It’s not lost on me at all that tonight, instead of working on some writing, I should be putting the last minute touches on my Harry Potter costume and seeing the Half-Blood Prince at midnight. Actually, I would have been in line at the iMax theater already (I waited in line for six hours or so for Star Wars Episode III). Instead, I’ll be seeing Twilight on Saturday, which is a movie I know nothing about except that it’s got its own nerdy following and stars the kid who plays Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire.

I think Warner Brothers moving Half-Blood Prince means I’ll only have more time to either create my Harry Potter costume, or to rethink my promise to dress in full wizard wear. Nate promised to go full-costume too, while Mark promised to not look me in the eye or walk next to me so people won’t know we’re together. The idea of showing up full wiz is just so hilarious to me, though. I know people go their whole lives dressing up for movies and stuff–Mark and I bummed a light from two middle-aged Jedis while waiting for Star Wars–but it’s not my world. I just wanna visit. So I guess I’ll see We Are Wizards this weekend too.

R.I.P. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince November release date:
[audio:song_for_the_death_eaters.mp3|titles=Song For The Death Eaters|artists=Harry And The Potters]

Can’t believe this is still eight months away.

Is this gif more or less mesmerizing than the Beyonce video?

I watched the debate on rerun tonight, so I feel less involved than if I had watched it the same way as the other two, as well as the VP debate. Instead of paying attention as much as I should have, I couldn’t stop watching McCain’s weird faces. The Face wasn’t always paired with a sarcastic comment, sometimes it just appeared on its own, as if it were on someone holding in a sneeze, or someone trying to blink something out of their eye.

John McCain: Quirks Of Your Next President

Seeing Weezer for me is probably like seeing My Bloody Valentine for a lot of other people–or maybe not. Maybe it’s really like seeing Liz Phair, where you know there’s something great there that got sorta misplaced or deferred or scared out of the person, or maybe that something great was the flash so there’s nothing really to return to because that was the detour. I talked about the Weezer show last night here, but one other thing I wanted to mention about “El Scorcho” was that Rivers Cuomo did sing the first few lines, but with his hands over his face, half covered, half shielding his eyes so he could gaze at the audience. I don’t know what this means.

Meanwhile, I’m working on some other freelance stuff, thanks to this:

But it is not free of any cost or obligation.

I’m regretting something I did before I went into the city today. This morning my dad forwarded me something a friend had forwarded to him, an email with the subject line “THIS OUGHT TO HELP PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHAT’S HAPPENING.”

My parents are both really conservative, like, Fox News on during dinner time, Rush Limbaugh in the car conservatives. I normally ignore them when they talk about who’s ruining America, or how I’ll become a Republican once I “start making some money.” My dad also just retired as a colonel in the Air Force.

The email contains sections like:

> When some claim that President Bush shouldn’t have started this war, tell
> them the following :
>
> FDR (DEMOCRAT) led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us; Japan
> did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost … an average of 112,500 per
> year.
>
> Truman (DEMOCRAT) finished that war and started one in Korea . North Korea
> never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost … an average
> of 18,334 per year.
>
> John F. Kennedy (DEMOCRAT) started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam
> never attacked us.
>
> Johnson (DEMOCRAT) turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000
> lives were lost … an average of 5,800 per year.

As if I, a naive Democrat, would go OMG but I HATEZ WARS? HOW DID I MISS THIS? I don’t hate wars. There are some wars I actually love. I owned a season pass to Colonial Williamsburg, I participated in a Civil War reinactment (for the north). I feel okay with some wars. I don’t care much for unjustified wars, no matter who started them, though. And, trust, if I could be against the Vietnam war right now, I would be, except I can’t be, because I think it’s over (I can’t tell because I’ve been watching the RNC).

What was the kicker to the email?

