Viggo who?

Can't say as I've ever heard of him…

Kidding, of course: although last week—and not for the first time—I deeply, deeply wished that Peter Jackson had been able to convince Daniel Day-Lewis to play Aragorn. Mortensen is such a piss-headed moron that he still believes that the liberation of Afghanistan was an example of evil American imperialism.

More on Viggo and this month's running farce here (scroll to end). See also here and here. And then there's this interview with Mortensen's The Lord of the Rings colleague John Rhys-Davies, which I somehow neglected to mention last year.

Ironically, Mortensen's character in the movies is a military leader. And many have drawn parallels between the conflict in The Lord of the Rings with the war on terror. With a twinkle in his eye, Rhys-Davies confides that a friend whispered to him while watching Mortensen in The Return of the King, “Does he realize he's George Bush?”

Anyways. Enough about Viggo; let's talk about me. We took the picture above about a week back. The sword is a replica of “Strider's Ranger Sword” from the LotR films, which I rather fancy in spite of the fact that it is oh so non-canonical. (The replica is also about twice as heavy as the real thing, and the balance is all wrong, but so it goes.)

The beard went away a couple of hours after this picture. And rather than giving Army barbers the satisfaction, this week I will make a donation to Locks of Love (provided, of course, that they don't mind all the grey).

In just over a week, my head gets shaved. But don't expect pictures of that to end up here; Natalie Portman can carry off that look far, far better than I. And she's a girl.

I'm not sure that DD Lewis is much better on the politics front (see here for a start, for instance, but I do think he would also have made a very good Aragorn.

Good luck with the barber...and everything else!

Right, the head-shaving is to dehumanize you. Don't give them the satisfaction. Do you suppose being married to scary/phreaky Exene has something to do with Viggo's warped worldview?

Et tu, Daniel?

Well, perhaps the poor sod never quite recovered from seeing his own father's ghost while playing Hamlet.

As for Viggo's even more warped world-view, my theory is that some guys learn that playing a soulful Chomskyite with a deep loathing for one's own culture is a great way to score chicks like, well, Exene. But then they get so deep into the part that they never find their way out.

Either that or he really is just a piss-headed moron.