# Seriously(?)... a book for die-hard nerds on JRRT !



## Deleted member 12094 (Oct 12, 2019)

We all know about the books of JRRT.
We all know also there are many books about the books of JRRT.
Well, I came across a book about the books about the books of JRRT, if you follow me .😲

The "Essential J.R.R. Tolkien Sourcebook" by George Beahm looks at JRRT in an eccentric non-literature manner. Following a (hardly relevant) overview of the various JRRT book versions, this publication discusses 66 "books about the books of JRRT" (who has them all...?) and there is yet another list of 28 audio adaptations. Surprisingly (at least for me): there is also a list of musical adaptations which found their inspiration in LotR.

That said, a good part of that book (about..., remember?) is also devoted to the kitsch-lovers among us: extensive lists of what is available regarding themed address books, journals, calendars, postcards, posters,...: all equally indispensable. 

You'll be thrilled to learn where to buy Gandalf's staff for 295$ (I'm sure you all have one already) but you might consider acquiring the One Ring in pure gold, which sets you back up to 896$; cheaper versions come without guarantee of invisibility. 

From my point of view, and whilst still trying to uphold a (moderately) serious impression here: the overview of printed and audio books is an interesting part, to be fair. However, since it was published in 2004 one might doubt if it's up-to-date still (apart from irrelevant movie-related trash published since then). ISBN is 1-56414-702-9.

_PS - check out Glamdring and Sting prices too! 🤓_​


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## Miguel (Oct 12, 2019)

Merroe said:


> You'll be thrilled to learn where to buy Gandalf's staff for 295$



Someone should design a lamp based on Belegûr's crown, use good materials and sell it for a high price.



Merroe said:


> but you might consider acquiring the One Ring in pure gold, which sets you back up to 896$



A few days ago i read something mentioning that Morgoth's essence was inside gold but not absolute, and that Sauron used gold rings because of this or something like that. I think it was from Notes and Motives but i'm not sure.


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## Olorgando (Oct 13, 2019)

Merroe said:


> … this publication discusses 66 "books about the books of JRRT" ...


The only thing that might interest me.
But since you say this book was published in 2004, even getting a copy of this book *itself* might be seriously difficult (been there with others).


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 13, 2019)

I wouldn't pay the $30 it appears to retail for -- and a paperback at that -- but I see used copies online for $5.


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## ArwenStar (Oct 13, 2019)

Merroe said:


> You'll be thrilled to learn where to buy Gandalf's staff for 295$ (I'm sure you all have one already) but you might consider acquiring the One Ring in pure gold, which sets you back up to 896$; cheaper versions come without guarantee of invisibility.


ok... can i kill orcs/sauron/morgoth/everything with gandalfs staff? and can i get the set of 20 rings?


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## Deleted member 12094 (Oct 14, 2019)

As a follow-up of your understandable enthusiasm, dear ArwenStar: the staff is good (I've tested it), but for your own day-to-day orc-killing business, my advise would go to Gimli's axe (only 129$)!

However, if close combat is not your thing, consider the more economic arms of Legolas (bow, knives and other very useful stuff) for a mere 40$ - a bargain)!

Please report back how well it works out for you. 😅


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## Olorgando (Oct 14, 2019)

ArwenStar said:


> ... and can i get the set of 20 rings?


Wearing all 20 at once could lead to your creating some "oops" posts with your smart-thingy!


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 15, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> Wearing all 20 at once could lead to your creating some "oops" posts with your smart-thingy!


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## Olorgando (Oct 15, 2019)

Erestor Arcamen said:


>


Palpatine? I have the DVDs of the first six (by real-world calendar) Star Wars films, and have seen them all, but little has stuck in memory (same goes for the really *big* Star *Trek* DVD box I have, the first *ten* movies … 🙄 and btw I do not consider that first Star Trek movie to be so bad, on the contrary!)


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 15, 2019)

Yeah, Palpatine. I'm not a huge fan of the prequels but the original trilogy are some of my favorite movies. Rogue One and Solo, the separate movies, were actually really good as well. Unfortunately, the sequel trilogy gave people bad impressions of the newer movies so they weren't as popular.

