Crying at the Movies

On Thursday July 14, I went over to a friend's house for her birthday party. And it was an enormous nostalgia fest for the eight of us there, because five of them were going to the midnight premiere of the eighth Harry Potter movie.

(I, unfortunately, was the slag who didn't reserve her tickets on time, and would be going to see it at four P.M. the next day instead. I am dumb. The other two didn't like Harry Potter. I'm not quite sure what they were doing there. They must have felt very out of place.)

Quite a few of us had grown up with the series, and for the three hours before they left we were talking about our hopes for the movie, how great it would be, how everything was ending, but really nothing was. As one of my friends said, it wasn't like our books were going to disappear overnight. And we would always have our experiences, all the memories tied to years and years of reading this amazing series, and talking to friends about this amazing series, and making other people discover this bloody amazing series. All the fake wand duels, all the dressing up as Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley for Halloween, all the waiting, waiting, waiting for the next book or movie or announcement was not going to be erased from our memories because there weren't going to be any new movies or books.
They left for the midnight premiere at 10:30, and I was picked up and taken home with a heavy heart. Talking to my friends, most of whom had been similarly affected by the Harry Potter series, made it hit me--hard--that this basically looked like the end of my life. And I'd better damn well appreciate that now, while I still can.
The next day took forever, because I was waiting until four o'clock and torturing myself with Tumblr, which was Potter-saturated. We got to the theater at three o'clock, waited in a line that was already enormous and made me panic that we would end up in the first row, looking up at the movie screen like it was the top of the Sears Tower. (But we didn't, thank the gods.)
I had puffed myself up before, thinking that I was emotionally prepared for this movie. I'd read the books! I knew what was going to happen! I was prepared for the fact that every minute that passed by was my childhood being wrenched away from me! I was totally prepared, yeah?
God, no, I wasn't.
I cried:

1. When the Death Eaters burned the Quidditch pitch, and I remembered Harry as an untroubled first year playing for the first time on that pitch, and my eyes welled up before I could help it.
2. From when Snape died to the end.

Most people kept drinks in their cupholders. I kept tissues.

And then the Hogwarts Express sped away at the end of the film, it felt so final. That's it. It's only lucky for this generation that we were here to see it.

Quote for Monday, July 18, 2011:

"If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf." 

— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

Muse for Today:

I saw a GIF of Jo Rowling saying this on Tumblr, but I can't find it now, but I was emotionally vulnerable the other day and it made me cry.
“Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

Also, in less important news that I feel like I have to share anyway: It is my blog's birthday today. It is two years old.

Gooey Funk

Recently, I've been in a funk.
The kind of funk where you are just angry at everything, and feel completely purposeless, and want to finish everything but simply don't have that kind of motivation, and all you want to do is lie face-down on the floor, not moving, and wonder why you even exist at all.
I am a lazy person in an astounding number of ways, but I am rarely lethargic, and I hate being this way. It's frustrating.
Most people (the kind of people who still say 'funk') would describe this kind of a mood as a blue funk, but I think my funk is more a squishy, lurid purple kind of funk that is horrible to be trapped in, and a sad sight for those who aren't in any sort of funk at all.
(Funk is starting to be a semantic satiation in this post, isn't it? No. Wait. Don't answer. Yes, it is.) (You're so endearingly charming, FRAS! Talking to yourself like someone cares!) (*blushes in the most endearingly charming way possible* Oh, stop it!)
It's times like this where I forget to do stuff that I love, like bake food or talk to my friends or work on my stories or read books that I've read fifty thousand times. I just end up focusing on how much my life sucks and looking up sucky bands on purpose (which is a deviation from my normally much more impressive pursuit of good music) and abandoning books in the middle because I hate everything and watching (I'm not even kidding) five hours of Glee in a row because I want to indulge in an activity where my legs and mind don't move.
Skip the parenthetical sentences if you'd like to see me reach the point! *attempts dashing grin that just comes off as creepy*
(I had a Season One box set because I decided to start watching the show finally after two years. The plot line has a lot of holes and it's a little stereotypical and, quite frankly, the show doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes, but it's a good show to watch when you are doing an excellent impersonation of someone in a screen-induced coma. Also, they can sing. Sometimes, I wish they would leave certain songs alone [I don't care if you're Vocal Adrenaline, you do not TOUCH Bohemian Rhapsody], but they all have stunning voices, and Quinn's and Rachel's make me especially jealous.)
(I'm so sorry for all of you who don't watch Glee. Here. I hope this makes you forgive me. It is soap that looks like food.)
It's so easy to fall into this kind of anti-creative funk. Unbelievably easy to just give up, especially when it's summer vacation and you live in the kind of town where I live. And I think that hoisting yourself out of a funk is completely dependent on you, and how you work. In my case, I just need to stop doing all of the things that are detracting from my creativity and focus purely on one thing before I can even begin to work on anything else.
But sometimes that is so, so hard to remember, and even harder to attempt.
In even more FRAS-related news, I am going on vacation! So, posts will be infrequent/nonexistent until July 4. I only say this because I've been better about posting lately, and this hiatus is NOT me slipping into my ways of yore, just me being in Orlando. At the Harry Potter theme park. Yeah.
Also, since I probably won't be blogging on the day, a happy early birthday to my cousin Questa, whose birthday is on Friday!
And also a happy birthday to Sonic the Hedgehog, who is twenty whole years old today! I never played your games, Sonic, and I probably wouldn't even know it was your birthday if it wasn't for Alex Day putting up a video about it.

