Steven M. Finkelstein

This movie has gotten overwhelmingly good reviews, and it’s rare that you’ll hear me completely go against the critics, but this is going to be one of those times. Here’s the thing about the Harry Potter movies, and the books, also. I know they’re the hottest selling things since Jesus (and I mean that literally, since the Potter series is the only book in history to outsell the Bible, if you can believe that), but I’ve just never been all that impressed with them. Here’s proof: I’ve read the first six books, but the seventh one has been out now for a good long while, and I still haven’t gotten around to picking up a copy and reading it. I have no motivation to, and that doesn’t say a whole lot for Rowling and her story telling abilities. When the last volume of a seven part epic comes out, the audience should be chomping at the bit to find out the fate of the characters they have come to know and love. I’m completely apathetic. The books, and by extension the movies, are supposed to be filled with wonder, with humor, with complex interpersonal relationships…hell, they’re supposed to be filled with magic. They’ve just never seemed all that magical to me. The quality of the writing isn’t that great, though I’ll admit, it’s improved a bit as the series has gone on. The comparison that I keep on making, though, when I describe this movie to someone, is between the Potter books and movies and the Lord of the Rings series. The trilogy is simply the best fantasy that has ever been written, and amazingly, Peter Jackson was able to complete the transition successfully and transfer the undeniable majesty of those books to the big screen. I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t think it could ever be done. But if you want real magic, if you want real epic storytelling, and if you want wholly original characters, read and watch the trilogy. Harry Potter can’t hold a candle to them, either the books or the movies.

It’s not like the movie is God-awful, either. There’s some genuinely funny parts, while the humor of some of the previous installments seemed a little forced. The set pieces, which are the real stars of these movies, are just as impressive as ever, second only to Goblet of Fire, where I thought the tasks of the Tri-Wizard Tournament were some real show-stealers. It’s shot in brooding, murky tones, the backgrounds often purposefully dulled so that the humans in excessively complex makeup and costume won’t look like escapees from the nearest Renaissance Fair. It’s successful in that respect, for the most part. But from what I remember of the book, there’s a great deal of exposition going on (the damn thing is six-hundred-some pages), and it’s just incredibly difficult to get all of that into a two-and-a-half hour movie. There seemed to be a lot missing, and the stop-and-go pacing was driving me nuts. Some things seem to be given too much attention, while others that would seem important even to someone who’d never read the book or seen the other movies are completely glossed over. Malfoy and Harry have a seeming duel to the death in the Slytherin bathroom, and Malfoy appears to be mortally wounded. Snape appears and spirits him away…and then the whole episode is never mentioned again, for the rest of the movie. Huh?! Dumbledore takes Harry to a place where he is convinced one of the amulets that contains part of Voldemort’s essence is hidden…but we don’t learn how he heard of this place, and then, after a lot of bother, when the pair gain possession of the amulet, it turns out to be a fake. We never learn how and why it happened that Dumbledore was put on a false trail. Presumably it is something that we will learn about in the seventh movie (or book), but the fact that we don’t know the reason for it here makes this experience seem incomplete and unsatisfying. In many ways, this seems like a placeholder movie, just a setup for the seventh one…and the eighth, since they’re stretching Deathly Hallows into two. Jeez.

There’s just a couple of other things that are bothering me too, that I feel compelled to mention. Going back to the Rings/Potter comparison, I have to note that Dumbledore has always appeared to me to be simply a watered-down version of Gandolf. I don’t know if that was intentional by Rowling or not, but they look and act exactly the same, except, of course, for the fact that Gandolf is the original, and Dumbledore is a copy, a stolen forgery. This is made more evident by the scenes at the end of Half Blood Prince, when he and Harry are on the trail for the artifact containing part of Voldemort’s essence. These scenes could have been taken directly from the Mines of Moria segment from The Fellowship. They look identical, right down to Dumbledore and Harry being menaced by zombie-like creatures, all of which look and move exactly like Gollum. It’s really kind of mind boggling, actually, how much of a blatant rip-off it was. I was sitting in my seat getting pissed off because of it. I’d really like to get some still frames from the two movies, put them side by side, and compare them, because other than the characters, the shots are practically interchangeable. And then (spoiler alert), when Dumbledore plunges to his death, the shot is remarkably similar to the one where Gandolf is dragged into the pit by the Balrog in The Fellowship! Unbelievable. The only difference between the two is that when Gandolf fell, I was heartbroken, and when Dumbledore fell, I couldn’t care less.