If you mean the original Star Trek movie, I agree it's not that bad and is a fun movie. I actually like most of the original cast movies. Once they went back in time to get humpback whales (Star Trek IV), I kind of stopped them seriously lol but still have seen them all.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 15, 2019)

The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is tight!


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## Olorgando (Oct 15, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is tight!


S-eS, where an how do you dig out these "pitch meeting" videos all over the place?!? 😅


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 15, 2019)

I prefer the theory that Jar Jar was supposed to be the evil Sith lord and then when people hated him that was scrapped lol


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 15, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> S-eS, where an how do you dig out these "pitch meeting" videos all over the place?!? 😅


Youtube. You know, that thing you're afraid of?  





Dissing sand and rubbing skin is also tight!

Might as well finish off the trilogy:






Well, I guess I'm evil now.


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## Olorgando (Oct 16, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Youtube. You know, that thing you're afraid of?


Duh! I caught on quite quickly that some threads here are basically glorified collections of YouTube links. And not posted solely by yourself. 
But as I told you elsewhere, I have actually given YouTube a peek. And from what I have heard about it over the years it must be a huge repository. 
*That's* what I meant with how - in that huge maze, where one can probably get seriously lost, does one find this guy doing nutty pitch meetings about almost everything. 
But then I'll take a wild guess that you're a thoroughly seasoned YouTube veteran. 🤖😎


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 16, 2019)

Nah -- it's all about the algorithm. Search a recent skiffy or super movie and you're likely to get a pitch meeting.

Or, you could just search "Pitch Meetings"!


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## Olorgando (Oct 16, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Or, you could just search "Pitch Meetings"!


I'm having "Dilbert" flashes when I watch these.
As I have posted, perhaps even on TTF, I consider the "Dilbert" comic strip (of which I own and have read several albums) a serious, sober, detailed - if with a certain horrified undertone - study of the (mal-) practices common in at least some US companies (the plague having spread beyond US borders by now). At least in the "Pitch Meetings" you have posted here and that I have actually watched, I find them to be the most precise critiques of any movies I actually know (this used to be the province of Mad Magazine some decades ago, which hilariously shredded at least one Godfather and one Rocky movie that I had seen). 🤣


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 16, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> it must be a huge repository.


Here are some figures to wrap your head around:









How Much Do YouTubers Make? - Website Builder


Over 17 years ago, YouTube changed the way we consume content. What started as a place to watch quirky cat videos has grown into a massive empire of




biographon.com


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## Olorgando (Oct 16, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Here are some figures to wrap your head around:


Umm - MS Edge shows me an empty page, even after I press the "refresh" button … 🤨


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 16, 2019)

Try this one:









More Than 500 Hours Of Content Are Now Being Uploaded To YouTube Every Minute - Tubefilter


Your average person could spend their entire lifetime trying to watch all the content uploaded to YouTube in just one day. The platform’s users upload more than 500 hours of fresh video per minute, YouTube revealed at recent press events. That works out to 30,000 hours of new content per hour...




www.google.com





People are already nostalgic for the "good old days" of youtube.











And can't forget cats -- early adopters, and still going strong!





I read some years ago that 18% of Internet traffic was cat-related. That may have been propaganda from Friskies, but still, there are a _lot _of cat videos! 🐱


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## Olorgando (Oct 16, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Try this one:
> … number-hours-video-uploaded-to-youtube-per-minute ...


Hours of video running time - or Mega- etc. bytes of disk storage capacity needed on the servers for them ...
I guess I apply more restrictive definitions to the term "content" (which may join my ever-growing list of "non-words", worn down to oblivion by massive misuse).
And on other sites, perhaps more restrictive in allowing links of many types, I have seen quite a few (cat) pictures (stills taken from YT videos?) that had me react in exactly one way:
"What's the number of the SPCA???" There's plenty of extremely *un*funny stuff percolating on the net. 😒


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## ArwenStar (Oct 17, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> That may have been propaganda from Friskies, but still, there are a _lot _of cat videos! 🐱





Olorgando said:


> I have seen quite a few (cat) pictures (stills taken from YT videos?) that had me react in exactly one way:



Everyone is obsessed with cats. This is a fact. 🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱


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## Olorgando (Oct 17, 2019)

ArwenStar said:


> Everyone is obsessed with cats. This is a fact. 🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱


I can just see it coming: a revisionist Silmarillion movement of cat fans on the Internet clamoring "bring back Tevildo!!!".


