Nine Months

Obviously, regular posting has gone right out the window, along with predictable sleep patterns, and interruption free se- uh, sessions of Trivial Pursuit (yeah, that'll fool 'em). This is parenthood.

Despite the rather cliched complaints about having kids (all of which are true, which explains why parents are all, to a greater or lesser extent, terrible cliches themselves), Olivia is in a pretty fantastic age right now. We are approaching nine months - that magic point at which she has been an outside baby for as long as she turned the Wife's insides upside down. This gives me, as the dad, a new perspective on pregnancy. It lasts forever.

Some science types, attempting to make a name for themselves, have opined that human babies actually have a gestation period of 18 months - not nine. This is really me grossly oversimplifying their doctoral theses, but since none of us are going to care enough to read them anyway, I feel like I'm allowed. The reasons for this theory of human development are simple. Unlike most other animals, which are born with some basic abilities that might give them a possibility of survival, humans are born more or less useless (in a purely anthropological sense). It is only at about nine months (give or take) that a human infant begins to show the level of survival ability that other animals generally have within hours or days of birth. The theory goes that we are born in this underdeveloped state  because our far greater intellect (as compared with, say, a boll weevil) would require a head circumference at eighteen months too large to permit childbirth. So, we come out half-baked, and do the rest of our cooking on the outside. For nine more months. Give or take.

Nine months or so also happens to be a pretty fun age. Babies have a lot of personality at nine months, and provided your baby isn't a total jerk (some are) they can actually be a lot of fun at this point.  Olivia can crawl now, which means every morning, after her first feeding session of the day, my Wife and I get our blood pumping by playing hockey goalie to keep her from stage diving off of our bed. She is also much stronger, faster, and more curious than she has been previously. Glasses of liquid within her eyeline are fair game to go in Daddy's lap. The only time we can safely stop paying attention to her for three seconds is in her playpen, where Beagle lays nearby staring at her, confused by the human version of his crate. If she is anywhere else, and we turn our attention away, we inevitably turn back to find her with baby wipes, power cords or dirty shoes in her mouth. This is an astonishing ability, really, since it doesn't matter if any of those items are even in the room with her when we set her down - she will force them to materialize.

We're expecting the letter from Hogwart's any day now.

The only real downsides to this age as far as we can tell are baby-proofing (see above if you are confused about why) and teething. Your average baby has six teeth between six months and twelve months. Some spread them out. Olivia is still sporting her toothless smile, but they are getting close, and will probably be coming all at once. She is not amused.

Got no creative closer this time - gotta get back to baby proofing. Hooray.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two

I’ve given you a week to catch it, but some of you may be waiting for this weekend to go see it, so here’s my Great Big Giant Spoiler Alert: I would assume anyone inclined to see this movie has also read the book, or at least knows how the story ends already. Obviously, if you don’t know how the story ends, this post may have some surprises you don’t want to read yet. But more importantly for most Potter fans is that this post discusses some of the (in my opinion, significant) liberties the movie script took with the source material. IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET, I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU NOT TO READ FURTHER. I don’t know how much plainer I can make it than that. My blog will still be here after you’ve seen it, but I don’t want to spoil anything for you or change your expectations. Moreover, even after you’ve read it, this review is really only useful to explain what I thought about the movie - so if you aren’t really interested in that, then skip this post and read something about what Beagle has done lately. Really, I don’t mind.



Good?




Very well. Most of this post is being written on Friday morning, July 15 after a post-midnight showing. These are some of my immediate impressions. I make this point because, at the time of writing this, I don’t know when I will actually post this to my blog, but it will almost certainly be a week or so after the movie premieres. By then, I may not have the same thoughts and impressions, as I have from time to time been subject to more reasonable thinking after a period of reflection. For example, immediately after I saw Phantom Menace, I thought the movie was okay - maybe even pretty good. It was only after some intense reflection that I realized what a total crap bag that movie was and that I was in total denial because of my attachment to a franchise that had in many ways defined my childhood. I didn’t want to acknowledge that George Lucas was destroying everything good he had ever built. My full thoughts on George Lucas and the downfall of the Star Wars franchise are likely to be a post for another time, but I use this to illustrate that I have occasionally been subject to snap judgments on movies and later thought better of my initial opinions.

