I KNOW HOW IT ENDS!

I finished book 7 last night! Now I'm very emotional! But I won't say anymore than that! Squee! Finish it, someone, so we can chat! Squee!

This is interesting...apparently a new study finds that if you are friends with people who are fat, you are more likely to be fat. I guess this could be true: after all I gained a bunch of weight my senior year in college, while living with my friends, but that could have more to do with the fact our plans usually included Ben & Jerry's...speaking of which, I need to try this Americone Dream pretty soon.

It's also a good week to be me, culturally-speaking. Book 7 is out (and now having read it, I can read all the interviews with JKR), and Hairspray the movie has been released. I want to see Hairspray so badly I can taste it. Mmm. Hairspray. You know what musical I'd like to see made into a movie? Sunset Boulevard. Think about it. If there was one movie that would benefit from some lavish sets and sun-drenched locations, it's Sunset Boulevard. We'll get the guy who was Raoul in the Phantom movie to sing it--but Joel Schumacher, you are BARRED FROM THE SET! I also realised today that I never "found out" who was going to play Motormouth Mabel in the movie...I always assumed it would be Queen Latifah. Well. Yeah. Who ELSE are you going to get to do it? Please. I am however, on the fence about John Travolta as Edna Turnblad. I don't care if he's a draw (not drawing me though--uh uh, firmly on the fence!) who made the decision to not pursue Harvey Fierstein on bended knee? Seriously. I would have thought it was obvious. Oh well--hopefully I'll have a review soon.

Meanwhile, I've noticed lately that people seem unable to genuinely enjoy anything anymore. All the reviews I've read have had this disaffected ironic hipster tone like "eh, I GUESS I'll deign to see this movie," and some (like the Onion's "Hate Mail" column) start out openly hostile and work their way up from there. Or they are quick to put movies in their place: "If you're a Transformers fan..." "If you're a Simpsons fan..." So, apparently these movie studios are paying billions of dollars for a devoted knot of fanboys? I don't think so. Maybe the problem is there is too much entertainment that's being recycled (see: Hairspray), and not enough new stories. But what happened to just enjoying something for the hell of it? Even the recent hype over Harry Potter was disappointing. All these columnists looking on fondly while the rest of the world went nuts. Granted, as a fan, I might not have been able to write the most cohesive column ("OMG, teh book--?! And then the-house elves?!?!?!?!! TONKS??? waaaahrrr?11@!")but surely there must be people out there who ENJOY the things they're reviewing and are brave enough to say "Screw you cool hipster ironic people with your skinny jeans and your eyeliner, I am going to Harry Potter, I am going to wear a costume and when the Warner Bros. logo shows up I am going to APPLAUD, damnit!"

And then I'm going to bark about how mediocre it was. Ah well--so it goes.