This book is predominantly concerned with making money, and from its pages a reader may learn much about the character and the literary integrity of the authors. Of boggies, however, he will discover next to nothing, since anyone in the possession of a mere moiety of his marbles will readily concede that such creatures could exist only in the minds of children of the sort whose childhoods are spent in wicker baskets and who grow up to be muggers, dog thieves, and insurance salesmen. Nonetheless, judging from the sales of Prof. Tolkien’s interesting books, this is a rather sizable group, sporting the kind of scorch marks on their pockets that only the spontaneous combustion of heavy wads of crumpled money can produce. For such readers we have collected here a few bits of racial slander concerning boggies, culled by placing Prof. Tolkien’s books on the floor in a neat pile and going over them countless times in a series of skips and short hops. For them we also include a brief description of the soon-to-be-published-if-this-incredible-dog-sells account of Dildo Bugger’s earlier adventures, called by him Travels with Goddam in Search of Lower Middle Earth, but wisely renamed by the publisher Valley of the Trolls.

from the Prologue — Concerning Boggies from Bored of the Rings

My introduction to Bored of the Rings (1969, a scatalogical, offensive, and dated, but hilarious, parody of The Lord of the Rings, came at the hands of a friend of mine, Karl H., during a Boy Scout camping trip in the late seventies. My first memory of Karl is him at 8 years old being carried kicking and yelling over the school custodian’s shoulder after he’d been caught trying to scale the back fence. Two years older than me, we stayed friends until he graduated high school in 1982. I saw him once more after that before he disappeared into the wilds of the West Coast. When first his sister, and then his mother passed away, I didn’t find out until weeks after the fact and missed both funerals and him.

Looking back on our scout troop, it was a motley assortment of characters. Sponsored by Trinity Lutheran Church, a plurality of us were also members of the congregation. The rest were various boys from the neighborhood, ranging from several members of one big sprawling Irish family to apple jack-swigging stoners and other assorted riff raff. The draw was camping and white-water canoeing. The looseness of the adult leadership meant nobody thought the enterprise was too straight or goofy. When we attended assembly at camporees, compared to the rest of the troops, we were like Sherman’s Westerners during the Grand Review of the Armies at the end of the Civil War: shaggy and unkempt, with nary a complete uniform in sight. Unlike Sherman’s soldiers, a slight scent of pot clung to more than one of us. Still, we were skillful and won several awards over the years and were inordinately proud of our raggedy nature.

While my late friend Densel introduced me to D & D, Karl, a much more counterculturally aligned kid, introduced me to a different side of fantasy. He hipped me to Elric of Melniboné and Ged of Earthsea. And Bored of the Rings.

By the time I read Bored of the Rings in the late 1970s, for a young teenager, it was already like a misplaced signal from some distant time. It’s filled with cultural references from the sixties that were already starting to fade from public consciousness. Still, having already consumed LotR at least twice, Bored hit home. Authors Beard and Kenney clearly knew Tolkien’s works inside out. Without ditching most of LotR‘s plot, they managed to trim the story down to a tidy 160 pages. The book uses crudeness, word play, endless satirization of American culture and consumerism, and metafictional elements. An example of the latter includes Bromosel increasingly looking forward to his own prophesied death (“You cash in your chips around page eighty-eight.”) as the book becomes increasingly absurd. In other words, it uses whatever works to make you laugh.

Beard and Kenney were members of the Harvard Lampoon and instrumental in developing a new style of smart, iconoclastic comedy. Later, they’d found National Lampoon Magazine, a licensed spinoff of the HL. Beard became the successful author of humor books, including The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook. Kenney would go on to co-write Animal House and Caddyshack before accidentally falling off a cliff and dying at the age of 33.

The original cover shown above, a parody of Barbara Remington’s LotR’s covers, was done by Michael K. Frith. Frith went on to become an important designer of Muppets, and a senior executive and the creative designer at The Jim Henson Company. William S Donnell’s map of Lower Middle Earth is stylistically similar to Tolkien’s own map, and as useless as Tolkien’s is useful.

Following Dildo Bugger’s decision to ditch his homeland, the Sty, for the restful elvin retreat, Riv’n’dell, the wizard Goodgulf (a discredited Rosicrucian), has determined the magical ring Dildo obtained years earlier, is the Great Ring of Power.  Sorhed, the Dark Lord from the land of Fordor, and his Nine Nozdrul, are threatening the realms of Lower Middle Earth again, and must be prevented from recapturing the ring at all costs. It must be sent to the Zazu Pits of Fordor and be destroyed once and for all.

As Dildo has already split town, it falls on his nephew, Frito and his servant Spam Gangree to at least carry the Ring to a great council at the elvin retreat, Riv’n’dell. They’re joined by the idiot brothers Pepsi and Moxie Dingleberry.

On their trek to the Riv’n’dell, they are stalked by mysterious black riders on great black pigs and meet the ranger, Stomper. The ranger, they learn, is in truth, “Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt, the self-styled Glorious King of Twodor.”

