★★★ Early morning rain faded out like an aspect of the departing night, leaving an artistically sunlit haze on the river. It was mild again. There was no excuse for hopping the 1 train for a single stop, to change at 59th. No good enough excuse, anyway, though there were the lingering puddles along Broadway, the sun hanging too low to reach the pavement and burn them off. Downtown was clearer still, and warmer. Was it worth keeping the coat on? A woman hurried past, her upper body rising from the band of her trousers in nothing but a stars-and-stripes bodysuit, or one-piece swimsuit, scoop-backed. Men in chairs outside the bookstore turned their heads. Indoors, under the flickering fluorescent rings of the stairwell, the sun’s green afterglow flooded the eyes. Yet even come nightfall, the leaves were still damply stuck to the sidewalk.

“Research published today in the journal Biology Letters followed urban birds and measured the amount of cellulose acetate (from cigarette filters) in their nests. The nests with more butts had fewer parasites.”

“A new study has found that adolescents who smoke and suffer from depression may be at greater risk for developing osteoporosis later in life.”

Were there other famous people attached at one point or another to adaptations of the J.R.R. Tolkien stories? There were! In fact, several non-Peter Jackson hobbit movies have already been made. You may have even seen some of them, when you were a little child, or when you were smoking marijuana “hobbit weed” and looking at videos on the Internet this very afternoon!

If you have kids and/or once enjoyed the indoor sport of Dungeons & Dragons, then you will probably go see The Hobbit next weekend. But what if Magneto and that guy from The Office weren’t in the movie, then what? Other people would be in the movie. Other people have been in such hobbit movies. People like Andrew Breitbart’s father-in-law.

Andrew Breitbart’s Father-In-Law, Orson Bean

Game-show panelist Orson Bean actually was Bilbo Baggins in the animated 1977 version of the tale. Later, his daughter married Andrew Breitbart. According to Breitbart, Bean “was once blacklisted as a Communist back in the ’50s. Ed Sullivan called him to say he could no longer book him on the show.”

American badass/crazy director John Huston

Guess who John Huston voiced in the same Rankin/Bass cartoon production? Gollum! No, that isn’t true. He was Gandalf, obviously. This version is weird and kind of ‘70s-Saturday morning, but it’s all right, too. Huston recites the whole long dwarf poem, about the Misty Mountains and all that, with Robert Plant.

John Lennon, as the Gollum

The greatest adaptation of Lord of the Rings to never happen was a Stanley Kubrick-directed live-action film starring The Beatles. John Lennon was the force behind this idea. (Lennon also attempted to make a movie of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, which would’ve jump started the cult author’s move to Hollywood favorite by a dozen years.) In the Beatles version, Lennon had chosen the role of Gollum.

Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, as Sam and Frodo

The Beatles had completed two hugely successful movies, A Hard Day’s Night and HELP!, and they were looking for their next project — which would turn out to be the much less successful television movie/dope freakout Magical Mystery Tour. Had Lennon got his way, McCartney and Starr would’ve played the young hobbits who leave the Shire to start a band and get high.

George Harrison as Gandalf

How did Tolkien turn down this idea? He hated hippies! Also, he did not want his beloved book to turn into another marketing device for the Beatles. And something-something about “film rights.” But when it came down to it, Tolkien said no to The Beatles. And then, eventually, he died. So, never say no to The Beatles!

The Guy Who Was C3PO Was Also This Elf Guy

Anthony Daniels, who has made an entire career out of doing a better C3PO voice through a crappy little transistor speaker than Richard Dreyfuss could manage in a recording studio, was also the voice of … Legolas, in the unpleasant Ralph Bakshi stoner cartoon version of The Lord of the Rings. We are not even sure who “Legolas” is, so we’ll just leave this as it stands. (John Hurt did the voice of “Aragorn” in this version. Aragorn was Legolas’ wife, IDK.)

Led Zeppelin

They never made an official Tolkien movie, but they sure made some crappy hobbitesque sequences for their 1970s concert film, The Song Remains the Same. Also, various characters and settings show up in Robert Plant’s teen-aged boy lyrics. And, on Monday night on the David Letterman show, the three surviving members were Letterman’s interview guests. When Letterman noted the band’s affinity for songs about vikings and sex, bassist/arranger John Paul Jones said, “You missed the bit about vikings having sex with hobbits.” And that’s how Marc Bolan was born! No just kidding that’s how orcs are born.

And finally, because why not, here is a picture taken by Peter Jackson, from Ian McKellen’s Flickr. It’s a picture of God wearing John Lee Hooker shades. Also, punk rockers never wanted to be the hobbit. There is no feature to be written about The Clash or Patti Smith or X optioning Fellowship of the Ring.

“You lie down in the evening and slowly get used to eternity.”

