The Dark Lord Sauron welcoming George Bush? Hrm...something is amiss my friends!!!

Sunday, January 20, 2002
Tolkien Party In Croatia - Xoanon @ 15:48 PST
I am writing from Zagreb, Croatia. LOTR premiered here on the 16th and there's going to be an after-premiere LOTR party at "Tolkien's pub" this saturday. Yep, believe it or not, here in Zagreb we have the "Tolkien's house" and "Tolkien's pub".

Anyway, the party is going to be full of businessmen that don't know the difference between a dwarf and an elf BUT there is going to be a prize contest and guess what the main prize is: The One Ring!

Starting tommorow there will be beer drinking contest, the one who drinks his beer fastest becomes the "hobbit of the day" and gets a chance to win the Ring by winning in another competition on saturday.

Yeah baby... I managed to get my hands on an invtitation so I'll be going to the party.

Vinet Exhibit Report! - Xoanon @ 15:26 PST
Lotho Sackville-Baggins writes: We went to the last day of the Pierre Vinet exhibit in Santa Monica today (Saturday 19th) & I just wanted to share with you how truly wonderful it was.

Mr. Vinet was there himself, autographing postcards of his image of Ian McKellen as Gandalf. These photos were far more than was on exhibit at Casa Loma. There was a large room full of color shots and a smaller room of the black and white portrait shots. The color images were wonderful - rich saturated color - greens that were so vivid, rich earth colors, just wonderful. You could almost smell the landscape.

Mr. Vinet was so friendly! What a wonderful man. It is hoped that there might be a catalog of his works - but nothing is definite yet. I hope all Los Angeles fans made the effort to visit the gallery - it was really something special.

Thursday, January 17, 2002
John Rhys-Davies Takes On LA Comic Convention - Xoanon @ 12:03 PST
From: Garfeimao

It sort of slipped my mind to send you these pictures and a report of JRD's appearance last Sunday in Los Angeles. He flew down straight from Vancouver to attend this comic book convention, which is held monthly at the Shrine expo hall in Los Angeles. He is very charming, intelligent and really has a passion for the the trilogy of films, his fellow actors on the project and especially for Peter Jackson. As he put it, if Peter called and said he needed to shoot some footage at a NZ volcano that had been acting up recently, and he couldn't guarantee anyone's safety, JRD is positive that everyone in the cast would just say "sure, I'll be right down for that".

These three pics are of when John Rhys-Davies first arrived at the convention, and then while he was sitting at the panel table and people came up to get autographs and talk with him.

OK, here are two more pictures from the convention. When I asked if I could get a picture with him, he said to come up on the stage, and then proceded to offer me his knee. So yes, I got to sit on his knee, it was sort of like visiting Santa Claus all over again. Malia, she of the quest to form an official Orlando Bloom fan club is in the other picture. She was thrilled beyond words to meet him.

Anyhow, another interesting note on what JRD had to say. Someone asked him what Treebeard sounded like, and I think the person just wanted him to speak in Treebeard's voice, but the answer was much more interesting. It appears they have not recorded the dialogue for Treebeard yet. He said they were finding it tricky to come up with a way to be true to the Book's description of Treebeard speaking in a rather slow, methodical manner, and making it cinematic. In otherwords, Treebeard's speech pattern may be too slow for the pacing a film needs to keep the audience interested. He is confident they will come up with something, but was able to give us another hint. Since Treebeard is just about the oldest living thing in Middle Earth, he will have travelled everywhere, and met just about every race in existence, with the exception of Hobbits, of course. Because of this, he will have learned many languages and dialects, and therefore, might be prone to speaking with many different accents at the same time. In otherwords, one sentence may come out rather Elvish sounding, but another may sound Gondorian. It's clear they are putting a lot of thought into this, and it sounds like a fascinating process. I can't wait to see what they do come up with in the end.

Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Which country is the most Tolkienoholic? - Xoanon @ 14:23 PST
Valdi writes:

Tehanu wrote: "Which makes me wonder: Which country is the most Tolkienoholic? Who has the highest percentage of their population going to see FOTR? Will it be NZ? The States? England?"

Well, of all countries it's got to be the small Iceland :) In 18 days(it premiered on the 26th Dec) over 60.000 people have seen LOTR and thats an ENOURMOUSLY much considering that iceland's population is only 280.000 people :)

Basically, this means that over 20% of iceland has seen it(of course some people have seen it twice or more but still- :>)

I personally dont think any other country in the world will be able to beat this. The film is already the 3th highest grossing ever in iceland and many suspect it'll take the top place from Titanic later on.


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