'harry potter,' latin and me

in the few weeks before finals when solid food gets replaced with red bull and full nights of sleep get replaced with power naps taken between 3 and 5 a.m., the idea to flee civilization and abandon all responsibilities suddenly seems more appealing than ever. if you're like me, you wish you could go to hogwarts because there, at the very least, you can do magic.

i started reading the harry potter books before i hit middle school; i remember wishing jk rowling would write a sequel to 'harry potter and the sorcerer's stone.' like any other kid, i wished i was a wizard, so of course i knew all the spells and everything better than i knew... whatever it is you're supposed to learn in the 5th grade. what i didn't realize was that all those spells actually mean something. by memorizing all those spells and what they did, i was actually learning a tiny bit of latin.

for example, 'alohamora,' one of the first spells harry learns, unlocks things. 'mora' in latin means 'obstacle,' which is kind of cool. 'colloportus,' the counteraction of 'alohamora,' magically locks a door. the latin word 'porta' means 'gate' or 'door.' the 'accio' spell, which summons items, literally translates in latin to 'to summon.' 'aparecium' causes invisible ink to become visible. 'appareo' in latin means 'to become visible or appear.' the confundus charm, 'confundo,' obviously confuses people, and in latin, literally means 'to confuse or disorient.' the 'expecto patronum' spell creates a patronus, which keeps dementors at bay and comes from the latin, meaning 'i await a protector.' 'expelliarmus,' a favorite disarming spell of harry's, comes from the latin 'expellere,' 'to expel' and 'arma,' meaning 'weapon of war.' the 'lumos' spell, which creates light, comes from 'lumen,' meaning 'light.'

i could go on forever, or at least until i run out of spells.

there are also other things like names derived from latin. professor remus lupin, a werewolf, gets his name from the word meaning 'wolflike.' 'sirius' is latin for 'dog,' and also the name of harry's animagus godfather who turns into a black dog at will. severus snape gets his name from the latin word for 'strict' or 'severe,' which anyone can agree is fitting.

it kind of makes me respect jk rowling even more as an author, actually thinking through all the details in her books so thoroughly. learning about how all these words are derived from latin also gives me just another way to procrastinate, so from the bottom of my heart, jk rowling, i thank you.

007: license to thrill (see what i did there?)

i've always been of the belief that one's life doesn't really start until one has seen their first james bond movie. for me, the awakening, if you will, occurred around age 13, and it's safe to say i've never looked back. the 007 films make up my very most favorite franchise of all time, and yes, that includes 'star wars' and 'indiana jones.'

i'm a ridiculous 007 fan, and am totally okay with being so far removed from normalcy in this area it actually strains credulity. i not only own all the movies but also know the intricacies of each plot line. i can name all the villains, sing all the theme songs and, despite being born over 20 years into the series, offer substantiated opinions on how pop culture throughout the franchise's history has affected the stories.

now, i've probably done a fairly convincing job of portraying myself as a complete nutter, so, why the sudden peak in excitement over britain's most lethal weapon? me and a buddy of mine sectioned off two days this weekend to watch our way through the entire series. it's sort of a last 'hoorah' before we both go into our finals-induced hibernation periods, and it's going to be great. we figured it takes almost two full days to watch through all 22 movies, so we've stocked up on red bull and hot pockets, and we're ready to go.

probably the best thing about bond movies is there are so many great things in them. we have theme songs. we have gadgets. we have bond girls. we have villains, bad-guy organizations, villain sidekicks and super-secret lairs. we have q, m, miss moneypenny and felix leiter. we have bond himself. every single movie has all these elements, except for maybe the hiccup (*cough* disaster *cough*) that was 'on her majesty's secret service.' i could go on for days about all of that, but in my opinion the best part about these movies are the puns and beyond-cheesy innuendo.

it happens more with the brosnan movies, and those are spectacular, but it's almost more satisfying when timothy dalton cracks a smile once in a blue moon. some of the best material comes from the outrageous nature of the bond girl names, some of it shines through when q takes bond through his gadget arsenal. i love bad puns with all my heart, and bond has produced the best of the best over the years.