I’m still going to give this movie a more-or-less favorable rating, and I’m sure I’ll still go see the last one, no wait, make that two…because I’m a sucker. Since I haven’t read the last one, I still actually want to know what happens, but it’s not because I’ve been taken in by the cliffhanger, and I absolutely must know what happens to Harry and company, it’s just because I want some closure and to put this sad, seemingly never-ending chapter of my life behind me. Maybe I would feel differently about this series if I’d been a little younger when I’d started reading them, and I’d grown up with the characters, but probably not. I’ve always been able to differentiate sub-par fiction with great, and the same could be said for film making. My rating: 5/10

So, this September is my ten year high school reunion, and I’ve been bombarded by monthly email newsletters giving me updates on what events are planned, the cost of tickets, and generally all of the reasons I should go. I’ve been in contact with three different members of the committee who are organizing the whole thing, two of whom I knew pretty well in the past. They’ve both been doing their part to convince me that I need to be there. On the one hand, it’s kind of flattering that they’re taking such a personal interest in trying to get me to come, but on the other hand it’s kind of strange. It’s not like I spent a whole lot of time with these people in high school, even if we knew each other. I’d be hard pressed to come up with a single time that we got together outside of school, voluntarily, or even during school, for that matter. I’ll be up front about this, I hated high school, and I told these people so. While it was going on I suffered through it, because I didn’t really have any choice. I wanted to graduate, and that meant attending, but I wasn’t popular, I shunned extracurricular activities, and when I walked across the stage in April of ‘99, I was doing so with the knowledge that if I so chose, I would never have to see any of these people again.

Now, just to be clear, it wasn’t like I hated any of them, or anything that extreme…well, very few of them. My feelings toward most of the student body could best be described as ambivalent. Now that the opportunity has indeed come to find out what the rest of them are up to, I find myself just as apathetic toward it as I thought I would be. Maybe if I was still living in Cincinnati I would make an effort to get there, just to see who gained the most weight, lost the most hair, and who came out of the closet. But it’s no accident that I left Cincinnati and moved to New York. If my feelings about my classmates weren’t very strong, my feelings about the “Queen City,” by the time I left, were a hell of a lot stronger. I don’t want to completely condemn Cinci, because there are worse places. I’ve lived in worse, but I’ve also lived in better. I’m living in a much better place right now, actually. And then there’s the fact that the committee actually has the gall to ask me for money, to pay for the ticket that allows me the “privilege” of seeing my classmates again. That settled it, as far as I was concerned. Even if I was rolling around in a pile of hundred dollar bills, instead of being currently without a steady source of income, I still wouldn’t give Walnut Hills High School a cent, after all the math and science classes that I took that came close to killing me from boredom. I feel a certain sense of nostalgia about my teenage years sometimes, but it comes from the friends I had during that time, and an overwhelming percentage of them didn’t even go to Walnut Hills. I was a loner in high school, and I’m a loner now. I’ve surrounded myself with the few select people I care for and who care for me. There’s no reason for me to go back. And if, for some reason, a former classmate of mine is dying with curiosity about what I’ve been up to in the past ten years, they can come here to New York and I’ll be more than willing to catch them up, provided they spring for a couple of beers. Because these days, I think I’ve earned the right to demand that people pay for my company. And if they disagree, good riddance, it just means I don’t have to deal with them. My paying to relive the ennui I felt ten years ago is just laughable. But thanks for trying anyway, guys. Take consolation in the fact that your efforts have put a smile on my face.

