Fool's April: the blog by kwugirl

...where nothing is sufficiently foolproof for the sufficiently talented fool

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Also this necklace.

Sunday, 22 July 2007

Palma Collection - Hosarita

{Posted at 05:19PM} {0 comment(s)}


I want this shirt.

Sunday, 22 July 2007

WWND? t-shirt

{Posted at 03:56PM} {0 comment(s)}


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Sunday, 22 July 2007

J.K. Rowling is a brilliant woman. I won't go into any more detail about what happens in the seventh and final book of the epic tale of our generation, except that it is satisfying and it is beautiful. Of course, I will be rereading it over and over again, but I may eventually decide that Book Six will remain at the top of the list if only because it didn't come with the feeling that this is the end. We shall see.

I just want to write a little bit about how my friends and I did HP celebrations last night, and maybe some of my thoughts and feelings towards the impact of the series. If I could, I would just commission Paci to write it more lyrically than I ever could, but he is both off gallivanting in Europe (yet he commented on a recent entry! Hi Paci!) and I'd like to record this for myself. I left my camera behind at a restaurant we went to in the course of the night, so the only photo I have is on my phone, a self-portrait of me with my lightning tattoo and cape, sent to my sister. But let me back up a bit.

My friends and I decided to go to the Harvard Square celebration over the Coolidge Corner one, even though the Brookline Booksmith is awesome. There were a couple reasons for this. For one, the Harvard Coop was giving people a bigger discount (40%, so $21) and handing out some gift bags, and for another, there was going to be a wizard rock concert in Harvard Yard (Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys). So we all reserved copies at the Harvard Coop by emailing or calling and started lining up around 5 to get these wristbands that would confirm our reservations, with gift bags for the first 500.

I left work early because I really wanted a gift bag, but I didn't find out that the line was running around the block to the 2nd Harvard Coop location until around 4:50. It's ok, though, because they had been handing out flyers with various rules on it, one of which was that for public safety reasons, people weren't allowed to start making that line until 4:30. Most of the people in my group managed to get gift bags, but Diana just missed it, because the A-I line she was in took a lot longer. Really a bummer. The gift bags had inside them some coupons for local businesses (I picked up my free sample of Demons in the Dark soap from Lush today), some candy, a small-size B&N (I know, what?) poster, a red/gold tassel keychain, bubbles, a pair of bendy-plastic Harry glasses, and the best bit, a temporary tattoo of a jagged number 7 with a little image of Harry in it! More about that later.

While waiting in line (it took us over an hour to pick up our wristbands), I ran back to my apartment to get the capes that Di and I had made last weekend out of some black sheets from the thrift store. We called them pimp sheets because they were some sort of polyester and sort of shiny and I canNOT imagine why you would ever want to sleep on them, but they looked used and then ended up in the thrift store. My cape was just trimmed a bit and two corners tied together in the front to make it sit on my shoulders; Di did some pleating and sewing to fit more closely around her neck. We also had white button-down shirts and ties, of course (hers gold/red, mine red/blue...just a random tie I had around), and Di has actually made us all WANDS with the tools she has at work. I loved having a wand! Seriously, childhood dream come true.

Emily had already come dressed as Luna, with radish earrings and a cork necklace, and schoolgirl shirt/tie/skirt/socks. She got a glow-in-the-dark pair of Harry glasses in her gift bag, which were a perfect addition to her whole ensemble. There were lots of other costumes, of course, which I loved looking at. My favorite was probably a woman who wore a giant pink RenFair type dress with a gold picture frame--to be the Fat Lady, get it? :) And also some kid who had a cardboard box around him with windows and turrets drawn on it (Hogwarts).

