mariness

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, part two

( Cut for spoilers, although you should know that Alan Rickman rocks. )

Ok, so, my one attempt at playing golf resulted in a score of 88 – for one hole. (I allowed other groups to pass me, one reason my, um, "game" lasted so long.) In my defense, that score only happened because a) the trees kept jumping in front of my ball, deliberately, b) the various clubs weren't actually interested in swinging where I was making them swing and c) some of you may not believe this, but I think the ball (er, balls, eventually) were under a curse because they were not rolling the right way.

To be fair, this may not be entirely the fault of the game of golf, since I am nearly as bad at miniature golf. Actually I find miniature golf goes best when I play it with my eyes shut.

But watching the game on the internet? (Not TV. TV coverage is the very definition of dull.) That I can do. Which is how I ended up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and learned a few things:

1. If you want to see Harry Potter at Universal's Islands of Adventure, but don't want to pay the insane parking fees for the world's largest parking lot on top of the ticket prices, your best bet is to show up during the Arnold Palmer/Bay Hill event and announce, in cool and collected tones, that you are there for the Bay Hill event. The ticket agent will then smile at you and hand over a complimentary parking pass and – unusually enough for the Universal parking lot – actually send you to the correct parking location (in this case, Spiderman.) You can then join various happy golf spectators as they negotiate the insanity that is that parking lot, going UP the elevators or the (once again not working) escalators and OVER the walkways before quietly vanishing into the happy Harry Potter/Spiderman/Thing One and Thing Two crowds. Your wallets can thank me later.

2. If, however, you are actually heading to the Arnold Palmer Invitational you will first need to negotiate the ticket area which is inconveniently located in the general walkway to Universal Studios (where the walkways for the two garages meet up with the walkway to City Walk). You will then need to go back DOWN to the bus/taxi parking lot.

3. This is about the time when you will realize that Universal Studios is not actually all that close to Bay Hill.

4. Thanks to the miracle of iPhones, however, everyone can watch golf coverage on the not short shuttle ride to Bay Hill. The delight of this will be considerably mitigated by the insistence of the driver on telling Tennessee jokes. And Auburn jokes. And Georgia jokes. And UM jokes. And Florida State jokes. You will feel renewed pride and joy in the University at Binghamton.

5. Your entrance into Bay Hill will be further delayed by the need of Tiger Woods and his entire entourage and a very large group of happy fans to cross a road. (And that was the only time I saw Tiger Woods the entire day – we thought he was going later so otherwise missed him, which given the happy crowds following him was probably just as well).

6. Bay Hill is located in a residential district of lovely homes, with residential streets crossing the golf course here and there. This is lovely for the homeowners, and rather less convenient for people actually trying to get into the tournament, as traffic is constantly stopped by golfers and spectators.

7. Spectators will get considerably more involved in the game than I thought, and by more involved, I mean, participating in conversations like this:

Player currently in the lead: "DID IT FALL INTO THE HAZARD?"

"YES!"

"NO!"

"WHICH SIDE OF THE RED LINE?"

"THE LEFT THE LEFT THE LEFT!"

"THANKS!"

Also players occasionally throw balls at small and cute children or at harmless, unassuming, water hazards and lakes. Also, caddies run around raking up sand. I did NOT KNOW THIS.

8. Great blue herons are, to my surprise, very intense golf fans. They love it.

9. Ducks are, not to my surprise, not very intense golf fans. Anhingas will eat fish.

10. Golf is the sort of game that allows you to learn these sorts of things.

11. Hunter Mahan wears cute sunglasses. You do not actually need to attend a PGA Tour event to know this but I thought it should be mentioned.

12. The very rich often have very bad taste. This will be demonstrated by a house on what I believe was hole 15 which was not merely three times larger than either house beside it, but also, and this cannot be concealed, horrifically balanced and just flat out ugly and too large for its lot.