I think about death fairly frequently, and with the same sense of impatience one has for the friend who is habitually unpunctual and impossible to get hold of while you sit there drumming your fingers on the bar and pretending to pay attention to the television while you wait. So I don’t suppose this sort of therapy would do much for me, in the sense that, not only am I ready, I would prefer to be incinerated and blasted out into the universe so that no trace of me remains here when it finally does happen, but I still think it’s a pretty solid idea.

“The memory of eating a large meal can make people feel less hungry hours after tucking into food, according to new research.”

Is this the world’s oldest dinosaur? Sure, why the hell not.

The Amazing Reformation Of Mitt And Ann Romney

by Ana Marie Cox

“Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver transplant soon: ‘I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to treatment.’”
 — “A detached Romney tends wounds in seclusion after failed White House bid,” Washington Post

No one at the homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles recognized the man serving them soup on a post-Thanksgiving weekend. Disheveled and dressed down, the former GOP nominee for President was also wearing a hairnet that held back tousled hair that is usually preternaturally neat.

“Hello, Robert, good to see you this afternoon,” Mitt Romney said as he ladled a bowl. He greeted another, “Mr. McCoy, I see you got your hair cut.” He turned to a reporter standing nearby. “He looks good, right?”

He’s popular among the shelter’s clientele, who probably don’t know that he’s the same man who campaigned against “takers” seeking handouts. They call him “Willie,” short for his given name, “Willard.”

A black man in a shabby parka sidled up in line. “Hey, Willie, give me five, my man!” Romney slapped the man’s hand awkwardly. He turned and deadpanned, “Steve is trying to teach me to be ‘cool.’” Steve intoned with the same mock-seriousness: “It’s gonna take awhile.”

Romney’s capacity to remember names, honed over years of high-level business meetings and schmoozing voters, seems to have given him an advantage here at the Union Rescue Mission as well: “I see the light of recognition in their eyes when I call them by name,” he said later, “Not that they recognize me, but that they recognize that I’m recognizing them…” He let the sentence hang for a moment. “They are used to being ignored, I guess. Mostly…” — Romney cleared his throat — “by people like me.”

“I wanted to ask some of them to the house, maybe,” Romney said, wiping his hands on the stained apron he hadn’t yet taken off. “But, you know, I’d lose my anonymity. Here, I’m just one of many.”

***

A continent away, Ann Romney stomped her feet to ward off the chill as she watched the young woman riding a horse on the far side of a paddock on Long Island. It could be a scene from any point in her life as a wealthy equestrian except that Tanya, the adolescent laughing loudly as she bounces around on the back of a $250 million show horse, is from Queens and her experience with live horses is, suffice to say, limited. “Police officers ride them in parades, their poop stinks,” she said before hesitantly accepting an invitation to get on top of Rafalca. Afterwards, she was all smiles: “I thought it would feel like riding a bike, but it was really bumpy — and I could feel his muscles. He slowed down when I got scared. It was really cool.”

Tanya and a half-a-dozen other teenagers were here via The Fresh Air Fund, a charity that sends inner city children to places where they can experience the outdoors. After some cajoling by Mrs. Romney, all of them accepted a ride on top of the equine Olympian. Romney told them that the horse competes in a “dance competition” and they all laughed. “For real?” asked one. Ann Romney had the horse do a sideways shuffle, earning a round of applause. She sent the kids off with apples (“they aren’t just for horses!”) from a nearby orchard.

“I don’t expect this to change their lives in a big way,” Ann Romney said later. “Obviously, I’ve found riding therapeutic, and I hope some of them get something out of it, maybe the idea that they’re not limited by their immediate environment, or that there’s joy in the world they haven’t discovered yet…

“But really, this is more for me than for them. After the election, Mitt and I realized that we had missed something really profound about the American people — that the country maybe wasn’t the place we thought it was.” She caught herself: “I mean, not in a bad way! I just think we realized we had no idea what it was like to be one of, well, I don’t want to use that statistic again, but you know the one I mean.”

***

The Romneys were reluctant to talk to a reporter about their post-election stints as largely anonymous volunteers, but aides prevailed upon them to do so as the family prepared to make one of the largest private educational donations in history to a job retraining facility in Ohio. The center is the product of a public-private initiative that matches community colleges with industries that might otherwise place jobs overseas.

“Look, I’m always going to be a conservative; I’m not giving my money to government to get this done, but I realize that I can play a part in lives of people who have been laid off, who’ve seen their jobs go across the border,” said Mitt Romney in an interview given after he and his wife reunited in New Hampshire late last week. And why Ohio? Romney looked sheepish: “It’s the least I can do after running all those ads.”

