Contents: Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII
PROLOGUE: THE BEGINNING – After being judged and awarded more points than my fellow troll, Ryan, who valiantly ripped up his pants and wore a cut-out corduroy hat opposed to my black jeans and green shirt, we gathered in the circle. The judges told us the rules of the game and basically another outline of the basics, which may have been helpful if my handbook fell into something I didn’t want to touch.Everyone was sequentially announced and I discovered that apparently every female in the farm was an “ol’ whore!” Turning to my fellow troll, Ken, I exclaimed “everyone’s a whore eh? More like lord of the…..O-RING! HA HA HA!” Ken wasn’t amused, but I think he was staring at elf boobs.
PART I: THE GAME – The game started out with a blast – a blast into the pavement!Aragorn made a run for Tom Bombadil, but fearless-leader Scott had a little bomb of his own! “It’s supper time… FOR MY FISTS!” Scott screamed as he introduced Aragorn to the pavement.Now normally, even being tackled into the pavement might be out of the ordinary, but when this is your first witness to a tag I was thinking I discovered a sport more dangerous than alligator-football.Oh yeah, and meanwhile Bill the Pony made a valiant effort, but Bill may have been (A) cross-eyed and thinking she was in actuality breaking through a pocket where people weren’t or (B) mistaking my hands for delicious carrots…my first “tag” had occurred, which may not count because it was more of a handshake, not even compared to Scott’s camera-smashing sack!
After sending Bill to the glue factory, Strider and the pony were stuck for 15 minutes… pun severely intended.Ken was awarded Boromir’s Horn, to which I wittily responded, “That blows! HA HA HA ha… heheh… hooo…” Ken didn’t find it funny, but I made it my personal goal for the rest of the game to make Ken laugh. So eventually the troll-troop went out hobbit-hunting, and after awhile of grueling search and a handful of unsuccessful make-Ken-laugh attempts (“so Ken… does that token make you feel any.. HORNier?! badoomchink!”), we saw some figures ahead! Scott said to go tag them, but seeing as they were dressed in black and had red-eyes I concluded that they were either orcs or hobbits with eye-herpes; but seeing as I was a newbie to this game, I did as I was told and killed one of the orcs as the other one jumped into the woods. Discovering that she was actually an orc, we took her prisoner and yelled at the orc who jumped in the woods that we were on his side. The orc thought this was some kind of evil trick and we were going to pull some Pepsi Twist commercial magic: “oh,and we’re not really Sauron’s trolls…we’re strolling ELVES OF SONIC DEATH!”
Just then, I thought I heard Ken laugh, but it turns out he just swallowed a bug. The orc we captured tried to convince him to come down, but apparently he thought I had brainwashed her with my sexy curly hair and perfect physique. We learned that this orc was named Tim, and we all agreed that he probably wouldn’t trust a cell phone because he thought it stole his soul and replace it with alien entities like what happened with all of our government officials (John Ashcroft?).
After giving up hope of ever recruiting Tim the orc, we decided to move on and continue the hobbit-hunt. We saw Aragorn’s stick in the distance (who was licking his wounds with Tom Bombadil), and we met up with some barrow-wights who asked if they could join us. “Sure, it doesn’t matter to us if you’re black or…WIGHT!! HA HA HA HA!” At this point, I was glad we weren’t playing “Survivor: Middle-Earth!” because I realized I would be the first person voted off. Ken made some gargling noise in the back of his throat, but by this time I wasn’t surprised if Ken was wearing woman’s undergarments, so it didn’t faze me. Scott, with the ears of a fox, heard noise up ahead! We made a daring attempt to stealthily sneak around the hill and ambush the noisy hobbits! We kept trucking to our attack point and discovered the source of our ambush!….a couple of rock climbers. I wasn’t sure who was more upset: our group of ruffians, who discovered we had been wasting our time hunting civilians, or the rock climbers discovering a band of creatures carrying clubs with war paint screaming “OOGA-BOOGA!,” but I’m not ruling out Jesus.
After leaving the rock climbers behind and me making a hilarious pun about “LETS ROCK!” we went off to help with the sack of Rivendell. Rivendell was apparently guarded like my virginity for no one was there to offer any resistance. I thought about mentioning this to Ken, but then I remembered the undergarments and considered the consequences of my actions. Soon, we were confronted by a much more terrifying force: THE MENACE! I don’t really see him as much of a menace unless he was sitting in front of me in the movie theatre because this kid had the largest head I have ever seen on a human being. I know some of you out there our thinking of some counter-point like “that’s ‘cause my brain’s so huge!” but hopefully the following account will prevent this notion from entering your (normal-sized) brain. First of all, the Menace charged us to tag, but then right when he was about to connect he ran away as if to say “I could of tagged you, but I DIDN’T! NYA HAA!!” Seeing as we basically had the whole evil army with us, we promptly tagged him and insulted his mother. Points were added and compared, and it appeared that we had won by a hair. A Celebration of champagne and break-dancing followed. No sooner had I slipped into the hot tub with Cameron Diaz, than did the Menace exclaim “oh no wait, I had 100 more points than what I said!” Ok, now I know accidents happen, and I'm not saying it COULDN’T happen, but I imagine if you were the Menace, there would be two things you knew better than your first spanking: 1) What is my kill-count, and 2) How many points have I accumulated?” So we sat down for a 20-minute nap, but not before Lori, a troll who had been quiet for most of the game, decapitated the Menace and put the head in her knapsack. We all plopped on the ground— some of us a little farther away from Lori than usual—and in Ken’s case, a little closer. I guess girls who can kick his ass are his type, but each to his own! Then the flirting began.
