Harry Potter and my day-to-day life

I know, I know, I know. It's been a very long time since I wrote a new entry for this blog. I apologize. I have been so caught up in other projects that I haven't had the chance to read, or write, about Harry and his friends in quite some time.

That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about J.K.'s magical world. No, that world never drifts far from my mind. It just means I haven't been actively reading the books, watching the films or writing this blog of late.

And Harry Potter keeps popping up in my day-to-day life. It's in some ways amazing how these books and films that are now several years in the past continue to have life, continue to influence the world in which we live.

Three examples:

1. Did you see the articles on the various new websites about how scientists are working on developing an Invisibility Cloak, similar to that "seen in Harry Potter"? Awesome. I have gotten used to seeing articles of this kind that talk about scientific developments that bring to life technology that was first seen in Star Trek but this is the first article that referred to Harry Potter. What's next, the development of flying brooms? a flue network? a deluminator?

2. I watched the Jim Carrey film Yes Man on Netflix the other day and was pleased to see Harry Potter play a significant role. Now, this is not a great movie. It starts well and seems to be promising some interesting stuff but, unfortunately, it starts to fall apart about half way through and degenerates into silliness by the end. Be that as it may, it was a lot of fun to see Jim Carrey (dressed as Harry) and Zooey Deschanel (dressed as Hermione) attend a Harry Potter party, complete with an awesome Dobby in attendance.

3. I was chatting with my boss the other day about my holiday plans. My partner, you see, is preparing a big trip for us to celebrate my upcoming birthday and she has kept our destination a secret from me. This makes the whole thing very fun, exciting and mysterious. It also leads to a lot of questions, both from me and from other people in my life. My boss asked where I thought I might end up going. I said I can think of a variety of possibilities, all of them fantastic: England, France, Italy, Prague, the Netherlands, California, Victoria BC, even Florida so that we can go to Harry Potter World. When I mentioned the last option, my boss, the last person in the world I would have thought to have read Harry Potter not to mention to have gone to Harry Potter World, smiled, nodded and said: "We waited in line for three hours to get a wand!"

Awesome.

I wonder where I'm going to go.

No feet up on Harry Potter

So I'm watching Orange is the New Black on Netflix, the award-winning show about an upper middle class woman who ends up spending a year in prison for a crime she committed when she was younger.

I was just cruising through the first season, trying to figure out what all the buzz is about. So far, I'm not totally sold on it. It's okay, I guess. Kind of hit and miss. Not as funny as I had hoped and somewhat lacking in interesting characters.

Then, out of the blue, there's a scene in the prison library. One of the women is wishing to borrow a book and the inmate who works in the library, thinking she just wants to borrow a thick book to use as a foot stool, refuses to let her borrow The Order of the Phoenix.

It came and went in a flash but I think the line was something like, "You ain't puttin' your feet up on Harry Potter. You want something to stand on, you borrow [James Joyce's] Ulysses. I tried to read that s---. That's for puttin' you feet on."

Now, I've read Ulysses and it's really very good. It doesn't deserve to have people stepping all over it either. But what a moment of joy to be watching this crazy, crude, violent, disturbing television show that seems so far away from J.K.'s magical world and to find that, even in this prison, Harry Potter is revered.

Awesome.