Harry Potter, Eat Your Heart Out!
Some of the young folks around here are very much into Harry Potter. A bunch of us went over to Prairie du Chien to see the new Harry Potter movie last summer, and then one of the kids lent me videotapes of the first two films. This led to me reading— well, okay, extensively browsing through— the first Harry Potter book. Which, actually my brother has given me all the series in print so far for Christmas these past two years. I'm getting to 'em, in my own way and at my own pace: with a schedule like mine, if I find time to read anything cover to cover, it's usually during the summer months, which are now coming up toward us.
Anyhow. One of the kids around here had a catalog with all sorts of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter merchandise in it. I rather shuddered at the thought of buying a genuine 18K gold replica of the One Ring. But they did have a very nice reproduction of Harry Potter's magic wand for sale. There was a website associated with the catalog; I went to it and looked around, then started Googling for magic wands.
I ended up ordering the magic wand up above, from an outfit known as Whirlwood Magical Wands. Somebody out there is making a very nice living, cashing in on the current Potter craze and selling magic wands which come in dozens of different styles, choose the wand that best fits your temperament. My wand isn't like Harry's, but in fact I like it even better. It's called the Poetrell: hand-turned, made of maplewood, with a black walnut finish. Site says it's 16½" long, mine actually measures 17½". This wand positively exudes the aura of fine antique furniture from 18th century Europe: somehow, I can just imagine Mozart wielding it in a magical duel with Salieri.
At $62, the Poetrell ain't cheap; but to my mind, it's worth it. That's Whirlwood Magical Wands. Another nice magic wand site, even more overtly Potteresque, is Alivan's. (Gee, is that anything like "Ollivander's"?!)
Next item of business: where can I find myself a nice Jedi light saber?
Labels: gear
posted by paul @ 12:38 PM
4 Comments:
keep googling. there are some nice lightsaber replicas out there for about $400-500. Of course those are just handles. There was a neat fluorescent tube one for about $100 that was out last fall, but I don't know if you could find that now...
Yiii! $400-$500 for the handle alone??! Maybe I oughta see what I can make out of an old chrome flashlight... :)
Paul,
About reading only in the summer - I am the same. Between teaching and going to school, for the last two years, I have only been able to read 2 or 3 books in the last 3 years. They have been light reading, and I would have had my brain blow up if I even tried to read anything else. I have about 3 months of no work (except moving 3000 miles) so I will probably double that #. Have any suggestions?
On the light saber - Look at Borders.com. We were in a Borders here in Chapel Hill and that is where caltechgirl saw the one that she commented on earlier. She was going to buy it for me, but it didn't happen.
Ah, I wonder if that's the same light saber I saw for sale at ThinkGeek (out of stock there, though, till early July).
This summer I'm basically just going to dive into my long-neglected personal library— which fills two entire rooms in my house, plus the upstairs hallway, plus several other bookcases scattered around. One good book I've read lately is What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, by John Markoff: I never realized before how much today's personal computers owe to concepts and designs pioneered back in the 1960s.
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