Harry Potter Scene It? DVD Trivia Game to go with new movie and book!

Between the release of the 5^th movie and the 7^th and final book, this July is a huge month for Harry Potter fans. It’s been a long tiresome week for yours truly, avoiding Harry Potter spoilers on the internet and nailing down my predictions for the final book. After all, being a wizard myself I take a special interest in Harry’s adventures. That last one was a real shocker, eh? How can J.K. Rowling possibly top Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince? Tonight at midnight, the world will find out! Lines are already forming at bookstores across the world, except in Israel where the release date falls on their Sabbath, poor fellows.

The Israelis won’t be needing their Harry Potter Costumes until Halloween, but they can still enjoy Harry Potter Deluxe Scene It? 2^nd Edition.

This is what all the kids are up for these days, it’s not Backgammon and Battleship anymore, it’s all about these trivia games! The Scene It? folks are famous for them, of course, beginning with the delightful original Scene It? interactive DVD games of movie clips and questions. Now they have games for every sort of movie and TV show: Disney Scene It?, American Idol Scene It?, James Bond Scene It?, Turner Classic Movies Scene It?, HBO Scene It?, Marvel Scene It?, and the list goes on.

It’s like going to a cinema where they have those trivia questions before the feature like, “In what movie did Humphrey Bogart tell Ingrid Bergman, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’” And you have to choose Casablanca over Dude, Where’s My Car. Only Scene It? is much more fun and has tons of video clips and you can keep score with your friends or family, and you can play in your own home. And eat moderately priced popcorn.

One of few things more exciting to kids than DVD trivia games is Harry Potter, so imagine their delight at a Harry Potter Trivia Game!

Even Muggles who’ve not read up on the famous boy wizard can play Harry Potter Scene It? DVD Game because it is based on the Harry Potter movies. It even includes scenes from the brand new summer blockbuster, Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix! Haven’t even seen it myself yet, but the book was one of my favorites. This is the one where resistance to Lord Voldemort really gets organized, and Harry and his schoolmates start their own secret order in resistance to the Ministry of Magic. Ooh, and we meet oddball Luna Lovegood, who’s not like other kids but is a fantastic character!

For those of you who are attending Harry Potter parties, Fantasy Toyland is well-stocked with Child Harry Potter Costumes and Adult Harry Potter Costumes, so parent and kid can go together!

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the unveiling of Wally the Wizard’s Pointless Personal Predictions for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

How can Snape still be innocent? This is the central question my theory is trying to answer, because I so trust Dumbledore’s judgment and don’t want him to be dead for good. This is how I’ve solved that problem: you see, I believe Snape performing the Avada Kedavra killing curse was part of the Order’s plan from the beginning, because Dumbledore has created a Horcrux that will allow him to resurrect. And you remember rumors via Hagrid that Dumbledore and Snape had a heated discussion when Snape was trying to back out of something?

Of course, this means Dumbledore would have to have killed someone. But what if he was defending the innocent, or it was a mercy killing? On the other hand, I vaguely recall that not just killing but murder is required to split one’s soul. But on the other other hand, what if having destroyed Voldemort’s ring Horcrux counts as murder because it contained a piece of his soul?

Another unrelated prediction I have for the last book is that Harry will indeed kill Lord Voldemort, but at the cost of his own magical powers and possibly his life, just as trying to kill Harry once cost Voldemort these things (if it weren’t for those darn Horcruxes!). But since killing Harry would be too obvious, I think the big tragedy is that he’s no longer a wizard and maybe Ginny dies. I do not believe as many do that Harry himself is the 6^th Horcrux, mostly because someone else had the idea before me.

And also, I believe the person with initials R.A.B. in possession of Slytherin’s locket is Rosmerta, not Regulus Black as is commonly believed.

There you have it folks, no leaks, no inside knowledge, just good old-fashioned intuition. These predictions are substantiated only by facts in the preceding books and my infallible wizard logic!

Zip Line - The Greatest Summer Toy Ever!

I realized several days ago that my backyard was missing something. The answer came as I sat on my porch swing, surveying the green grass and contemplating a riddle that a friend had included in her most recent email:

What moves ahead without a motor
Without an engine, oars or rotor
Without electricity (battery, wind or solar)
Without wheel, rudder, wing or pedal
Without foot, paw, hoof or saddle?
What takes you forward daringly fast
Without coal, steam, oil or gas
When you’re young you find it fun
When you’re old you watch it pass
And when you arrive on the other side
You wish the ride would last?

“But of course!” I thought, stumbling off the porch swing which I had been rocking with inappropriate gusto. “THIS YARD NEEDS A ZIP LINE!”

What an ideal toy for summer! Or any time there’s not a blizzard! And it certainly filled all the criteria of the riddle, being a hand-held trolley propelled by gravity and momentum.

Standing in the middle of the lawn I looked down the rows of my neighbors’ backyards, all cluttered with boring stationary playground equipment and abandoned toys. The kids were probably inside playing video games and watching TV. I wanted to go over there and share my revelation, but my broomstick was inside. If only each of our yards had a zip line, or we all had one very long zip line, I could zip over for a visit and tell them how amazing backyard ziplines are! I could glide effortlessly over the toy-strewn ground, my robe billowing out behind me.

Feeling inspired, I dashed inside to Google “zip lines” and send a triumphant email to my friend. She thought she could stump me, but she made a mistake thinking Wally the Wizard would fail to guess a fantastic outdoor toy! Won’t be so smug next time, will she?

Actually, the answer to the riddle turned out to be Time. But this did not dampen my enthusiasm for installing a backyard zipline, not in the least! It turns out they are delightfully diverse, so I chose three to put on FantasyToyland.com: the economical Fun Ride Original Trolley Ride, the whopping 90-foot-long 250-lb-carrying Fun Ride Super Z Trolley Ride, and the one in the middle that’s juuuust right like Mama Bear’s porridge: the Fun Ride Deluxe Trolley Ride! This is the one which is now in my own backyard. I get there with the Original Trolley Ride, which goes from my kitchen the trampoline, which is right next to the launching platform of the Deluxe Trolley Ride. This is bad for my morning commute because the trampoline causes me to spill my coffee, so I put up the Super Z from my front door to the commuter parking lot across the street.

My zip lines seem to have had an effect on the neighborhood children like that of a reanimation curse on the undead. They have staggered away from their flashing screens to stare at the wizard zooming back and forth on this futuristic pulley contraption. Once they blinked away the afterimage of god-knows-what-they-were-watching, they were gleefully zipping and zooming the day away. Before long their parents had caught on and installed their own backyard ziplines.

What’s shocked and awed
That once guffawed
The fun and functional zip line?

My riddle-mongering friend when I swooped in to meet her for our carpool on my Super Z Deluxe Trolley Ride!