fly, you fools.

i've finished watching the first two movies, and i'm about to fix dinner and watch "the return of the king."

while watching the first one, i remembered something.

when i took speech as a freshman in college, i totally did my "biography" speech on bilbo baggins.

i know, i am so cool.

i just looked up the outline on my computer. (yes i still have all those files saved...for times like these!)

i remember that i opened the speech by playing a clip from the first movie, of bilbo leaving the ring with gandalf. but i had forgotten that i chose to do the speech on bilbo, instead of a main character, because the movies don't explain how bilbo got the ring. so that's what my speech was about...bilbo's history of adventures (as told in the hobbit), and how he got the ring. and a lot of facts about hobbits that i found interesting, that i felt should enhance everyone's enjoyment of the movies.

it's also funny, because one point on my outline says to "recite the lord of the rings poem from memory."

oh. my. gosh.

i did that.

i got a B.

speech was actually one of my favorite classes. my professor was great, and i thought it was fun to be able to talk about whatever i wanted, uninterrupted, for 5-15 minutes.

people interrupt me a lot.

anyway, here's a quote from "the two towers." i think it summarizes the moral of the stories pretty well. one of the morals. because there's so much going on!

i'm not going to talk about how every single character in this movie is incredibly complex, or about how the fight scenes make me want to learn how to sword fight, or about how i wish i had pretty elf dresses to wear, or about how i wish i owned the scores to each movie, or about how i kind of want to marry every single male character in this movie (under the age of 30...ok, 45...)...etc.

you're welcome.

"Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."