LOTR, amateur style

Success. I finally read the Lord of the Rings books. It took me months, and not a small amount of moaning and complaining to Travis about 1,000 pages of:

• unnecessary poetry/songs
• an over-abundance of landscape descriptions
• foreboding, foreboding, and more foreboding
• creepy Gollum
• Frodo fainting/falling down

I have of course seen the movies, though not for a long time, and I was surprised that I did not remember a lot of things that happened in them. I told several people this, and they unfailingly responded, "well, there's a lot in the books that didn't happen in the movies." But when I told them that I didn't remember about the giant spider, or the battle at Minas Tirith, or Frodo getting captured, they agreed that those were major plot points, definitely covered in the movies.
Mostly I don't remember anything about the Return of the King, so I netflixed it. And, because thorough is my middle name, I ordered the extended version. What was I thinking? Over 4 hours of hobbits falling down and foreboding? The two discs have been sitting on our table for a week now, taunting me.
But I guess since I'm procrastinating, and Travis is at a Rangers game with our friend Andrew (hopefully watching them beat the Angels), now is my chance. Sasquatch is keeping me company, because neither of us like battles, and I don't guarantee that we'll finish it, but we're making an effort. I am going to blog while watching, because I am not good at only doing one thing at a time, especially when that one thing is not dancing.
I will give commentary for a little bit:
So far, everything is out of order, which makes sense because the books cover one entire storyline at a time (and audiences can only handle so much fainting Frodo at once), but it's jarring. Also, everyone is standing around drinking and celebrating after Helm's Deep, which did not happen. Make haste, people! You are going to be late to the battle at Minis Tirith!
Also, Frodo and Sam are still with Gollum. Does that mean that they haven't got to the spider yet? I was hoping to miss it, since it's supposed to be in the second book.
Ah, yes. Gollum is talking about it now. They are going to the spider. That wouldn't be scary to me, obviously, but I'm pretty sure Sasquatch would have nightmares, so we'll have the remote at ready.
Man that Andy Sirkus (Gollum) is a terrific actor!
Also also, have you read There and Back Again? It's Sean Astin (Sam)'s account of the filming of the movies. Of course I read this years ago, long before reading the books; I may be the kind of person that real fans can't stand. Okay, Gandalf just said, "Run, Shadowfax. Show us the meaning of haste." Awesome.
Sasquatch is very impatient with this movie. She would rather try to eat my mukluks, Travis' frisbees, and every sock in the house.
I am having fun watching this movie after seeing my best friend Amy's pictures of her LOTR location tour in New Zealand. I would be having even more fun if Amy were in the movie. Why can't you have been there 10 years earlier, Bern? You are perfect Hobbit height!
The king of the Nazgul just left Minis Morgul, guys. Orcs are approaching Osgiliath by boat. It's about to get real heavy. Time for a snack.
Ha! I couldn't remember the name of Osgiliath, so I looked it up on the Lord of the Rings wiki (like wikipedia but just for LOTR), and guess what? The tagline is "One Wiki to Rule Them All."