The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

1968 was not a good year. War, assassination, political violence and creeping fascism fell over the land like a gloomy shadow. It was however, a very good year to read J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings for the first time.

 I had first come across the epic trilogy in 1965 as a high school senior when I saw it listed as a favorite of 60's college students. Later some of my pals formed a band called Middle Earth and passed out business cards with the word "Hobbit" displayed prominently.

The bassplayer in the band had a hippie-style VW bus named "The Traveling Slum". On the windshield visor was a button that read "Frodo Lives".

But despite my travels with the Middle Earth band members in the Traveling Slum, I still had not read the book that had given birth to their name--- until the summer of 1968.

Tracy Turnblad and the gang are back in this latest version of the John Waters classic about desegregation in Baltimore, Maryland during the early 1960's. Hairspray was originally a 1980's film starring Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad and then turned into a hit Broadway musical. The 2007 film is based more on the musical than the John Waters original film. Waters does make a brief cameo in the new movie as a flasher pervert. Anyone who has seen his Pink Flamingos will appreciate the irony.

The story of Hairspray was based on the real life civil rights protests at Baltimore's Gwynn Oak Amusement Park and at the Buddy Dean Show, a dance program modeled after Dick Clark's more famous American Bandstand.