Bored of the Rings?

The mad (and genius) brains behind the Harvard Lampoon, Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, were hyper-inventive irreverent spirits and, in 1969, wrote a spoof of Lord of the Rings. It delivers!

Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney were at the heart of so much of what is considered classic American comedy lore these days. After their student days at Harvard, they turned the Harvard Lampoon into a spinoff enterprise of incredible proportions called the National Lampoon.

From the super-successful magazine grew live theater, radio shows and movies (more about Animal House here). Now those staged radio shows - wait for it - featured John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. All of them became superstars. Saturday Night Live would have never happened, I think, without the National Lampoon bringing all of those people together and giving them ample opportunity to hone their comedic talents with utter irreverence. Yes, there was Second City, of course - but the National Lampoon brought them all together in New York, ripe for Lorne Michaels’ picking.

Now then, Bored of the Rings! Here’s a line to get us started and give you a sense of what you’d be getting yourself into, should you ever choose to read it:

“At the mention of his name, Frito gurgled loudly and fell off his sheep, and the Ring dropped out of his clothes and rolled to Orlon's feet. One of the sheep trotted up, licked it, and turned into a fire hydrant.”

Frito is the parody-name of Frodo, of course. And Orlon’s Elrond. But don’t worry, it gets worse from there. Sam is Spam, Bilbo is Dildo, Gollum is Goddam, Gandalf is Goodgulf and Aragorn, son of Arathorn is Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt. If you love Lord of the Rings as much as I do (heck, I just found out I have a three volume edition that’s worth thousands of dollars - who knew!), then some of this spoof will be a bit hard to take at first - but don’t be stuck up, stay flexible, go with the flow and you’ll find yourself laughing out loud more than a few times at the moronic joys presented here.

The two bright minds made no secret of their intent - on the back of the small book (it’s just 160 pages), you find their statement - and a warning for Tolkien lovers:

This paperback edition, and no other, has been published solely for the purpose of making a few fast bucks. Those who approve of courtesy to a certain author will not touch this gobble with a ten-foot battle-lance.

There’s no doubt that both Beard and Kenney actually loved the original. In their foreword, they write that,

“We hope that those of you who have read Prof. Tolkien’s remarkable trilogy already will not be offended by our little spoof of it. All fooling aside, we consider ourselves honored to be able to make fun of such an impressive, truly masterful work of genius and imagination. After all, that is the most important service a book can render, the rendering of enjoyment, in this case enjoyment through laughter. And don’t trouble yourself too much if you don’t laugh at what you are about to read, for it you perk up your pink little ears, you may hear the silvery tinkling of merriment in the air, far, far away … it’s us, buster. Ching!”

Just to make sure that no reader gets into this parody with the wrong expectations - the authors toss in a little scene even before their foreword - it is a scene where an elf lady is trying to seduce Frito to get him to give up the Ring … see what I mean? Ready for a taster?

“Toes, I love hairy toes,” she moaned, forcing him down on the silvered carpet. Her tiny, pink toes caressed the luxuriant fur of his instep while Frito’s nose sought out the warmth of her precious elf-navel.

Within those measly one hundred and sixty pages, they manage - somehow - to tell the whole story. None of it really matters, of course. It’s all about the language, the sentences, the often down-right stupid ideas they’re not afraid to use. Having read Tolkien’s novels before is a must in my view. Otherwise much of what happens won’t make sense as won’t many of the word plays.

In the spoof, Merry and Pippin are called Moxie and Pepsi and they’re just as irresponsible and occasionally annoying as the they are in the novel. At some point, Spam (Sam) has enough:

“If only I'd listened to my Uncle Poo-poo and gone into dentistry," whined Pepsi.
"If I'd stayed home, I'd be big in encyclopedias by now," sniffled Moxie.
"And if I had ten pounds o' ciment and a couple o' sacks, you'd a' both gone for a stroll in that pond an hour ago," said Spam.”

Allow me to offer a few more ‘gems’:

In his hand he carried an ancient and trustworthy weapon, called by the elves a Browning semi-automatic.

“To assist him in his duties there was a rather large police force which did nothing but extract confessions, mostly from squirrels.”

“There were a great many beds arranged around the walls, all of which looked as though they had recently been slept in by perverted kangaroos...”

"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made good copy."

The classic when Bilbo says farewell to the hobbit-crowd with a veiled put-down - well, in the spoof Dildo isn’t quite as veiled and eloquent:

“I have lived in Boggietown, as you all know, most of my life, and I have developed opinions of you all, and before I leave you all for the last time, I want to let you all know what you have all meant to me.” The crowd yelled approval, thinking that now was the time for Dildo to distribute the expected gifts among them. But what followed surprised even Frito, who looked at his uncle with shocked admiration. He had dropped his pants.

I had never heard of the book and came across it only when I researchd Douglas Kenney for the article I wrote a few weeks ago. But seriously, folks, the brains on those two young minds, Beard and Kenney, Kenney and Beard. They were reportedly perfect opposites that found themselves together in their love of humor. In the Netflix movie about Douglas Kenney (trailer below), you see their relationship beautifully on display (I found it a surprisingly good movie).

Henry Beard, born in 1945 and now aged 79. He was the calm, the restrained, possibly you call him the straight man to wild Kenney. Douglas Kenney, born in 1946, died at the age of 33 when he fell off a cliff in Hawaii. It’s never been established whether it was an accident or a suicide … alas, suicide rings true to me. In any case, I’m mentioning this because of the adage that the candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.

To my mind, that is utter rubbish. Beard and Kenney show two ways to go. The challenge with every creative mind is keeping a balance, being disciplined, knowing when to pause, when to step back and find that center again. It’s easy to lose yourself in acts of creativity - and especially so if you’re super successful. Insanely imaginative creativity like ‘Bored of the Rings’ likely comes from times that are anything but grounded and/or centered. My advice is simply to yes, go with that wild flow - but then come back. In short, it you must aim, then aim to be Beard, not Kenney.