Anyone who’s been to college knows that there are about a billion sports in which you could participate, even if you’re an albino asthmatic with a severe peanut allergy.  Yet brave souls all across New England decided that their private schools’ sports offerings had too many minorities and not enough wands. Thus was born competitive Quidditch.  Yes, from Harry Potter.  As I reported previously, the Quidditch World Cup (aka the Olympics of Private School) took place in New York this weekend.  NYMag was there to witness it first hand.

Quidditch — or Muggle Quidditch, as it’s technically called — is a glorified mash-up of dodgeball, basketball, and rugby. Players run down the pitch trying to toss the quaffle (a kickball) through the goal (a hula hoop taped onto a jerry-rigged PVC-pipe stand).

Baska-what?  Ohhhh, you mean muggle basketball. Now I understand.

They’re doing all of this more or less one-handed. The other is always on that phallic piece of wood they’re straddling. (If your broom touches the ground, you’re taken out of the action for fifteen seconds as you simulate the time it would take for a wizard to fall to the ground.)

Within an hour, several people have already been carted off the field with injuries. Two players collided so viciously that one spit out his mouthguard along with a few tablespoons of blood. The woman on the other side of the collision was lying on the ground with her head split open. Volunteer medics rushed over, chanted a Ferula spell, and bandaged her forehead.

You think that’s bad, three quiffles from Sarah Lawrence suffered strained scarves. Meanwhile, Hoyt Velez-Twinklemoss found out natural grass makes him wheeze!

Amid the games, hundreds of fans milled about. Some are wearing shirts that say, “I got 99 problems but a snitch ain’t one.”

You hear that?  I think Jay-Z just blew his brains out.

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As the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is set to hit theaters on November 19, 20-year old Emma Watson recently told London’s Sunday Times that she has enjoyed her legacy as Hermione Granger and that she wants to celebrate it instead of trying to move beyond it with edgier roles. In fact, Watson said that she is putting her foot down on two specific things – nudity and cocaine. Coincidentally, her upcoming cameo on Two and a Half Men was canceled.

Watson, who has been attending Brown University to feel normal and grounded, insists that she’s a strong actress who doesn’t need to shed her clothes for success. Oy New York Daily News, fancy a dismissive wank, guvna?

The British starlet added that she’s not “so paranoid or insecure” that she needs to shock others in order to convince them she can play a different role.

“I don’t want everyone to forget me as Hermione,” she told the magazine. “I’m really proud of her.”

But that doesn’t mean Watson is going to avoid taking risks entirely.

“I wished I’d done more naughty things,” she told the UK Sun of her time growing up on set. “Three months ago I cut my hair and at that moment I felt I became a woman.”

Yes, she cut her long hair ridiculously short so she looks like a 16-year old boy and now she finally feels like a woman. Whatever, at least she’s not complaining about being rich. Wait, what’s that, Reuters? She IS complaining about being absurdly filthy wealthy?

“By the third or fourth film, the money was starting to get … serious. I had no idea. I felt sick, very emotional. It was a real shock,” the actress told Vogue in the interview.

What did she think she was making when she was acting in all of these incredibly successful films? Skee ball tickets? If she’s so sick over her estimated $34 million fortune, then she should donate it to charity. For instance, my new “Home For Half-Naked, Coked Up Actresses.” Please make checks payable to CASH.

Spazzy white guys wearing prescription eye wear, gosh, I never would've expected that.

One of the subplots of the Harry Potter books is a game called quidditch, in which students at the wizardry academy ride flying broomsticks around after ball that flies through the sky of its own accord.  Now, thanks to precious students with too much time on their hands at at expensive Northeastern private schools, it’s not just a side plot in a children’s book, it’s a “sport”.  Well bust out your sunblock and hemophilia medicine, Madison, because the Quidditch World Cup is coming to New York City next week. It’s all the poncey exclusivity of lacrosse with 50% less date rape!

