Filed under: Generalizations | Tags: childhood, culture, harry potter, life, magic, movies, pop culture, writing
Harry Potter. Oh Harry, your books are over, your movies have played, your battle is won and now my heart is void. I had the same feeling when watching the final episode of LOST, a television show Mike and I watched (and will again) with a fervor that borders on zealous. It wasn’t the horribly sad ending (which both had) that brought tears to my eyes. No, what made me bawl and smear my make up was knowing that something I’ve loved, and has been in a part of my life for the last twelve years, is over.
Sure, I’ll still pick up the books, and each time I read them, the story will be like new to me (unlike many people, I can re-read stories hundreds of times and still enjoy every minute of it). But still, it’s over and I’m sad. Harry Potter’s my buddy, just like John Locke and Jack Sheppard were. I knew them intimately and rooted for them even during their most vulnerable moments.
Although I’m sad, the sort of sadness that you get when a good friend moves far away and you know you’ll probably never see them again, I’m also thankful. I’m thankful for books like Harry Potter and shows like LOST because they gave me something, and reminded me that my love for stories is too overwhelming to ignore. I became a writer because of epic tales that span years to tell. If you want to do the story justice that is. They reminded me that there is still magic in this world.
I don’t know how other writers feel, only how I feel, and I truly believe that to write, you must believe in magic. Not just the magic we possess to entrance readers, to pull them into a different world and introduce them to creatures and people of our imaginations, but real magic. I believe in magic. I believe that there are things out there that happen which are so strange, so impossible, so fantastical that magic has to be real.
I believe in magic because without it, we’re just moving around and living in a world which is so clearly laid out for us. We are born, we go to school, we finish school, we go to more school, we finish that one, then we get jobs, get married, have children, all that stuff. I choose to believe that there are places in our world where magic hides, where you can find it if you really listen to your heart and feel it.
I have to believe in magic because without it I’m only telling the same story again and again and again. Once a year, when the new Harry Potter would come out (book, movie, whatever) my belief was renewed, I was reminded of the magic that’s hidden away. Now that it’s done, the onus is on me. I get no more reminders, from now on, I have to find that magic for myself, and bring it to you with words and characters.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1990, childhood, children, culture, funny, kids, life, love, nostalgia, nostalgic
I grew up, all the way, in the 1990’s. 1991 I was starting my first day of Grade One, and in 1999 I was entering my last year of Junior High School. More often then not, I feel bad for the kids we’ve got nowadays. Their cartoons are mostly animated with CG (“computer graphics” unless that term isn’t being used anymore and they’re just calling it “animation” now), and well, the rap is full of bitches and ho’s.
So with my 26th birthday looming only eight short weeks away, I’m sorta missing the good old days, and the good old 1990’s. Below are things I miss about the 90’s:
Fluorescent Clothing – It was cool and blinding all at once. Seriously, I had this windbreaker that looked as if it were designed by a schizophrenic with a passion for brightness. The only bonus of that was your parents didn’t make you wear those light-reflective strips when you rode your bike at night. There was no need…you are your own source of light.
Screamer is gonna kick some ass
Ghostbuster Toys from McDonald’s – Have you seen the crap they throw in Happy Meals nowadays? Let’s not fool ourselves, creativity and imagination is not exactly something we’ve instilled (on a regular basis to those good parents out there) in our children. So I’m a little shocked at the piece of crap toys that kids are (kind of) playing with. Now we got Ghostbuster shit, and da’shit it was! There was the horn thing you strapped to your handlebars, and rode around the neighbourhood at like 7 am while it screams WEE-YOOOOO WEE-YOOOOOO WEE-YOOOOO” until the day your dad “accidentally” busted it in the garage with his hammer.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – With shit-family shows like Full House and Family Matters on TV (by the way, didn’t Family Matters have some younger sister who all of a sudden just disappeared? hmm), The Fresh Prince was the coolest of the cool family shows (which weren’t many). Will Smith was so good at being so bad. And the rappin’ was bitchin’. Seriously though, how did Uncle Phil not suffer a massive coronary?
The Macarena – I was ten when this song came out, and may I ask everyone of you reading my nostalgic remembrances, when was the last time you did the Macarena? Do it, love it, line dance your way back to the 90’s.
Nintendo 64 – You really didn’t need any skills to play the N’64. We got Mario, Mortal Kombat and all that good shit. I always kicked my brother’s ass. Why, you may ask? Well, back in the 1990’s button-mashing was a surefire way to Sub-Zero the shit out of people.
EAT YO CANDY!
ADD – Everyone had ADD. And when I say everyone, I mean any eight-year-old boy who ran around, screaming and acting, well, like an eight-year-old boy. So pretty much everyone was on Ritalin at that time, which I gotta say, didn’t seem to have any real effect on these kids. We had three boys from Grade 2 to Grade 7 who *had* ADD. It was interesting watching them pitch their fits once or twice a year and throw desks and bite people and shit. Yeah, I miss real ADD; not this ADHD shit we’ve got now.
Fruit Snacks – My God we have a lot of fruit snacks back in the 1990’s (which, thinking back on it, probably contributed the the influx of ADD kids). Bright colours and FUN FUN FUN winked at you and if you didn’t just have Soda Licious you would DIE from snack-mortification. Which in turn was used to buy the souls of your classmates. Those kids would do anything for fruit snacks….
There’s like 1,000 things I could compare with the way we do things today, but I think that’s enough for now. The 1990’s knew how to rock it, and nerd it out all at once. Maybe I’m just feeling nostalgic cause the new Super Mario Bros. for the WII is kicking my ass. Let the button mashing commence!
The Lifespan of a Fly 