I finally saw Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last week. It must be said that my previous exposure to Tolkein consisted of reading The Hobbit, in 6th grade or something, and watching the first Peter Jackson movie, when it was out in theaters. And it must be said that, though I don't associate any particular displeasure with these experiences, I remember very little about them at all. Bilbo Baggins rings a bell, but, then again, so does Quasimodo. The Fellowship of the Ring movie brings to mind fire and gray backgrounds and fearful short people and Ian McKellan being wise. There might've been some stuff about courage and love in there, but whatever. That being said: What the hell was going on in The Two Towers? Seriously, what the fuck just happened? I'm not talking about themes or allegories or ephemeral stuff, I really just don't know what was physically occurring in the film. I was so lost. Characters would speak to each other in grave tones, using dozens of similar-sounding proper nouns, and Brooke and I would turn to each other and shrug. According to my understanding: A schizoid pig-man tries to steal a ring from two perpetually sad-faced midgets, and ends up guiding them to a big gate, which they don't go through. I forget what happens to them in the end. Meanwhile, a cock-rocker with a sword runs a marathon or two with a real live dwarf and a sexy man with arrows (who may or may not have been named after San Diego county's newest theme park, Legoland), all the while having flashbacks to Aerosmith videos. They stop once in a while to meet kings and Ian McKellan (who briefly forgets that he was in the first film) and they end up helping defend a castle in a mountain from thousands of vicious computer generated images. The images far outnumber the cock-rocker and his friends, so Legoland enlists his friends, all of whom, like him, are in the band Nelson. They don't sing "Love and Affection", but they do shoot fast arrows and one of them dies dramatically. The cause of all this seems to be a giant flaming vagina and its servant, Christopher Lee, or perhaps it's the other way around. Anyway, it sounded like these two entities' names were Solomon, which I can only assume is Biblical, and Soren, which I can only assume is Kierkegaard. Anyway, Solomon and Kierkegaard the Vaginal are Bad, cause the music was Bad and the sky was cloudy and dark when they were on screen. Then some other stuff happened and somehow we found ourselves in the car driving home. Oh yeah, the tree guys were cool. What did I do wrong? Why did all the women and men have the same haircut? Why did people run up to the top of a hill, pause to stare at something in the distance, wait for the music to swell, and then speak an often unintelligible proper noun with gravity and feeling? Why did that same thing happen ten times in the first hour of the movie? Why were so many things so convenient? Why was the cock-rocker a preternaturally expert tracker when it mattered? Why was there another way into the place the midgets were trying to enter? Why was it so easy for the main characters to just ride their horses out of the besieged castle, mowing down CGIs like a cow guard on a train? Why did Legoland and the dwarf have to banter Lethal Weapon-style during what was supposed to be the most serious and brutal scene in the film? How come it was so easy for the gay midgets to get the tree guy to go south instead, and why was it so easy to do so? Where were the challenges and trials in the film? And what was up with the slo-mo King of the Horses? Who cares? Is this a Peter Jackson film or an Enya video? AND WHERE WAS THE SECOND TOWER? WHAT DID I MISS?