For some reason, my old copy of The Tolkien Reader has a promo for Clockwork Orange… guess they were big college things.
I’m write something soon. Maybe a Moorcock or a Heinlien parody. The latter will probably involve Gandalf having sex with everyone, including characters I need to invent…
snicker Sure is! But I love these best, I think! Versions that are so foreign to the hzuman language, its scary and a hell funny at the same time!
So we’ve had Binary, C++ and JavaScript - what’s next?
OOOUUHH - Klingon Opera anyone???
Actually yesterday was Tolkein’s eleventy-first birthday, not eleventieth.
Simply superb. I bow down before the collective genius of this board!
My favourites: Dostoevsky for those with short attention spans, EverQuest, Piplet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Matrix… and too many more to list. 
My humble submissions:
‘Gondor Heights’, by JRR Bronte - Frodo makes an impassioned speech to Sam:
“My love for the Shire is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for the Ring resembles the eternal rocks beneath; a source of little visible delight, but necessary. … Sam, I am the Ring. It’s always, always on my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own, my Precious! So do not talk of our separation again…”
(or possibly the Kate Bush version: “My one Ring / My only Preciousssss”…)
~
‘The Eye of the Ring’, dear ol’ Robert Jordan:
“Woolheaded man!” sniffed Arwen, folding her arms beneath her breasts, then unfolding them again so she could tug on her braid.
Aragorn grimaced. If only Legolas were there. Legolas always knew how to talk to girls.
[etc. The story trundles on with all the pace of an Ent dinner party. Frodo gets laid. The Dark One resurrects all his clearly inept lieutenants every few books (endless franchise potential!). And still no-one can give a definitive answer on who killed Asmodean. sigh… ]
~
Sorry, they were a bit pathetic, but maybe someone else can run with them?
Requests:
- Spinal Tap
- bad disaster flick, a la Independence Day or some such
- The Office
- Gene Wolfe (ulp)
There’s an Eddie Izzard version perculating in my brain (nasty process).
Thanks, everyone, for a great read…
I don’t know if I’m good enough at parodying people’s styles to do it myself, but if it hasn’t been done I’d love to see someone do LOTR in the style of Chris Claremont’s 80’s run on X-Men.
Here’s my take on Calvin and Hobbes. Please click on the link. Written and drawn by yours truly.
I am absolutely shocked no-one’s done this yet…
War of the Rings.
Gandalf (As Narrator): No-one would have believed, in the last days of the Third Age, that Shire affairs were being watched from the endless swamps of Mordor. No-one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinised, like someone who studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of even greater evil. And yet, across the Mountains of Mist, Forces immeasurably more evil than ours, regarded the Ring with a flame-lidded eye. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us…
Did someone already do the Marquis de Sade?
I’m willing to.
Does some dedicated Tolkienite want to put an index together for this thread? Eru knows we’d all be wonderfully grateful!
I’ll do it–I could make it a page on my website that this thread could link to. How’s that? I’ll start and you guys can approve it.
-Epi
Hey there Qadgop…
Let me guess, big E.E.Smith fan, right? Well, he and Tolkien are from about the same period. Come to think of it, so is Edgar Rice Burroughs. Ever read his Princess of Mars series?
Gotcha covered, Qadgop. I’m working on the web page right now, but I need some help, as I haven’t gotten all of the references here. Someone e-mail me if you’re interested in helping with hosting, design, etc…
Ring Trekkin’ by The Firm
*o/` Ring Trekkin’
across Middle-Earth
with this motley Fellowship,
a bright new Age to birth.
Ring Trekkin’
across Middle-Earth,
hounded by our enemies
and things are getting worse!
[sub]Elven Prince, Legolas[/sub]
Orcs approaching from the West,
from the West, from the West!
Orcs approaching from the West,
I’m still the prettiest one!
Ring Trekkin’
across Middle-Earth
with this motley Fellowship,
a bright new Age to birth.
Ring Trekkin’
across Middle-Earth,
hounded by our enemies
and things are getting worse!
[sub]The Wizard, Gandalf[/sub]
It’s Evil, Frodo, but not as we know it,
not as we know it, not as we know it.
It’s Evil, Frodo, but not as we know it.
Wanna play with my hat?
/Chorus/
[sub]The warrior, Boromir[/sub]
It’s worse than that, Gandalf’s dead!
Gandalf’s dead! Gandalf’s dead!
It’s worse than that, Gandalf’s dead!
C’mere, little Hobbit!
/Chorus/
[sub]The ranger, Aragorn[/sub]
Find those hobbits! Still not king,
still not king, still not king.
