Putting on my long underwear on the 12th.  I’ll be PAing on a film shoot in Troy, NY.  It is an outdoor shoot.  Might be nippy after being outside for 7+ hours.  Looking forward to it.

By the way upstate NY is a great location for a film of any size.  Lots of talented cast & crew with extra equipment as well.

ALBACON, www.albacon.org , has its hotel for 2010: Best Western Sovereign Hotel – Albany, 1228 Western Ave., Albany, NY 12203; +1-518-489-2981; http://www.sovereignhotels.com/ .

We hope to have on-line registration up and running real soon now.  Y’all come.  We give good con!  Allen Steele is our Literary Guest of Honor.

For the past couple days I’ve been scanning in papers from the Tolkien conferences I ran in 1969 and 1971: The 1^st & 2^nd Conferences On Middle-earth.  I may add a couple more that I have which are contemporary with them.  It is very interesting to go thru these papers which were based solely on The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.

These are the papers which didn’t make the cut for “A Tolkien Compass” edited by Jared Lobdell.

One idea is to publish them under the title: “A Tolkien Lodestone.”  They being sort of not quite ready for accurate directions in Middle-earth.

It might be fun to hold another Conference On Middle-earth for fans of Professor Tolkien, the books, music, art, films, etc.  A small get together in the “Green Dragon” for a nosh & a natter.

I wonder if this film will be released in the US.  It looks interesting.

A while back there was a TV movie, “Murder in 3 Acts” shown on ABC in Oz.  It concerned the murders committed by Snowy Rowles around 1930.  The disposal of the bodies was accomplished by the method discussed by Arthur Upfield & mates over coffee.  Upfield has just sold his first BONY novel and was looking for a plot device for his 2nd.  The main thing was to dispose of the body completely and, hence, pose a nasty problem for BONY.

Rowles was there with them.  However, he was careless and was caught & hanged.  Upfield’s book came out & was serialixed during the trial.

If you can obtain the film, it is a good view.

On the 19th, the closest to 22 September, I sat down in front of my computer with its 24″ monitor & watched the extended version of TLOTR.  It was a grand way to spend the day.  I love the film, the books, and even enjoyed the musical.  –  Of course, I did much junk food, including Pizza, Pepsi, chips & dip, & ice cream.  How much better can it get?  –  I would love to find someone with a BIG screen to host a hobbit party to watch the film.  I’ve done it, but it just doesn’t work on a small screen.

This is a fun, if blood & guts is your kind of film, war movie.  Betrayal, love and lots of mayhem.  Actually, it is an alternate history movie.  Has Tarantino been hanging around with SF writers?  Turtledove, Stirling, Flint, etc.  In any case the film moves along swiftly and with a big finish.  The acting is quite good, tho Pitt does come across as having too much fun playing a hillbilly.  I enjoyed the film.

This is an amazing film.  It combines the feel of a documentary with the crazy events as they occur.  It is one of the best science fiction films I’ve seen.  The situation the aliens find themselves in is quite believable as is the reaction of the surrounding populace.  The locale is in South Africa.  The director gets some fine acting from his cast.  Yes, it does leave itself open to a sequel.  This ending was, apparently, realized towards the end of shooting.  As one critic noted, “Bring on District 10!”  If you haven’t seen the film, I strongly urge you to do so.

Saturday, 20 June 2009.  I awoke to another fine day.  It was sunny and comfortable.  I decided I would catch breakfast up the road.  I did my shoulder exercises, packed the car and headed north.  Drive was quite pleasant with light traffic.  The scenery was quite nice and the road wound between and through fields. 

Just south of Phillipsville I got off of 101 and onto the Avenue of the Giants.  I took my time and slowly drove down the road that wound between giant trees.  It was most relax will.  In Phillipsville I asked about the whereabouts of Hobbiton, USA.  It turned out and that I had passed the overgrown sign to Hobbiton, USA next to the sign that proclaimed The Chimney Tree.  I returned both the café and Hobbiton, USA were closed.  I took a picture of the sign and then started walking up the path.  It turned out that there are some tenants living on the grounds and warned me off as I was trespassing.  Darn!  While I was there, at least 10 cars slow down to give the area a look. 

I think the owners are vastly underestimating the attraction of Hobbiton, USA.  Granted it would cost a fair bit of change to bring the area back to high standards.  However, I would bet and donate some money that if the owners asked for help on The One Ring.Net and The Frodo Franchise blog, they would attract more than enough talent who would be willing to work for free in order to restore Hobbiton, USA to splendor.  All they would have to do is put up a plaque afterwards indicating which human, Elf, dwarf, etc., had helped with the restoration.  Moreover, they could host an annual picnic on the weekend closest to 1 May, which I believe is the date that Bilbo returned to Bagend, to do a spring cleanup on the grounds for the following tourist season. 

I sorrowfully took my leave and slowly headed up the Avenue of the Giants.  It is truly a magnificent experience to slowly drive this road.  Some of the trees along the road appeared to be about 10 feet in diameter.  Further away there must’ve been even bigger trees than those along the road.  It was truly an invigorating experience for the soul and mind. 

It was a short drive after the Avenue of the Giants ended to Eureka where I stayed for the evening.  Once in my room I’ve read for awhile, then went to the adjacent restaurant for dinner, called up a few friends to work on meetings along the road and then read some more until I turned out to light.  

I also decided I would spend an additional night here as I was meeting an old friend for a late lunch and rather than try and drive on afterword would put my feet up, make some phone calls and read little bit.  I would head out to some parks on Monday morning.

Thursday, 18 June 2009.  Got a fairly good night’s rest and awoke to find a hazy overcast and cool morning.  I headed down to Denny’s for a grand slam breakfast and on the way back I noticed the cloud cover, probably high fog, had more or less listed in the sun was out.  About time to get some work done on my diary.  While I didn’t upload diary entries to my blog, I did get about five or six days recorded.  I should catch up with over the next day or two and be able to post my entries. 

About noon, under bright sun, I headed up Highway 1 to the San Francisco area.  The first portion of the trip up to Santa Cruz was slow, rather pleasant but nothing special.  I did get a look at your grocery stores vegetables being harvested in the field.

The drive north of Santa Cruz was exceedingly nice.  The only real problem was getting through the CF that is known as Santa Cruz.  This is where I once again had some problems following almost nonexistent traffic signs.  Highway 1, the rest of the way, hugs the coast and is well worth the drive.  The drive it has gentle hills and curves as it runs almost on the beach to cliffs overlooking the sandy beaches.  For the most part I was not bothered by insane drivers, though there were a few, and could enjoy a leisurely drive up the coast. 

Ignorance is bliss.  Unfortunately, it also leads to driving on a road that appears to be the only one, it isn’t really, from the coast to San Francisco Bay.  Route 92 is a very beautiful drive marred only by the fact that there is a continuous heavy stream of traffic from one coast to the other.  The road snakes through rising hills almost to the Bay before dropping down onto the coastal roads.  It would be great fun to drive without the traffic. 

After petrol I found my motel and called Janet Coyle who arranged the Middle-earth Tours for us.  I dropped by for a lovely chat.  All too soon I headed back to the motel.  I once again tried to call a couple folk but to no avail. 

After reading for a couple hours I headed back into Belmont to Toto’s Pizza where I had some ravioli.  It was quite good.  Dessert was some Baskins and Robbins ice cream.  I headed back to the motel, watched some TV and read.  No response from my friends.  After a shower standing in a tub that didn’t drain, a call to the night.