TOW Ry Became a Pott-head

It's Saturday night, approximately 5:45pm, and in half an hour, Team OSF will be picking me up and we'll be on our way to see "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1"!

I'm pretty excited. In past years, I tried fighting the whole Harry Potter phenomena. I didn't care to read the books, or want to see the movies. But I had no real reason to be anti-Potter, other than the sake of wanting to buck the popular trend.

Besides that, I'm not exactly known for seeing movies. And as for the films that I do see in theaters, I'm known for falling asleep during them. (I'm Ryan. Have you met me?) Although, I was pretty awake and engrossed in the last movie I saw, "The Social Network". Fascinating story and good performances by Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake. (Though, like the SNL skit asked, when are you gonna make more music, JT? I just wanna dance!)

Anyways. Back to Harry Potter. Friends over the years have enjoyed them, my roomie (cousin Cheryl) has been a super-fan since the beginning, and so I've known bits and pieces and seen portions of the movies, but never got caught up in it or paid close attention. But seeing the trailer for HP7 got me intrigued. Gone was my perception of a kiddish fun wizard tale in Britain, as it was replaced by a darker grittier world of dark lords and sorcery (so my first impression of the trailer left me, anyways).

So last Friday, with one week until the 7th movie premiere, I thought "let's do this." I decided to watch all six previous films to catch up, and over the course of the week, I finished the challenge. And to celebrate Jordan finishing up her long paper for school, we soon depart for Fashion Valley to see Harry battle He Who Shall Not Be Named!

Random - Movies

A few days ago, I started thinking about the movies we used to watch as kids. I don't remember what triggered these memories in my head, but I started to reminisce. In my childhood, a staple for me and my cousins was to watch those Disney sing-a-long videos, where you'd follow the bouncing Mickey Mouse head to the lyrics, over scenes from Disney movies or the Disney parks (...land, ...world, ...which makes me wonder why there's no Disneyuniverse Park somewhere). And of course, the regular Disney movies, like "The Aristocats", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", and so on.

But what I was really reminiscing about was what I like to think are the top 3 movies of my youth - the ones I'd watch over and over with my cousins, and we'd have our favorite scenes, know the lines, etc. The short list may surprise you.

In no particular order --

1) Sister Act 2.

Not only did we have the movie (VHS y'all), we rocked the (cassette) soundtrack in my aunt's minivan all the time. It wasn't as successful as the original, but it was so much more fun! Now that I think about it, the high school setting of kids who could really sing and the teacher who tried to pull it all together totally reminds me of "Glee". The songs were hella catchy. I mean, "if you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention"... yeah, I can still sing along. And the "Joyful, Joyful" medley that brought St. Francis Academy the state championship always had us singing and dancing along in the living room. Our favorite was the song over the closing credits, where the credits rolled over the cast singing and dancing to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". Man, I wanna watch this movie again. Oh, and it's what introduced me to Lauryn Hill - whose music I still enjoy today. "Some girls/guys are only about that thing, that thing, that thiiiiiiiiing..."

2) Hocus Pocus

Yup, the Halloween movie with a young Thora Birch, Sarah Jessica Parker, and a talking cat named Binx. I never really celebrated Halloween (dang my parents and their overly conservatism), but my cousins and I watched this one alot no matter what season of the year. I don't remember too much of the story now - I know three witches came back from the dead because a virgin lit a special candle, and they needed to absorb the soul of a young girl before sunrise in order to remain alive again. Kinda ridiculous, but it worked. It wasn't scary, it was Disney-ish without being under their umbrella, and it had a fun musical number... that my cousins and I knew the moves. Moving on...

3) Ghost

I know, right? Why are a group of kids under the age of 12 enjoying this movie? Maybe we had a thing for Whoopi Goldberg because of "Sister Act"? Actually, that did have a lot to do with it. She was the comic relief in the movie (and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year), and her relationship with Patrick Swayze's character was very endearing. She was the fraud psychic who all of a sudden could communicate with this ghost trying to send a message of warning to his love, and while the movie wasn't a comedy, their interactions provided a deal of humor to the dark yet romantic yet suspenseful film. Our favorite scene that we watched over and over and over was Oda Mae (Whoopi) first starts hearing Sam's (Swayze) voice and she starts freaking out when she realizes she can actually hear a ghost during the fake seance she was conducting. We just found the scene incredibly hilarious ("Sam Wheat???") - what can I say, we were young.

And thus ends my random trip down memory lane. [bows]