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Author Walter Isaacson released an excerpt from his forthcoming biography about billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and boy does it have the internet talking.
The excerpt centers on a rather unique test Musk subjected musician Grimes to at the beginning of their relationship back in 2018.
And because these two are nothing if not eccentric, it of course involved Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
The test centered on Tolkien's work after Grimes compared Musk to Gandalf on their second date.
Musk, a Tolkien superfan, wanted to make sure Grimes wasn't just an interloper when it came to the author's works, so he subjected her to a "rapid-fire trivia test on ‘Lord of the Rings.'" Isaacson wrote:
“He wanted to see whether she was truly a faithful fan. She passed."
But this was no mere flirtatious Q&A. In reference to Grimes' Tolkien knowledge, Musk told Isaacson, "that mattered to me."
Okay then.
That would be enough to make many of us end the date right then and there, but it wasn't even the wildest thing that happened on one of their early dates. Musk later decided to show off a bit, putting his Tesla car to the test while she rode beside him.
Isaacson wrote:
“He showed how fast the car accelerated, then took his hands off the wheel, covered his eyes, and let her experience Autopilot."
Grimes was definitely impressed—in a sense, anyway.
She told Isaacson:
“I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, this guy is f**king crazy.' ... The car was signaling and changing lanes by itself. It felt like a scene out of a Marvel movie."
It sounds like an improvement on their first date, which took place in a Tesla factory in Fremont, California, where the would-be couple walked the factory floor while Grimes watched Musk "try to fix things." Sounds...riveting.
Naturally, Musk and Grimes' dates and other revelations in Isaacson's book have raised quite a few eyebrows on social media.
It may have been a bizarre courtship, but it worked for a while. The pair dated for three years and had two kids together, X Æ A-12 in 2020 and Exa Dark Sideræl in 2021, before splitting later that year.