You may recall my post last summer about the giant writing spiders in my backyard. They haven't appeared this year yet, but stay tuned - I've found a few small webs in the garden but haven't seen the arachnids. But we had a spider scare of another kind the other night when my daughter tried to go out the back door to get something from her car. I saw her open the door, then she slammed it and turned around pale as a ghost. "Mama! There's a huge web covering the door! And there's a spider in it and it's eating something!"
( What Happened Next )

You just never know what's going to hit you in the face as you go out the door ~ be careful out there!

But this first link reminded me of what happened:
German Woman Loses "Spider Shock" Court Case

Several Oceanic mysteries going on right now:
Floating Blob near Alaskan Coast Identified
Giant Squid Swarming Southern California Coastline

And two Snake Stories from Florida:
Pygmy Rattler Strikes Again at Florida Walmart
Python Posse Goes A-Huntin' in the Everglades

The Teaser Trailer for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is out. I didn't see Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, but there are some awesome scenes. Love the Cheshire Cat!

~~ I wrote this post once today, so you are not seeing double. The code went berserk and the margins went crazy on me just because I edited one little punctuation mark. Then my husband and I went out to dinner for his birthday, which is tomorrow, and I just got back to work on this.  I hope this post works!

I'll leave this thread up between now and Tuesday, and then do a chat thread on Tuesday night for the midnight showings. That way if anyone wants to drop in at 3 a.m. to discuss the movie we'll have a spoiler thread for that.

I have made a ton of new icons, but I'm not putting them up until Monday or Tuesday. However, if you see any new ones here they are free for the taking - just credit  nettlebrew 

lemon_ashwinder and I along with others on HPN are passing the time playing the Five-Word Game, and things have taken a turn for the controversial. Are Harry's eyes really black? Did his mother really buy him a tiny black frockcoat when he was a baby? Did James not pass the DNA test? If you can be snarky in five words while hopefully ticking off certain people about Harry's gene pool, please join us.

There are a few interviews and new videos worth posting after all, but with spoilers of course.

A long interview from The Scotsman with Helen McCrory who plays Narcissa from Snitchseeker:

"Don't reach down for your popcorn, because by the time you do, I could be off the screen, in Half-Blood Prince I am literally like, whoa, there she goes! But everyone was like that. In our first scene, Helena Bonham Carter and I are rolling past this blue screen, and we knock on the door and Tim Spall comes out.

( Read more... )

SPOILERS!!!

Behind the Scenes with Snape, Draco, Fenrir, and Bellatrix.
Harry and Snape actually have a conversation, which is a vast improvement from the book.




( More Under the Cut )

I was so happy to read this - perhaps I can avoid dementia after all:
Coffee May Lower Risk of Alzheimer's Risk

I was also relieved that police in Gastonia, North Carolina, caught this so-called "spree killer" who was terrorizing the small town of Gaffney, South Carolina. I was terrified by this because my daughter is getting ready to move to Columbia and this guy was rumored to be moving south. The whole thing was creepy - he was just randomly shooting people for fun. I actually spent one day listening to the police scanner, and they were following every lead from kids shooting off fireworks in the woods, to strangers driving through town.
Even Though Threat is Gone, Emotional Scars Linger in Cherokee County.

George R. R. Martin, author of the Song of Ice and Fire Books, and otherwise known on Livejournal as grrm, is in Helsinki for Finncon, a celebration of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Anime. Yesterday grrmwrote about visiting the Sveaborg, which he referred to as a "great island fortress" and from these Pictures it's easy to see why it would inspire him.

Congratulations to Al Franken and the entire State of Minnesota on his Swearing In as Senator Number 60 for the Dems.

My nephew wondered on Facebook the other day how long it would be until Michael Jackson rose from the grave as a Zombie. It appears he didn't even wait until the burial because CNN picked up his ghost on camera!



And if that's not enough, someone has Seen his Face in a Birch Tree Stump in Stockton, California.

The Paranormal World is also mourning the death of their own enigmatical icon: Writer John Keel author of The Mothman Prophecies. He apparently died penniless and basically alone. Edit: Please read the comment  below by his friend, Loren Coleman. I sincerely only mean to honor Mr. Keel and was just sorry to hear that he did not have an easy life towards the end in spite of the  movie based on his life's work starring Richard Gere.  I doubt the movie studio paid him half enough for his story, which is all I meant in my original post. I'm a huge fan of both Mr. Coleman and Mr. Keel, and only wanted to memorialize his work in a week when Michael Jackson got all the attention.

There are some weird and wonderful new images from Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland in USA Today.

Sadly there isn't a picture of Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar yet, but still these pics are bizarro and very Burtonish.
They also have a gallery of artwork HERE

MTV Movies Blog has a Retrospective of Alice Movies that is quite enjoyable. This movie is not due out till March 2010.






Snitchseeker has a nice Video Interview With Matt Lewis from a Dutch TV show. He says that hanging onto Trevor the Toad in the first movies was not easy: "You'd have to hold it close to your chest, a bit like a rabbit, but he'd just jump out and they are so strong, and you didn't want to squeeze too tight..." Also from Snitchseeker, there are a couple of clips of the Phelps Twins on the Blue Peter show, and there's a cute clip of the Weasley Joke Shop from HBP.

