Shared Text: WR Randy Moss Joins the San Francisco 49ers

May 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It shouldn’t be a surprise that a disproportionate number of Harry Potter references in popular media come in the opinion columns on the editorial page and in articles by sportswriters. Unlike the beat reporters who are obliged to keep the narrative line pretty much to the facts to sustain the illusion of neutrality, columnists and sports reporters have every incentive to be colorful and brash. Literary references welcome.

Earlier this week it was Joe Posnanski and the Dementors he felt haunted Cleveland Municipal Stadium in his youth. Now it’s the advent of troublesome Randy Moss in the re-building project of San Francisco’s football team. Sports Illustrated columnist Ann Killion clearly thinks the Bay area enthusiasm about Mr. Moss’ arrival and good behavior is premature and maybe even akin to fantasy, hence her use of Hogwarts references to express her skepticism in ‘Randy Moss Off to Great Start With 49ers.’ She starts out with this note:

SANTA CLARA — Randy Moss arrived in the Bay Area in 2005 with sirens blaring and a police escort.

Seven years later he’s come back with an invisibility cloak.

Later, she adds:

San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh has made him sound like a cross between Hermione Granger and Vince Lombardi.

“In the classroom he sits in the front row, he soaks up the knowledge and always gives the feedback, too,” Harbaugh said recently. “His attendance has been impeccable … he’s like a coach.”

There are no other references to books or popular culture than these invisibility cloak and Hermione throw-aways — because none are as sure to be grasped immediately or as widely as a Harry Potter reference. Right?
Filed Under: Shared Text

Daring (?) Fan Fiction: ‘In Defence of the Dark Arts’

May 27, 2012 by 4 Comments

On my way home from Scotland, I read a detective novel called Trouble Brewing (great fun) and a history of The Johnstown Flood. Both were gifts from friends attending the Harry Potter conference at St. Andrews and they were a great distraction from the madness of flying 5,000 miles – at great altitude  – in a pressurized steel tube    – over endless ocean  – at night! Really, flying on broomsticks at midnight with Mad-Eye Moody or on Thestrals with friends traveling to rescue Sirius are arguably safer and more rational choices (if I’m not sure I’d enjoy the trans-Atlantic version of those options). I was glad and grateful to have the reading I did, consequently, to divert my attention from the power of any turbulence able to shake a bird the size of the one I was in.

I had all but stopped work on all projects in the weeks leading up to the St. Andrews conference, so I arrived home to the reality of an overflowing inbox and too many to-do items requiring my focus and attention in six directions simultaneously. As I did on the plane, I chose to do the brave thing, of course, by despairing of even making a good beginning and sat down to read. Here I read an intriguing bit of Harry Potter fan fiction that a writer calling himself ‘Willard Binns’  (Prof Binns?) has started to sell online at his website and at Amazon.co.uk.

It’s called In Defence of the Dark Arts: Lord Voldemort Reveals the Truth Behind the Harry Potter Stories and I think it’s worth reading and talking about for at least three reasons.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Taylor C. S. Lewis Conference: A Remarkable Slate of Speakers

May 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

Here’s the thing, serious readers. I get a lot of mail and almost all of it is from thoughtful people like you who want to ‘run something by me’ for my opinion. These are rarely subjects that are throw-away questions not deserving some real discussion and expansion. My blog post ‘drafts’ file, consequently, is now at 109 entries in the queue of topics waiting for me to come back to them. And I don’t think I’ll ever work through that back-log because as I write up one, two more enter the back of the line.

Some posts, though, have to jump to the front of the line because, if they don’t move to the point, their date of expiration passes and they’re worthless.

Today’s first post is an example. Next week the annual gathering at Taylor University of C. S. Lewis and Inkling Mavens takes place and The Colloquium on C. S. Lewis and Friends is a wow meeting of minds. No, Gilderoy will not be speaking (I’ll be working the 8th Day Books table with my friend Joshua), but that’s a good thing as David and Crystal Downing, Alan Jacobs, Woody and Susan Wendling, and a host of brilliant scholars and insightful readers will be. Check out their slate of speakers and schedule here, and, if you live nearby (Perelandra?) or can make the trip from afar, I hope to see you there!

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Hog Pro Notes

St. Andrews Conference: The Literary Legitimacy Controversy

May 26, 2012 by 6 Comments

What surprised me at the St. Andrews Harry Potter conference was the media attention it generated (global) and the focus of the fuss: that a venerable academic institution — entering its seventh century qualifies St Andrews as ‘venerable’ certainly — would condescend to take seriously something as silly as the Hogwarts Saga. Both were predictable, of course, and were not only predicted but prepared for by the media co-ordinator at Scotland’s oldest university.

Let’s take a look at the “You’ve Got to be Kidding!” editorials that were generated and the reactions prepared in advance to counter that posture (which it did, for the most part):

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Shared Text: The Dementors In Cleveland Municipal Stadium

May 26, 2012 by 3 Comments

Is Joe Posnanski the Best Sportswriter in America? Almost certainly. The Best Writer in America? My gut says he’s in the running. Which probably means, Joe tells me, that I’m way off base.

Two examples of why I love Joe: On Saying What You Think Is Right Without Evidence (real title: ‘The Toughest Three Outs’).

Maybe the throw-away line that “the last three outs in baseball are the hardest” doesn’t make you flinch. Joe explains not only why this talking head cliche is nonsensical, he leaves a reader wondering how often s/he says things that just ‘sound right’ but have no substance or link to the way things really are. Posnanski seems to be writing about baseball; he’s really jump starting a discussion of epistemology and psychology that is visceral and important.

I write about Joe here today only because of something he wrote recently on the Death of Donna Summers (‘Last Dance’) that, again, is less about the late great (?) pop star than the inside bigger than the outside. He drops a Harry Potter reference in one of his opening paragraphs:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes