• Of Wizards, Witchcraft and Endings

    •

    Gus

    Here is where we will discuss the latest and final Harry Potter opus. For those of you who have not yet read or finished the book, consider this your SPOILER WARNING and stay out of the comments until you’ve done so.

    If, however, you read it, sound off below.

    For the record: bought off the shelf at B&N; on Saturday evening at around 7:30. Finished late last night in a marathon reading frenzy after Val and the kids went to bed. I’ll put thoughts up in comments a little later, because I’m still rolling over the big parts of it in my mind, including that epilogue/last chapter thingy.

    Also, when Carl saw the new book on Sunday afternoon, he wanted to know if I would read it to him. I hesitated — it’s 750 pages and quite obviously not the same kind of book as THE POKY LITTLE PUPPY — and then told him no, it was the last book and he hadn’t read the first ones yet. He asked me if I had the first ones. I told him no, but we could get them. Right now? he asked, super-super eagerly.

    So Carl and I went to Barnes & Noble that very afternoon and bought both SORCERER’S STONE and CHAMBER OF SECRETS, and started reading Book One that night. He’s now four chapters in and, I think, digging it immensely. It helps that he’s also seen parts of some of the movies and has at least some concept of what he’s supposed to be “seeing”, but I think he’s appreciating this on its own merits as a story. I’ve been making a habit of asking him the next day what he remembers of where we were and what was happening, who people are, things like that, and he’s doing pretty well.

    For some reason, when I thought of reading more serious books to my kids as they got older, I thought, I dunno, TREASURE ISLAND or something. The thought that I would be reading Harry Potter to Carl — and that he would seem to be enjoying it tremendously — before he turned four never really crossed my mind.

  • Harry Potter and the Terrible Procrastinator

    •

    Gus

    So, uh, it’s like, tomorrow night, I guess. And so the great Question of our day:

    Do I wait and buy it off the shelf somewhere on Saturday, risking not finding a copy of the single largest hardcover first printing in history, or order it from Amazon and just turn off the internets for an entire week while I’m waiting for the book to get here?

    (Also for your consideration: this weekend is Jazz & Ribfest downtown, so it can’t be all Potter all the time.)

  • braindump

    •

    Gus

    I almost titled this “brandump”, which is also somewhat appropriate. Herein, a list of things that I’ve thought “that’d make a good blog post” over the last several weeks but never developed. If some of this sounds like Greek to some of you, I apologize in advance for the lack of well-developed context I would inevitably have added to each one.

    • Fraction wrote a pretty scathing take on the White Stripes’ new album a few days back. I’ve had it for something like two or three weeks now and only got around to actually listening to it today. For the most part, he’s spot-on, but I tend to think that Jack White’s actually found a new model for their stuff: early David Lee Roth-era Van Halen. Compare and contrast the Stripes’ “Rag and Bone” with 1978’s “Ice Cream Man” and tell me I’m insane. Otherwise? This will likely not be getting lot of repeat play on Ye Olde iPod.
    • Wilco’s SKY BLUE SKY, on the other hand, is like my perfect summer album right now. It’s very mellow; it’s the “sitting on the porch with a glass of lemonade watching the kids run around on the lawn” album the Eagles never made. I fear that means I’m getting too old to really ROCK, y’know? Saw Columbus’s Evil Queens with Casey at Comfest a few weeks back (hey, here’s a video of the show!), but that’s the extent of my ROCK-ness of late.
    • Vote for Springfield, Ohio! Whoops, it’s over. We couldn’t even muster 10,000 votes? There’s more people in the TOWN than that.
    • Vanilla Coke Zero is awesome.
    • So is Jon J. Muth’s ZEN SHORTS, which has become my favorite bedtime story for the kids for many reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity it has given me to perfect my Panda Accent. Muth’s work is just so damned pretty.
    • In light of recent events, spent some of last week’s vacation beginning to re-read Hunter S. Thompson’s FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ’72, for about the third or fourth time. I always get to “June” and quit. It’s amazing to me how many parallels you could find between the current political campaign atmosphere and the Democrats’ scramble in ’72 — though they weren’t exactly jockeying for position sixteen months before the actual election took place…
    • I got a new grill. It has four large burners and a side burner. Also, today Val accidentally dropped an earring down the drain in the bathroom and between the two of us, we managed to get the u-bend pipe off, retrieved the earring, and replaced the pipe, all without the aid of a monkey wrench — and there’s no water spraying in the bathroom, so I’d say the home repair was a success. Domestication, if not complete, is nearly there.

