"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" as reviewed by otters

"OMG it's starting it's starting HARRY POTTER EEEEEEEEE!!!"



"Wait, Tom Felton can act now?"



"Oh, Harry and Ginny - so romantic!"
"Really? I've always preferred Harry with that weird blonde. You know, Draco."



"Look, Mom! I'm an Inferius!"



"DUMBLEDORE! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"



*yawn* "Man, it's late. I'm getting too old for this."

Best Harry Potter shirt yet?

What DO we get up to at Harry Potter parties?

Don't worry; we did not actually get a baby drunk. We just thought it was really cute how he was all zonked out on the living room floor, so we added props.

My haul from Harry Potter Yankee Swap

Two bookmarks and a Lego pen, which I stole in the last round.

Wizard rock!

Headed to the show! Stacie likes it in the back (of the SUV).






Danae and I do that thing where I hold the camera out at arm's length and hope I have it aimed right.






Holly and Chele.






Chele rocks out with Brian from Draco and the Malfoys pre-show.






Danae bought a H&tP foam finger. That's right - they sold foam fingers.






Micah and her friend Aly, who lives in Grove City (Columbus suburb) and was kind enough to give us a ride to Skully's, where the show was. Aly has never read the Harry Potter books - but now she plans to. Such is the power of wizard rock.






Up first, The Whomping Willows. Wizard Rock 4-eva!






Holly, Chele and Danae in the crowd. Danae was about ready to go bustin' some heads if Matt didn't play "Draco and Harry." Luckily for all of us, it was his last song.






Draco and the Malfoys are up now, which means: "It's time to PARTY! LIKE! YOU'RE EVIL! It's time to FREAK! OUT! SOME MUGGLES!"






OK, so I guess Bradley lays down a drum track in advance, and then they use that for the shows. The drum machine went on the fritz, so Brian had to pull out his iBook. Macs ... is there anything they can't do? (I mean, except play City of Heroes ...)






While Brian fiddled with the drum track, Bradley played solo.






Whoa, dude - you kinda DO look evil there! I guess red-eye will do that to you.







It was an all-ages show. Here you can see a few kids sitting on the bar. I wonder if Skully's has ever had a crowd quite like this.






Things get hectic when my camera decides it's happier on the "Make Everything Look All Trippy" setting.







That would be Paul (aka Harry Year 7) if my camera weren't doing the trippy thing.






There we go! Hello, Paul!






Uh-oh! Looks like one of the Malfoys infiltrated the Potters' set! Bradley changed ties and came onstage as Bill Weasley.






Joe (Harry Year 4) pulls out a sax. Awesome!






These guys basically never stop jumping. Check their MySpace photos if you don't believe me.






It's tough to see in this photo, but this guitar has a lightning bolt painted on it, which is pretty cool. At one point, the guys did the guitar salute from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which was pretty rad, because I knew there had to be someone else out there who liked that movie. Too bad I didn't catch it on film.






Joe plays keyboards, and the bubble machine goes wild! This was the big finish, "The Weapon." So the bubble machine's going, and suddenly the guys jump into the crowd and start giving everybody hugs, and everyone's singing, "The weapon we have is LOVE!" - and it sounds hippie-ish in the retelling, but it was pretty awesome if you were there.






After-party at Barley's in the Arena District. As you can see, Danae took advantage of the excellent happy hour at Skully's. During the show, she was fanning everyone around her with her foam finger - which was nice, except when she would get a little too close and start hitting you in the face with it. Afterwards, she wandered around the bar offering everyone Soft Batch cookies.

The weapon we have is love!

I don't think I've ever been to a concert quite like the one I attended on Friday night.

Yes, yes - part of that is that I've never been to a concert where all the bands played Harry Potter songs, but really, what I mean is that I've never been to a show with so much energy. It was pretty amazing, and I'm definitely going again if Harry and the Potters' tour comes anywhere close.

Pictures coming soon!

Spoiler-free Harry Potter observation

Scholastic does seem to have trouble with the British-isms, doesn't it?

My books can't seem to decide whether the expression ought to be "well shot of" or "well shut of" (I think it's the former), and one of the Weasley twins just referred to Harry as "specky" when I'm sure he meant "speccy."

