CC: The Reason for the Season

When you wake up this Christmas morning, make sure that you don't lose sight of the true meaning of the day. It's not about Santa or presents, shopping or cooking, family or Jesus. December 25 is the anniversary of the day that the fellowship of the ring set out from Rivendell (at least according to wikipedia). So this Christmastime as you're enjoying your time with your family, spare a thought for poor Legolas embarking on a dangerous mission against the hosts of Mordor.


A happy Christmas to you all from all of us here at There and Back Again: An Elf's Endeavour (except for Dan who doesn't believe in fun)!

Keep checking in next month for my final preparations before I set off on my adventure.

DV: Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones will break my bones...

but soon you leave the country

CC: Daisy, Daisy....

I'd just like to congratulate Dan on discovering the most boring possible arrangement of 41 words that the world has yet to see in the previous blog post. I know he's been spending a lot of time lately working on becoming even duller than ususal, and it just makes me so happy that he's decided to share the fruits of his labour with us. Look out HAL, the world has a new sentient computer that will soon take his place in the history of cinema. He wouldn't hesitate for a second to cut out my life support systems either if he could.

DV: An editor is me?

I shot a documentary the summer before last.
I'm making a longer cut.
This has nothing to do with Elves.

Nov 20: Full Transcript (done)
Dec 15: Paper Edit
Dec 25: Rough Cut
Jan 15: 2nd Cut
Feb 10: Picture Lock

CC: The Horse and His Elf

“Show me the meaning of haste!” I whispered into the ear of my mighty steed, clasping his reigns, prepared for a wild ride. I mustn’t have been speaking clearly though – he seemed far more intent on showing me the meaning of his indifference toward anything I wanted him to do.


My elven training had lead me to “The Ranch” in Oakville. For who could call himself an elf who could not ride a horse? Though I had a girl doing a radio documentary as well as my loyal producer there with me, Voshart was nowhere to be seen. He had decided to ignore the fact that we’d been trying to set up these lessons for weeks and go visit New York instead. That’s ok. When Peter Jackson needs to cast someone for the horseback scene we know who he’ll choose.

Trying to jump onto the horse

The lesson lasted only an hour, but we didn’t waste a minute. The first order of business was to teach me to get onto a horse. But not in the usual way. Being an aspiring elf, my instructor decided that it might be more appropriate that I learn how to grab onto the horse’s main and swing myself onto its back. She was also of the opinion that elves would be beyond saddles, so I got to learn to ride bareback on my first lesson. It was a crash course on learning how to work with horses designed to teach me as much as possible in as little time as we could. Needless to say, my comfort or the idea of easing me into it were completely irrelevant.


Nonetheless, I emerged from my adventure more confident, and able to direct my horse to take me where I need to go. I even made it through a driver’s test style series of pylons. Although I only made it to riding at a jog and not quite a full gallop, I can’t wait to show Dan up the next time we both make it out next time for more lessons.

DV: The Quantum of Ciosk

The "Chris is a Failure Party" has passed like a kidney stone.


With almost 30 attendees Chris reached his goal of finishing his film by November 13th and managed to screen something that was "watchable".

Quantum of Solaceme on the other hand was unanimously panned by everyone who migrated from the party to see this midnight screening. I heard from multiple sources that this year's Bond film was "worse than Chris' film"

How is it possible that man with the intellect of a dead penguin could out-do a bond film?

#1 The most likely scenario:
Bond was so disparagingly awful that guests were thankful for Chris's straight-to DVD release.

#2 My theory:
The Director of 007 spent all his spare time cleaning his kitchen.
Chis however, neglected his duties as a member of society and focused only on finishing his film.

CC: The Final Push

Just now as I've been killing time while my video renders, I read that Baz Luhrmann (one of my favourite directors) is now in his final 24 hours of production on Australia, a film that he's been working on for the last four years of his life and is now scrambling to finish on the last possible day, less than a week before its premiere. It looks as though we both have something in common. Although with only two years on mine, I'll concede that it may only be half as good as Baz's.

Meanwhile, on this side of the equator I'm currently expending my last reserve of energy to try to get Adventurer finished before Vosh's 'Chris is a Failure' party. Only difference is Baz doesn't have a DVD to author too. Lazy. I'm gonna need every ounce of processing power on this computer to get this DVD finished by the deadline. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. I wonder if Dan is going to have a trailer for our documentary ready for me to put on the DVD like he said that he planned to on our facebook group. That would be embarassing if the tables were turned tomorrow night.

So if you find yourself free of any sort of plans this Thursday, come by our place for a 'Chris is a _____ (soon to be determined) party'. Drinks! Adventurer screening! Midnight Quantum of Solace! What more could anyone ask for?

The menu is ready, but will Dan deliver his half of the content?