Happy Harry Month

If you just said, "Harry who?" stop reading now.

I saw the movie last night. I really enjoyed it, except for the part where the movie theatre informed me that the margarita machine was broken. "For the whole night?" asked I. "Yup," replied they.

I tried boycotting the margaritas, but then I discovered that my constant margarita-at-the-movies consumption has forged an indelible link in my mind between the act of movie-going and the art of margarita-drinking. It just isn't a movie without a margarita. And so, within the first twenty minutes, I crumbled and got the disgusting margarita on the rocks. It was, you will be unsurprised to learn, disgusting. So that part sucked.

But the movie itself, well, I liked it. I'm trying to decide if I really like it, or if I just like it because it's a Harry Potter movie and I'm at a point now where I don't much care if it's particularly GOOD or not, or true to the books, so long as it is a movie that features a character named Harry Potter.

I used to care a lot that the movie was just as I imagined it when I read the books, and that it included everything from the books that I felt was important. Lately, though, that just doesn't matter anymore. The movies to me simply aren't the essence of Harry Potter, so I find I can appreciate them for whatever it is that they are.

This is in contrast, say, to something like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which to me IS Lord of the Rings, never mind that I had first read the books. It's perfection and the "reality" of that fiction, whereas the Harry Potter movies are to me just a representation of the reality – it's in the books only that the world is "real."

That being the case, I can't get myself too worked up over the fact that this or that character was left out, or that things didn't happen quite the way they were supposed to. I liked it, and I was well entertained for the time I was there. I could even be persuaded to return, especially once that dang margarita machine is fixed.

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In other news, I will soon be entering total media blackout. No more Internet, no more CNN, no more reading of newspapers and magazines. I do not care to know how the seventh book ends until I read it myself, thank you. And no, I do not think it is cute to "jokingly" inform me that X happens, and then laugh and say that it doesn't, so it was okay to joke about it (no, it's not okay, because then I know what DOESN'T happen, which is almost as bad as knowing what DOES). This is a complicated way of saying that I won't be reading your e-mails either. You jerks.

It looks like there's about a 70% chance of work next weekend. I can't convey in mere words the depth of this particular tragedy; all I can do is hope it does not happen. Unfortunately, the ugly thing from hell that doesn't go away and then goes away and then comes back to me to do stuff very urgently deadliney deadline do it now...may very well be back on my desk at the end of next week, which will leave me with no viable choice but to work until it's done. I'm doing what I can to prevent that – worked this weekend to get it back to the other side as quickly as possible, in the hopes that it might return to me on, oh, Wednesday, instead of Friday, and I'll work nights next week too if I must.

See, the problem is that I work with these people who are almost, though not quite, as nerdy as I am. They will all be reading Harry Potter next weekend, and they will arrive in the office bursting to discuss it. They are also mean, so they will not hesitate to RUIN it for me if I was unable to read it due to WORKING so that they could sit at home reading.

So I think that, if the worst happens, I will have to stay home "sick" as soon as I get rid of the project from hell.

Either that, or I will work with my door closed and hang a strongly-worded sign regarding the wrath that will befall any who dare to spoil Harry Potter for me.

The latter path is fraught with peril...I can't help but think of that episode of Friends where Ross is fired after he leaves a rage-filled note to warn off a lunch thief. The spiteful bile that would pour forth from my pen into such a note would virtually guarantee a similar outcome. Which would mean that I'd have all sorts of time to read the book, so maybe there's something to that....

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I was excited to see a preview before the movie for The Dark Is Rising. My friends, if you are unfamiliar with these books, I beg of you not to judge it by that preview, which made it look...hm...just a little bit cheesy and derivative. And I beg of the filmmakers not to actually make the movie cheesy and derivative.

First of all, The Dark is Rising WAS first of all. As in, years and years before Harry Potter arrived on the scene. If it looks like yet another tired Harry Potter ripoff, I assure you it is not. I thought that maybe HP was inspired by it – J.K. Rowling says no, in the general sense that nothing inspired her books, but I wonder if she didn't read those herself when she was a kid. Regardless, there's a vast gulf that separates a ripoff from an homage, and though there are similarities between the two series, they definitely are both wonderful in their own unique and distinctive ways.

Second, it was in fact MY Harry Potter, as in the fantasy series that I loved when I was a kid. I would have just about died of joy if this movie had come out when I was 12 – I still remember a fantastic dream I had right around that time in which I turned on the TV, and there it was. These books are good. They're really, really good.

So please, if you like Harry Potter, give it a try. Read The Dark Is Rising first, even though it's not the official start of the series. Read it before the movie comes out, because I think the movie may not nearly do it justice. (Was I already buzzed on the non-frozen margarita, or did they portray the main character – a British boy who was not actually, and maybe never had been, young – as a skateboarding-riding, hormone-driven American teen...with a sidekick? Why, God, why?)