[Bêthberry]

A Savage Journey into the Heart of the Tolkien Dream

Bilbo S. Thompson,
on assignment for Get Yer Ya-Yas Out

We were somewhere around Park Galore when the mushrooms and lembas started to kick in. This was a very ominous assignment with overtones of extreme personal danger and I had wanted to be fully alert in all my senses. The MoreScenarios headed out on the highway, wearing chains, shades, and last week's growth of beard, which was definitely not the designer stubble of the Itship heroes themselves.

This Itship was in revolt about something. It belonged to a generation that saw Itself doomed and useless, struggling with the painful contradictions of values gone sour and rotting and warped by the uncontrolled onslaught of a military/industrial/commercial Tolkien enterprise. They were disillusioned by something, by all those filmic fans whose MO was drool through school and the testosterone riders who assumed that no quarter was the heroic path.

To anyone who was part of the Tolkien scene before Ring became synonymous with profit rather than preciousss, the whole world seemed drifting towards a stance of wild, uncontrolled exploitation. The Itship threatened this militaristic take-over by parodying, ghosting and overthetopping every text they could lay their hands on. What this sprawling, free-wheeling orgy of excess had to do with Tolkien soon became a painful contradiction.

And so the Itship came face to face with the warfare state of She. The MoreScenarios knocked back a few beers, then knocked off a few heads, and then knocked on wood. (Because this would soon be a PeeJay13 episode, no one was knocked up.) It was a garden of agony as they struggled to overcome their natural brutal urges for mortal combat and trophy taking. In the end, following Robespierre's gentle remonstrations, they satisfied themselves with taking only one prisoner, the foul-breathed Etceteron, wrapped up in chains. Once the Bow itself was captured and the Great Fozzle, they decided not to mess with Gravlox's wooden leg, not themselves having any dead foot fetishes. Then, the MoreScenarios careened, fast and furious and loud, on the early morning freeway back to Minus Moreghoul, long hair, beards and bandanas blowing in the wind, leaving the Itship in disarray. We expect soon them to follow.

* * * * * * * *

"Well," said Merisuwyniel. "You know what happened last time we tried to save one of us from capture and kidnap."

"Right," said Chrysophylax. "I overate."

"Wrong," said Pimpiowyn. "We lost our taste for barbequed flesh."

"Buy the ticket; take the ride," affirmed Orogarn Two heroically.

"I haven't got Flit the Fourth written yet; we cannot have more adventures," bemoaned Vogonwë.

"That settles it," spoke up Kuruharan with uncharacteristic haste. "Let's go save Etceteron."

Gravlox spoke not a word, but stood tall and strode forth determined to act every inch of a Gregory Peck hero.