In search of Book 7

I didn't reserve Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows anywhere because I wasn't sure whether Gerry and Sarah's rehearsal dinner would go on past midnight. It ended at 11, so I had an hour to figure out what to do.

I stopped by Joseph-Beth without any real intention of picking up the book there - as you can see, it was a madhouse:



Just packed!



There was some fun stuff happening, though; I filled out a trivia quiz and a "Snape: Good or Evil?" poll, both of which offered chances to win gift certificates. The woman next to the Snape poll was pretty irritating, though; she kept shrilly insisting that Snape was evil:



(She's the one in the glasses with the owl perched on her shoulder.)

There were tons of fun costumes, too - my favorite was a perfect Luna with a cork necklace and a lion hat, but I didn't get a picture.



Oh, yeah, and Warm 98 was there for some reason. Soft rock was blaring across the parking lot - one more reason not to get into the line that, by the time I left, had wound in front of the store three times.

With less than a half hour to go, I headed to Meijer to see what their "party" was all about.



That's a long line! I bought a few groceries but decided against waiting for the book. Instead, I headed over to Kroger:



They had a good system at Kroger: instead of having everyone who wanted a book stand in one line, they just gave each cashier a stack of books to sell. If you wanted one along with your Five Alive, you said so.

So there was no big wait at Kroger, but the store was definitely livelier than it normally is at midnight. Maybe that's why I heard a college kid say to his friends, as I twirled out of the store with my book, "Aw, damn - I hate Harry Potter."

It's here! It's here!

Pick up this week's issue of CiN Weekly, please, because I wrote the cover story on Harry Potter!

In it, you will find:
- A story about my friends and their Harry Potter parties
- An interview with wizard rocker Matt Maggiacomo, aka The Whomping Willows
- A teensy recap of the first six books
- Readers' predictions about what will happen in Deathly Hallows
- What's happening for the release at bookstores around town (our intern, Amy, wrote this one)

OK, you can also find those stories by going to the links above. But seriously, pick it up. Kevin did an awesome job designing it.

Harry Potter, in outline form (Part 1)

PRE-PARTY: Dewey's in Newport.



PIZZA: Billy Goat, shared with Cati (pink shirt at lower left).

IN THE THEATER: Nervous at first because the 10 or so of us who were there at 10 p.m. were trying to reserve an entire row of seats. But our various friends arrived soon enough.



BARNES AND NOBLE: The only coffee option at the Levee, and therefore crowded as all get-out. The store officially closed before I was even able to make my order (but they served everyone who was already in line).



NUMBER OF FOOD SERVICE WORKERS I SAID "BLESS YOU FOR BEING HERE" TO: 2

WORRIES THAT AFOREMENTIONED WORKERS WOULD THINK I WAS A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN: Fleeting

USHER JOHN: Awesome. In the pic below, he's asking if anyone has a wand with which he can perform the Sonorus Charm to amplify his voice. Love! (Also, note costumed wizard exiting stage right.)



THEATER: Crowded and raucous.



SCREENS AMC SOLD OUT, ACCORDING TO USHER JOHN: 14

AMC'S POLICY ON THEATER SPECIFIED ON YOUR TICKET VS. THEATER YOU WERE SITTING IN: Enlightened. If you want to sit with your friends in theater 11 even though your ticket says theater 9, go right ahead.

COSTUMED CHARACTERS WHO WALKED THROUGH THEATER JUST FOR KICKS: Tonks and Filch. I yelled "Wotcher!" at Tonks, but was not quick enough on the draw to get pictures.

FASTEST BATHROOM BREAK EVER: Me, four minutes to midnight.

Coming up: the actual movie.

Voldemort can't stop the party

So my friends and I do these Harry Potter parties every month or so. The one we had Wednesday was a particularly important one - not only because the movie and the book are coming out in a matter of weeks, but also because I was to interview people (and David was to take pictures) for a cover story in CiN Weekly!

It's my first cover story, and I'm excited to write it, but I 'm even more excited that we're doing a cover story on Harry Potter. I want everything to go perfectly.

So when I hit the traffic on Kellogg Road from people packing into Riverbend to see Def Leppard, Foreigner and Styx, I got a little nervous. But I got through it.

