If you haven't had a chance, indulge in "Wizard People, Dear Readers". A clever gentleman created an alternate soundtrack to the first Harry Potter film. He inspired this project, God help us all. I'd like to share it with you guys as it comes together. So! Part One:
Prague.
Dusk. Amidst the musically curling fog, a symphony of moisture, a lone figure
emerged. He was a snow bank of a man; immovable, merciless, frigid, and
somewhat dingy. His purpose this night was truly wicked awesome and top secret.
Forward he trudged, as only a paragon of curmudgeoned tenacity could do.
The town's
worn masonry embraced his arrival in a perfunctory, greeting yet another
obscure relation sort of way. The fog warrior did not care. Errant thoughts of
past weather patterns, crushed energy drinks, rampant Easter bunnies and the
like were waved away like once-buoyant paper aero planes. There was work to be
done.
How had he
come to be here? On foot, obviously. But what chain of events, what inevitable
flashback through the corridors and occasionally dead-ended alleyways of time,
had called forth this mercenary to his own ego? I was hoping you’d ask.
Muhahahaha.
It began
with a word. And a man who was not meant to read it. A man called, to his
misfortune, Gandalf Springsteen. Or sometimes even more unfortunate epithets. Today
no one seemed to notice him. If they had, there was something to see. The man
started. He read it again. It was a misprint. It was impossible. If’t t’were
true, … everything changed. Not a misprint. A key. A big, heavy, shiny in some
places and all tarnished into strange colors in others-type key.
This visual cacophony was too much for him. Indeed,
it would have shattered the psyche of a lesser man than he. Like so many poorly
eavesdropped half-truths, this wizened Tobey Maguire's eyes were a crossword
puzzle of emotion. It would take Merriam Webster herself to decipher them. But
a single thought grasped him. A lifeline. A time comes when one knows what is
needed, and that they are the one for the job. It was now, and Gandalf could
not doubt that. With that solitary hope, he pulled his heaving mind ashore.
An
individual of impeccable skullduggery was vaguely aware of a narrative
coalescing. He didn’t care for it. As pretentious as a masterclass in the
flossing habits of Méliès, as torturous as an all male production of Annie.
Shaking the cobwebs of necessity from his gnarled, snarky frame, he arose.
Pretense forgone, the singular goal of flakey goodness his only compass.
His oracle
peered into the lackluster depths of steamed milk. “You have one option. Er,
two.” The rogue tore into his croissant with alacrity. “One, caramel sauce. The
other, swift retaliation.” A jingly
noise denoted the advent of more mundane patrons. The oracle glowered.
“You speak of revenge?”
“No, fool.
Had I meant revenge, I’d have said ‘revenge’. I speak of action. Not served
cold, but struck when the iron is hot. One moment, sirrah.”
But here,
good gentles, we change our scene. And you may well regret it.