Harry Potter did not have the same impact on my imaginative development as Star Wars, and I have been painfully aware of the shortcomings of some of the Potter movies in the past. That said, this is still a series I have loved, and in some ways my reading the series as an adult (albeit a completely geeky adult) gave me greater objectivity than the childlike perspective I had in watching Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I would never elevate Harry over Han - the two franchises are just too different - but Potter had a lot to offer, even to a reader that was somewhat older than its target audience. This movie is the penultimate culmination of that series - the high-budget, visual telling of the final installment of a great novel that ended a great series of novels. I had high hopes, and that may color my comments some, so please take my review (and anyone else’s) with a grain of salt.

So, there’s that. Disclosures over. Let’s get to it.

This was probably the worst Potter movie of them all.

I realize what a bold statement that is. Any objective fan can recognize that many of the movies fell far, far short of the source material - a problem not at all uncommon for movies based on books. I make this bold statement with a caveat - it is the worst of the Potter films, all things considered. Order of the Phoenix was probably the most painful to watch overall, but it was based on the weakest of the books (in my opinion). In this, the eighth installment of the movie series, the directors and writers had some of the absolute best, most emotionally rending and iconic source material of the entire series. And they pissed it away.

I have to constrain my comments to a few key areas of the movie because otherwise I’d be here all day. First, there’s the significant rewrite that Voldemort is suddenly aware when he loses a Horcrux. Point of order: Why didn’t he notice when the amulet was destroyed in Part One of Deathly Hallows? Why didn’t he already know the Diary was gone? And Harry can hear horcruxes? Interesting. Okay, I guess I can accept that this twist at least reduces the amount of narrative explanation for how he finds the diadem (which was in the wrong place in the movie, btw - Rowling put it where it was for a reason). The confrontation between Snape and Harry immediately after he arrives at Hogwart’s is an obvious and incredibly awkward departure from the book, as is the fact that all of the member’s of Dumbledore’s Army, despite apparently living together in hiding in a secret room (that is not (!?) the room of requirement(!?)) are still active participants in the day to day goings on of Hogwarts? I’m sorry, what? Are we to believe they are in hiding at night, but go about unpunished to their daily classes? Or are they merely having a slumber party, complete with hammocks and representatives from three of the four houses in another common area of the castle, with Snape’s blessing?

I can forgive the minor departures, like Harry never going to Ravenclaw Tower, and Malfoy taking Crabbe and somebody other than Goyle (I guess the actor who previously played Goyle read the script and took a pass on this movie) into the Room of Requirement. Even the failure to utilize the Shrieking Shack in the final movie can be forgiven for the sake of expedience and moving the plot forward. But there are the big changes to be considered. The conversation between Harry, Hermione, and Ron before he leaves the castle for the woods was a huge, glaring error. I call it an error rather than a rewrite for a reason. Obviously this was another intentional departure from the book, but this is one which gets 180 degrees away from the underlying characters of all three of the primary heroes of this story. Harry intentionally avoids talking to his two friends in the books precisely because they would never, under any circumstances, let him go alone to face Voldemort. Here, Hermione pats him on the back with a few goodbye tears and Ron stands there looking like a lump on a log.

That brings up another problem - one which has nothing to do with the script. The three principles utterly failed to show up for most of this movie. Maybe they were emotionally exhausted - I know each of them is capable of decent acting, but you wouldn’t have known it here. The only actors who really seemed to try at all were the young men playing Neville and Draco whose names I am too lazy to check for on IMDB. Oh, and Alan Rickman in the Pensieve scenes, though I was somewhat disappointed with his performance elsewhere.

The piss-poor acting and bad editing decisions collided together into a black hole of suck in the scene in “King’s Cross Station.” In the book, this is maybe the most important scene in the entire series, explaining virtually everything that has not already been resolved, and bringing some emotional catharsis to Harry after spending so long wondering about the true character of his mentor, Dumbledore. Obviously, the studio, the directors, the writers, or someone made a decision to forego most of the major “is Dumbledore who we think he is?” subplot in Deathly Hallows: Part One (a gross miscalculation in my opinion), so a lot of that conversation would have made no sense if it were included in Part Two. Still, Harry meets his lost mentor again in this scene of the movie and we see them feeling.... nothing. This was the coldest, most mechanical scene of the entire movie and at the worst time imaginable. I never liked the replacement Dumbledore, but I thought after the sixth movie he might actually understand the character. Wow was I wrong. Or maybe he does understand the character, he just doesn’t bother to put forth much effort unless he gets at least thirty minutes of screen time. Also, minor note, but as long as I’m dissecting this scene - with that massive budget, was that the best visual background Warner Bros. could give us for King’s Cross? I expected something I couldn’t have designed with Photoshop, but I guess they needed the extra dinero to make Harry and Voldemort fly together later in a totally unnecessary ploy to rake in more bucks on the 3D showings.

