March 2007 Archives

It must be done...I must fly them proudly:

I know just enough about basketball to have the chops to have written one piece on the team for The Hoya, when they just missed getting into the Sweet 16. It was my senior year. The piece was basically about how out of control CRAZY it was on campus while that game went on. All you had to do to hear the game, or at least know who was scoring, was stand outside in the middle of the campus; the collective groans and shouts told the whole story without any need for a TV. I can only imagine what's going on there now.

A few weeks ago, Alex and his band (read: Alex, his iPod and his guitar) came into town, so I, he, Samantha and Jessica traveled, naturally, to Staten Island and my apartment to hang out. As I was pulling up to my building, and parallel parking no less, they found The Lion King on Sam's iPod. Sam has put what happened on YouTube. We are dorks. No, wait, Alex is the dork. But a funny dork:

Note to self: Even a week after being sick, eating Moroccan food is a "silly panda" thing to do (thanks, Alex, for the descriptor). "I didn't have much!" I'll now whine, loudly. No difference.

Anyway, not to sound like a total robotic social calendar machine, but I've been systematically seeing people, night by night, since I got home from this two-week odyssey. It's literally the only way to make sure I see everyone - just fill up the schedule! It's horrible. I hate putting my friends and family on my schedule, or going down the list like this. But there are people I've missed and want to see, and the only way, now, to make sure I see them, is to make sure I see them. And that means scheduling. BAH.

On tonight's docket - Cheryl! (Yes, PotterCasters, HotttCheryl.) Miss I've Read Book 7 And Can't Say Anything About It. Miss I Know If Harry Lives or Dies. Miss I'll Smile Evilly While You Ponder Aloud. UGH!

That aside, I've missed her tons. I know, it seems like hanging with each other in this six-month period would be impossible, like two magpies whose beaks have been taped shut. Sometimes it is like that; I say something about Potter that I know she can't ever, possibly address, never mind answer, so I clap my hand over my mouth and wave my hands in front of my face and apologize. She laughs. We actually came up with an idea for PotterCast, that I hope I can make happen. We'll see. (Probably not.)

We ate the aforementioned Moroccan food and laid upwards on her bed, which is bizarre in her apartment because she has construction paper cutouts of trees on the walls, strung with paper clip garland and chains of used Metro-Cards. It was like laying on our backs in a painting of a forest done by a subway artist (or perhaps a subway itself). Anyway, we laid there and commiserated over our busy schedules. I told all my stories, and the conversation naturally led to where we'd be in 20 years.

Cheryl: "Introducing the Harry Potter books to our children."

Melissa: "Whoa. Yes. We will be. Oh, god, that's exciting."

Cheryl: "And I'll be like, your mother put that comma there!"

I mean. She's planning on announcing her punctuational contributions to her children. How can you not love this woman?

It's funny how your body works. I must have been sick for a few days before the symptoms manifested, yet when I got home from tour it was very easy to get my stuff together, drop my cat off back at my apartment, and get back into my car for a leisurely ride into Brooklyn to see Seth and watch "The Riches." (Cool show. Not sold yet, but very good so far.) I remember feeling completely calm, completely at peace, because I had just spent five days curled into whatever space was available, lugging about 40 pounds of stuff around; that night, with clean hair and in clean sweats, carrying just my wallet, back at the front wheel of my Sentra, life felt lovely.

Then the next morning - wham.

The rest of this week has been spent taking notes, writing small bits, having some meetings, catching up with Leaky stuff, and making some plans for book coverage as well as other stuff.

Moochka, for her part, has not left my side since I've been back. I've been separated from her for two weeks, the longest since I went away last July, and she has been absolutely aggressive about demanding my attention. Right now is the first time since I'm home and at my computer that she's not sleeping on my arm; she's at least a FOOT away (sleeping). She sleeps on my lap, she sleeps on my wrist, she sleeps next to me on the bed, she licks my nose, she gives me kitty eyes, she fastens both paws around my leg and lets me drag her around the apartment, she purrs loudly if I put my hand on her tummy while she sleeps, and if I move at ALL, she is up and following me in an instant. She's so funny.

I'm just starting to realize, however, how ludicrously fast this year is going to go. It's March. There's something wrong with that picture. It should not yet be March. It should be February. And it's not just March, it's halfway THROUGH March. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I miss my sister. I want to go see her in New Zealand but it's looking so bleak; I'd have to force myself to work half the time I was out there, anyway, and so what's the point of being in NZ and Australia if you're not enjoying the heck out of yourself out there?

Thank you all for reading my warmup writing session. This was a freewrite brought to you by Melissa's Need to Get Real Writing Done Tonight. Tea, a peanut butter sandwich, and jazz, here I come.

Thanks for all the feedback, guys, and all the amazing support of the book. You all make this process much easier. I'll probably put a book blog together sometime soon, too.

There are now a ludicrous number of pictures on my flickr from last week's Harry and the Potters extravaganza. This doesn't even include the performance pictures, becuase those are going to go in the Leaky Gallery, and the system is giving me trouble. They'll be up soon.