Find those hobbits! Still not king.
Still not king. Damn.
/Chorus/
[sub]From Imladris, Elrond Half-Elven[/sub]
You cannot change the Laws of Magic,
Laws of Magic, Laws of Magic.
You cannot change the Laws of Magic.
Do I look good in purple?
/Chorus/
See my “Doc” Smith does LOTR on page one.
And of course I read the Mars books. I’ve got them all in hardcover! Also Venus, Pellucidar, Tangor, The Mucker, etc.
“The Wraiths Are Back In Town” - with apologies to Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy and well, everyone.
Guess who just got back today?
Those black-clad Wraiths that had been away
Hadn’t changed, hadn’t much to say
But man, I still think them cats are scary
They were asking if the Ring was around,
Where the Shire was, where could Baggins be found?
Told them he was living in Hobbiton
Driving old Lobelia crazy
The Wraiths are back in town
The Wraiths are back in town
The Wraiths are back in to-oow-oww-oww-oownnn
The Wraiths are back in town
Remember that 'Gul who used to hiss a lot?
Every night he’d chase us while we’d try not to get caught
Man, when I tell you he was cruel, he was red hot
I mean he was shrieking
And this time over at Barliman’s place
Well, that Frodo slipped, then vanished without a trace
Man, you shoulda seen Sam’s face
If that Hobbit disappears again, forget him!
(Repeat chorus)
Spread the word around – guess who’s back in town?
Friday night, dressed to kill
In a dell on Weathertop hill
The wind will blow and blood will spill
And if the Hobbits want to fight you’d better let ‘em
The Elves in the forest singing out a battle song
The Shadow’s getting closer and it won’t be long
Won’t be long ‘fore Sauron comes
Now that the Wraiths are here again
(Repeat chorus)
P.S. Thumbs up for John Norman parody. By the Priest-Kings, that was great!
Expanding on Edward George Bulwer-Lytton…
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept between the burrows (for it is in Hobbitton that our scene lies), rattling along the burrow-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of Hobbitton, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the watch, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated,–and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent. “Hobbit. Shire. Bagginsssssss….”
At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added,–“But if this vill do as vell, Nazgul, it is quite at your sarvice!” Pausing reflectively for a moment, Nazgul responded, that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket he rode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and rain would allow. After many days, he soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters was written “Sauron’s Court.” Having at the most conspicuous of these buildings, a workshop, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the great fires, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a wizard of a certain age, and endowed with a gaunt thinness of face and person.
“Hast got it, Nazgul?” said the wizard quickly, as he closed the door on the guest.
“Noa, noa! not exactly–but as I thinks as ow . . .”
“Pish, you fool!” cried the wizard interrupting him, peevishly. “Vy, it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing ken to another, and you has not been arter the ring at all. So there’s the poor cretur a-raving and a-dying, and you . . .”
“Let I speak!” interrupted Nazgul in his turn. “I tells you I vent first to Mother Bussblone’s, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Ring, and she says, says she, 'I ‘as only a “Companion to the ‘obbit!” but you’ll get a Ring, I thinks, as Master Tolkiens,–the cobbler, as preaches.’ So I goes to Master Tolkiens, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the Ring–'cause vy?–I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you’ll be a-getting it at the butcher’s hover the vay,–'cause vy?–the butcher’ll be damned!” So I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as not a Ring: but I 'as some scrap metal bound for all the world just like ‘un, and mayhap the poor cretur mayn’t see the difference.’ So I takes the metal, Master Sauron, and here they be surely!–and how’s poor Judy?"
My very first post. This thread is so much fun. Wish I had something great to post, but the comments on Terry Brooks have already been done. (LOTR couldn’t have been written by him as he would have had no one to steal from). Also loved the Elrond Hubbard and all the poetry. Here’s a link to the Tolkien Sarcasm page which you all might enjoy: http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/tolksarc.htm
Another board I am on posted a link to this thread and I have been laughing (or at least giggling) for days. I would love to see a David Letterman Top 10 list, but after seeing all the other entries know that someone else would do a much better job than I would.
PS - Here’s a link to another site with alternative versions of LOTR - many very good, but not as funny as this thread of course:
http://www.flin.demon.co.uk/althist/auth.htm
Check it out …
How about someone doing LotR in the style of a set of letters to the editor of your local newspaper written by angry, largely ignorant one-issue voters? You know, the ones with lots of phrases about “deplorable behavior” and “that’s what’s wrong with our country today” and “if he would look around once in a while instead of…” and “After reading so-and-so’s letter of October 13th I felt compelled to write” and “if only it were that simple”.