The climactic battle was ripped into separate confrontations to stretch the drama, and that might have been okay if they didn’t screw up some of the major elements. In her fight with Bellatrix LeStrange, Mrs. Weasley comes off less like an angry mother defending her child than an incompetent witch who got in a lucky shot. The drama and intensity of the book were totally lost. Neville does come across like a warlock from Mars with fire breathing fists -as he should - but the rewrites ignore the primary effect of Harry’s big sacrifice - that Voldemort’s curses can no longer really hurt the people Harry sought to protect. That was kind of significant. Or maybe I’m the only one who thought so.

In the final battle between Harry and Voldemort, I just have to point out - the only reason their wands were able to lock together in that fashion previously was the twin cores. There’s a reason they don’t do that in the book version of Deathly Hallows. At this point in the story, neither one is using their original Phoenix feather wands (and don’t get me started on the failure by Harry to repair his original wand - that would have added maybe ten seconds to the movie?), so I’m guessing Warner Bros. never bothered to hire a consistency consultant.

My final beef - at least of those I plan to write about - is mostly just to point out some moral ambiguity that didn’t sit well with me. In the early scenes of the movie, the three heroes break into Gringott’s bank with Griphook the Goblin, and Imperius curse one of the senior goblins into being a cooperative git. In a departure from the books, that senior goblin is killed by the dragon in the vaults below the bank, primarily because he has been imperiused and is too stupid to get out of the way. None of our heroes seem terribly concerned about this, including Hermione who has spent the better part of seven books fighting against the oppression of other magical races by wizards. What? Didn’t occur to any of you that this particular innocent death was sort of your fault? Or have we just decided that goblins really are a lesser race?

Any one of these particular flaws standing alone could almost be forgiven. No movie is going to be 100% faithful to a book it is based on, and expecting that is unreasonable. Moreover, I am very aware that much must be sacrificed to make sure the story - the main story - moves forward at a reasonable pace. This was the second part of the final book and still clocks in at two hours plus, so asking for more is somewhat unreasonable. BUT, consider the example of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) Trilogy. Peter Jackson had to cut a metric ton of source material in order to make three still extremely long movies. Despite the inconsistencies and omissions, LOTR still made a damn good movie series, and many people who never read the books have loved those movies. Potter, while being one of the best and most entertaining book series I’ve ever read, failed to come close in more than half of the movies. The vast majority of people have either read the books or are dragged by people who have read the books. And good thing - you would undoubtedly be completely lost if you hadn’t read the books beforehand.

I will say this for the final Harry Potter movie: it gave me what I wanted. Something still felt missing after reading the last book, like I wanted the story to go on a little bit more... or maybe it was simpler and I just knew there were a few more movies to come so it wasn’t really over until then. After seeing this, I know it’s really over, and while I may have to go read Deathly Hallows one more time to purge this experience from my memory, I don’t have any immediate need for something new from the Harry Potter Universe.

Harsh, I know. Feel free to leave your flaming feedback. It’s just my opinion.

Iconic Moments in Growing Your Inner Geek

I would never presume to write a definitive list of “things you must do to be a proper geek.” The reasons for such discretion are primarily practical - I don’t want to deal with my Constant Readers’ “constructive criticism” that I forgot this or that, or should not have included something else. Also, there is the fundamental disagreement amongst interested parties as to what precisely constitutes a geek (as opposed to a nerd, dork, dweeb, etc.) and exactly what type of geek a particular person is. Eventually, we will have to have some sort of U.N. sanctioned international summit to resolve this question (as if the U.N. ever resolves anything - political zing!), but until then I will go with a fairly broad definition of a geek as someone with an inordinate interest in one or more areas of popular or niche culture which have nothing to do with athleticism. “Geek” is in no way mutually exclusive from the other terms mentioned above - one can be a “geek” and a “nerd” - but one is not the same as the other (though I and others may occasionally use such terms interchangeably out of literary laziness).