13. Even though the course is covered with various large airconditioned tents, various large TV screens explaining where everybody is at any given time, electronic golf swing analysis, materials scientists, computers immediately calculating speeds and locations, huge TV cameras, the main leaderboard/scorecards ARE STILL CHANGED BY HAND. And by hand, I mean, six people on each board are climbing up and down latters moving names and numbers around and rechecking what people on the ground are saying all while trying to be absolutely quiet.

14. Speaking of quiet, this is a remarkably quiet sport, with everyone going, hush, hush, even when, as was happening more often towards the end of the afternoon, everyone was increasingly drunk.

15. An astonishing number of wealthy homeowners will decide to augment their income by selling cheap drinks and candy on the side of the course. These sales will be further augmented by what I am certain is a merely coincidental decision on the part of some of the women to sell these drinks and candy in bikini tops and short shorts.

16. SPF 30 sunscreen is not quite as reliable as its label claims. I'm just saying, if in a rather painful fashion.

17. Everyone, including you, will wander round and round and round, which will a) force everyone to buy more drinks from the wealthy homeowners and b) cause various crowds following the big ones to shift here and there, allowing you to easily pinpoint when the major players are approaching a hole.

18. You will never be able to figure out why anyone would decide to wear a black cocktail dress, emeralds, and six inch heels on a golf course, but you will be able to figure out pretty quickly why she looks utterly miserable.

So, as part of this (so far, mostly failed) attempt to blog daily in July, a tale from last weekend.

I headed over to my mother's for a small July 4th party. So you know, my mother has a condo that overlooks a small lake and just beyond that, Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure on one side. From another balcony, you can see SeaWorld's occasional fireworks, and if you don't mind heading into the hallway, you can more or less see Disney's fireworks in the distance. That, combined with various small private celebrations (Florida: we can and will use gunpowder at will! YAY!) makes it a pretty decent place to watch fireworks, even if this year, the larger celebrations (the various city/town/neighborhood/resort fireworks) were split up between two nights.

Joining us were some friends and acquaintances from my mother's church – A and B (not their real initials), the acquaintances, and C and MF (their real initials; I think a few of you have actually met them), the actual friends. A was a quiet, older, uncertain man, eager to please; B, his wife, held herself carefully, tightly, and watched everyone. C and I bonded again over a mutual hatred for Alamo Rent-A-Car and Continental Airlines and Delta Airlines while A listened and nodded, and in another area my mother caught up on church news with B and MF.

Over dinner my mother, who really liked my story in Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction and wants me to write more things like that, instead of "that weird stuff," brought up, proudly, the subject of my writing and "all of her great reviews," and I clarified that yes, I write science fiction and – and this is important – fantasy. Fantasy. Fantasy. We're all clear on what this means to most people, right?

Magic.

Since the group did not exactly consist of science fiction/fantasy fans (it's safe to say I was the only one in the group) conversation meandered over to disability issues. My mother noted that when you're chronically ill, you tend to want to spend your good moments enjoying life, not focused on disabled advocacy. Nonetheless, the group agreed that I am nice and articulate and should spend my time doing disabled advocacy, even if I want to write about, say, magic instead.

Fortunately enough things started to explode outside, so to the balconies we headed.

I mentioned that you can see Universal Studios from the condo, right? This unfortunately means that you can also see Universal's Rip Ride Rockit, which from a distance at night looks like a little dragon – or, on July 4th, a little firework - climbing, climbing into the sky and then PLUNGING at a very nasty angle to its dragon death. (Ironically, the cars on Universal's Dragon Challenge ride, from a distance, don't resemble dragons at all.) It's kinda sickening, although I am assured by no less an expert than a ten year old that "Oh that ride is TOTALLY AWESOME BUT YOU HAVE TO RIDE IT AT LEAST FOUR TIMES BEFORE YOU THROW UP." So, um, now you know. You will not be getting my personal testimony on this subject.

