Last week, author and bajillionaire J.K. Rowling issued the commencement address at Harvard, the university most famous for purchasing sexy love letters between Norman Mailer and Carole Mallory. Encouraging the Class of 2008 to "imagine better," Rowling told graduates that "we do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already." Also: High-powered litigators can be pretty awesome, too, but it's not like these kids can cast Imperio spells.
The Harry Potter lawsuit currently making its way through New York courtroom testimony is nothing if not a tearfest. Author J.K. Rowling and film distributor Warner Bros. are suing publisher RDR, which wants to print Steven Jan Vander Ark's encyclopedic Harry Potter Lexicon, a print companion to Ark's website of the same name, which explains all those made up words from the bestseller. But the real story here is all the breaking down on the witness stand.
On Monday, it was Rowling's turn … or almost: She "came to the edge of tears" and had to "regain her composure" during testimony. "It’s very difficult for someone who is not a writer to understand," she told the court. "The closest I can come is to say to someone, ‘How do you feel about your child?'"
And yesterday? CONTINUED »
• OMG! Harry Potter is hitting it with Hermione. If J.K. Rowling were dead, she'd be rolling over in her grave. Since she's alive, she's probably pleased with any extra DVD sales that result from the romance.
• Gene Simmons has a sex tape. We're only surprised this didn't surface earlier.
• Jessica Simpson doesn't want to become the next Kirstie Alley, and is consequently being sued for $10 million.
• Speaking of Simpsons, Joe Simpson wants Tony Romo to become the next Nick Lachey. Not a good call, man.
• Britney Spears needs the anti-depressants that help people remember to wear underwear.
• Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon growing fame makes us feel old.
Larry Birkhead, the shark-toothed suitor of Anna Nicole Smith, is best remembered for successfully implanting his sperm into Smith's uterus (despite competing specimens from lawyer Howard K. Stern, Bahamian royalty and the husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor) and for conveniently stepping forward to accept his parental responsibilities just as soon as he realized that the bulk of Smith's multimillion dollar estate was set aside for the care of baby Dannielynn.
And now he's known for something else: Deluding himself into thinking he was Barbara Walter's "10 Most Fascinating Person of 2007."
Even for those who have never a Harry Potter book, the whole empire is undeniably amusing.
First, there are the twenty-somethings who swear the book is real literature, even though the last novel they read was in Freshman English. Then there’s Daniel Radcliffe, whose development from boy wizard to man gave us a new respect for whoever did the casting for The Philosopher’s Stone. Add a closeted gay character to the mix, a ridiculous reaction by the press and you’ve got some real entertainment there.
So this year Entertainment Weekly named J.K. Rowling Entertainer of the Year, crediting the author with getting "people to tote around her big, old-fashioned printed-on-paper books as if they were the hottest new entertainment devices on the planet."
Hey, it’s a better choice than the color green. And she’s even entertained those of us who couldn't care less about wizardry.
Rejoice belatedly, Harry Potter fans! For your beloved Dumbledore has finally received the SNL treatment.
Sure, it's not nearly as funny/nuanced as Brian Williams' "behind-the-scenes" testimonial (or, for that matter, Bill Clinton's "Mystery" costume) but it's worth noting if only for the fact that Fred Armisen's Larry King is almost as spot-on as his Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
And for the fact that, this time, the award for "Beating A Dead Horse" will not be going to the New York Times.
Forget about the whole momentarily shocking kerfuffle surrounding "Harry Potter" scribe J.K. Rowling and her decision to "out" fictional character Albus "I'm Secretly Gay" Dumbledore. Now, Rowling is involved in another equally boring controversy. A legal one! Pertaining to copyright infringements!
Author J.K. Rowling and the maker of the Harry Potter films are suing a small publisher in Michigan over its plans to release a book version of a popular Web site dedicated to the boy wizard. The suit claims that RDR Books will infringe on Rowling's intellectual property rights if it goes ahead with its plan to publish the 400-page Harry Potter Lexicon on Nov. 28.
And from a legal standpoint, Rowling's absolutely right. But really, what's the harm in putting an invisibility cloak on this lawsuit long enough to let the Michiganders sell one crappy Harry Potter knockoff book? Jeez, Rowling. You'd think after crushing the right-leaning Midwestern children's dreams by telling them way too much info about their beloved grandfatherly wizard and his "magic wand," you could have maybe, just maybe, let this one slide.
Although we can’t always shake the nasty habit of writing in the royal we, occasionally one of our editors decides to shake off the cloak of anonymity to write a short, pithy statement long, rambling diatribe about a topic of their choice. Today, Debbie Newman is that editor.
Days after outing Dumbledore as a same-sex oriented magician, author J.K. Rowling is already soaking up criticism from all ends of the crazyperson spectrum.
Naturally, we have the religious zealots, who don't want their precious tots reading about same-sex anything (or, for that matter, sex itself) because it's "dirty." Then, of course, we have the self-appointed literary ombudsmen, who've questioned her motives and wondered whether England's Richest Person By Far has overstepped her bounds.