Understand, when I use the word “geek” I (a) paint myself with the same brush, and (b) do not mean it as a derogatory term in any form or fashion. Urban Dictionary (yeah, I know - I need a new source) describes geeks as “the people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult.” I think the spirit of that definition is accurate more often than not, as geeks tend to be people who think outside the box, and are non-conformists in some sense other than the really annoying teenage angst sense where “no one understands me, so I’ll go listen to Modest Mouse and grow out my bangs.” Geeks are well served in later life by being their own people, while often being ostracized in early life because they didn’t conform to some arbitrary standard of interests, hobbies, or fashion.

One can be a geek in a single category, as in someone who is well adjusted in most respects but has an unhealthy fascination with all things Disney. Not that I know anyone like that. Ahem. More often, geeks tend to hold interests in multiple “geek” categories - sci-fi, fantasy, role playing games, video games, comic books, etc. These are the more well-rounded geeks, but too many geek interests can counteract the constructive aspects of being a geek by making one a lazy slacker.

One can be a geek about a specific movie, TV, or book franchise, or one can get geeky about a more mainstream hobby - band is a great example. You knew them in high school, and may have been one yourself - there were kids in band, and then there were band geeks. Many of my friends are proudly self-described band geeks. I myself was a theater geek in high school. My parents wouldn’t sign the permission slip for me to warm the bench on the football team, so I had to do something, and that was where I found my niche. In the old days, AV clubs were havens for geeks, and though they probably aren’t called that anymore, any high school club involving computer based design, film-production, or audio/visual editing of some other kind is probably filled with geeks.

So, like I was saying, there’s a lot to take into account when discussing the general concept of “geeks,” so a definitive list of geek behaviors, or key moments in geekdom would be hard to pull together. That said, I am a geek and I know a lot of geeks, and there are many, many common experiences shared in and amongst those geeks I’ve known over the years. Herein, I offer a short list of Iconic Moments in Growing Your Inner Geek. Most people will not have had all of these experiences (I myself have not had all of them) but most well-rounded geeks will probably have had more than one. Enjoy.

Watching the Original Trilogy - The capitalization is not poor grammar, as there is only one Original Trilogy. Not all geeks are Star Wars fans, though it is a rare geek who truly dislikes episodes four through six in their original format, and an even rarer geek who has not at least watched these three films (cough cough *wife* cough cough). Star Wars was a defining cultural achievement, both for cinema special effects and sci-fi in general, as it allowed the concept of “space opera” to be part of popular, as opposed to niche, culture. Besides, if you can’t whip out a convenient Yoda quote when someone sets you up by saying “I’ll try,” you are socially crippled. I grew up in a generation that had “lightsaber duels” with broom handles almost as often as we had “sword fights.” From a distance they look the same, but the sound effects are miles apart. More importantly, we grew up innocent of such nonsense as Jar-Jar Binks and pod-racing intergalactic dictators. Needless to say, my early memories of the Trilogy are strong in the Force.

Mocking the Prequel Trilogy - No one hates like an old-school Star Wars fan scorned. Unlike the Original Trilogy, however, one does not need to have actually seen the movies to establish this geek bona fides, as popular culture, Youtube parodies, and RiffTrax have given us multiple ways to appreciate the finer points of the best franchise ever squandered without actually sitting through seven+ hours of excruciatingly painful “entertainment.” Midichlorians... George Lucas, you jackass.
In the same vein as this experience, but eliciting slightly less rage, is mocking the alterations to the Original Trilogy added in the “updated” versions. Among the more egregious - Greedo shooting first, the awful CGI Jabba, and the mighty “rings of doom” exploding outward from the two destroyed Death Stars. Unlimited resources and that was how you “fixed” the explosions George? Poor show old chap.