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 17, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> I can just see it coming: a revisionist Silmarillion movement of cat fans on the Internet clamoring "bring back Tevildo!!!".



Or a miniseries about Queen Berúthiel and her feline servants


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## Olorgando (Oct 17, 2019)

Erestor Arcamen said:


> Or a miniseries about Queen Berúthiel and her feline servants


Meh! I just found a weak point in my above post … neither Tevildo and his Angband pride nor QB's "kitties" quite conform to the "awwwww! cuuuuute!" Internet norm … 😬


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 17, 2019)

Apropos of nothing more than (possibly) evil cats, I used to have this insert from one of my top five favorite films.



I think I paid 5 bucks at a convention, back in the 80's. You should see the prices now!


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## Olorgando (Oct 18, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Apropos of nothing more than (possibly) evil cats, I used to have this insert from one of my top five favorite films.
> 
> View attachment 6138
> 
> I think I paid 5 bucks at a convention, back in the 80's. You should see the prices now!


Ah, from 1964 and starring one of the masters of the horror genre, dear old Vincent Price (though quite often one has the impression that he had his tongue firmly in his cheek).


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 18, 2019)

True enough -- many of the films he did for Corman and Castle were done simply for money to fund his art collection. He must have found something compelling about Ligeia, though, because in that one, he played it straight. It was noted by critics at the time.


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 18, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> True enough -- many of the films he did for Corman and Castle were done simply for money to fund his art collection. He must have found something compelling about Ligeia, though, because in that one, he played it straight. It was noted by critics at the time.



I love Corman and Castle . 13 Ghosts is one of my favorite horror movies.


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## Olorgando (Oct 18, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> ... He must have found something compelling about Ligeia, though, because in that one, he played it straight. It was noted by critics at the time.


That tongue-in-cheek was usually visible by him hamming it up (don't you *dare* pollute this thread with the B-word!!! 🤐 )
But yes, when he played in low-key, he could really be scary (not to my extremely jaded current self, but I was more impressionable in decades long gone. 😎🙄 )


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 18, 2019)

Erestor Arcamen said:


> I love Corman and Castle


I regret not seeing "The Tingler" in the theater -- especially one of those rigged with the tingler devices. That must have been quite an experience.

I used to sneak downstairs to try to watch "Twilight Zone", without waking my parents up. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. One night, Barliman and I made it down to "Shock Theater", but unfortunately woke up our Dad.

"What are you two doing out of bed?"

"Something good's on! We want to watch it!"

"What?"

"The Tingler."

At this point, William Castle appeared, to introduce the film. Our Dad stood there until it reached the 50: to 58: remark:






Switched the TV off, and said "No, you don't -- now go to bed!".


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## Olorgando (Oct 18, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> … I used to sneak downstairs to try to watch "Twilight Zone", ...


Presented by Rod Serling, yep. But as its original run was until 1964, what I could have watched must already have been in syndication (we arrived in the US in late summer of 1966). I still have the jingle in my ear …


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 18, 2019)

Yes, I'm way too young to have had a chance to see The Tingler in one of the rigged theaters but that'd be amazing. Our local drive-in does classic horror/monster movie nights so I get to go see some old b and z movies the way they were meant to be seen, at least .


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 18, 2019)

At least you still _have _one -- they're getting rare. One of the last times I went to a drive-in was to see "The Dunwich Horror". The projectionist somehow got the second reel started upside down and backwards. As my friends and I were also pretty much upside down and backwards that night, it took us a while to notice! 🤪


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## Olorgando (Oct 18, 2019)

Drive-ins - just right now not a good place to be, as we have some dark clouds giving off "farts" crossing us - at least if you're sitting in a convertible car with a fabric top. And as my wife just told me, it has actually also started raining - a very rare occasion in this year's drought summer, when seemingly 99% of "hopeful" clouds passed over us without depositing a single drop of precipitation badly needed; fifth year in a row with a serious precipitation deficit, 2015 and 2018 having been years with hellish summers (2019 pulverized absolute maximum heat records, but had cooler spells interspersed).


