The distance between Rohan or Gondor and Rivendell is CONSIDERABLY longer than the distance from the Goblin-Gate to the Carrock. By several orders of magnitude.
This pizza-delivery related quip made me realise that Elrond’s relationship to Aragorn is similar to that between a certain pizza-delivery-boy and his distant nephew.
Elrond is Aragorn’s 62 x great uncle, apparently, while Fry is Farnsworth’s 30 x great uncle. Aragorn’s family tree is of course many thousands of years longer than Farnsworth’s, but his ancestors lived longer.
Why on Earth would the minions talk to the cops? Even if for some reason I found it needful to frame you, they’d have brought the contraband themselves, planted it, and then arranged an anonymous tiip.
I can’t decide if you’ve been reading The Last Ring Bearer or Bored of the Rings.
I’ve never even heard of the former, and couldn’t make it through the latter. I’m not a fan of parodies.
:eek:
Don’t both these stanzas speak to you?
Everwhite vs. Everclear! 
Ah, the Rooskie Commie* Last Ring Bearer.*
Shame!
My favorite line:
Hated Bored of the Rings so much. There were maybe three times I smiled during the whole damn book.
You probably had to be 15 when you read it. BotR quotes probably ate most of the last available long-term memory space in my brain.
May I ask how old you are? I tend to think that appreciation of BOTR often depends in part on whether you came of age during the 60’s. The book employed that era’s cultural trends and memes (NOT the petty dwarf!) pretty well. But it would fall flat for those not familiar with jargon and imagery it invoked.
In many ways, it’s now as dated as a 1990’s SNL skit. (The '70s skits are still classic, of course!)
You relieve my mind immeasurably. Thanks!
Yeah I remembered Elrond and I think Gandalf discussing who else would or would not come to the council and Tom Bombadil and several others “would not come” and I must have conflated teh book with the movie, which we watched a couple days ago.
I was read BOTR when I was a teen in the late 80’s and it still makes me laugh just thinking about Arrowshirt’s armor falling off and getting his sword stuck in the ceiling when he’s striking a dramatic pose.
Also (from distant memory):
“You have ridden far”
“You are in much danger”
“You leave at dawn”
or something like that…<puts BOTR on re-reading list>
“you cash in your chips
on page eigthy-eight.”
“Many good men and true had fallen: the brothers Handlebar and Hersheybar, and Eorache’s uncle, the trusty Eordrum.”
As I think on it, you’re right; one of the Elf-lords does allow himself a moment’s regret that they didn’t call Bombadil, and Gandalf replies that it doesn’t matter; he wouldn’t have come and giving him the Ring to keep would have been a serious mistake.
It was Elrond himself, in fact, with Erestor on the follow-up question. Bombadi’s home l is not as far away as many of the others–around 450 miles, much of it on decent roads. (Minas Tirith, on the other hand, would be about 1200 miles away by way of the Gap of Rohan.) A messenger on a fast horse could probably reach the Old Forest in about 5 days. Return time depends on Tom’s response and travel speed. The messenger could return with Tom’s refusal, but (barring magical elf-steed stamina) it would take longer than the initial leg; the horse, at least, would need rest. Figure 12 days for a round trip, and perhaps 15 or more if Tom rides along.
Frodo spent 4 days recuperating between his arrival and the Council. If Elrond had decided immediately upon his arrival to call a Council, and remembered and sent a messenger for Bombadil at once, they would have had to wait an additional 8 days to know whether or not he was coming, and 11 days if they expected him to show. Given the situation, I don’t think he would have been willing to wait that long.
So, it was an odd thing for Elrond to say, unless…
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Elven messengers are faster than I’m estimating. (Entirely possible.)
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He actually decided to call the Council well before Frodo arrived, but not months in advance. Perhaps when Gandalf arrived, or even earlier, once he took account of all the far travelers that had gathered.
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He has some faster way of communicating than sending messengers out on horseback, a notion not supported by the text and evidently annoying to Skald, so I’ll leave it be.
It’s the notion that Elrond sent a message to DENETHOR that I find annoying. (Plus I’m a curmudgeon.)
But I also get annoyed when movies in general compress action down to ridiculous lengths. Jackson’s movies don’t generally fall victim to that, incidentally. There’s plenty of lines to establish that we’re only seeing the highlights of the heroes’ journey, not the entire thing. The hobbits change clothes between Brandywine and Bree, for instance; it was obvious to me, even having not read the book yet, that they’d stopped off somewhere in between (likely at Merry’s home) to better prepare themselves for the journey. After Frodo is injured the first time, Sam comments that it’s three days to Rivendell; Gandalf says that it’ll take 40 days simply to get to the Misty Mountains.
Et cetera.
In the LOTR movie, Gandalf said the Company should hold a course west of the MM for 40 days, on the first leg of the ring going south. But yeah, I agree they do pretty well with indicating the passage of times in those three movies, setting aside the time when Elrond traveled to Rohan seemingly overnight just so he could hand Aragorn his sword.
OTOH, Jackson’s Hobbit movie seems to be compressing time ridiculously, in that apparently (though we can’t be sure until another movie appears) the trilogy is the origin story of the Witch King, who in the books had been hanging around ME for 1600ish years but in the movie he’s 1540 years late.
Yes, that’s the really over-the-top bit. My point was, at least in part, that it would have been impractical even to send a message to the Old Forest. Sending one to a city nearly three times as far away, with more serious hazards along the way, makes no sense at all in this context. (The barrow-wights should not be a problem for an elf, but Saruman might be another matter.) It took Boromir over three months (110 days, he says) to make the trip, and he arrived on the day of the Council. Even assuming a tireless elf and a horse liquored up on miruvor, the messenger would have had to start out at least 4 to 5 months before the Council. If Elrond planned the meeting that far in advance, why didn’t he send anyone to Frodo? Oh, wait–if he had, his summons would have arrived before Gandalf even left Hobbiton.
And yes, that part of the EE stands out partly because Jackson generally did a much better job with timescales. (Of course, I also dislike it because I dislike pretty much every moment of screentime for Denethor.)