I was not a reader at all at this point in life however I was a puzzle person so each day I would do the daily sodoku out of the State News. As you can guess a sodoku puzzle takes up about 15 minutes out of a 4 hour shift so that didn't really solve the boredom issue. A few friends suggested reading which at first I was like blah no way I hate reading. I mentioned this to my sister who told me to read Harry Potter. I gave it a shot once before. I made it through Chapter 1 of the Sorcerer's Stone in about 3 months before I gave up but I figured what the hell that was a few years back lets try it again. So I started out that summer at the pool with a second attempt of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone but skipping ahead to chapter 2 or 3 (I can't remember which one) to start. It was a little slow at first but by the time I finished that I went straight on to the next and so on. The series became and obsession; I finally was seeing what so many others were seeing.
Over the course of my junior year and into my senior year I read The Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban and The Goblet of Fire as well as watched all of the movies. I was lucky and could borrow all the books from my sister. I didn't purchase a book myself till The Half Blood Prince. I was pretty disappointed in myself that it took me this long to get into this series and actually just reading as well. Considering the first book was released in 1997 and the first movie in 2001 and I was just starting out in 2005 I was very late to the wizarding world.
By 2007 I was a huge fan and could talk Hogwarts, Muggles, Voldemort and Dumboldore with the rest. Hell, I dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween like 2 years in a row and you know I was a member of the Facebook group Fuck This...I'm Going To Hogwarts. I think I really became a die hard fan when I was kicked out of the midnight showing of Goblet of Fire at NCG Cinemas. Before I get into that story I should talk about how I got to that point. I was still reading the book Goblet of Fire and talking about it with my friend Michelle. We had decided to get tickets together for the midnight showing. A few weeks later my roommates had asked me to get tickets with them but I turned them down as I was going to get them with Michelle. Well someone ended up buying Michelle tickets as a gift so I was kinda left high and dry with no one to go with. I talked to my roomies and I was just going to get a ticket and go with them. I went over to NCG one afternoon to make this epic purchase as this is the first movie I have ever gone to a midnight showing for! I talked to the lady at the desk and told her my situation about my roommates having tickets and I wanted to be able to sit with them. She said that wouldn't be an issue, that the tickets work as a voucher system and you just get there with your group and turn them in and go into one of the available theatres. I thought that's easy, sure, lets do this. So I made my purchase of a single ticket.
That faithful day of November 17th, 2005 arrived and I still had 3 chapters to read of the Goblet of Fire and the movie premier was quickly approaching. I have a vivid memory of sitting on my bean bag chair in my room at 622 MAC scarfing down dinner and reading as fast as I could (I was still new to this whole reading thing so I wasn't very quick at the time). My roommates were telling me it was time to leave and I still had just a few pages to go so I quickly finished that off and hopped in the car to the movie theater. Now this is where things start to get really interesting. So I drove us to the movie and we got out and went to get in line when we found out even numbered tickets are on the East side and odd numbered tickets are on the West side. Everyone in my roommates group and Michelle and her friend were all even numbered and I was an odd number all by myself. I kinda panicked for a second before deciding this should be a simple fix let me go and talk to the ticket people.
While everyone got in line I went to get things situated. The ticket person was useless and overwhelmed so I asked for the manager and he came right over and we talked. The manager and I both started out very friendly and I explained how I had asked how the tickets worked and everything before I bought the ticket. His response was I can't help you this has been our policy since day one. Since that was not the answer I wanted to hear I restated the question and got the same response. This went on for about 5 minutes of me finding a new way to rephrase my question and getting some variation of the same no response. I was starting to get annoyed as was the manager so finally after getting a no response one too many times I go well clearly you are not a good manager if you can not get all of your employees to follow your rules and looks like me coming to this theatre just about every week since the day it opened means nothing guess I'll just have to start going to Celebration (NCG's rival) to get him really pissed off. His response to that statement took me off guard a bit when he told me I could leave his theater and if I did not leave on my own he would have the police remove me.
As you can imagine by this point I was just pissed off for a number of reasons but I felt defeated and didn't know what else to do. I walked back to my roommates in line to tell them what was going on and that since I drove to give me a call when the movie was over and I would come back and pick them up. While I was talking to them the manager started walking toward me and I started to think I am really screwed now that I didn't leave fast enough or something. As he approaches he starts to talk to me and to my huge surprise he is not still trying to kick me out. Instead he is doing the complete opposite. First he apologizes which I in turn do as well for calling him a bad manager and then he goes even a step further. He offers to help me out and gives me a couple options. Option 1 he has a VIP theater but can only fit 7 of us in that and our group was 13 or option 2 he will walk around with me and try to find someone in a similar spot to trade tickets with. I elect for option 2 which took maybe 3 minutes to find. Still not sure why he didn't just do that first instead of fighting and taking up 15 minutes of his time.
After that fiasco the movie went off with out an issue and I was able to watch The Goblet of Fire with all of my friends and enjoy it! I don't think reading the book just hours before the film was a good idea but that is what it is. Reading the book so close to the movie kind of kills the movie because one you already know what is going to happen and two the whole time you are comparing the movie to the book and as everyone knows the book is always better than the movie!
It is a very sad day as there is no longer anything to look forward to. Perhaps I will just have to go back to the beginning and start over again. Or perhaps the best thing I can do is make a trip to Orlando to the The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. And also there is Pottermore though I'm not entirely sure what that is but I also don't know what Google + is but what the hell I gave that a shot so I will do the same for Pottermore.
The movie I felt kept to the book very well. I was pleased that I made it to the finally at midnight but I am very sad it is over. This series has been such a part of my life. I do not agree that is was shown in 3D however and I feel that those who go to see this movie in 3D are not true fans. The beginning was not in 3D so neither should the end. I have seen some movies in 3D and its cool if it is intended to be done in 3D like Alice in Wonderland or Avatar but this is a standard movie that gets 3D as a make more money gimmick. The epilogue in the book was really good cause I could use my imagination and picture the scene but the movie did ruin that image for me. Watch the movie and you will know what I am talking about. The whole theatre burst out laughing at that point because it was horrible. Good in concept but bad in execution.
Here is an awesome image of the timeline of the movies and books
http://codyrapol.com/~BigBangTheory/2011/06/Harry-Potter-Time-Line.jpg
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