At the great council, it is decided that Frito, accompanied by Spam and the idiot brothers, must take the Ring to be destroyed in the lava pits in Fordor. With them will go the dwarf, Gimlet, son of Groin, the elf, Legolam of the Weldwood, Goodgulf, Arrowroot, and Bromosel, son of the steward of Minas Trooney.

The thing with the names bothered me a little the first time I read the book. They were just too silly. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate that silliness, particularly alongside the more (or less) sophisticated humor of the rest of the book.

As I said, Bored follows the beats of LotR somewhat closely. So, after leaving Riv’n’dell, the band of travelers are forced to brave the dark halls of Nikon-zoom. There, they encounter a horde of orc stand-ins, narcs. Leading them is a great demonic creature, the ballhog. In one of my favorite scenes in the book, the Goodgulf stands against the evil monster.

At this the ballhog strode forward onto the bridge, and stepping back, the Wizard drew himself up to his full height and said, “Avaunt, thin-clad one!”

Arrowroot waved Krona. “He cannot hold the bridge,” he shouted and rushed forward.

“E pluribus unum,” cried Bromosel and leaped after him.

“Esso extra,” said Legolam, jumping behind him.

“Kaiser Frazer,” shouted Gimlet, running up to join them.

The ballhog sprang forward, and raising the dread globe over his head, uttered a triumphant cry.

“Dulce et decorum,” said Bromosel, hacking at the bridge.

“Above and beyond,” said Arrowroot, chopping a support.

“A far, far better thing,” said Legolam, slicing through the walkway.

“Nearer my God to thee,” hummed Gimlet, cutting the last stay with a quick ax stroke.

With a loud snap, the bridge collapsed, spilling Goodgulf and the ballhog into the abyss. Arrowroot turned away and, stifling a sob, ran along the passage with the rest of the company close behind. As they rounded a corner, they were dazzled by a sudden shaft of sunlight, and after dispatching a sleeping narc guard in a few short minutes, they scrambled out the gates and down the eastern stairs.

From Nikon-zoom, the party passes on to the elvin realm of Lornadoon where they are presented with magical elvin cloaks “that blended in with any background, either green grass, green trees, green rocks, or green sky.”

After the death of Bromosel, the party is split apart. Pepsi and Moxie, captured by narcs, end up with the vegetal Vee-ates, while Arrowroot, Gimlet, and Legolam, find themselves joining the fearsome merino riders of Roi-tan in battle against the traitorous wizard, Serutan.

Frito and Spam find themselves in the company of Goddam, the previous owner of the Ring. Despite nearly boring them to death with endless tales of woe, they let him lead them to a secret way into Fordor.

I can’t help liking this book. It’s filled with clever bits, some of which my friends and I quoted for years. One of our favorites concerned the story of how Dildo Bugger refrained from killing Goddamn out of pity.

He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage.

When I first mentioned I was going to write about Bored, someone quoted that line right back to me.

It’s also, often, got a sharp, satirical eye for a time when assassinations and conspiracies seemed rampant. When Benelux, Steward of Minas Trooney, ties himself up and commits suicide on funeral pyre, Goodgulf seizes control of the city in order to prepare its forces to battle Sorhed’s hordes.

   Within a remarkably short time, Goodgulf had galvanized the sleepy capital into a drilling militia. Marshaling Minas Troney’s resources, the Wizard personally drew up ration lists, fortification plans, and lucrative defense contracts which he himself filled. At first there was a clamor of protest against Goodgulf’s extraordinary powers. But then an angry black cloud began growing over the city. This, plus a few unexplained explosions in Opposition newspaper offices, silenced “those damned isolationists,” as Goodgulf dubbed them in a widely publicized interview.

Bored of the Rings is not for the faint of heart or easily offended. It is the product of what a NY Times article on the National Lampoon called “slash-and-burn stuff that alternated in pitch but moved very much on the offensive. It was always disrespect everything, mostly yourself, a sort of reverse deism.” As clever as it is, it’s crude as heck and takes no prisoners. There is no icon, no sacred cow, no anything that is safe from its acidic ways. And I like it that way.

Oh, I left out all the poetry and songs. Most readers, I suspect, or at least the honest ones, of the Lord of the Rings, will admit to skipping Prof. Tolkien’s poems. Not all of them, perhaps, but most. That is very much not the case with Bored of the Rings. Beard’s and Kenney’s parodies range from the ridiculous to the nearly sublime. For just a taste, here’s the inscription on the Great Ring.

“This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,

Who’d pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.

Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,

This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.

The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.

The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.

If broken or busted, it cannot be remade

If found, send to Sorhed (the postage is prepaid).”

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Fletcher Vredenburgh writes a column each first Sunday of the month at Black Gate, mostly about older books he hasn’t read before. He also posts at his own site, Stuff I Like when his muse hits him