Parallel Johnny

I went and saw Order of the Phoenix last night. It was good, but they did what was only expected. The fifth book is the longest of the series and so its natural to cut out parts in the magnitude of chapters. Also, some minor storyline changes had to be made in order to bridge those gaps. I understand that, but still there were some parts that just shouldn’t have been left out including a certain device that is so prominent in the book and books to come, that it was the cover of the fifth book.

A couple new characters were introduced and I thought they were great: “Tonks” and Luna Lovegood. Delores Umbridge was exactly as I pictured her.

For the IMAX version they make the final battle scene all in 3-D. It was very cool and made the Ministry Scenes look even better.

** Possible spoiler if you haven’t read books 5 and 6. scroll down a bit**
In the movie, we finally get to see the Black family-tree tapestry. Unfortunately, its impossible to understand the branch flow showing each generation. You can, however read the names of many of them. In the scene, they show three burned out family members, which threw caution to me since the tree has at least 7 members burned out for being disowned. By making sure there were at least three shows some importance to those members.

One was Sirius, the second I couldn’t make out but was very close to Sirius is assumed Tonk’s mother (married muggle, Ted Tonks) and the third was Alphard Black, the uncle of Sirius and Regulus who helped Sirius after he ran away.

We know Sirius is a good wizard, Alphard showed good and Regulus we learn was a death eater who turned away. This gives some more ground to the RAB theory. Majority claims its Regulus Arcturus Black, but I think he took the name of his uncle Alphard.
** End Spoiler**

Side note: If you look on wikipedia, a Charlus Potter is listed on the tree. He married Dorea Potter and had a son. I wasn’t able to spot it in the movie though.

Go see it. and if you like the movies, go read the books. You’re missing a ton of story.

Off to the movies to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  Its gonna rock.

Is it lunch yet? I forgot about this time last year at work. With a little more than a week left here, I’ve pretty much finished my work. There’s no time to start anything new, so what do I do? I basically go over what I’ve done and try to improve it…every day. I wish I could just space out or kill hours at a time online, but I’d feel too guilty. I managed to listen to two audio books — Harry Potter, Books 5 and 6 — and I’m about to move on to the H2G2 series, or maybe the BBC radio episodes. I’ve been on a comedy binge this week. Lewis Black, Dane Cook and my newest favorite, Daniel Tosh. I heard him a while back, guest hosting Loveline. The guy is hilarious, so I found his album True Stories I Made Up.

The Detroit Pistons verses the Pacers, the big brawl. If you could promise me that every game would end like that, I would be a season ticket holder in a heartbeat. “Are you serious? I’m gonna have to fight at the end of the game? Lets go, sounds awesome.”

This is actually just the beginning of a very long post I wrote out of boredom, but since I know the attention span of most readers is 10 seconds, I’ll break it up.

Here’s some behind-the-scenes footage to new new Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It goes behind the set for the underwater scene. The source is in Spanish, but you’re smart folks. If not, have Google translate it.

[Link]

A few new Harry Potter Goblet of Fire stills.

Draco

Mad Eye Moody with Ron

A day away from work leaves lots of catch-up in the worldly news.

Peter Jennings dies of lung cancer at the age of 67.

Space shuttle Discovery returns to Earth safely this morning.

New Harry Potter movie, Goblet of Fire to be rated PG-13.

Will Canada move Daylight Savings to match the new schedule for the US?

If you haven’t heard yet:
The 4th Harry Potter movie, Goblet of Fire is set to come out in November. Just last week the official website was released. Much of it still is marked with “coming soon”, but there are a few features worth looking at.

Most important of the site is the trailer. Its a short one and even shows clips of past movies making it seem more like a teaser.

Then they have a place to cheer for the athletes of the Triwizard Tournament. You can download your favorite wizard’s campaign kit to show your support. I’ll be placing mine up shortly.

The bottom of the site has small icons of all the 2^nd-bill characters; however when you mouseover them, it shows a “coming soon.” Hopefully this means each character is getting their own page. I noticed that the left-most one is Ginny. If I remember, she was barely in the 4th book. Maybe the movie will give her a larger role.

The site has no still shots of the movie. If you want to see those, I suggest MuggleNet or The Leaky Cauldron. New pictures were just released yesterday.

I just finished the final 30 pages of HBP today during lunch. All I can say is
….wow….

I would like to discuss the book with others who have finished reading it. I’ll spare you all of spoilers. Wikipedia has a massive amount of information pertaining to the series. I advise not going to it until after you read the book.

That said, last night I went to Fith Avenue with Lauren, Lisa and Eric to see Blend. I have to say, they are one of the most amazing bands I have ever seen. They do amazing cover songs, equally-as-good original numbers and have an unbelievable stage presence. They play at Fifth Avenue every Wednesday night. If you can, go see them at least once.

Tonight, we’re meeting at Niki’s in Greektown for dinner then going to the Tiger’s game. Eric got good seats through his work. Luckily, I dont have work tomorrow. However, I do have a compentency test at 1 pm. I wish I knew how to prepare for this test. We’ll see.

Lastly, but certainly not least important; Tomorrow marks 3 years of being with Lauren. Not sure what else to say about that, but I know I love her as much, if not more than I did on the 1st day.

I had a fun, long weekend.

Friday was the 1^st qualifying round for the karaoke contest at McGee’s. A good group of us showed up: Lauren, Sara (up from Chicago for the weekend), Lisa, Eric, Brian and Aaron. After sending a Dodgeball out, Sara D. and Party Bill showed up. And if that wasn’t enough people, Melissa, Gerard and Shelby showed up later. Lauren was one of the two qualifiers for the night. I told you she was good. Pictures soon to follow.

Saturday was a long awaited day. The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series was finally released. I’m 10 chapters in so far and love every page of it.

Sunday I was with Lauren all day. We said goodbye to Sara before she left back home. We then drove along Jefferson to look at the water. Eric and Lisa asked if we would like to go see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so we made plans to meet at Shores Theater for the 9:15 showing. That gave Lauren and me enough time to get dinner at Logan’s.

I really enjoyed the movie, even if everyone told me all the jokes before I saw it. The Oompa-Loompa(s) were probably my favorite. I was very glad to see they didn’t cut out all the singing. Much more background to the story and, according to Lauren, it follows the book much closer than it’s predecessor.

Random Thought: I have a horrible craving for Hungry Howie’s.

First, a Review…
For all you RSS fanatics, Pluck has been released for Firefox. Its everything I wanted Bloglines to be. I haven’t installed the FF version (can only use IE at work) but I assume everything is the same. Once I install it at home, I just log in and all my setting I made at work will be synched up at home. Like Del.icio.us, it also holds bookmarks and allows you to share everything. Go download it.

Next…
I would just like to say to the Pope that I will be receiving my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, tomorrow. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be in the confession booth any time after I read it, either.

Tonight…
Karaoke Night at McGee’s. I will be there along with Lauren, Lisa, Eric and I’m sure a few others. Everyone must come see Lauren sing. She is amazing. I’m not saying that just because she’s the love of my life, either. She is constantly complemented by strangers. Besides, who can resist Journey? No one, thats who.