Things I Do When I'm Tired

So yesterday, which was Friday (the 13th! AAAAAH) I was exhausted. This year has reminded me exactly how much I hate school. Also, it was just too bloody hot outside this whole week. It was my birthday on Wednesday! It was nice. But I would rather I hadn't gone to school at all this whole week, because I hate people and my school and being in school when it's hot.

I like that school is preparing me for later life, but apart from my World Studies class, I feel like I learn more from random Google searches about topics I'm actually interested in. I hate Trig, I learn nothing, basically at this point I am simply trying to keep out of summer school. Why do I have to learn something that is both useless for any sort of practical use and involves a lot of work that I am unwilling to undertake? WHAT IS THE POINT? Sometimes I just can't take it. I am so tired of 'learning' stuff I don't want to learn. AAARGH.

So I was tired. Clearly. And what did I do when I was tired? I ate an entire bag of pretzels and watched two and a quarter movies in a row. I saw Nowhere Boy and Flipped and part of The King's Speech, but despite my love for Helena Bonham Carter, by that time I started that film the time was almost midnight and I was part-zombie.

Nowhere Boy, if you don't know, is a film about John Lennon and the most important women of his childhood- his Aunt Mimi and his mother Julia. I was watching it partially for Thomas Brodie Sangster, who plays Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster and Paul McCartney in one? Excellence) and because I like the Beatles.

I forgot, though, that this isn't a movie about the Beatles- it's about John. So the film cut off right before they left for Hamburg, when they really started becoming a bigger sensation, and I didn't get all the music I so unwisely anticipated. I'm glad they didn't put anything after Hamburg in there, though. It would have lost the focus of the film. What made me quite like this movie was the mannerisms of the actors. John's evil, shaming sarcasm, the defiant way he holds his mouth, and the way Paul looks up through his eyelashes while he played guitar all reminded me of the old footage of the actual Beatles. They actors didn't really look a lot like them- they were like them.

Flipped was a lovely book. I liked that book a whole lot, and what was nice about the movie is that they took some of the diologue straight from the book. And they did the film in voiceover, telling the same story from both Bryce and Juli's perspectives. All they left out was a bit of character development, but the characters didn't look like I pictured them. I felt it was a good move to place the movie in the sixties, though. That sweet story might not have survived in the era of texting and Facebook. But it was worthwhile.

I haven't yet finished The King's Speech, but I reached the part where he swears dozens of the time, and I just thought it was funny. He's a prince, and he's trying so hard to keep his dignity with this commoner, and he just goes off. It's fairly hilarious.

Also, weird weirdness is weird: Just last week, one of my oldest friends (meaning I've known her for a long time. She's only a month older than me, so not agewise oldest) was reading Gone with the Wind. And then she asked me about Catcher in the Rye. I wrote about both of those in the space of a month. Coincidence? I don't even tell anyone I keep a blog.

Quote for Saturday, May 14, 2011:

Is nowhere full of geniuses, sir? Because then I probably do belong there.

-Nowhere Boy (2010)

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266029/quotes)

Muse for Today:

I didn't always hate school.

"Happy First Birthday!"

You can pretend I'm singing, and that I sound like a chorus of angels. Everyone would like a chorus of angels to sing to him or her on his or her birthday, and my blog is no exception.

Also, Happy Centennial! (Although a centennial usually refers to one-hundred years, I will happily misuse this word in the name of my blog's first birthday and my ONE-HUNDREDTH POST!)

Here's to another year of survival for all, whether I blog during this year or not (predictably enough, most likely not)! Stay in school, kids!

Quote for Sunday, July 18, 2010:

Every ten years a man should give himself a good kick in the pants.

-Edward Steichen

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Birthday)

Muse for Today:

I hope I never grow up, so that I can always appreciate good quotes like that.