Next weekend, more than 60 different teams from high schools and universities across the country are expected to gather at De Witt Clinton Park in New York City for the fourth annual Quidditch World Cup.
Harvard University, M.I.T, Yale, Penn State, Duke — several prestigious universities are registered for the World Cup and count quidditch among their extracurricular activities.

University of Maryland student Valerie Fischman isn’t satisfied with quidditch’s current status, however. She’s waging a long-shot campaign for recognition from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Fischman originally joined the team because she was a huge Harry Potter fan, not because she was particularly interested in playing a sport. Now she’s a chaser on the University of Maryland team and also serves as its co-vice president.

Wait, you’re saying she joined the Quidditch team despite not being very interested in sports?  Excuse me while I retrieve my monocle, for in my surprise it has fallen.

Quidditch players have to thread several other hoops to make theirs an NCAA sport. There must be official quidditch clubs at a minimum of 50 colleges across the country. Then, athletic directors from those colleges must individually petition the NCAA. It’s a process that could take years — if it happens at all.  Fischman admits it’s not an easy task. She’s hoping for help from her university’s athletic department — as well as the International Quidditch Association.  That’s right, there’s an International Quidditch Association. [via (who else) NPR]

[Said Harvard Co-Captain Stacy Rush]: “The teams great. It’s so much fun flying around on your broomsticks. Now, they look like they don’t fly. In practice, we don’t fly around on them because we’re surrounded by Muggles. And we can’t break our statute of secrecy which is our code of law in the wizarding world.” [IvyGate]

I hope this does become an NCAA sport.  First, because it’s still less lame than ultimate frisbee, and second because I’d someday love to hear, “Ooh, that Rooney Sanchez-Davis, she thinks she’s sooo hot, just because she’s dating the captain of the Quidditch team.  She even wears his inhaler around her neck to rub it in everyone’s face.”

“We call outsiders ‘muggles’ because they’re always stealing our lunch money.”

Japan enjoys a well-deserved reputation for all things batpoop loco, but India is headed to the top of the crazy chart with a bullet. Between bulldozing the Slumdog kid’s shanty like the villain in a Brendan Fraser movie, making a movie that makes Michael Bay’s movies look like cinema verité, and my personal favorite, hiring larger, more violent monkeys to control the population of smaller monkeys, India is easily my favorite story setting of the year. More to the point, today in wacky news stories, the popularity of Harry Potter (note: NOT Hari Puttar) has spawned an owl-trapping trend.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has blamed fans of Harry Potter for the demise of wild owls in the country as children seek to emulate the boy wizard by taking the birds as pets.
The hit books and films, which are popular in India, feature a snowy owl called Hedwig who is a feathered sidekick for the Potter character and used to deliver mail.
“Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls,” Ramesh said Wednesday, according to comments reported by the BBC.
Researchers found that a growing number of owls were being trapped, traded or killed in black magic rituals. [AFP via AV Club]

My favorite part of the story is the way the modern effortlessly co-exists with the ancient, almost as an afterthought.  “A western book about a boy magician has spawned a trend of pet owls among the urban middle class.  Oh, and some actual sorcerers have also joined in, hoping to use the owl parts for black magic.”

Sidenote: This Indian guy would make Harry Potter his bitch. God knows what he had to do to make that sloth bear so happy.

(LOUD NOISES!)

Here it is, the brand new trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, coming November 19th.  The whole gang is back — director David Yates, Captain Eyebrows, the ginger kid, hottie mcwhatsherface — in truth, it’s been a while since I gave a crap about a Harry Potter movie, but I’m not opposed to them. Obviously they’re still a pretty big deal.   Hence all the opera choir gasping in the background.  In this chapter, there’s some evil dude on the horizon being mean to everyone, so the old dude is all, “Harry!  Use your magic!”  And Harry’s all, “It’s too hard!  I’m just a boy!”  And then Ron Weasely comes in and he’s all, “I hate you, Harry!  Your parents are dead!  We’re not friends anymore!”  So that complicates things.  Anyway, looks good.

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