About at this time, I had run far enough away to no longer hear what they were saying. This was also the time that our fearless leader Scott decided that we were so sweet that we didn’t need his help or that some of us weren’t wearing deodorant, because he ditched us like a happy meal toy.
This part is really hazy in my memory so I’ll do my best. After running around Isengard for a while, we decided to sack it. Then we also tried to take prisoner the white hand orcs' cooler, but they weren’t being good sports about it. We moved up the road towards Gondor and met up another group who had already taken the citadel. The group asked us “uhhh… is that the flag of Isengard?” “…maybe” “umm, Evil can’t take Isengard” “…want to trade flags?” “… do you really think that I am that stu- SURE! We’ll trade with you!” So flags and kisses were traded knowing that a little bit of our hearts had been exchanged. Further up the road we saw Citadel Bob and his gang of no-good ruffians! [Editor's Note: With all due respect to the memory capacity of trolls, the "Citadel Bob" that Mark refers to as being captured here was, in fact, Denethor. I know this because I was the one who was captured. Citadel Bob escaped to fight another day, as did Citadel Rich, who was my companion in this particular battle.] With a handful of the more athletic evil team, we charged to meet the fearsome-foe! Lead by the lil’est-nazgûl-that-could, Bob was now our bitch. And I’d like to thank whoever took this picture, for it is the best victory pose EVER.
PART VI – THE FLIGHT TO MOUNT DOOM
After scampering around with Bob for awhile and, all in all, not doing anything productive, we noticed that we were going to be late to make it to Mount Doom on time! That’s when I got the most brilliant idea of my life… Combining my keen intellect and love of MacGuyver, I soon created the most ingenious invention ever created by man: THE MENACE MOBILE! Umm… I’m just gonna skip all the details and let you judge from the picture of how it all worked out:
Needless to say, once again my brainpower had saved the day from certain defeat. We all got off the Menace-mobile and gathered around Sauron the all-mighty. As soon as we got there we happed about some controversy on weather the Mouth of Sauron jumped his 15 minutes. Being that the accuser was the Good Paladin (but actually looked like a cross between Robocop and a Miami dolphin), Sauron asked if he swore on the Holy Bible. The Paladin responded, ”*BZZZT *MY_ROBOT_BODY_IS_NOT_PROGRAMMED_TO_LIE; MY_ FUNCTIONS_ARE_ TO_PROVIDE_EXCELLENT_TELEVISION RECEPTION, EAT_SMALL_CHILDREN, AND_POOP_CAR-PARTS *BLEEP-BLEEP!*” Upon hearing this, the lil’est Nazgul ran for the hills, but Sauron seemed satisfied and asked Mouthy to sit down for a couple minutes in a sample of submitting to robo-terrorism. Afterwards was a blur of charging up a hill, sitting on a log next to a girl, running down hills, partying with the forest creatures, and winning the Olympics. It’s also strange that I got a message on my cell phone that said “Hi, I don’t know who this is, but I’m looking for Kenny. End transmission.” Needless to say, I was a little freaked out. When telling my fellow evil army some barrow-wight made an inevitable “OH MY GOD! THEY KILLED KENNY!” comment, but I had insisted that I had been contacted by the FBI, I also wondered what they were thinking after hearing my Monty Python Alzheimer answering machine message. Thankfully, Ryan remembered that I had lent my phone to Mugwart earlier, to call his parents, and somehow, whether black magic, voodoo, or star 69, this lady had somehow gotten my number. For my efforts in “being the coolest troll!” I was awarded the flag of the Shire (+5 points… yay!”). This now made me the strongest troll in the bunch, and I considered killing Ken for fun, but then I feared being decapitated by Lori. Instead I just made threats: “Now I have the power to destroy you all! I am the strongest! Bow down before me!”
Ken: “Uhh, how ‘bout: noooooooo.”
Sauron: “Mark, you see, you’re kinda like yellow starburst— no one really likes them but they’re still just there.”
Ken: “HA HA HA HA!”
Lori: “THREAT, BAAADD! SSMAASSH!”
Me: “Noooo! I have the power of the Shire! No one can defeat me!”
After two limb replacements, an emergency tracheotomy, and liposuction, I was back on my feet. On the bright side, I had made Ken laugh… maybe not directly, but if I hadn’t of been there, that insult would never have been made, so I’ll take credit for it! Speaking of taking credit, someone else took my power of the Shire! Apparently a bunch had happened after I passed out from the pain from my first limb replacement, for Saruman now had the Ring and was going to make a break for it. The race began, and I ran with all the power in my feet! I think I accidentally tripped someone but I didn’t see who it was, so if you’re reading this, I’m sorry! Anyway, I caught up to Saruman, but who would be one step in front of me? TIM THE ORC! Tim must have been a track star or beaten up a lot as a kid, because he could run like no other! So we tagged him—there was some dispute that we couldn’t take him prisoner or something and we couldn’t take the ring from him—but the judges decided that they would just award the evil team the victory. Soon after, my body started to reject my new organs and I had to be Med-flighted on the menace-mobile.
The Ring Game was over, in a bittersweet victory
PART VII – POINT, COUNTERPOINT!
This is the part where you can ask me questions, post comments, or ask me out on a date. I’m sure you all have a lot to say! In a few weeks, I’ll update this section with my responses to your comments/questions/hot dates. Oh yeah, I SWEAR I saw Gandalf at the movie theatre the next Sunday, so if anyone could confirm his whereabouts, contact me at markroethke@yahoo.com! In the words of the back of the ninja turtles playing cards deck “Deal me up, dude!”
P.S. I’d also like to note that my spellchecker has “Robocop” in it, making it the coolest computer since the talking one in Knight Rider.
Story and photomanipulations ©2003 by Mark Röthke. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
