Something like a literary review

So, I was watching the Sci Fi channel the other day, enjoying the cuteness that is the new Doctor Who, and the roomie and I were flummoxed by SciFi's commercials for a new cheesy looking fantasy movie called "Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King," which was being promo'ed as a precursor to "Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." To which the roomie and I said, "Wha?" (having never heard of the Dragon King.) But my good ole bible of all things pop culture-y, Entertainment Weekly was good enough to enlighten us -- The Dragon King story is based on the Nibelungenlied, or the Ring of the Nibelung, aka the story on which Wagner's Ring cycle is based. So, ok, it is old. The movie still looked damn cheesy though.

Anyway, the reaason I bring this up today, a week or more after the movie aired on basic cable, is I was having a really nice lunch with a bunch of folks from my office, and the topic of baby names came up -- not all that unusual, since we were out with two pregnant women, one of whom we were treating to a "not-shower" lunch. The lone guy with us was joking about suggesting Viking names, and I burst out with "Freya," and he bounced all over that. "That's great. What is that? How do you spell it?"

I pulled from my limited knowledge of Norse mythology, remarked that I thought she was the Norse verison of Aphrodite, which she is, or at least the goddess of love and sex (and battle!). And this, roundaboutaways, led back to the reason why I knew about her, which I thought I could trace back to a college class where we read the classic retelling of the Ring story. Which I recommended to my coworker, and he's going to go get from the library.

So you see? My job's not all about having to recommend books I really don't like. Really. Sometimes there's good stuff.