What Do Wizard Teenagers Do?

Awhile ago, my soul mate Katie and I had a long, drawn out, (beer-induced) discussion about what the students at Hogwarts do in their spare time. This is, of course, when they are not working diligently on their wizard homework or playing Quidditch or boning in the Restricted Sex-ion. What do they do to relax? How do they get crazy? You can't tell me that sneaking out after curfew to go sit and watch Hagrid hatch dragons is the riskiest thing they do. We decided that these activities probably differ from house to house, so here is a detailed analysis of our discussion conclusions.

1) GRYFFINDOR

Intoxicant of choice: Beer and/or Jaeger bombs

Activities: swordfights with Godric Gryffindor sword replicas, Gryffindor Beer Drinking Olympics, the Harry Potter drinking game (anytime his name is mentioned you do a Jaeger bomb)

Why: Gryffindors are brave and courageous, and liquid courage only intensifies these traits. Gryffindors would be the ones to try to Bungee jump with Extendable Ears, use centaurs as mechanical bulls, and graffiti the castle with things like BALLS DEEP in ink that won't erase. They would play parkour on the moving staircases and let all the house-elves out to run races through the corridors, all while taking bets on who will pass out in the Great Hall and get peed on by Mrs. Norris. They would also be the ones to upload all the incriminating photos to Facebook because THEY DO WHAT THEY WANT and Dumbledore was a Gryffindor so that absolves them of all fault.


2) HUFFLEPUFF

Intoxicant of choice: Marijuana

Activities: getting the munchies and raiding the kitchens, since their common room is right near it. Spacing out and staring at the fire looking for famous faces to materialize. Listening to Celestina Warbeck on the wizard wireless.

Why: If it weren't for Cedric Diggory, we would say the Hufflepuffs are saints who do nothing but sit around and knit and smile at each other. But Diggs and his crew had to be badass in some way, so we figured they would go with weed to mellow out and forget all the happy Hufflepuffiness that surrounds them on a daily basis and makes them hate life.


3) RAVENCLAW

Intoxicant of choice: Wine and/or Adderall

Activities: sitting in big chairs with glasses of port having fake intellectual conversations (i.e. "Why does wine give you such a bad hangover?"), playing trivia-based drinking games, staying up all night doing homework, having boisterous debates such as "Grindelwald vs. Voldemort: Who Was More Clever?" which devolve into fistfights

Why: Everyone knows Ravenclaws are ridiculously smart, clever, witty, intelligent people. So naturally, wine is the drink of choice. But they are still teenagers, so they binge drink with it. Their drinking games have to be high-brow, so they base them on logic. The debates get pretty intense, which is why they have learned to be excellent boxers. And when exams approach, everyone at Hogwarts knows to get in good with the prefects of Ravenclaw, who control the castle's stock of behavioral meds. How else would an entire house have a reputation of being insanely intelligent? They study all day and party all night!


4) SLYTHERIN

Intoxicant of choice: Expensive vodka and/or cocaine

Activities: Pin the Dark Mark on the Mudblood, Voldemortic rituals, drawing penises on people who pass out, Take A Shot For Every Death Eater Relative You Can Prove (family trees/heraldic evidence required), Slytherin Fight Club

Why: Slytherin parties are the wizard equivalent of high-brow Manhattan raves. Techno blaring, a VIP lounge, cocaine gift bags. They can afford it because they are wizarding royalty. There's a dress code and house-elves bring you Grey Goose cocktails in Swarovski crystal glasses. When everyone gets really shitty, the Slytherin FIght Club emerges, where people bet on how much pure blood will be spilled on the dungeon floor.



Also, this actually happens, since once upon a time I was a wizard teenager, so this is a first-hand account.

Unicorns and various other magical beasts

Unicorns are real and I hate people that don't believe in them.

I want a house elf like Kreacher, meaning one that screams at me and calls me a Mudblood.

When people ask me my religion and I say Dumbledore, I'm only half kidding.

I think the other day a thestral landed in my front yard, but I have never seen anyone die so I can't be certain.

I wonder why Regulus Black changed his mind.

Every time I get evaluated in my collaborative communication / leadership class, I am more and more certain that J.K. Rowling based Hermione Granger on me.

Every time something Harry Potter-related comes out or I acquire it, this time being the Half-Blood Prince DVD, I go a little mental. I'm sorry.

Oxford, Bath, and Stonehenge

Wow, loyal readers, I'm really sorry I've been so suck-tastic at blogging lately.  Truth be told, I'm just so busy/tired/lazy to do it, so here goes nothing!