Rolling Dice- Depending on what phase of life you first experienced table-top role playing games (RPGs), you may today deny ever having had the experience, or avoid conversations where the subject comes up, but you’re just denying your inner geek. Many of us have known the joy, at one point or another, of sitting around a table drinking heavily caffeinated beverages until three a.m. and pretending to be a level seven half-elven ranger with a Ring of Sustenance, whose actions (and the outcomes of those actions) are ultimately determined by the roll of a twelve-sided die and the whims of a Game Master, or GM. And we’ve also experienced the boredom of putting up with the player at the table whose role play side-story took two hours to resolve with the GM while the rest of us grow more and more sleepy and likely to take our dice and leave. Table top role-playing is a rite of passage for many geeks, whether its the traditional medieval sword and sorcery variety (i.e., Dungeons and Dragons), or something more contemporary, or even futuristic. There are RPGs with themes ranging from western to pirate, space to other dimensional, ancient past to ridiculously unlikely future.
The big problem most people have with table top RPGs is the speed of the game, as calculating results by hand with the aid of dice is time consuming, and arguing over fine points of rules with a GM or other players is tedious. Video game RPGs (Final Fantasy, for example) eliminate that element but take away much of the social aspect. Enter Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, which have become intensely popular in recent years, even drawing in the advertising credentials of significant (and less than significant) celebrities. These games allow you to be social - ostensibly - by playing online with friends or people you have never met, but have nothing like the social experience of sitting at a table with a few friends and going old school with paper and pencil and a few dice. Hopefully, as big as World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs have become, they will not replace the table top experience for the next generation of geeks. That’s where it all started, and there’s still a place

Reading LOTR and/or Harry Potter - No, I do not think the two are interchangeable. In my view, both have a great deal of merit, but I include them together because they are exceedingly popular, exceedingly geeky book series, and each to some extent defines a generation of readers. In the sixties, LOTR (Lord of the Rings, for the uninitiated) fans scrawled “Frodo Lives” on subway walls in New York, and took pilgrimages to the home of J.R.R. Tolkien. Apparently, Mr. Tolkien did not understand what all the fuss was about, but was generally quite pleased at how well received his books were.
In the last decade, Potter fans have clogged bookstores for midnight BOOK releases (think about that crazy sh**), often wearing costumes. I’ve seen five year olds devouring the eight hundred page tomes of the Potter series, so clearly there is something to these books. I myself destroyed The Deathly Hallows three days before taking the bar exam, and threatened anyone who wanted to dissect the exam with me after the fact with spoiling the end of the story. It was very effective (shocking, that law schools would be full of geeks).
Both book series have inspired incredibly successful movies (of varying quality), but nothing about the movies replaces the first experience of reading the books themselves.

Utilizing Star Trek in everyday conversation - Whether it’s a direct quote, an homage to the Shatner’s broken delivery style, analogizing a situation to an engineering problem Geordi LaForge had to overcome, or simply testing a possible love-interest with the query “Death Star versus Borg Cube - who wins?” (this is a story for another time), the first time one references Star Trek in everyday life is a special occasion indeed. Like with Star Wars, one does not have to be a Trekkie (or Trekker) to be a true geek, but also like with Star Wars, it is a rare geek that doesn’t have a passing familiarity with some of the characters, situations, and actors of the iconic series. A certain amount of mocking is to be expected, as most fans acknowledge the original series had weak points, the first few seasons of TNG were terrible, and Voyager might as well take a long walk off a short pier. But unlike with the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, most Trek fan ribbing is good natured, and for the most part the bad is enjoyed right along side the good.

Attending your first “Con” - “Cons,” or conventions, generally implies either a thematic convention of small to medium stature (for example, a Star Trek convention in Akron, Ohio, or a Comic Book Convention in Charlotte, NC) or one of the much larger geek meccas which occur throughout the year in major U.S. cities which have no particular theme and seemingly cover all things geek (Comic Con in San Diego - going on right now! - or Dragon Con in Atlanta later in the fall). Cons are all about fully embracing whatever it is that has drawn you to the Con, which inevitably is some incredibly geeky side of you. Whether it is an interest in gaming (board or role play), anime, sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, the latest project by Joss Wheedon/A.J. Abrams/Chris Nolan/Marvel Studios, the Dresden Files, or just fishing around for fellow cosplay aficionados (if you don’t know, you’re better for it, and I’m not explaining the concept), there is a Con or Cons for you. Think what you will about the people who show up in wizard robes and chain mail - you are only in a position to judge at all because you are at the same Con. Embrace your geekdom and put on your Spock ears.