Total Film has a slideshow of 12 Things They Cut From the Harry Potter Movies.
I was glad to see they included two that we wrote about in the Mugglenet Book - Peeves the Poltergeist and Ron Playing Quidditch. But I was shocked they didn't include the one thing that drives me up the wall - the omission of Lily from Snape's Worst Memory in OotP. That is unforgivable as far as I'm concerned.

Groklaw blog asks the question: Could King Lear have been written under U.S. Copyright Law?

Attorney Julie Hilden takes sides (as she sometimes did during the Lexicon case) on Findlaw, and can't resist mentioning the Lexicon book in regards to The Salinger Lawsuit. She also fails to mention that the Lexicon actually got into print. Why aren't these people reading my blog? *LOL* Well, perhaps she just doesn't want to admit that her own predictions were wrong, so just in case Mr. Colting's book is deemed a parody by the court, Ms. Hilden believes she's found an out-of-court way to punish a rogue author:

"It's worth remembering, finally, that there is another way to protect Salinger: Boycott Colting. Colting may have a right to publish, but he has no right to be read. And while copyright suits always have an uneasy relationship to the First Amendment, well-informed boycotts (that is, ones that truly understand the works their members are boycotting) are perfectly consistent with it – and are themselves an expression of a First-Amendment-protected view."

Yeah, right, because a rich author and his attorneys cannot possibly punish this man enough for his crime. Deja vu? No wonder Rowling comes to mind.

I spent most of last night swooning over this with the rest of the Snape fans ~ What else can be said for it? It's bloody awesome! I can't exactly feel sorry for the Snape haters who have to drive past this every day - it must make them really angry. In fact, I'm 100% sure they are hating this summer of HBP love so far.

And Alan Rickman gets a giant billboard right there in Hollywood as a leading man! *Celebrates*

My friend morgan_emerald described it perfectly on Harry Potter Network:

Interesting and lovely composition! I may be reading too much into it, but it feels a bit like a triumph

Snape and Draco situated both centre piece, still in opposition, but clearly leaning towards the "good side" and breaking away from the "bad". Dumbledore and Draco seem mostly focused on each other -- Dumbledore almost disappearing in the background and with little relation to Snape in the forefront, conveying an interesting message. Draco obviously has Greyback "backing" him (read: breathing in his neck). To me, Snape's posture in relation to Draco specifically, but to Dumbledore and the Trio as well, is clearly protective. He shields them with his body much like he did in the image from PoA. His non-wandhand gesture also suggests he is pausing Bella and Greyback, holding them back. I also like how he is the only one with an explicit and intense focus on something "outside" of the poster frame, as if he is the only one fighting the real fight, a very heroic image. Bellatrix' suspicous glare on his behalf is masterful and highly suggestive of his struggle maintaining his position in Voldemort's camp as well.

Thanks to masterofmysteryand hbpmoviepics for the original.
Also to thehollow for posting it on HPN.

I keep looking around for something interesting to post, but everything in Fandom seems boring right now, and I keep coming up with nothing. Of course, how could I top that discussion about Snape's Look-Alikes that we just had? *LOL* Impossible.

If you have something to talk about, please do. This is just for relaxation, and chat.

I never get tired of these Dolphins!
(Yes, I wish I was at the beach!)



My daughter thinks this is the most relaxing song of all:




That's all I've got!

My kids are really looking forward to The Dark Knight coming out next Friday, and everyone has Batman Fever.

I had to find some icons of course, and most of them come from gothamicons which has great stuff from every version of Batman.

There are some nice Photoshops of Batman mixed with classic art on the Batman Blog. I don't know the origin of those pics, but I made an icon out of Starry Night Bat Signal. ms_arithmancer can use it as an alternative to plain Van Gogh if she ever needs to call for help.



Tonight my kids were all home together for a change, and they watched Batman Begins. That wasn't enough, so my daughter and her boyfriend looked around on YouTube and found the following classic moment from the 1966 Batman TV show. This is fun:



Then my husband made everyone watch the Richard Roeper review of the movie, which comes on after our local news here on Sunday night. It's a great review but filled with SPOILERS so beware.  


 

I hope everyone has a great Independence Day!



 

I've been thinking of which video to post for Independence Day and decided on this one by Sheryl Crow because Americans perfected the high-speed chase, and Steve McQueen escaped on his motorcycle years before James and Sirius were ever invented.

( Tribute to Steve McQueen Under the Cut: He Was the Real King of Cool and Could Fly Anything - a Horse, A Car, A Dune Buggy, or A Lemans Race Car - And He Had the Original Flying Motorcycle )

It was officially 95 degrees (35,C) where I live yesterday, but my daughter saw a bank sign in downtown Chattanooga that said 100 degrees. There was also an Air Quality warning for Ozone. I'm hoping for clouds today.

I keep promising to post pictures of my garden, so today is everyone's lucky day [/sarcasm]


And now a song that seems appropriate: "Walking on the Sun" by Smash Mouth.