Tom Waits in the Hobbit?

Well according to the Guardian, who got it from AICN, who got it from the dairy maid in the eternal game if web-based Chinese whsipers that passes for entertainment news, Tom Waits is being considered for a role in The Hobbit.

I think that's cool and all (being a Tom Waits lover from the beginning of time, more or less, if we assume that time began when Waits launched Swordfishtrombone, and some physicists theorise exactly that) and it's not generally the the kind of news I feel the need to comment on (it's probably bullshit anyway) but I was struck by:

"Waits has acted before, in films such as Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Robert Altman's Short Cuts and Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law. But he has never played the kind of character you would expect to find in a JRR Tolkien's novel."

Uh, hello? Bram Stoker's Dracula? Singing spot in Shrek?

I wish the Guardian had comments on so I could be all outraged and nerdy. NERD RAGE!!!

Also, while Smaug's a good call, it could also be one of the trolls that gets turned to stone, or the voice of a dwarf. A dwarf would be kind a fitting, actually.