watching bond movies really gives one an appreciation for the ridiculous pun. it also gives one an appreciation of over-the-top action sequences. i can't conceive of a surface, automobile or location bond hasn't used in some sort of brawl. then again, the impossible display of epic badassery is one of the cornerstones upon which 007 is built.

the cool thing about watching all 22 in such a short time is that we can sit and compare performances. to me, sean connery is the true bond, even though i grew up with pierce brosnan's movies. i might even like brosnan's movies better, but connery made the role what it is, that is until 'diamonds are forever,' which might as well be called 'sean connery should've quit while he was ahead.' actually, the producers observed (astutely) that connery looked too old in 'diamonds are forever,' so they hired roger moore for a younger-looking bond. interestingly enough, roger moore is actually three years older than sean connery.

there's timothy dalton, the super-serious, out-of-place-in-the-80s bond who no one really liked. poor thing's only kind of cool sequence was when he went sliding down a hill atop a cello case, shooting bad guys as he went. daniel craig took a little getting used to, mostly because he's grittier than brosnan and doesn't speak entirely in fantastically bad puns. he's since convinced me, however, that despite his moneypenny-free existence he has a lot to offer. abs, for instance.

so, here's to blofeld and number two, pussy galore and tiffany case, fight scenes underwater and on the moon, uncovering conspiracies and foiling plans of world domination, smooth tuxedos and vodka martinis. shaken, not stirred.

inspirational sports movies: the encyclopedia

the other day, i was flipping through my 15 channels at like 2 a.m. trying to find something to keep me awake long enough to write a 12-page paper about the environment. this was a virtually insurmountable task, considering how i ran out of fresh material around page 4, lost track of how much coffee i'd drunk by page 8 and was blasting AC/DC by page 11. we all know how that goes.

anyway, the movie i ended up watching was 'invincible,' mainly because it was the only thing that wasn't an infomercial or 'cold case.' 'invincible' is this really awful mark wahlberg sports movie about some has-been quarterback who finally gets his shot in the NFL, and it's inspirational to the point of ridiculousness. i thought it's just like pretty much every other inspirational movie ever made, and then i thought about the inspirational movie genre as a whole.

has anyone else ever noticed that the vast majority of these insipid inspirational "we shall overcome" movies deal with sports as a major theme? they're nearly exclusively centered around either sports or cancer, sometimes both. 'field of dreams,' anyone? 'the karate kid,' 'rocky,' 'rudy,' 'ali,' 'miracle,' 'we are marshall,' 'a league of their own,' 'the rookie,' 'air bud,' 'bull durham,' 'hoop dreams...' i could go on. these movies span just about every sport... there's even that movie about the jamaican bobsled team. are there sports movies that don't have an underlying inspirational theme?

even though i really hate those sappy, over-the-top "make your dreams come true" movies, i have learned almost everything i know about sports from watching them. there's always that climactic, pivotal moment toward the end of the movie during the final game where you all of a sudden see like an entire game because they're drawing out the suspense of the plot. of course, there's never any real question as to who's going to win because these movies are wildly predictable, but they have to explain the rules of the game a little bit so that everyone understands how and why the good guys won.

there are the rudimentary things like the rules of hockey, learned from 'miracle.' there's the strategy of baseball, learned from 'angels in the outfield,' 'eight men out,' 'major league,' the list goes on. i know all about soccer, basketball, golf, football and even boxing from these movies. i even know some of the rules of the more obscure sports like rugby (in 'invictus'), bobsledding (in 'cool runnings'), cycling (in 'breaking away'), chess (in 'searching for bobby fischer'), pool (in 'the hustler') and more. it's kind of great, actually.

movies like 'raging bull' always end with a good message, but they're generally depressing tear-jerkers. theoretically, sports don't always have to be depressing. in fact, i'd say most sports are anything but depressing. but even the sports comedies end up being a little heavy on the disingenuous "we can do it" emphasis, what with all the overcoming obstacles and the learning to believe in oneself. not that believing in yourself is bad, but is it too much to ask for more 'caddyshack' and less 'hoosiers?'

on the other hand, i could just go watch espn.