Well, today’s my birthday. The event has sometimes left me contemplating the unavoidable passage of time, and taking a moment to reflect on what’s important in my life, what has happened in the past year, how my life has changed, remained the same, and what I’m looking forward to or hoping will happen in the year to come. This year, I don’t feel like a whole lot of that is happening. I’m too busy to bother with it. Seeing as this particular birthday comes just a couple of weeks after the New York move, and also considering that I haven’t found employment yet and I’m neck deep in the job hunt, all of that “where am I now in terms of my life and goals” stuff has kind of taken a back seat, because I needn’t really think about it all; I’m already well aware of it. When you’re living in a city this expensive and you don’t have steady work, you don’t really get the spare time to wax philosophical. You know what your priority is: survival. And that’s what my mind is geared toward.

Also, it’s not like this is a particularly significant birthday, either. Eighteen felt big, and twenty-one, obviously. Twenty-five felt like a number of some significance, because it was halfway to thirty. But let’s be honest, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between twenty-seven and twenty-eight; it’s not like any new privileges have been bestowed upon me, and in fact, there aren’t going to be any from here on out, until I hit fifty-five and I’m eligible for the early bird special at Denny’s, Perkin’s, and Eat and Park, depending on what part of the country I’m in. I can’t wait. Only twenty-seven more years to go. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just try to enjoy the sliding slope to thirty. Maybe when I get there in a couple of years it’ll feel significant. Or maybe…maybe birthdays just don’t really feel significant anymore. Maybe that’s a thing of the past. Maybe any excitement that I feel is actually more like a form of nostalgia for the excitement I used to have. Probably better not to get too bogged down in it. Even if the event isn’t quite what it used to be, or different, at any rate, I find that I’m able to use it for a good cause anyway: to count my blessings, and there are a lot, even if I don’t always choose to acknowledge them, and even if I gripe about the problems that at times seem to hem me in and mar my progress. I still have my friends, family, and my creativity, and I feel like that’s all I need. With all that taken into consideration, I feel like this is a happy birthday, even if I don’t have the resources to make it a particularly extravagant one. I’m still in my dream city, and I feel like that’s a big accomplishment in and of itself. So check back with me next year at this time. Twenty-nine may not be any more significant than twenty-eight, in the grand scheme of things, but I still feel like I’ll have more accomplished then, speaking in terms of my long term goals. If I was a betting man, I’d put money on it. Also, I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish a happy birthday to my other Cancerian friends. There’s several of you, my fellow crabs. You know who you are.

There’s nothing like being literally teetering on the edge of what is essentially total bankruptcy to remind a person of what’s really important. It’s not like there’s been a time at any point in the past five plus years since I finished my undergrad that I’ve enjoyed what could really be called a healthy financial cushion, but rarely have I been as close to having virtually no liquid assets as I am right now. It’s funny, but the other time that I can think of where I was as desperate for money as I am currently was three years ago, the last time I was living in New York. Coincidence? I think not. Of course, I came back here voluntarily, so perhaps I’m just a masochist, a glutton for punishment…although if you look at my posts from just a few weeks back, they’re full of the bravado of a conquering hero. This city can knock you down a few pegs, in a hurry. I’ve noticed how different cities have different personalities, and if I could put my finger on New York’s, I would say that its a level of grittiness that’s only matched by its unwillingness to make anything easy. Quite the opposite; I would go so far as to say that it seems really vindictive sometimes, as if it’s throwing everything at you that it possibly can, in an effort to beat you into submission. I don’t know who’s to blame for my current predicament, myself, for wanting to come back here, the city for its give-nothing-away attitude, or the economic climate that’s making it tough for all of us.

