Going off the H-Pott Grid

For the next week or so, I am going to be the most boring person on the planet. I will have nothing to talk about. I will become dull at parties and dinners. I will be a disappointment to my students. I will, in effect, become my drink at Starbucks: A Grande Drip. And it's all because I don't give a rat's ass about what happens to some pasty British kid named Harry.

Exactly what are people who don't like Harry Potter supposed to do this month? In all this hype, Jesus could come back and no one would notice. This July, all topics point to the wizard and his pubescent wand, which means that anyone who is not obsessed with all things Rowlingesque (Jesus, did I just use that word?) is shut out of the global conversation. Used to be you could watch the news or read a book to escape a pop culture phenomenon, but now there's nowhere to turn. And the learning curve is too steep to try to catch up with Harry now, so, in other words, if you're not down with the H-Pott by now, you're screwed and will never earn the trust of a rabid Harry Potter fan.

I'm not against Harry Potter; I'm just not into it. Actually, I had secretly been hoping for the series to have run out of steam by this point, not so it would go away, but so that by the time the film for Harry Potter 7 was ready to shoot, audiences would be so through with Harry that Warner Bros. would hire David Cronenberg to direct it. You have to admit you're curious to see what he would do with it, even if it would scar you for life.

What sucks most about it all is that I have nowhere to go. Most places that are safe havens for dorks--bookstores, nice movie theaters, etc.--have become temporary Hogwarts shelters, all tricked out to hail Harry Potter like he was Caesar entering Rome, or, more appropriately, Christ entering Jerusalem, because the world has been made over in His (Harry's) image, and Caesar couldn't do any cool spells.

I'm not saying to boycott Harry Potter, but I am saying that some of us should try to prove that there are other things in life this month other than beating Slytherin and Hufflepuff. Too much has been made of this; it's time to go off the H-Pott grid. This isn't opting out, because you can't opt out if you've never been let in. Until there's something else worth talking about, I'm signing off.