the line between superfluity and functionality

the other day i went karaoke-ing. despite the fact that the reason for this outing was to let a girlfriend of mine sing and dance her boy problems away, i was still all over it because i love karaoke nights. i'm by no means good at it; i can carry a tune well enough, but that doesn't mean i have any talent in the singing department. that's the beauty of it, though. lack of singing talent makes karaoke what it is, which is essentially a room full of drunk, inhibition-less people in a bowling alley bar crooning away while everyone else makes fun of them.

on this particular karaoke outing, my scorned friend was out in big-time "hell hath no fury" mode, with more than a hint of "i'd rather be curled up on the couch watching titanic with a pint of ben & jerry's" heartbreak mode. this combination could mean nothing but, yes, you guessed it, crooning through breakup ballads of the 70s and 80s: the three sheets to the wind edition. from 'endless love' and 'he's got you' to 'every rose has its thorns,' all the way through 'i will survive,' the poor thing ran the gamut of "my heart's been stomped on and now it's on my sleeve" emotions.

anyway, the shameful point of this story is that i know all the words to all these songs. not just the sappy power ballads, but the classic rock, the bad 90s pop, the great 80s dance hits, the oldies but goodies... singing along to the drunken american idol blooper reel made me realize how much random, useless stuff i have bouncing around my head.

for example, before the other night i hadn't heard a backstreet boys song in about a decade, seeing as i've tried my best to forget the boy band phase of my life. but when some preppy barely-21 who could've gone to high school with me got up and, in a fit of nostalgia, started singing 'larger than life,' it was like i was 10 again and knew every lyric.

the thing is, song lyrics really just barely scratch the surface of everything filed away in my memory banks. random trivia from snapple caps, answers to obscure trivial pursuit questions, lines from my favorite movies, pointless anecdotes professors put in their lectures to make them more interesting, it's all there. it's kind of amazing, really, how little of this information is actually useful in any capacity.

so there i am, watching my friend wail away along with diana ross, thinking what i could do if all this entirely superfluous information were replaced with legitimately helpful information. could i be off curing cancer or preventing global warming if i had managed to retain the important stuff? my general policy in high school and throughout most every gen ed class i've taken was to breeze through the day-to-day, cram like hell in the hours before any major tests, and forget it all the minute i didn't need it anymore. it worked like a charm, too.

but what if i couldn't tell you that an autopsy on an animal is called a necropsy, and instead the space in my brain used for stockpiling that tidbit was going toward something credible? kind of an interesting thought.

on the other hand, i don't want to be a brain surgeon or an astronaut. i'm an advertising major, which means the only real skills i need are the ability to bullshit and the ability to persuade people to buy things they don't need, and these two skills are conveniently interlaced. i choose to think that my brain is filtering out all the stuff it knows i won't need and hanging on to anything that might be helpful at some point. sure, it might just be things like party anecdotes, but i've always felt it's better to know a little about a lot than a lot about a little. consequently, i've now convinced myself that it's a good thing that ten years after my boy band phase i can still sit here and spit out the lyrics to 'mmmbop' like it's my job.

and just as a parting note, 'karaoke' is japanese for 'empty orchestra.' i learned that on 'how i met your mother.'

barney stinson, the everyman

the other night, i was having dinner with a friend of mine who had just gotten dumped. those "i really need a girlfriend to talk to" dinners can be a little draining, even though all that's really required is to listen, nod your head and come up with a new insult every few minutes. nevertheless, there i was, playing right along in full-on supportive mode. however, as the night wore on, she kept going on and on about this scumbag and what had happened, and i couldn't help but realize that maybe things weren't quite as she was telling them.

soon it came out that devastated as this girl was, this had actually been a one-night type of deal. of course she regurgitated every word he had said to her, and soon it became clear: my friend had been dealing with a barney stinson. once i formed this conclusion, it was actually more of a struggle not to laugh at her than it usually is to appear to be paying rapt attention. why? because i love 'how i met your mother.'

this guy had convinced carly that he was leaving town the next day because, get this, he had been drafted as starting quarterback for the patriots right out of college and he wanted to savor his last night in chicago. i promise, she bought it hook, line and sinker. when she woke up alone and called the number he gave her, she got the chicago rejection hotline.

