So which of the Harry Potter threads on the first page should I read?

[buckweaver]

<a href="http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/44150/">Door No. 1.</a>
<a href="http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/44467/">Door No. 2.</a>
<a href="http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/44518/">Door No. 3.</a>

 

[mike311gd]

None of the above.

 

[Cadet]

You're just jealous.

 

[buckweaver]

You're just jealous.

That's it. 8)

Although I did watch another one of those movies last night.

 

[Chi City 81]

Who's this Harry Potter of whom you speak?

 

[mike311gd]

You're just jealous.

I am a lot of things, Cadet. But jealous of Harry Potter fans is not one of them.

 

[Write-brained]

This is Door No. 4, right?

Do I need to start another thread pointing out that another thread has been added?

 

[JackyJackBN]

Idadoor.

 

[Cadet]

Jealous that you all aren't part of the cultural and literary phenomenon.

 

[writing irish]

I haven't been into fantasy novels since I was a junior-high-school dweeb whose pathetic existence revolved around Dungeons and Dragons and Led Zeppelin. Fortunately, in 9th Grade, I discovered punk rock and Kurt Vonnegut. I left the goofy Anglophilic world of spells and sorcerers behind many, many moons ago.

But, I'm not going to scoff at Harry Potter. Maybe it's not grade-A literature, but it's a BOOK. In a day and age when people are semi-literate at best and people under 20 seem to know little besides video entertainment, Harry Potter is a character in a series of BOOKS. You know, those archaic things with words on paper that people read. They just sit there and READ, for hours at a time!

So I'm no Harry Potter fanatic, but I'll give the whole Potter phenomenon a thumbs-up. Yeah, it's not what I'm into personally, but dammit, people are READING. That's welcome news in these degraded times.

 

[buckweaver]

So I'm no Harry Potter fanatic, but I'll give the whole Potter phenomenon a thumbs-up. Yeah, it's not what I'm into personally, but dammit, people are READING. That's welcome news in these degraded times.

Well said. Pretty much ditto for me.

 

[Cadet]

I've never been into sci-fi/fantasy stuff. LOTR bored me, never got into the Matrix. But these books are so well written, and indeed such a cultural phenomenon, that I recommend them to anyone.

 

[writing irish]

Yeah, and it's KIDS reading. I think CS Lewis and Tolkien is basically goofy ****, but they taught me "big words" when I was a young-un. That enabled me to understand all sorts of subversive **** when I was a teenager.

 

[writing irish]

B-Dub, you rule. Are you really a White Sox fan though, or just a devotee of the pre-Ruthian epoch?

 

[buckweaver]

B-Dub, you rule. Are you really a White Sox fan though, or just a devotee of the pre-Ruthian epoch?

I'd choose the Sox over the Cubs, if it came down to that. You'd never catch me rooting for the Northsiders, that's for sure. But I'd never claim to be a Sox fan. I'm a Braves fan, and have been since I was 9. That's my team, although I tend to root more for individual players than anything else.

I am, however, a pre-Ruthian Pale Hose devotee. I probably have more knowledge about the 1912 Sox than any healthy person under the age of 80 ever should.

 

[writing irish]

I grew up with the Rangers, watched the Red Sox in college, but my dad was Chicagoan...Cubs fan.

His dad was Cubs fan and these things are patri-lineal, as you know. Funny thing though, my old man was actually a South Sider. His folks moved from the country to the city when the depression hit. Dad was eight years old when he moved to an all-Irish neighborhood on the South Side that's all-African-American now. He was the ONLY Cubs fan in his school. So he took a lot of ****. This was the late 20s/early 30s, when the Cubs were good, so at least he had "scoreboard," to a point.

Nelson Algren, a South Sider, has some great short nonfiction narratives about the White Sox. One of them recounts his experience- kind of a mirror-image to my dad's. Algren's folks moved from the South Side to the North Side when he was about that same age. He had the same troubles of fitting in with the kids in the new neighborhood. This was right after the Black Sox scandal. Algren got lots of **** for how his boys "thrun" the World Series. Great reading.

 

[writing irish]

Sorry Harry Potter, old-school Second-City baseball threadjack in full effect...

 

[pallister]

Some Northsiders are Sox fans, despite objections of family members.

 

[writing irish]

It's a lot like the "Irish Question"...you can't stereotype people's loyalties based on geography or other factors. It all goes back to people's family and personal experience.

 

[pallister]

My dad, two oldest brothers and their kids (my nieces and nephews) are Cubs fans; my other two older brothers and myself are Sox fans. The three of us have talked a lot of **** the last couple years -- and enjoyed every minute of it. I'm currently reserving comment on the Cubbies lately; they're looking pretty damn good.