Lord of the Ringtones

My brother is an avid reader of fantasy sci-fi and Japanese anime. In high school he bought and read a boxed copy of THE LORD OF THE RINGS (which I've tried to crack into throughout Peter Jackson's three-year, three-movie phenomenon). The book is handsomely bound in red leather, the pages edged in gold. I've gotten as far as the Introduction, which states THE LORD OF THE RINGS is not a trilogy, but actually one book in six parts...

Jackson's movies make it easy to feel the legend. I'd like Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf to spring off the page with as much spectacle as the movie heroes, but they haven't yet. I'd like to feel a book fan's buzz at watching imagination come to the screen: "Yeah, I've known about this all along."

For now, I'll content myself with wielding an imaginary sword or bow, humming as my personal background music "The Bridge" motif in all three movies. I think it's "The Bridge (of Something)." It's my favorite music, the kind I can put on REPEAT on the CD player and be happy. But there's my dilemma: If I like one song especially, why buy the soundtrack not even sure of said song's title, having only fully heard it as a ringtone? What's an honest, non-file sharing guy to do?

I bring this up because today is Orlando Bloom's 27th birthday. It's also Nicole Eggert's 32nd (she of short stature who played Jamie Powell on "Charles in Charge" and later experimented with silicone and Corey Haim--a lethal combo for sure), and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss's 43th. Nothing like a triple shot of "Seinfeld," courtesy of cable and broadcast, after a hard day.

I'd blog on, but these pretzels are making me thirsty.