once this story had come out in its entirety, it got me thinking that this guy must watch 'how i met your mother,' too. while nodding blankly and randomly hurling degrading yet witty insults in his direction, my mind started to wander. i thought about 'how i met your mother' and how it actually teaches us many lessons about the crazy world of dating. many of these lessons come in the form of barney's theories and rules. as carly talked, i thought about my favorite of barney's theories and rules. i also thought about how many of these rules could be applied to my friend's life and make her less... pathetic might be too strong a word, but it's the one i'm going with.

take the hot/crazy scale. for those who don't watch 'how i met your mother,' the hot/crazy scale allows for a girl to be a certain level of crazy, as long as she's equally hot. there's a line called the vicky mendoza diagonal that delineates the appropriate levels of crazy and hot, but if a girl goes too far past the vicky mendoza diagonal, she reaches the shelly gillespie zone. i'm here to say that the hot/crazy scale also works for dudes. for example, i dated this guy who started out as 'cute target boy,' but as we got to know each other better, he became 'creepy target boy.' this was after i learned that his favorite movie was 'love actually' and that he dropped out of college, lived with his mother, had me in his fave five list halfway through our first conversation and during our first date started making plans for a weekend away. he got crazier and crazier, but no hotter.

then there's the platinum rule. barney explains it like this: "you know how the golden rule says that you should love thy neighbor? well, there's a rule above that called the platinum rule, which says that you should never ever *love* thy neighbor." it says that you shouldn't date someone you're around a lot, and therefore can't escape once you break up. it happened with this guy i worked with at target. he fell for this guy and they actually made a really cute couple until the close quarters started to make them hate each other, and it was awkward for weeks.

the most realistic depiction of the single life on 'how i met your mother,' though, is barney stinson himself. without the barney stinsons of the world, i wouldn't have to spend my saturday night and enough of my paycheck to cover two comfort food meals on watching my perpetually lovelorn friend sniffle and complain about some guy who conned her into a one-night stand. and somehow, i still like 'how i met your mother,' probably because it is realistic, and makes those crappy moments funny.

who needs originality, anyway?

after spending what felt like most of my life trying to create an ad campaign around a particular brand of antacids, i've come to wonder what's so great about originality, anyway. here i am, going through all possible scenarios of an antacid commercial, most of which include the two friends, one who's just eaten something that gives him/her heartburn and one who recommends this fantastic new antacid.

blech. can't we just draw on our vast knowledge of information that's already been seen, debated and eventually accepted? why can't we get away with conventionality?

take quentin tarantino. the man doesn't have an original bone in his body, but everyone's always talking about what an ingenue he is. he takes concepts, music, sometimes entire scenes from other movies. his movies are filled to the brim with references to other movies, and sometimes he even rehashes his own stuff, although most of that happens in the soundtracks.

from 'reservoir dogs' all the way to 'inglourious basterds,' tarantino's body of work reads like an amalgamation of every japanese action film known to man. if nothing else, you have to give him credit for finding the time to actually see all these movies he takes pieces from.

now, i'm not saying this is at all a bad thing. in fact, quite the opposite. he is a freaking genius, because even given all his remaking, rehashing and referencing, he's managed to convince us all of his originality. maybe the thing that cements tarantino's uniqueness is his ability to mash together a smattering of things we've already seen, combining them in a way we haven't. he did take the quintessential world war II movie and then change not just the plot, but the end of the war.

i have tremendous respect for tarantino's epic badassery. his movies are fantastically gory, and his concepts are always entertaining. his skill as a director is undeniable, especially his ability to make the unoriginal seem entirely new. if tarantino can do it, why can't i? find concepts and taglines from old campaigns and reuse them for different products... maybe even the same product, call it a throwback to retro style or something. seems easy enough, right? nope, because somehow there's no way i could pull it off because i'm not an arrogant, mildly creepy, 'heavily influenced' movie director.

all that being said, i'm still an advocate of originality. see, if you sit there and mull over the concept for long enough, creativity will eventually strike. thankfully, in this case, it did, and yours truly managed to knock that stupid antacid commercial out of the park at the eleventh hour, as always. isn't the final product better ten times out of ten if it's something entirely new, something you sat and thought about for however long, making your project something entirely your own and not just a knockoff of someone else's? it's like you feel more accomplished at the end of the day if you had to work for your idea.