The weekend of the 9th-10th-11th I went to Oxford, Bath and Stonehenge.  It was a really laid-back trip.  Oxford is a pretty cool place, the best part about it was Christchurch College which is where . . . yep . . . HARRY POTTER was filmed!  So awesome.  The other super cool thing about Oxford was Alice's Shop, because Lewis Carroll wrote a large chunk of Alice in Wonderland in Oxford.  They had some really cool stuff -- I bought some postcards and a copy of the book.  I sent Matt a postcard of the thingee smoking a hookah, which he loved.

We ate at a cute cafe where the guy gave me a free cookie for no reason, then hit up the bus again to go to Bath.  Bath is a really REALLY beautiful town, but our hostel was at the very top of Bathwick Hill which is a BEE-YOTCH to climb.  Sweating, panting, calves aching, the whole shebang.  It was far away from the center of town where all the cool stuff is, but we braved the hill and went to a cheap and awesome bar for dinner.  We were all pretty exhausted, though, and went to bed fairly early that night.

Saturday was nice -- we slept in for the first time in weeks!  Six girls getting ready in one hostel room was a challege, but I'm pretty laid back so I just let the girls hog the mirror and brushed my teeth and called it a day.  We set off down the freaking hill but soon split up because some people wanted to go shopping and some wanted to see sights (like me).  So me, Jessica, Danielle, and Alex went to the Jane Austen center which was so cool, I bought Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility as well as a Colin Firth card for Katie.

Then we basically just wandered around, shopped a bit, went back to the hostel and took a nap.  We didn't feel like getting ready and going out, because that would entail walking ALL THE WAY there and back again, so we ended up in the hostel bar.  Unfortunately, they closed that at 9:30pm. REALLY?  So somehow I ended up at a pub with the Dean of Students (Ed), Alex, Matt and Danielle.  I got . . . intoxicated  . . . and when we woke up the next morning at 8am to go to the Roman baths let's just say I still felt it.

The baths were amazing!  The Roman stuff still kills me.  They were so advanced, and then civilization kind of reverted . . . I don't know, it's just very interesting.

I got to sleep on the bus on the way to Stonehenge so needless to say I was in MUCH better shape for that one.  It really is just a circle of rocks, but it's hard to explain how fascinating it is.  The stones were transported from Wales, aligned perfectly with the solstices, human remains were found in the Y and Z holes, and I'm standing there thousands of years later looking at it.  I wish you could get close to it, though.  I wanted to pull a Claire and get transported back in time to find my Jamie.  (Any Outlander fans here?  No?)

All in all it was a great weekend, pretty laid back but well worth it!

Life with Harry / Song and Skit

So I have decided to post the rough cut of my editing project.  It's not finished (the bars and tone have been omitted . . . !!!) and I ended up changing the graphics at the beginning, but you can get the general idea of it.

I have to do a project for editing and a documentary for Camera for Broadcast, so I'm doing them both on Harry Potter.  However, this is more of a "showcase" video and not a documentary.  I'll end up using the majority of the footage in the documentary, but it will be totally different--more of a Maysle Brothers feel.  

If I had access to a good camera, I was going to do a short narrative film but, alas, my camera time is limited.  I need to invest in a good camcorder.

I hope you all enjoy this stupid video.  I laugh when I watch it, but that doesn't mean anything.

Oh, and there's Song and Skit :)

Hogwarts Live

OK, so I know I make a big deal about HogwartsLive.com.  Basically, in a nutshell, it's a text-based Harry Potter RPG [role-playing game] in which you can chat with other players and kill creatures in the forest and gain experience and defeat Voldemort.  Why is it so addicting?  Because it's what I call an active time waster.

Facebook can only be so active.  Commenting on photos, statuses, walls, etc., you are only talking to one person at a time.  HogwartsLive is weird because there's a chat in which a lot of VERY different people participate -- and they think about the game in various ways.  Some people see it as a way to make friends.  I don't, because I have RL (real-life) friends.  In fact, 4 of my real-life friends are on HogwartsLive which I will refer to now as HL.  My goal is to get to 200+ Voldemort encounters and get a Ford Anglia as my mount.  But others don't see it that way.  I have the sneaking suspicion that many HL players have very few real-life friends and a disproportionate amount of HL friends.  My evidence is that people who have been on HL for a smaller amount of time than me have waaaaay more Voldemort Encounters than I do, and seem to take HL "drama" much more seriously than I do.  This can only be because they are on a crazy amount more time than me, because I am on a decent amount and I rarely chat, I usually just fight in the forest.

However, I am relatively hated on HL because of the way I chat.  I make fun of almost everyone on there because of how seriously they take the drama.  I like to cause the drama because it's funny as hell.  If I am out of forest fights and have nothing else to do, I will be contrary to anything anyone says on HL just to start a fight.

Because what is the fun in an online RPG if everyone loves each other?