He has other regrets, maybe even a lot of them. “I mean, a car elevator! What were we thinking?” He put his hand to his forehead, mock-slapping it. “We can’t un-install the damn thing, but maybe when we sell the place, we’ll set aside a specific donation, just so we’ll never forget the folly of it all. The Romney Early-Learning Center and Car-Elevator Repair Service Institute? Just kidding. We’ll think of something. I just hope I never forget how that single thing screamed ‘privilege’ and ‘out of touch’ in a way that we didn’t understand at the time.”

“Don’t forget the NASCAR team owners,” Ann said. Mitt shook his head, “Oh, it will be a long time before I forget that.”

As self-deprecating as Mitt Romney can be now, he won’t speak ill of anyone involved in the campaign. “We all worked really hard. We just got some things wrong.” He appeared thoughtful. “Would I do it differently if I could do it again? Of course. Would I even do it again, that’s the question. Maybe a guy who’s been in business almost all his life isn’t the right guy for the job. I really don’t know. I know I wish there was a Republican in the White House and I’d like there to be one there soon. But they’re going to have to figure out how to make that happen. Here’s a ‘pro-tip’ from me to them” — Romney drops a wink — “don’t alienate half the country.”

Only one subject seemed a sore point: his choice of running mate. Asked about Congressman Paul Ryan, he took a minute to respond: “I — “ He broke off and then shook his head. Ann Romney put a steadying hand on his knee. “I’ll just say I wish him the best. He worked hard, and I’ll say this, he believes in everything he says. Oh boy, does he.”

Ann Romney was more reticent than her husband as to how her tour of struggling communities has changed her perspective on the election and the issues debated during it. A friend, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Romneys have kept much of their charitable activities private, said that Mrs. Romney spent at least one day incognito shadowing a nurse at a Planned Parenthood clinic. “I’m not saying that she’s ever going to be anything but pro-life, but she felt genuinely conflicted about the way the party handled abortion issues this time around. I think she just wanted to understand the other side.”

“It’s possible to rehabilitate your image, even after a drubbing like he took,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic consultant who’s seen former clients the Clintons turn their reputations around. “But two weeks ago, I’d have said it’s almost impossible for Romney to do it, especially in the time frame we’re talking about. I mean it took Carter years. With what you’re telling me now, though… it’s amazing and humbling, for me, personally, even. I can’t tell you the last time I had a conversation with someone who didn’t get to where we were in a Town Car.”

Mitt Romney says he has no immediate plans to re-appear in public life. “The work at the Mission is as public as I need to be. Heck, I’m going to have to change that up now, too! I hadn’t even thought of that!” He playfully slapped a reporter on the arm. “I knew I should have kept up my streak of not talking to folks like you! Now Steve will never finish teaching me to be cool.

“But, oh, seriously: There are other places that need the help. I’ve come to really like the simplicity of that kind of service, too: You make the food, you give the people the food, you pay attention to them. And I’ll tell you what, after a couple of years having people make me sandwiches, it feels good to make them for someone else.”

Ana Marie Cox is a political columnist for The Guardian. Photo from Mitt Romney/ Flickr.

Pianist Dave Brubeck has died at the age of 91. You may very well find this soothing.

The longhairs with the pocket protectors had already set up the lines between USC and Stanford and UC Santa Barbara. It was 1969, a weird year of technological and social progress (Apollo 11, Mariner 6 and 7, the Stonewall Riots) and de-evolution (President Richard Nixon, the Manson Murders). Students were still seizing campus buildings — SDS took the Harvard administration building that spring — but on this day 43 years ago, the hippie nerds in the computer labs made the last connection in their four-node Defense Department-funded networked computer project. The fourth computer came online at the University of Utah.

The first text transmission using the new packet-switching technology was “lo,” from UCLA to Stanford. The programmer had intended to type “login,” but the computer crashed before the third character of text was sent.

Eventually these early “tech support” guys got everything rebooted and sent the entire word. Once the nation’s best university computer departments were connected and the ARPANET was deemed functional in 1975, the Pentagon said “thank you” and seized control of the entire project. There is a persistent version of history that claims packet-switching networks were specifically developed so that a decentralized ARPANET could survive a nuclear war, but Internet historians say it was developed because everything was so unreliable on a good day that the ability to reassemble chunks of data in their intended order was essential for any binary network. (Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation suggested a distributed network to survive a nuclear war, because that’s the kind of thing they plan on, at the RAND Corporation.)

Not until 1981 did the Defense Department split the classified between MILNET and the National Science Foundation’s more open network, CSNET. A year later, a universal protocol called TCP/IP appeared, and by 1986 the increasingly powerful network of supercomputers was expanded to the NSFSNET, which means “not safe for work.” The public quickly filled the the new Internet with ASCII pornographic images until the World Wide Web arrived in the early 1990s to facilitate the global distribution of .gifs and alt.startrek.erotica and Cyber Monday deals in household appliances. Happy birthday, ARPANET!