Oh, the things we do for the things we love... - Page 5
© Michael Martinez
But then a snafu developed and Karl Urban was inadvertently allowed to continue signing autographs well into the middle of his scheduled session. He apologized through a spokesperson for the confusion (which was not his fault) and I agreed to just let him drop the session since we would see him again on Sunday in another panel with Brad Dourif. Karl felt very badly about letting the fans down, but the mishap wasn't his fault.
Nonetheless, Jincey sent me into the room after twenty minutes to chat with the growing audience. I decided to open up another Q and A session, but we ended up talking about some things I hadn't had time to mention in my "Reconstructing Middle-earth" session. This change in subject actually helped to bring more people in, and by the time the OneRing.Net guys showed up to start their setup for the next panel, the room was filled with an attentive audience. Most of the people stayed in the room while the setup proceeded, so Calisuri asked me to keep talking. To be honest, I was so pumped I can hardly remember what I said, but we took a few questions from the audience and answered them as best we could.
Rhetta Amateratsu, one of our staff members, put together a very nice presentation on Tolkien's use of Nordic mythology as a source. I missed her first presentation (track directors often find themselves running around the convention taking care of errands while their staff look after the presentation rooms) but sat in on the second. I was impressed with Rhetta's research, and I only brought up one anecdote of my own (about Queen Beruthiel, whose story was derived from the story about the giantess Skadi and the sea god Njord).
Jincey ran the trivia contest. She had some good contestants in both sessions, although I only caught part of the first session. I have to admit, I was impressed (as were Brad and Karl) with the knowledge of my fellow Tolkien fans. They were able to answer questions I could not have answered without consulting the books (and I've had to admit to being wrong three times so far this weekend). The respect accorded to me by the audiences I've spoken with is therefore that much more meaningful to me, and I hope no one came away with the impression that I was trying to talk down to them.
We did have one loose moment in the first trivia contest. One of the contestants asked for "a hard question". So Jincey turned to the back of the book and said, "Are you SURE? Because I've got some really, really tough ones." These were questions she had asked me to provide. The task was not easy, as Jincey had tole me she already had several hundred questions. So I came up with stuff I don't normally talk about, and I couldn't recall any of the questions I had supplied her.
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