Elon Musk gave Grimes a Lord of the Rings trivia test on their second date

Elon Musk has often found himself the main character on the internet on any given day, which is only to be expected when you’re one of the richest people in the world and you own the company formerly known as Twitter, now known as X; see, that right there is one of the reasons he gets talked about so much. He’s also at the heads of companies like Tesla and SpaceX. And he might have a cage match with Facebook* CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Love him or hate him, this Elon Musk guy knows how to command attention.

And he’s getting more of it in the form of a biography by Walter Isaacson, who’s also written biographies of folks like Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson has released an excerpt from his book on — where else — Twitter X, where he talks a bit about Musk’s relationship with the Canadian musician Grimes.

Musk and Grimes met in 2018 and have had an on-and-off relationship ever since. They have two children together — their daughter’s name is Exa Dark Sideræl and their son’s name is X AE A-XII, changed from X Æ A-12 to comply with California law — but as of right now, they’re broken up.

Could you pass Elon Musk’s Lord of the Rings trivia test? “That mattered to me”

The biography excerpt gets into the early days of their relationship; the two started dating in 2018 after chatting over Twitter (before Musk bought it) before Musk invited Grimes to tour one of his Tesla factories. “We just walked the floor all night, and I watched him try to fix things,” Grimes said.

That was their first date. The night after, Musk drove Grimes to a restaurant and showed off his car’s self-driving capabilities, taking his eyes off the wheel and covering his eyes. “I was like, oh s***, this guy is f***ing crazy,” Grimes told Isaacson. “The car was signaling and changing lanes by itself. It felt like a scene out of a Marvel movie.”

Later, Grimes compared Musk’s powers to those of Gandalf, the wizard from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series, which promoted Musk to give Grimes “a rapid-fire trivia test” on all things Lord of the Rings. “He wanted to see whether she was truly a faithful fan. She passed,” wrote Isaacson. According to Musk, “That mattered to me.”

I’m tempted to condemn this as gatekeeping behavior, but it’s easy to get distracted, since it’s one of the least weird parts of the excerpt. For instance, at the restaurant, Musk carved the pair’s initials onto a wall…on their second date. And Grimes gave Musk a box of animal bones she had collected as a gift. Where are you supposed to look?

Isaacson’s book, simply title Elon Musk, is available to buy now.

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h/t Independent