Having your first midnight movie hangover - Off the top of my head, I cannot think of movie that had a midnight premiere that doesn’t qualify as a geeky movie in some form or fashion.* The latest round of Batman films, Harry Potter, the Star Wars Prequels, the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot - the only So if you’ve ever been to a midnight showing of any movie, the odds are good your have some geek in you. Depending on your age at the time (midnight movies tend to be dominated by high school and college age geeks) you may have bounced back easily, but the mignight movie hangover is an experience unique to the fully formed, post-college geek. There are no more excuses. You’re old enough to know better. You’re still out doing this crap. You are Geek. Go roar, or something.


* Although the Twilight Saga had midnight showings, and every self-respecting geek I know despises Twilight fans almost as much as they hate Jar-Jar Binks, there is no denying that if you have an affinity for werewolves and vampires, you are probably harboring some geeky tendencies. Therefore, I grudgingly include even this detestable franchise and those who stayed up to watch the premieres in this discussion. Losers.

These are just a few iconic geek-oriented experiences that may help you identify whether or not you are, in fact, a geek. If you recognize yourself in some of these experiences, congratulations - you may be a geek. Keep doing what you’re doing and let your geek grow. If you haven’t had any of these experiences... what the heck is wrong with you? Even “cool kids” get references to Kirk and Spock!

Quoth the Raven, "Pottermore?"

In honor of the final film premiering stateside this week, I felt this would make a good topic for discussion. The title of today’s post might imply some sort of animosity (or at least spiritual ennui) toward Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling’s latest project - Pottermore. No, it’s actually a whole lot simpler than that. It’s that the traffic to the as-yet-unopened website is so intense, despite the fact that all you can currently do is submit your email address to express interest and receive updates, that you cannot actually submit your email address to express interest and receive updates. I know, because I spent the better part of a day trying.

Shutup. It wasn’t the only thing I did. And, I did eventually get on.

Anyway, that bodes well for the business model of Pottermore, whatever that may end up being, but doesn’t seem very promising for those of us hoping to access it in its first few weeks (it goes live in October, with a limited number of beta-testers gaining access on July 31, the birthday of the titular [heh heh] hero). The intense interest in the project is pretty interesting as well, particularly since Rowling and her publishers have been adamant that, whatever will come of this website, no new Potter books will be forthcoming. Pottermore will apparently be an online store where Potter e-books will be sold exclusively, with some new material written about the Potterverse, and several online games and interactive content. That last part kind of sounds kinda like sanctioned fan fiction, but one can hope that is not what’s intended.

The geek in me enjoyed Harry Potter far more than is reasonable for what, at the end of the day, was just a well-written but fairly simple book series. Arguably, it sparked the most recent revival of the supernatural genre novels, for which we can ply Rowling with both great thanks (i.e., for The Dresden Files) and lamentation (i.e., for the Twilight series). I’m sure those other authors would argue that Rowling’s writing didn’t influence theirs overly much, and they are probably telling the truth. The authors that have been most obviously influenced by Rowling are relegated to young adult fiction, if they’ve been published at all, and have mostly produced derivative crap in an obvious attempt to write “the NEXT Harry Potter.”

No, most of the recently released supernatural fiction, good and bad, is not directly influenced by Rowling’s writing (though they may share common influences). What the Potter books did for these other books was prime the fantasy pump for a large segment of the reading population that probably wouldn’t have given other fantasy/urban fantasy/supernatural genre stuff a chance. The increase in popularity in turn created a fresh wave of such novels from opportunistic writers (not a criticism - if I put that much effort into something I’d want to get paid too). That increase in inventory in turn created more interest, and the circle of life continues.

So, Potter created some opportunity for other writers, and made Rowling ludicrously rich in the process. And now, she’d like to “give something back” to her fans and readers, and we’d love to let her. If she happens to get paid a little more in the process (especially since she’s bypassing the Kindle and Nook stores to sell the hottest commodity in ebooks directly), one can hardly blame her. I for one am willing to admit my curiosity toward the new site. In the meantime, we have the final movie to watch and dissect. Its stateside release will be this Friday (or late Thursday night depending on how you view such things). I hear they gave the movie a twist ending - Voldemort is actually Harry’s father. No wait, that was something else...