But even though I’m faced with embarrassing numbers every time I check my bank balance, I find my bleak outlook broken up by moments of intense joy. As I was telling my other half, it’s enough just to be here. I’d rather fail nowhere else but here. And as low as I am right now, I feel like things have no choice but to get better. There were times in my life when I allowed myself to be dominated by pessimism. In recent years I’ve been making a conscious effort not to let that happen anymore. It’s not an easy thing to break out of learned patterns of thinking. I believe that part of my reason for wanting to change is the fact that I consider myself to be part of a family now (for the first time in a long time), and the energy that I project has an effect on others besides myself. I find myself wanting to be strong in the face of adversity, and to find the silver lining, even if, on the surface, one doesn’t appear to exist. I’m not saying I’m going to occupy my time now skipping down the street with a big forced grin on my face. I’m just saying that I’m making a concerted effort to think about what I say before I say it, to take a deep breath and count to ten every time there’s a setback, and to remind myself that adversity is often opportunity in disguise. The tree that hopes to outlast the storm must learn not to break but bend. And there is nowhere that the tempest blows more forcefully than the Big Apple, because, to quote my man Frank again, if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere. I said when I came here I was going to make my own luck. I’m still determined to do it. To test my mettle again, against a city that bested me handily in our first meeting, is the sort of thing that I live for. And that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? I am living. My head’s above water, I’m breathing in and out, and it always looks darkest before the dawn. Pick whatever cliche you want, the point is I haven’t given up, and I’m not going to. I love being here, on the edge. I feel like it brings out the best in me; desperation breeds ingenuity. And whether it likes it or not, it’s going to be this city that submits, that rolls over, that taps out…after all, I brought reinforcements this time.

Well, Independence Day finds Megan and myself in New York, as promised. The trip here has been laborious, and mentally, physically, and psychologically challenging, but I’m so glad to be here that it has made it all more than worth it. We’re about as close to the edge financially as either of us have been in quite a while, but we’ve both begun the job hunt, so hopefully there won’t be too much of an employment gap. Once we’ve got money coming in again we’ll both be free to start taking advantage of all the fun stuff going on around here. Of course, there’s always fun stuff happening in New York, but in the summer there’s even more than usual.

It’s funny how you can take the mentality that everything in your life is going to change to a place like this, and then when you get here you’re reminded so swiftly of how small you are. It’s something I’d experienced before, living here three years ago, but I guess it had slipped my mind a little. No matter how monumental the move was for us, and the changes it brings, we got here and just disappeared into the crowd. We’re surrounded by a living, breathing mass of humanity, literally millions, and they don’t even notice two newly arrived souls struggling to make it. I’d wondered if the economic downturn would have an impact here that I’d notice immediately. It has. People around here are talking about little else, and Megan and I are far from the only ones struggling. It’s sad, yet it’s also comforting. It brings a feeling of solidarity, knowing that we’re not the only two struggling to make ends meet. Maybe it’s inappropriate to compare our own problems to the national ones, but in this case, the two just seem to coincide. It’s my hope that as the economy recovers (a slow process), that our finances will do the same. I’m confident that they will. Even as slow as things are, there are so many more opportunities here than there were in Myrtle Beach, and Megan and I are willing to do just about anything to stay here. It’s our dream city. And that’s why I have such a feeling of optimism these days, even in the face of immediate, pressing challenges and demands. I’m just so glad to be here. I feel like I’m finally home.

I haven’t been able to do a lot of writing the past few weeks, due to move-related demands, but I hope to remedy that soon. The new novel is about two-thirds finished, and  hope to crank out the rest of it at some point in the near future. The first half of the year I feel like I did very well in terms of notching some publishing credits, even some paid ones, and I have greater hopes for the second half of ‘09. Just think, I’ll be able to watch the ball drop from Times Square this year, on a new decade, no less! It’s more than I ever could have hoped for. Well, I’m off now, to enjoy some down time on the 4th before plunging back into the fray that is the job hunt tomorrow. Thank you for all the good wishes, friends and relatives, on the move. I hope you will all come and see us here in our new home. Happy holiday, more soon.