His Royal Orangeness Karl Willem and PA/PR Gromit reading a new book.
I asked Alan if he's signed to do The Hobbit but he said not just yet. He did tell me Sam is the favourite to take over Peter's directing chores. I replied "Isn't he doing Spiderman?" "Isn't that done?" "Oh, you think there will be no Spiderman 4?".......
How many Oscar winners can you bump into in one week?
Last Saturday I watched Florian's film about the Stasi in "The Lives of Others". It was impressive. Even more impressive was the fact that Florian's last essay while he was a student here was marked "possibly the worst essay I have ever read on politics" by his tutor. Now, Florian's like "Do you have an Oscar award, betch?"
Anyways, credit goes to my social mountaineering skills that I'm on first name basis with these guys.
Alan is of course Alan Lee. He is Tolkien's official illustrator. He also did the set design for the LOTR trilogy, King Kong, and Narnia. Tolkien was a good artist as well and I've seen the original illustrations he made of The Hobbit but Alan Lee deserves a lot of recognition for a lot of the visual imagery we now associate with the fantasy world Tolkien created.
(Anyways, enough of the Ricky Lo-style writing. It's so showbiz and it's so not me.)
Anyways, I'd like to celebrate 1067 unique hits on this blog by doing a give away. (Ok, the 516 unique hits were some rabid fans who crashed my blog looking for pictures of Elijah.)
I'm doing this as a sign of appreciation to those peeps who have so much time in their hands that they read a stranger's blog. Alam nyo naman ako, give lang ng give. Kaya wala akong kaaway. (I'd like to say that anyone named Jester is disqualified from this contest.)
But first, the contestant must answer some impossibly difficult questions. Syimpri! Ano akala nyo? Kasing dali lang ng entrance exam sa UP or Ateneo?
Here goes:
1. When is His Royal Orangeness Karl Willem's Birthday?
2. When did Gromit join the Orange Household?
3. Where is HRO Karl Willem's hometown?
4. How many times has Gromit won the Oscar?
5. How many years has The Nashman kept his celibacy and purity?
Correct answers will get this.....
A hardbound, FIRST edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's newest book edited by his son and just released this Wednesday. In fact it's probably the last Tolkien middle earth book to be published posthumously.
Heto ang blurbs from Tolkien expert John Garth:
"The story of The Children of Hurin had its prototype in 1914, when as a student at Oxford Tolkien tried retelling the Finnish folk-tale of ill-fated Kullervo, who unwittingly seduces his sister. By 1919, that project had been superseded and Tolkien had fused elements of Kullervo with the Teutonic dragon slayer Sigurd - the German Siegfried.....it is an outlaw saga......the prose is full of stark old words and alliteration...cruelty and brutality are explicit.....a far cry from the black and white moral landscape that critics too often decry in Tolkien's works....."
In short, you should read this before you read the Silmarillion. (And let me be honest that this is the first JRR Tolkien book I've read....)
Aaanyways, if you manage to answer the questions, we'll give you not just an ordinary copy but OUR COPY! Oh ha, mega-bonggacious na pa-premyo.
...signed by Alan Lee himself.......(Trivia: He appeared as one of The King of Men during the opening sequences to Fellowship)
One of the world's best fantasy artists dedicating a book to HRO Karl Willem, PA/PR Gromit, and The Nashman.
...oh, ha. I'm so generous to give you our OWN copy. (The questions are so impossible anyway, we're betting we get to keep it...pero kung sa akala nyo lokohan lang ito, pag meron talagang makasagot, ipapadala ko talaga ito...Hindi naman ako sinungaling tulad ni Garci or Evil hobbit Gloria Arroyo)
HRO Karl Willem, PA/PR Gromit, and The Nashman's copy. It's priceless!
...the book has lots of illustrations but ONLY MY copy is signed on page 97. Shet, wala nyan sa Recto.
As a bonus prize, if you can, in less than 50 words describe why you love HRO Karl Willem, PA/PR Gromit, and The Nashman and why you think this online diary of ours is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cooler than the Jester-in-Exile and those on the Jester's blogroll, we will give you....
.....an exclusive lunch date with The Nashman at Marosan's followed by a tour of the mean slums of Baguio where he grew up. We'll stop by Manang's turon and banana-q stand in New Lucban then go eat kikiam at Trancoville. We'll have Benguet brew at Star Cafe before heading out to dinner at that soul food place located in the side street behind Session Road and Harrison (gawd! I porgot the name!)
Ang pa-premyong ito ay approved by PAMET and the Elida Hair Institute. Kadali-daling sumali, di na kelangan ng Technorati-tag eklat chu-chu. Mga sagot ilagay sa sobre kasama ng 10 tansan ng Sioktong...pwidi rin ilagay sa comment box. (Clues: All of the answers can be found from old blog posts.)