There were just SO MANY PEOPLE around and it was so cool, if you've never been to a HP book coming out party, you've really missed out. Reading is generally viewed as as a nerdy activity, and being this openly passionate about any activity is also generally not encouraged, but for me, who has always identified as a bit of an outside because I'm bookish, it was really cool (I'm running out of adjectives, so forgive me when I start repeating them now! I've been trying hard to vary it up, honest!) to feel like I'm part of this huge group, possibly a majority group, that's so inclusive and diverse and as far as I can tell, tolerant of each other. We need to have the world be like that, you know. And also, of course, it was just so much fun!

After we got our wristbands, we tried to get dinner at Uno's because Em's never been and has always wanted to go, but there was an hour long wait there so we left. They had these really lame decorations, with those plastic pumpkin "baskets" for collecting candy at Halloween, like they had just pulled out their Halloween decorations box, but the host was really nice and apologetic about not being to give us a table, which was appreciated. It was a bummer, because I really wanted to try the butterbeer that they were serving, but Amy sent me some home recipes that I'm sure my roommates and I will make some time.

We ended up just getting dinner at the food court place with Felipes but from the sandwich/burger place inside instead. I had the greasiest grilled cheese sandwich with tomatoes in the world, but it was the cheapest thing I could get and I had already been snacking on Wheat Thins and granola bars while we'd been waiting in line anyway. I sort of figured that my body has been through so much abuse this week with the stupid cold thing I still have and the resulting lack of running and then the plan to stay up all night to read, so to hell with all that. I'm going to try to start running again tomorrow and eat tons of very healthy food to make up for that one grilled cheese sandwich.

It was here that we decided to try to put on the tattoos. Di and I tried to put it on our foreheads, but apparently temporary tattoos don't work all that great on foreheads, so the top horizontal bit to the 7 didn't stick. Which was more than fine, we were left with lightning shaped scars! Hee :)

We then went to get dessert from Finale nearby, because they were offering free servings of their signature Molten Chocolate Cake dessert (OMFG, is what I have to say about what that tastes and feels like) with purchases of equal or greater value. We got two other desserts to share, a Boston Creme and some strawberry platter thingie, for a total of four desserts between five people (Di's friend from high school and the friend's roommate from Dartmouth were also part of our group last night). It was yummy. However, I took my camera out to take pictures of the desserts and failed to place it properly back into my bag, so although we made our way to the wizard rock concert, we only stayed for a few minutes before I realized what I had done and ran back to get my camera. I didn't get it back until today, actually, because they hadn't found anything until closing, but phew!

The wizard rock concert. Well, the band that was playing when we saw it was basically your typical young male teenagers without particularly strong musical talent wanting to form a band. More screaming than melody. That sounds harsh, but it's true, and I still LOVED THEM! They were all in character and having a good time talking to the crowd and their song titles, at least, were pretty hilarious. My friends and I are definitely going to get their cd at some point, haha. Di really wanted to get a t-shirt, but by the time we had gone back to Finale to find my camera and dropped off bags in my apartment and gotten a place in the line outside the Harvard Coop (we were actually around the corner, in front of Mint Julep) and she went back to try to get a shirt, the merch table had packed up. Bummer.

So we waited in line (the line was not supposed to form until 10, but it really started more around 9:30), spreading out our capes to sit on and passing the time by doing the Metro crossword and finishing up our summary of Book Six to Emily to jog her memory of things. The Coop sent an employee around with a Polaroid camera to take pictures of the groups for free and ours came out really nice, but someone else claimed it first so I'll be getting a scan of it eventually. Ah, well. Would've liked to have a real tangible piece of evidence of that night, but so it goes.

And then! Midnight! Everybody cheered, and there were a few waves through the line (the last attempt was very short lived, quite funny, heh), and when the first few people started walking by with copies of the book in their hands, they held them up to show the rest of us and everybody clapped and cheered. Our group got our books around 1, and Em went home while the rest came back with me to my apartment to stay up and read.