> In the years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two
> countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in
> Libya, Iran, and, North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a
> terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people. And the Democrats are
> complaining about how long the war is taking.
>

There’s so much wrong with all of this email, so I sent back quotes with links (oddly, this email didn’t contain any links to articles, papers, studies). There was so much and I needed to get working, so I put a terse “I would be happy to look up the rest for you when I get back // Best, Jessica” end to it. I sent it back to my dad, plus the other guy he forwarded this to, plus the person who forwarded it to him. I think I recognize that person’s last name, they’re a nice family whose kids I used to hang out with. I haven’t gotten an answer from anyone yet. And I hate to start arguments with my family. So I don’t know if this means “okay fine” (doubtful) or “we hate you right now.”

What I don’t get is, what am I supposed to get here? All wars are bad? All wars are good? All wars that Democrats started are bad? That we shouldn’t have gotten involved in WWII? Or the Cold War? Democrats start wars too so it’s okay to start wars? Maybe it is saying that John McCain was serving his country in an unjustified war, which kind makes his service sad right?

Wait, one more quote from the email b/c it’s so amazing:

> It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno (DEMOCRAT) to take
> the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.

So, so much to say.

Yesterday I paid the last $20 of my library fine. I didn’t have anything new to pick up since my fine stopped me from reserving books. I tried browsing at the New York Ottendorfer Library branch, an easy/difficult thing to do since their fiction section is entirely contained within a dozen small shelves. There were two Edith Wharton books, neither of which I wanted. No copies of “Confederacy of Dunces.” But I did noticed a large number of mystery novels (three shelves’ worth), books that no one reads but everyone reads. Mark mentioned a friend who used to proof(listen) mystery audiobooks. He’d check the audio against the book, feeling for certain the reader had misread, but more often it was a grammar/plot mistake in the book. He was given two days per audiobook. That’s the kind of quality control they put into mystery novels, and it makes sense. They’re obviously segregated by genre because readers care about the genre, the ingredients, more than they care who’s cooking.

My favorite example of this is the “The Cat Who” series. I guess it’s easy to make fun of the housewives this series is directed toward, the people who like mysteries and cats so much that they had to read about them together. This fan site for the author (Lilian Jackson-Braun, who is in her seventies and lives with her husband and two cats), doesn’t help: there are links to fan fiction, a broken message board, and ‘your daily horoscope.’ The author also has a link to a page about her ‘hubby,’ along with the dates he left the military and went to a WWF matchup.

I think being a fan necessarily means accepting that you’ll like someone or something regardless of diminishing quality, so I guess being a fan is necessarily lowbrow. I don’t think you can be a fan of a static thing: you can’t be a fan of a single TV episode, a single book, or film. You’ve got to be a fan of the author, series, characters, actor and then hope for the best, though quality always diminishes. Maybe it’s the lowbrow-ness that makes being a fan of something uncool, more than the fan-ness itself. Taste, an aspect of being cool, means discernment, fandom means no-discernment. You can’t qualify, you can’t say you like Weezer, but only the first two albums and maybe Make Believe, Simpsons but only the first five seasons, Star Wars but only the last three episodes. You’ve got to embrace it all.

On another note, the lady with the Lilian Jackson-Braun fansite also put up a Jim Carrey fan page. As someone who made her dad drive 10 people to the opening night of the Mask, who still has every word of Ace Ventura memorized, and who wrote Jim Carrey a fan letter every week for a year, I, uh, agree/approve. This has had its ups and downs: down, quite a bit, when The Majestic came out; back up for Eternal Sunshine, back down since.

—–

I have a track review on PTW, of a pretty bad Architecture In Helsinki track. It reminded me of the similar, but much better Scottish twee band Bearsuit. I’ve been meaning to occasionally post (legal!) MP3s I’ve been listening to, once in a while. Here’s one.