Re-entry from this trip has been a real @*@!#, most noticeable because I've been barely able to stand upright since. That's right, we rocked so hard I got sick. They rocked all the health out of me. Or it could have been the chicken in Montreal, which I shared with someone else who also got sick. But I like the rock explanation better.

Some other tidbits (if you want real details about the actual touring and music that went on, then go to my MySpace; this is just blather):

-Brad of Draco and the Malfoys, otherwise known as Nicest Guy Ever, or, How Can This Guy Be In A Band That Professes To Be Evil?, taught me a drum beat while we were in a basement in Ottawa. He taught me how to do it and let me go, then all of a sudden all the other guys had picked up instruments and started playing, and someting sounding remarkably like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came out. It made me feel like a total rock star. There's a recording, too; Adam (whose house we stayed at) said he'd send it to me. Woo hoo.

-So, naturally, with this newfound prowess, me and Emily (friend of HatP who came on tour to do their merchandise) have decided to start a band. Me on drums, she on guitar. We'll own the world. Pictures soon.

-At some point as we were tromping through the ice covered Quebec streets, the gang started likening our crew to Lord of the Rings' fellowship. I was up front talking with Patricia, the booker for the Quebec show, and barely heard the conversation, until two random words wisped into my ears. "Melissa...Gimli." I stopped in my tracks.

"I AM NOT GIMLI!"

Brad promptly shuffled over to tell me that no, I was in fact Eowyn. I laughed hard and told him I appreciated the attempt to kiss my ass, but that I was not Eowyn either. We finally settled on me as Bilbo - the one who traveled for part of the journey, then wrote it all down. Paul seemed to fancy himself Gandalf, to many others' disapproving looks. ("What? I'm a wizard!") Joe was, I believe, a pony of some sort (uh, ok). No one wanted to be Aragorn. That confused me.

-These guys have a really, really bad attitude toward puppies. First night there, they made me join a facebook group called "The Abolition of Puppies," apparently based on a very bad experience they had had a few nights earlier, with puppies walking all over them, peeing on all their stuff, etc. So, everything on the trip became about puppies and how to eat them. By the end of the week I was so indoctrinated that when Paul looked out the window and said, "Puppy!" I automatically said, "Kill it!" We laughed so hard I cried. They're evil, bad, bad, bad people.

-They also destroyed the Canadian National Anthem.

-That title I've been obsessing about finding for my book? The boys claim to have it. "Harry and the Potters, and some other stuff. By Melissa Anelli."

-I've returned home to the messiest house ever and, thanks to the sickness, the absolute lack of will to clean anything. Finally struggled through unpacking and had help cleaning, and just want to curl up and sleep for awhile.

-I'm calling this disease Puppy Flu.

I had the misfortune of catching President George W. Bush's address today, while in airport terminal lounge. I have grown completely irrational and likely unfair and totally incapable of intelligent thought about him and his policies. This man has reduced me to an illogical mess. Throughout the whole thing, I just found myself muttering - and not very quietly either - "I hate you. You're klling us," and "Yeah, right, sure," and "Ew, you horrible smug #*#." I have high respect for the high office of this country, but within five minutes of watching him smarm and pander and insult our documented intelligence I became a teenager who's just been told the prom's been cancelled. And perhaps I hate him for that most of all.

(No. I don't. I hate him because I want him to care a little bit more about our country than Iraq, because this all-important war isn't making us any safer, because the billions we've spent there could have built schools and school programs capable of fixing our educational mess, and because people are dying because he perpetrated a fraud on us. There. That's why.)

In brighter news, I am in my second airport today, listening to wonderful lilting accents as I wait for my second plane, the one that will take me to another city I've never seen, St. Louis, MO. (Sorry for the runon. Phew. What a sentence.) I'm going on tour with Harry and the Potters (P.S.: Wizard rock fans, there's a blog on my MySpace about this. I have no idea why the split posting; maybe I'll post it here too. I don't know!), though not to sing; I'm going to be documenting the Wizard Rock scene for the book I'm writing on the Harry Potter phenomenon, which has been the biggest development in my life since I last updated this blog. I can finally talk about it publically, safely, without fearing that I'd superstitioned myself into 18 years of hell or something. Simon & Schuster Pocket Books will be publishing it in Nov. 2008; it's very tentatively called Harry, A History (a title I like for fans but I'm having trouble reconciling the word "History" in a title... I'm sure there's a brilliant title hanging around somewhere, I just need to have a net and catch it at the right moment). It's just gearing up to the point right now where it is taking over my thoughts and life again, the way it did when I was writing the proposal. Notebooks are filling up, prospective interviewees are nicely listed, and I can't wait to give this fandom the sendout it deserves. It's been such a ride for me that I can't think of a better way to cap it off.

My cousin Vince had his first laugh today. That's the trade-off of traveling everywhere; it's been so long since I saw him last that I didn't even know the first laugh was imminent.

I have to go and forage for reasonably healthy airport food now, but I'm sorry for the long silence and hope to update here more; I'm really back-and-forth about having a book blog, giving updates and stories about the writing process; in the pro column, I want to share all these excellent stories (different, of course, than the stories that will be in the book) about this time, but in the con column...I'm not sure if it's too presumptive. What do you all think?