take 'death at a funeral.' the original movie, a british black comedy, ranks pretty high on my list of favorite movies. it's laugh-out-loud funny, but at the same time it has elements of understated sarcasm and underplayed hilarity. there's a new version coming out soon, which might as well be the same movie, only made in america.

america most definitely got some things right, things mostly concentrated in the area of food, but as a fan of the original 'death at a funeral,' this movie looks like an unmitigated disaster. it stars chris rock, tracy morgan, martin lawrence et al, and is a line-for-line re-enactment of the original. if it were actually the same movie with different characters, i'm not sure i'd have the same issues with it, but despite the dialogue being nearly identical, the remake takes the perfect blend of comedy and turns it into two hours of over-exaggerated slapstick.

the proverbial problem with remakes is the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality, and it goes the same for originality. while tarantino makes the 'borrowing' system work, i'd much rather sit around my apartment watching bad tv and mulling over the concept until a brilliant idea pops into my head. i love those few minutes after you've just had a stroke of brilliance, but aren't quite sure where to take it, so you think as fast as you can in order to cement your idea before it falls right back out of your head. if anything, it keeps things interesting.

so, to answer my own question: who needs originality? we all do.

in honor of mr. hitchcock

in honor of the fact that i just watched 'north by northwest,' i feel the time has arrived for me to share just how much i love alfred hitchcock. which is a lot, basically.

i'm not by any means an expert on the film industry, but i am an expert on buying lots of films and watching lots of films. i can certainly appreciate all the groundbreaking accomplishments hitchcock made in the world of cinema, and while those groundbreaking accomplishments certainly contribute to why i think he's great, the main reason is that he was a character and a half, and that translated into his movies.

when i say i love his movies, i don't just mean the ones everyone's seen, like 'psycho,' 'vertigo,' 'the birds' and 'north by northwest.' i collect hitchcock dvds like your grandfather collects coins. i'm the kid who can tell you where in each movie you'll find hitchcock's cameo, and i'm a walking encyclopedia on not jut the movies you've seen, but the ones you haven't. i've watched 'psycho' more times than i can count, of course. but i've also seen movies like 'the man who knew too much' and 'strangers on a train' a million times because you can only watch 'rear window' so many times before you start suspecting your neighbors of murdering their wives.

that's one of the main reasons hitchcock's movies are so great. they're so good, you can get invested and involved in these movies in ways you can't with others. the only reason i don't watch 'the birds' day in and day out is that i don't want to develop a pathological fear of pigeons. that being said, i love that if i watch 'the birds' too often, i know i will eventually develop said pathological fear, however irrational it may seem. i watch 'notorious,' wherein cary grant essentially pimps ingrid bergman out to her father's nazi friend so she can be a cia informant, and hitchcock makes it look thrilling and fun. he makes me want to be a secret agent, before my grasp on reality sets in and i realize i would be an abysmal secret agent.

you know what else? he managed to create that signature hitchcockian suspense even within the considerable limits of the censorship laws that existed at that time. it's fascinating that the movies aren't all that scary, per se, but there's enough anticipation to give the audience that exhilarating thrill of psychological suspense. the shower scene in 'psycho' doesn't show much skin or actual stabbing because of the incredibly strict censorship codes, but it's almost better that way. no, not almost. actually.

one sort of morbid reason hitchcock is so awesome is his ability to dream up new and interesting ways to kill people. hitchcock once said, "a murder without gleaming scissors is like asparagus without the hollandaise sauce: tasteless." the gleaming scissors worked in 'dial m for murder,' but throughout all of his movies, hitchcock killed countless people in highly entertaining ways. strangulation with rope or neckties or scarves, drowning in various lakes or rivers, stuffing bodies into trunks, stabbing with knives or scissors or any other sharp object, sawing, hurling down stairs, pecking by birds, locking people in carbon monoxide-filled cars... the list goes on.

watching all these movies makes me want to crawl inside hitchcock's head and see what goes on in his imagination, a la 'being john malkovich.' the great thing about his movies, though, is that watching them sort of gives you a glimpse into that mind. now, i'm off to go watch 'to catch a thief.'