[audio:http://www.jessicasuarez.com/audio/bearsuit-itsuko_got_married.mp3]

I am in Las Vegas visiting my family this weekend, so Mark had to call to tell me Tim Russert had passed. That call would have been unnecessary if I was at home, since, as I’ve mentioned lots of times, I’m addicted to MSNBC and I leave it on in the background all the time. Keith Olberman, once my favorite anchor, has become more red-faced and quick-tempered, a sort of Bill O’Reilly for the left. So I appreciated Russert’s measured election commentary, and his overall air of oldschool-ness and seriousness (the best image of that being his election-night white board). Twenty-four hour news is irrelevant for a lot of people,, I think; Meet The Press is glacial next to Twitter and hitting refresh on Google News, though his insider-ness often meant softball questions and an easy in for the administration. So I think all the attention paid to Russert’s death by his collegues and politians is partially because it does seem like an end to that news era, good and bad.

A Slate reprint of an article on David Sedaris and his ‘imaginary’ nonfiction was interesting to me because it asked if readers would accept the same reasoning– that making stuff up allows Sedaris to ‘suggest larger truths’–from hard news reporters: Jayson Blair, etc. But then, asks the writer, doesn’t fiction allow you to suggest larger truths just as easily?

I think about this sometimes in relation to reviews and little posts. On Paper Thin Walls I sometimes use ‘we’ when I mean just me, or I’ll make up the second part of the link to wrap up the joke I’m on. It’s grafting but obvious grafting, and something I don’t feel like I could pull off in a review. In my Tegan and Sara review I briefly referred to Death Cab For Cutie as ‘fellow Lesbian band’ Death Cab For Cutie. Obviously not. But judging by the quality of mail I receive @ my Pitchfork address, a lot of people would have factchecked that, not taken it as a joke, and been angry at the little lie.

Anyway two different things, I guess, except the article talks about nonfictional humor being given a special pass because it’s humor. As for defiantly calling it nonfiction just for the audiences’ sake: I would like to mention my own mother, who won’t go see a movie unless it’s based on a true story. We had to tell her “I Am Legend” was a true story to get her to go. There’s no way she believed this, but she suspended her disbelief, just so she could sit through it.

Sedaris has a new book out, which is why the article was reprinted. Mark observed the season’s first case of Sedaris smugness this week, the look on someone’s face when they’ve pulled out a Sedaris book on the subway, as if you can’t get “Me Talk Pretty One Day” out of the book dispenser at the airport as well. As if, if you expect everyone to know what you’re reading it can’t be worth being smug about anyway.

I don’t know how I found this, but I did:

“Accio!” all Magical Folk and Muggles alike! Get ready to be
transported (via broomstick of course) on a fabulous, fanciful journey
through the world of Harry Potter with HOGWARTS EXPRESS: The Musical!

Hogwarts Express is a queer re-interpretation of the Harry
Potter stories, themes and characters we know and love. You’ll be
mystified by its dance moves, stupefied by its queerness, and dazzled
by its political messages.

Weird to me that anyone would need to reinterpret and politicize a story whose author obviously thought a lot about race, gender, sexuality and politics. Every Harry Potter book and film is in the top ten for highest grossing/best selling– what other books and films, especially children’s books and films have 1) a female and a gay man as its two ‘genius’ characters. 2) a fair number of black/Asian students in a school that supposedly has a total population of 600 or so (for the record, there are one Indian and three black students in Harry’s house that are approximately his age, that I can think of) 3) three volumes dedicated to criticizing bureaucracy and ‘blood purity madness.’ 4) costuming that is mostly already gender neutral (girls have skirts with their school uniforms, but all wear robes over their uniforms, their Quiddich outfits are the same).

Also, Mark’s pointed out that the easiest queer character (besides Dumbledore) is Remus Lupin, the werewolf who has to hide his monthly transformation, and who has trouble finding employment as a result. He is forced to resign from Hogwarts when parents find out a werewolf has access to their children. He, toward the end, also panics and attempts to flee life with his wife and child (straight life).

I feel weird about this because it seems to imply that it takes a reinterpretation to see those themes, when they’re (subtly) there anyway. Plus I saw some pretty bad performance-based political campus activities while I was in college, and it’s made me wary. But a big part of being a fan of this stuff is becoming a part of it, in some way, so I understand the desire to do what’s ostensibly a musical fan fic.