the list of now

J.K. Rowling is a master of  building excitement, both in fiction and in real life. She doesn’t do anything small, does she?

Well, the geeks are all aflutter today and the reason is because of a little site called Pottermore.  Through posts on several fan sites that contained coordinates for a secret streetview (you can read more about that here on Mugglenet), fans found letters that spelled out “pottermore”. Go to the pottermore.com and you see adorably twitchy owls and this:

If you click on the owls, it brings you to a special youtube page set up to count down to when J.K. Rowling makes an announcement on June 23rd!

So what is Pottermore?

My official theory is that it’s a MMORPG.

First of all, I just think the logo has a video game look about it.  There are already several regular games based on the movies and a series of LEGO Harry Potter games.  It seems a little too cartoonish for any kind of supplemental book series and I have doubts that Rowling would approve any kind of tv series with new noncanonical storylines.

The thing that really clinches it though, is that I remembered hearing rumors that WB was working on a MMORPG a few years back.  I went digging and found this news story on Mugglenet called “Potter MMORPG confirmed by WB VP of Marketing” from June 4, 2008. They quoted an email from Warner Brothers Vice President of Marketing Sandy Yi:

The notion of creating a Harry Potter multi-player online role playing game is something that we’ve been discussing at Warner Bros. for a number of years and continue to explore. We are currently investigating the possibility of creating our own MMORPG but unfortunately do not have any further details to share at this time.

So it’s entirely possible that they’ve been working on this for the last 3 years and now are getting ready to roll-out a release to coincide with the last film opening on July 15th, next month.  Excellent timing.

I’m hoping it’s a true game with levels and challenges and not just Second Life meets The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Walking around in that world would be cool, but I need objectives for it to be worth it for me to devote time to it.

You can follow Pottermore on twitter as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if some more owls and other surprises show up before the official announcement next week!

Speaking of the impending release of Deathly Hallows, Part 2, if you haven’t yet seen the new trailer that was released today, you can watch it right here. It’s epic.  Queue the tears.

Awesomeness + Silliness = My favorite kind of everythingness.

Watch this now.  (and wait for it, it gets better and better!)

h/t to Kally, created by ElBucko.

Are you excited as I am to see Wolverine this week?  Well, here is some interesting news that came out of a recent screening.

Over at FirstShowing.net, they are reporting that the film is being released and sent to theaters with multiple secret endings!  (a la Clue) And yeah… it’s a gimmick, but kind of a neat one.  I am intrigued.  Writer Alex Billington says:

I just stepped out of a screening of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the Fox lot in Los Angeles and before it started, director Gavin Hood stopped by to introduce the film. He spent most of the time thanking us for coming to this screening and seeing Wolverine the way it should be seen, in theaters, and talked about how many difference there were between the final cut and the early leaked version. He then mentioned that Marvel has a tradition of hiding easter eggs in their films, and it’s no exception for Wolverine. They’ve hidden multiple secret endings on different prints and theaters will be showing different versions.

And about that leak?  Just want to say for the record that I don’t care.  I don’t think it’s fair that people are pre-judging a movie based on an unfinished early cut.   The naysayers are not ruining my anticipation for this film and most likely, even if this isn’t a phenomenal movie, I will still enjoy watching it.   So my reaction to all the “ooooh it got leaked” and “oooh we found out it sucks” shit is a big, fat  “Meh.”   Which is why I haven’t posted about any of that nonsense until now.

Buzz like this rarely infects my personal excitement/enjoyment of anything.

h/t to my brother Jonathan, who posted this link on Facebook and really should have a blog or tumblr for all the great stuff he finds.

LOVE the muppets + evil geniuses who love the muppets!

See also Kermit Bale.

Today ThinkGeek posted a newsletter with links to a whole amazing bevy of fake products (and dear god, I hope the squeez bacon is actually fake and doesn’t exist in some form somewhere).  Check out this screencap of my favorite three:

Not since Google gave us the ridiculous brilliance of Gmail Paper (a service in which they print your emails out and send them to you in actual folders), have I so enjoyed a geeky effort on April Fools’ Day.

Do yourself a favor and go read all the descriptions, they are absurd and random and smart and I love them.

I ((heart)) ThinkGeek.

p.s.  If those interfacing portal t-shirts did exist, I would so totally buy them and make one of my geeky friends wear them with me.  (I’m talking to you, Hally)  And I would by the buzzword bracelet thingie for Darcy.