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## Erestor Arcamen (Oct 18, 2019)

I'm lucky I guess, we have two. One is near my parents' house. It actually was going to close but then some car company, Honda maybe, did a promo where they bought digital projectors for a few drive-ins and this one was one of the lucky ones. The other is right outside of Pittsburgh and is open year-round. I'm not sure how much fun it'd be in the winter as I feel like the windows would fog up a lot.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 18, 2019)

I recently saw this interesting documentary on TBD:






There are some others on youtube.

You'll be explaining to your kids what a "drive-in" was. I suppose several generations of children have asked "Why is it called '7-11'?"

Today's kids are already staring to ask "What’s 'TV'?".


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## Olorgando (Oct 18, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Today's kids are already staring to ask "What’s 'TV'?".


Drive-ins … flat-screen TV monsters … hmmmmm ...
More and more TVs (as far as I can tell) are being hyped as having Internet-access ...
Now we have a 42-inch "flat"-screen Toshiba (compared to the current generation it is quite "fat"), a big jump from our 27-inch tube affair (I mean, my offline tower has a 26-inch monitor!). But it probably rates as almost a "portable" nowadays (except for the "fatness" issue).
TVs can do Internet.
Kids are doing almost everything on their "smart"-phones these days, is my (possibly erroneous) impression.
So kid, watching something on streaming on - oh what the hell, a tablet! (huge compared to "s"-ps) walks in to the room with, say, a 55-inch 4K TV (ours is only HD).
Kid stares incredulously at the tiny screen of his portable, sees the same stuff running on that wall-filler 55-incher (and I've seen adveritements for 66-inchers, and just forget those people with the IT-nerdiness of Douglas Adams and similar financial resources!) - the true successor to the drive-in movie theater may be the walk-in family TV room (probably mostly the living room). 🤩

At least in Germany, additionally, having an own car has seriously nose-dived as being high on the list of late teens - this may be quite different in the US with its much longer "normal" driving distances. Germany's population density is 233 people per square kilometer. The US's is 87. By states, only New Jersey (470), Rhode Island (394 - this really surprised me, would have thought it to be most densely populated by far), Massachusetts (336), Connecticut (286), and Maryland (238) top Germany's national average. Germany's most densely populated state (besides the three city-states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen), North Rhine-Westphalia (with my "ancestral" city of Cologne) tops all of these easily with 530. At a total population of 17,912,134, it would come in fifth in total population in the US behind California, Texas, Florida (what???), and New York State.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 22, 2019)

Wandering, incredibly enough, back to Merroe's original topic, I confess to wanting a Sting, ever since reading TH and LOTR, when I was 17. Of course, no such thing existed in those ancient days.

I balked at the $129 movie version, turned down a Pakistani knockoff for $25, and finally got a plastic one. But not the "official" one -- mine came from the Dollar Tree -- it's called "The Sword of the Kings".

Has a nice "ring" to it, no?


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## ArwenStar (Oct 22, 2019)

Hey, can someone just find me *ALL* the good quality LoTR + TH + everything Tolkien merch cause why not?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Oct 22, 2019)

Oh, I can _find _them for you, ArwenStar, but as for _buying _them -- I'm afraid you're on your own!


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## Olorgando (Oct 22, 2019)

ArwenStar said:


> Hey, can someone just find me *ALL* the good quality LoTR + TH + everything Tolkien merch cause why not?


Oh, so you've had a _*very*_ successful lottery ticket, ArwenStar? 😲


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Nov 7, 2019)

Back on topic, Barliman was up for a week, and brought me this item, picked out for me by my sister-in-law:

It's a "Gandroid the Gray" enamel pin -- and I'm sure it's not in the book. 

OTOH, he also brought a copy of Alan Lee's LOTR Sketchbook!


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