When David called to tell me about the pileup that shut down the highway and left him stranded, I got a little more nervous. But I figured we'd work it out somehow. And eventually he made an illegal U-turn and was on his way again.

Driving down an unknown road in New Richmond, I got a bit concerned that I might be lost. But I soon saw the turn I needed to take, and I found Carrie's house without incident.

At the party, as the calls poured in from guests who were caught in either the concert traffic or the accident traffic, I got worried - not that people would give up on coming to the party, but that David would arrive to take pictures of only three people. But before too long, people started to show up, and it was party time!

David arrived, took some excellent photos, left. I started the interviews, pulling people away from Harry Potter Scene It one by one to tell me when they started reading the books and what they like about the parties. After talking to three of the nine guests, I checked my voice recorder and became positively fretful. The recorder was set to "high quality" instead of "long play," and I had three minutes of recording time left. Amazingly, Carrie had a spare recorder I can use.

And then the power went out. Which didn't affect me so much, but it did put a sudden end to the Scene It game.

At this point, I was quite certain I knew what was going on. Clearly, Lord Voldemort was doing his utmost to squash our spirits, ruin our fun, and make me print a sucky article so people won't like Harry Potter.

Well, it wasn't going to work. Voldemort can't stop the rock, and he couldn't stop our party either. Carrie lit some candles, the gang switched to playing solely with the Scene It trivia cards, and I continued my interviews with the borrowed recorder. The party raged on until 1 a.m.

Also, the candles made everything look pretty cool.


Suck on that, Riddle!

My bathroom is the cleanest room in my apartment.

You can tell, because there's no pile of dirty clothes/old credit card statements/excess Tupperware in it, like there is in my apartment's other three rooms.

I even decorated!



See the shelf with the vase, and the wall thingy with the candles? See how the storage bins over the toilet are kind of symmetrical?

The bathroom-cleaning thing happened yesterday. It is the beginning of a week-long frenzy of general apartment-spiffing-up, culminating in a party Friday evening. (If you aren't invited, don't be sad - you probably aren't interested in coming. It's kind of like a book club, except instead of getting together and drinking and pretending to talk about books, we get together and drink and play Harry Potter Scene It?) It's my first time hosting, and I'm a little nervous - you know how judgemental those fangirls can be.

This evening, I went shopping for crepe paper, napkins and a Swiffer duster - one more weapon in my War on Cat Hair. I finally finished a craft project I've been wanting to do for at least a year, involving painting ugly red decorative Valentine's Day lights a more subdued silver color. I've got a pumpkin roasting in the oven, and all sorts of lovely ideas for what to do with it when it comes out. I transplanted my basil into a bigger pot.

But what I really should be doing is cleaning my living room.

Any book worth banning ...

... is a book worth reading, says a button I've had since I was, like, 13 and the Little Professor store down by the Kroger was still in business.

It's Banned Books Week!

Celebrate by reading a Harry Potter book. They're the most challenged books of the 21st century. ('Cause they're Satanic, doncha know.)

Oh, bother.

Harry Potter = fun! I still think the third movie is the best, but even if I had despised the movie, the spectacle would have made it all worthwhile.

My group took up half a row in our theater. We got there THREE BLOODY HOURS early; once we had our coats on the seats we could pretty much come and go as we pleased, so we kept making small-group excursions to Barnes & Noble.

It turns out that our idea of making customized shirts was nowhere near unique; we expected a few costumes, but nearly everyone in the show was decked out in anything from a simple striped scarf to full Hogwarts regalia. (One kid dressed as a ninja. Um, OK.) Two guys dressed as Harry and Draco staged a duel in front of the screen.

I think our theater was the first (of eight screens!) to open for ticket sales, meaning all the superfans were in with us. These kids clapped when the lights dimmed and again when the black curtain rolled down to make the screen wider. They clapped for the previews (until it became abundantly clear that the previews sucked hardcore). They clapped for the Warner Bros. logo, and again 10 seconds later for the title screen.

They screamed when Harry took his shirt off.

When I got home I was too pumped up to go right to sleep. I should have curled up with The Inferno or something else that requires enough concentration to tire me out, but no. Instead, I stayed up until 5 sodding a.m. reading Harry Potter fan fiction! (A hex on you, emma blog, for planting the idea in my head!) I got four hours of sleep; if not for my cat's plaintative mewing outside my door, I might have drowsed all day to the tune of my CD alarm clock's current selection, the not-at-all-rousing Garden State soundtrack.