It's been a confusing weekend. First, we saw actor/comedian Stephen Colbert appear on Meet the Press and make a complete mockery of the presidential campaign simply by appearing to go about it in earnest. Then we saw the author of "Harry Potter" shock millions (and, undoubtedly, offend the sensitive ears of the Christian right) by "confessing" that her fictional headmaster prefers the company of wizards to witches.
So we were more than a little bit relieved to stumble upon a beacon of normalcy in this otherwise topsy-turvy existence: "Kid Rock has been arrested in Atlanta in connection with a fight at a waffle house."
And suddenly, the world (almost) makes sense again.
During a recent Q&A session with audience members, Rowling answered a young fan who asked if (Headmaster) Dumbledore ever finds true love.
"Dumbledore is gay," she said, adding he was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, who he beat in a battle between good and bad wizards long ago.
The audience gasped, then applauded. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy," she said.
"Falling in love can blind us to an extent," she added, saying Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down" and his love for Grindelwald was his "great tragedy".
–J.K. Rowling, surprising "Harry Potter" fans by belatedly outing her elderly fictional character Headmaster Albus Dumbledore as same-sex oriented. [BBC via Queerty]
• Michael Stipe poses for Marc Jacobs, reminds us that everybody hurts sometimes.
• You'll forget all about Hillary Clinton's so-called cleavage once you get a load of J.K. Rowling's rack.
• If you squint your eyes, this random YouTube wannabe actually looks and sounds a hell of a lot like everyone's favorite Firecrotch! Except for this "Lindsay" doesn't go blaming it all on the black kid.
• Jayden Spears continues to exist! Oh, don't roll your eyes like that. After all, nothing is a given when you're dealing with the Fried Chicken Queen.
• Meanwhile, "Addison" is apparently gorgeous, healthy-looking and tan. Which we'd have probably noticed earlier, if only we'd been able to take our eyes off McDreamy long enough to look.
• The next time you find yourself too embarrassed to admit that killer short-jacket is from (gulp!) Filene's, just remind yourself that even semi-successful television stars still shop at Target.
"Potter casts his final spell," proclaims the Baltimore Sun. "Read it and weep," writes the Melbourne Herald Sun. "Harry Potter's story has a happy ending (for the book shops, anyway)," teases the Independent (U.K.).
Yes, we've all seen the glowing reviews for J.K. Rowling's final Harry Potter book, what about the sales? As it turns out, those were pretty magical as well.
The final book in the Harry Potter series sold an estimated 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of sale, setting a new record for the book industry, according to U.S. publisher Scholastic.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" went on sale at midnight Friday to the delight of fans, who have been eagerly awaiting the last in the seven-book series about the boy wizard.
Borders Group, the second-largest U.S. book chain, said it sold about 1.2 million copies of "Deathly Hallows" worldwide on the first day, the highest single-day sales of any title in its history.
Proving once again that Harry Potter is safe from harm's way, at least in terms of would-be spoilsports. And that no matter how many trashy reality tv shows, celebrity weeklies or Britney Spears' cd's they buy, muggles simply can't get enough of the pubescent wizard and his suddenly large-breasted maybe-girlfriend, Hermione Granger.
Finishing is emotional because the books have been so wrapped up with my life. It's almost impossible not to finish and look back to where I was when I started.
…I was very lonely with it. It's not like being in a pop group, where at least there would be three or four other people who knew what it was like to be on the inside. Only I knew what it was like to be generating this world as it became bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more people were invested in it.
I can never write anything as popular again. Lightning does not strike in the same place twice.
–J.K. Rowling, finally ready to close the "Harry Potter" chapter of her life [via Forbes.com]
We're a little under three months away, now, and the first distant rumblings of the weirdness that usually precedes a Harry Potter publication can be heard on the horizon…I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going…Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership…However, spoilers won't stop people buying the book, they never have — all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book.
–J.K. Rowling, urging would-be spoilers to keep quiet regarding the hush-hush details of the upcoming (and final) Harry Potter adventure. [via CNN]
And you thought Lindsay Lohan almost losing her bag full of jewelry was just this side of tragic.
That's nothing compared to the kind of hell that would have broken loose had JK Rowling been forced to part with the manuscript of Harry Potter. On her very annoyingly loud website yesterday, Rowling spills the deets, saying she was held over by airport security officials in New York when she tried to carry-on her incomplete manuscript.
Due to tightened airport restrictions since August 10 (when someone tried to blow us up) FAA regulations decided that a book (actually, it wasn't even a book, it was an incomplete manuscript) was a sign of a terrorist plot.
Had security agents not relented, she said … she might not have flown, she said in a posting dated Wednesday.
"I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't — sailed home probably," she wrote.
"A large part of it is handwritten and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the U.S."
Eventually, she added, "They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands."
50 bucks says Anna Wintour's assistant was going to great lengths to get the unpublished copy so she could send them to her boss' twin daughters on their way to visit Grandma.
Editorial Director