But anyway. You can also see Hogwarts rising from the end of the park – and, as it turns out, blocking the main place where Universal Studios used to set off their fireworks, with the result that Universal gave us only a Small and Sad fireworks show, but whatever. This led to a discussion about various trips by grandchildren (I should have mentioned that I was by far the youngest person there) who were all Very Excited about Universal Studios. MF, who, as I may have mentioned, is a very nice woman who deserves better than to be tortured by thrill rides, made a few jokes about it; C revealed that he doesn't actually know the difference between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (he'd seen bits of the movies but gotten bored, and never read any of the books). My mother and C complained about the rumors of lines (reportedly still two to four hours, which in Florida summer heat is no joke). I admitted that I loved Harry Potter and was planning on going once the temperatures, at least, got reasonable (I'm not holding out much hope for reasonable lines), and my mother explained that she would be dropping me off, but not bothering to enter herself, and B noted that her grandchildren wanted to see Harry Potter, but that she had read all about witchcraft and wizardry in the Bible, and she knew what the Bible had to say about wizardry and witchcraft.

Pause.

I should note, by the way, that this is not an attitude I tend to associate with the United Methodist Church. (Also, to stave off some potential comments – yes, I'm agnostic; no, I have no problems with churches or Christians.)

Conversation shifted, for awhile, to other things – church gossip, grandchildren gossip, fireworks excitement, general agreement that watching the Rip Ride Rockit and Magical Midway's Slingslot thingy was making everyone sick, and then another mention of Harry Potter, and B admitting that she'd seen the various lines of people heading to or already inside Universal, pretending to be witches.

"Seeing them in their costumes and those wands –" her breath caught a little –"it makes me sick."

Awkward pause.

It took me a few seconds to open my mouth to answer, but MF was there first. "Well, you have to give Harry Potter credit for at least one thing," she said. "It's got kids actually reading real books. That's something."

"That's true," said C hastily.

But I, the fantasy writer, said nothing. Perhaps I should have, but then again, I'd already noted that I was planning on handing over hard earned money to Universal Studios for the sake of Harry Potter, that I liked Harry Potter, and, more critically, that I actually write the sort of things she finds so evil and sickening. Perhaps, I thought, in her focus on the evil of wizards and witchcraft, she missed that the word "fantasy" encompasses both. And I did not want to start an argument in my mother's home with one of her guests - especially since arguing would not have done any good.

Before she left, B told me, again, that I really should become a disabled advocate. The phrase "God's plan" might have been mentioned.

I don't have a neat summary sentence to end this post. It's just a report, really.

Numbered for your reading convenience.

1. The weekend was greatly improved by a visit from manta1104, who came up to join us for Stephen Lynch and Star Trek revelry. We had no, repeat, no, surprising shower incidents, no matter what evil rumors might be flying about.

2. Alas,tThe disabled parking at Universal, which I had been avoiding, is, indeed, worse than I feared. Yay for putting the disabled parking on the same level as CityWalk; major, major Nay, for having the disabled parking literally nearly a mile to either park entrance and a full mile away from Hard Rock Café or Blue Man Group. Which meant I had to go by wheelchair. Double nays for not allowing wheelchairs on the moving walkways. Geesh. Memo to Universal: we have disabled parking permits precisely because we can't walk that far. Luckily, I had kindly friends willing to push the wheelchair as long as I promised not to sing.

3. I do, however, like Universal's Hard Rock's venue. Once you can get to it.

4. Small note to people on the balcony of the Hard Rock Café: Yes, yes, from the ground floor, we can see you putting a hand down that girl's shirt. And thank you for another reminder of the joys of alcohol.

5. Stephen Lynch. Raunchy. Hysterical. Brilliant.

6. Trek. In IMAX, dudes. Awesome. Just awesome. Brilliantly combining continuity while tearing it apart. (More on this in a separate post, but for now, I'll just echo jazzhandshimmer - go see this.

Plus, we had chocolate covered ginger. Usually reserved for pirate movies, but, you know, sometimes you just have to make an exception for these sorts of things.

7. Bread machine. Needs more practice before it is tried on more discriminating palates. Or strangers. Or friends. Even the cats were slightly underwhelmed (and the Grey One finds the machine's "whirr whirr" during the mixing process terrifying).

Now to recover from all this, after a few Trek statements.