And here's the interesting thing. Cassie Claire's excellent fanfic left me feeling more satisfied than did the movie. Is this a testament to C.C.'s spot-on depiction and expansion of the Harry Potter universe – or even the triumph of written over audiovisual media? (Nah; I probably just like the bits with the snogging.)

Meanwhile, my cat looks just like Mrs. Norris - except for the red eyes. Anyone know of a good feline cantact lens dealer?

Not that anyone will even read this tonight ...

... because just about everyone I know is going to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tonight. Yeah!

There is a large group of us. We will be wearing customized T-shirts and not causing a spectacle at all, oh no.

I think I heard Stacie pull up - gotta go!

"Oh, I just know I failed my O.W.L. for Ancient Runes!"

You scored as: Hermione Granger 70% Severus Snape 70% Albus Dumbledore 65% Ron Weasley 65% Sirius Black 55% Ginny Weasley 55% Remus Lupin 50% Draco Malfoy 40% Lord Voldemort 40% Harry Potter 35% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

I'm a bad, bad Harry Potter fan.

Because I've had the book for six days now and have read only two chapters. And I'm a fast reader, dammit! But ooh, the first chapter is so good. And ooh, the second one is good too, even though I don't think Snape is "hot" like some people do. I'm also digging how Rowling's prose style is becoming more complex; she's acknowledging that her readers, in addition to her characters, are growing up.

Here is a Harry Potter-related story to keep you busy until I finish reading the book and go into hyper-plot-analysis/when-the-hell-is-the-next-one-being-released mode:

I went to the release party at Barnes & Noble with Stacie and Stephanie. We got there about 11 (it would have been earlier, but the guy ahead of us at the McDonald's drive-through ordered seven Crispy Chicken McSomething-Or-Others, and it was one of those inescapable single-lane-surrounded-by-a-wall-and-a-moat drive-throughs, so we spent probably 20 minutes sitting behind this minivan breathing in carbon monoxide. At one point, I suggested to Stacie that the fumes were making me high. She thought I was being serious - which I so wasn't - and launched into a long tirade about how no one who says they're high is ever actually high. Perhaps she was high).

The store was, of course, full of kids in costumes and adults (mostly) without costumes. We saw a guy walking to the bathroom with what really, really looked like a live tarantula crawling up his shoulder, but when we saw him on his way out from the bathroom, it had gone. My favorite costumes were worm by two adults who had dressed in the sort of outlandishly inappropriate clothing wizards would wear if they were trying to pass for Muggles. Bloody brilliant, I say.

In case you're wondering about the look I went for, I wound up dressing in "none of the above" - black tank top, black capris, gold beaded slippers.

Oh, and just who is that guy with the kinda floppy brown hair who works in the cafe? He's adorable!

We had a line number, and the manager was having us line up 25 at a time. When our turn came, we made our way to the line and asked an employee if we were supposed to go in order of our number (we were near the front of our group) or just go to the end of the line. They said, "End of the line." Stacie said, "Are you sure? Because I thought I heard them say something about lining up in order of your number." They said the end of the line was fine.

So we're standing there, and the manager starts asking where specific numbers are. We speak up, and he says, "Come up here." And then he's rude to us! "You need to be listening when we make these announcements." Stacie said "We did listen - to your employees who told us to get in the back of the line!" But I don't think he was listening.

Then we got up to the cash register, and the cashier was all freaked out that the three of us wanted three books, but Stacie was paying for two of them (she bought Stephanie's book as a birthday present). The cashier said, "Well then, who's paying for the third one?" I raised my hand and tried not to roll my eyes. When the transaction was complete, I thanked her for staying late for us.

And as we walked back past the employees who had told us to get in the back of the line, Stacie explained to them that their mistake had gotten us in trouble with the manager. They suggested we should have punched him in the face. I considered punching them in the face. I was about ready to kill everyone who's ever worked for a Barnes & Noble. Except the coffee guy. He can live.

But the point is, we got out relatively unscathed with books in hand. So now I think I'll go begin Chapter Three. Hopefully I can finish the book before I am inadvertantly exposed to any spoilers.