I was the first one finished, around 5:30, and I puttered around a bit and ate some food before deciding that I couldn't stay up through and took a two hour nap before leaving around 9 for my Kinetic Sculpture class (in which I learned a lot, again, although I didn't make much during the actual class, just finished it at home later). When I got back around 1, Di and her friend (the friend's roommate went home earlier) and I went to get lunch at Finagle a Bagel, which horribly screwed up Di's and my orders (Di actually bought me lunch as a thank you for letting them all crash in my apartment, which was really nice of her) so note to self to watch them verrry carefully when they're making my sandwich at that location again. We had lunch in the park, discussing the book a bit, which was fun, although AMY LIN YOU NEED TO CALL ME, and then they went home and I took another nap until 6.

Since then I've just cleaned up the apartment a bit, left to go get that bar of soap and my camera back, made and ate a simple and healthy dinner (starting Reread #1 of Many of the Deathly Hallows), and now, wrote this blog entry. This has taken me over an hour! It's being posted on Sunday because I need to leave my apartment to get free internet now (UGH). And now, some general musings and thoughts.

I don't want to get involved with the internet communities and fan clubs and things like that. I like obsessing over all the details with my friends who have just as much of an encyclopedic knowledge of the books as I do (Amy and Andrew are best for this!) and while it would be a neat way to meet new people and such, I want to keep it to myself, a little bit. Reading is magical, and each time I cocoon myself in the world the J.K. Rowling created (or any other fantastic world: the His Dark Materials trilogy--OMG THE MOVIE IS COMING OUT IN DECEMBER AHHHHH!!!!--and Wicked and Ender's Game--I wish I could write out the author's Mormon beliefs that bother me yet become more apparent each time I reread it, but so it goes--and The Time Traveler's Wife), everything else falls away. It's perfect, and I love it. Getting lost in books and swings at the playground and coloring are my favorite bits of childhood, and not at all pretend bits that I'm being nostalgic about, but things that I really loved at the time and still do.

I think there probably has been a huge resurgence of reading in children as a result of the popularity of Harry Potter, and I think that that's a wonderful thing and something we really need to try to keep going on. My mom tried to read me bedtime stories when I was little. I have one particular memory of her reading a big Disney picture book of Winnie the Pooh to me, persisting even though she had trouble pronouncing some of the names as English is her second language (her English is really good now, although still slightly accented and not quite always grammatically/idiomatically correct) and it's one of my favorite memories of my mom, really trying hard to give her kid growing up in a different culture something still. If I ever have kids, I will definitely do the same. In fact, I don't know what I would do if it turns out that my kid hates reading (not has a reading disorder, because that just makes reading difficult, but you can still love it), but I think (hope) that as long as you indoctrinate them early enough and do it carefully and well, you can establish at least one thing, be it religion or whatever else.

I will continue to see the movies as they come out because although they are all deeply flawed, I think that unlike with lots of movies these days, I can feel that there are people behind it who love the source and are really trying hard to do well, rather than just to make as much money as possible. So I have a bit of affection for them, and I hope that the child-now-adult stars don't have to have just this as the peak of their lives. I may visit the theme park someday, but I don't know about that yet. That seems a lot more crassly commercial (as with all the other merchandise you can get...they're all so cheaply made! Although last night I did see this one beautiful broomstick right out of the movies that some girl was carrying around. I want one!) and I don't need rides and life-size models, I have the world in my head and I have the great visuals of the movies (you have to give them that, at least). But it might be fun, someday.

Speaking of crass commercialism, I've been thinking lately that this whole releasing at midnight and secrecy surrounding the books was a genius marketing strategy, even if it involved some rather scary sounding legal contracts to make sure people stuck with it. Still, it's also interesting that we had this thing where we had to wait years between getting bits, in the Age of Fast Internet.

I think J.K. Rowling will probably want to continue writing, because that's what Writers do, but she'll probably go under a pen name for awhile at least and if I stumble across it, that'll be nice, but if not, that's ok too. She has given us all so much, and I love her for it. Thanks.

{Posted at 03:47PM} {3 comment(s)}