A cracking gift!

Today at work my department had its seasonal potluck luncheon and Secret Santa gift exchange, and I have to say that it's a pleasure to work with people who don't fool around when it comes to gift selection.  Someone showed the remarkable good judgement required to get me a Wallace and Gromit Liquid Clock 7000, a toy so dangerous to assemble THAT IT CAME WITH A SET OF ACTUAL SAFETY GOGGLES.  Yes, Glen Williams received a radio controlled car that would drive up the wall, but hey, safety goggles, Glen - SAFETY GOGGLES.

And, and, it works.  The clock is powered by a simple battery made of zinc and copper strips in vinegar (orange juice was the other option for an acid - sorry guys, but vinegar has a much longer unrefrigerated shelf life) and after carefully following the assembly instructions, I now have the digital clock cheerfully ticking away.

My only complaint is that the name is too simple for a Wallace invention.  It would have to be something like the Liquid-powered Clock-o-matic 7000 to really qualify.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure about where I myself qualify on the "Only for use by children over ten years old" scale.  Because, well, I'm still pretty excited about the goggles.

 - Sid

P.S.  Is there anyone in the audience who doesn't know about Wallace and Gromit, Great Britain's cheese-loving, tea-drinking, invention-building, stop-motion marvels?  A Grand Day Out?  The Wrong Trousers?  A Close Shave?  The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

An Unexpected Journey?

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.

The first part of Peter Jackson's Hobbit Trilogy made its debut on Friday, and reviews indicate that it's very well done, very much in the spirit of Jackson's work on The Lord of the Rings but perhaps more approachable for the average viewer.  Reviewers also speak very highly of Martin Freeman's performance in the role of Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit who unexpectedly finds himself taken from his quiet if slightly stuffy life in Hobbiton to participate in an epic quest involving dwarves, trolls, wizards, elves, orcs, a dragon and his horde of stolen treasure, and, of course, a magical ring.

None of this is a huge surprise. Peter Jackson has a proven ability to visually portray Tolkien's Middle Earth, and it may well have been for the best that Guillermo del Toro was unable to fit The Hobbit into his directing schedule. However, I'm a little concerned about the fact that it's the first of three movies:  An Unexpected Journey will be followed by The Desolation of Smaug next year, and the trilogy will conclude with There and Back Again in 2014.

My paperback copy of The Hobbit is 272 pages in length, as opposed to the 1008 pages of The Lord of the Rings.  Word count is perhaps a better indicator of relative size - counts vary depending on what's included (chapter headings, appendices, etc.) but online sources have The Hobbit at 95,674 words, and The Lord of The Rings weighing in at 468,420 (not including the appendices).  Short answer, The Lord of the Rings is about four times longer than The Hobbit, and yet the movie adaptation of The Hobbit is apparently going to be about the same length as the Rings series:  three movies and nine plus hours.

I gather from quoted comments by Peter Jackson that some of the extra time will involve Gandalf's various travels and adventures during the time he spends away from Bilbo and the dwarves, and logically there's a lot of room to expand battle scenes and Bilbo's time spent hiding in the palace of the Elvenking and so on.  Even so, I'm worried about story for the sake of profit over story for the sake of story.

I have a lot of confidence in Mr. Jackson, but I also realize that moviemaking is a business.  On that basis, I can easily imagine a meeting in which a group of investment-minded suits suggest that three movies would very likely make three times as much money as one movie, hint hint hint.  In support of this, there's a common thread in reviews of An Unexpected Journey regarding parts that seem to drag on too long, or which have been enormously extended from the original text:  "Things that the book mentions in one sentence are given entire scenes."

I have tentative plans to see the first installment of The Hobbit between Christmas and New Year's, and I hope to go in with an open mind.  But I have to admit that I'm a bit worried that the extra content may mean that Bilbo Baggins isn't the only person going on an unexpected journey. 

 - Sid

Preferably later.

 "God, it's the end of the world, and I'm still 15 minutes late." 

Penny, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

By the way, speaking of the end of the world, has anyone heard anything new about December 21st?  You know, when the 13th Mayan b'ak'tun* runs out?  Personally, I'd like some kind of solid information about exactly how the world is going to end, it would be a lot easier to prepare. In fact, other than a few end of the world parties, no one seems to have put a lot of planning into this whole thing - there's been no debt holiday, we haven't been told to stay home from work, and as far as I know there hasn't been a single end of the world riot yet.

For that matter, is anyone still tracking the sinister alien objects that were due to arrive around now?  That whole thing seems to have fallen off the map, which is surprising under the circumstances.  Or has it?  Maybe there's a lot more planning going on than we think...

Seriously though, there's been a number of these apocalyptic predictions over the last few years - you know, purely on a statistical basis, sooner or later one of these clowns is going to be right.

 - Sid

*  Did we all get our Olmec As A Second Language credits at university?