    Vacation photos are up on Flickr but I’m too tired to deal with the formatting they will require tonight, so for the moment just turn your head for the ones that are sideways, and we’ll all get through this together.

  • Fire

    •

    Gus

    I heard about this last night from Val Ives, and now this afternoon the story itself appears on Publishers’ Weekly’s THE BEAT. From the Ohio University Post:

    As workers at the Universe of Heroes comic book store clear the crisped comic books and charred merchandise, co-owners Tom Green and Todd Grace now face the question of what’s next.

    The two owners face an estimated $100,000 in lost merchandise — a cost that will fall on them. Insurance is expected to cover the estimated $200,000 in damages to the building and the apartments above the store.

    “We must gather what is left of the store and try to build back up,” Grace said.

    Insurance on structural damage covers all of the building including the apartments above the store. Senior Chris Hess, who finished moving into his apartment above the store just one day before the fire, said that he and his three roommates are being forced to either find somewhere else to stay or go home for the next month while the building is repaired.

    While insurance will cover the building’s damages, it will not cover the damage to Hess and his roommates’ personal belongings. Hess said that everything in the apartment, including their furniture, televisions, food and even his roommate’s new puppy, was covered with a dark tint caused by black soot.

    The funding for the store’s rebuilding is still up in the air.

    [more]

    For those that don’t know, Todd’s a very good friend of mine from college. He moved back to Athens after law school with his family and went into practice, getting into the comics and gaming business a bit later. (The store they bought used to be this pit of a place, the epitome of the seedy comics store; they turned into one of the nicest and most friendly shops I’ve ever been in.) Hopefully they’ll get the place back on its feet. We’re thinking about you, Todd.

  • No, Please Stop

    •

    Gus

    Uh… what?

    (Context for those who haven’t seen the last episode of THE SOPRANOS.)

    So, no. Seriously. What?

  • The Wisdom (?) of Crowds

    •

    Gus

    Shorter Joe Klein: contrary to what Al Gore may think, teh Internets probably are not going to lead to the dawn of a new Age of Reason anytime soon.

    Extra Special Joe Klein Double Post — see Joe unload the proverbial rhetorical smackdown on Swampland guestblogger (and former House Majority Leader) Dick Armey. Reading their exchanges this week has been entertaining, but so far fairly lopsided; credit to Armey for his willingness to dish this stuff on TIME’s blog, but less so for his own adoption of the kind of hyperbolic discourse Klein rails on in the first link above (I’m thinking, preliminarily, of Armey’s post entitled “Am I the only one worried about Social Security?“) Still, a good read, and a sign that maybe not all political discussion is doomed to degenerate into invective.

    UPDATE 6/8: Never mind, looks like Armey decided to go all crazy on his last day (“Unfortunately, [Social Security reform] is dominated by Republicans who don’t dare and Democrats that don’t care”, and a random swipe at Teresa Heinz Kerry while extolling the virtues of a flat tax system. WTF, Armey? I was kind of digging on the real policy debate until that point.)

  • Magnificent Seven

    •

    Gus

    The Mercury Seven astronauts (left to right: Gordo Cooper, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra and Deke Slayton) in a 1960 NASA survival training photo.

    [more here; via Warren]

  • This is the Tongue of a Thirty-Year-Old Woman

    •

    Gus

    Go and wish her a Happy Birthday!

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