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bookishable · 4 years

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half-blood prince book moments

“you can do magic! surely you can sort out anything!” “the trouble is, the other side can do magic too, prime minister.”

“it is a long time since my last visit, i must say, your agapanthuses are flourishing.”

‘it was clear that as far as he was concerned, any man who could look at harry and say ‘excellent’ was a man with whom he could never see eye to eye.’

‘the dursleys tried to ignore their glasses completely, a difficult feat, as they were nudging them gently on the sides of their heads. harry could not suppress a suspicion that dumbledore was rather enjoying himself.’

“and now, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

“ah, yes, of course, i haven’t told you” the harry potter series, a summary

“you have not asked me, for instance, what is my favourite flavour of jam, to check that i am indeed professor dumbledore, and not an impostor. for future reference, it is raspberry … although of course, if i were a death eater, i would have been sure to research my own jam-preferences before impersonating myself.”

‘he seemed remarkably unabashed for a man who had just been discovered pretending to be an armchair.’

slughorn being more than a comedy character and being more prejudiced against muggle-borns than the movie showed

“i realised i can’t shut myself away or crack up. sirius wouldn’t have wanted that, would he? and anyway, life’s too short … it could be me next, couldn’t it? but if it is, i’ll make sure i take as many death eaters with me as i can, and voldemort too if i can manage it.”

“i won’t have to do occlumency lessons with snape, will i? because they were a—” “i think the word ‘fiasco’ would be a good one here”

“what is your dearest ambition?” “to find out how aeroplanes stay up.”

“mollywobbles”

“dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right” “sounds like the sort of mental thing dumbledore would say” “he’s going to be giving me private lessons this year” said harry conversationally

‘a warmth was spreading through him that had nothing to do with the sunlight; a tight obstruction in his chest seemed to be dissolving. the mere fact that they were still there on either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not shrinking from him as though he were contaminated or dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them.’

harry getting an outstanding in the defence against the dark arts OWL

“who blacked your eye, granger? i want to send them flowers.” i’m sorry but this is such a great insult

“dumbledore won’t always be there to protect you.” “wow … look at that … he’s not here now! so why not have a go? they might be able to find you a double cell in azkaban with your loser of a husband!”

the weasley twins’ shop window telling people to worry about ‘u-no-poo’ instead of you-know-who

the constipation sensation that’s gripping the nation

hermione saying fred and george’s products are “extraordinary magic”

“certainly they work, for up to twenty-four hours at a time depending on the weight of the boy in question—” “—and the attractiveness of the girl”

fred and george accusing ginny of going out with five boys and ginny being like “last time i looked, dean thomas was definitely one boy, not five.”

“people expect you to have cooler friends than us” “you are cool, none of them was at the ministry. they didn’t fight with me.” “that’s a very nice thing to say” i honestly love luna and harry’s friendship

slughorn inviting ginny to lunch on the train because of her “marvellous” bat bogey hex on zacharias smith

nick: harry potter knows that he can confide in me with complete confidence, i would rather die than betray his trust. ron: that’s not saying much, seeing as you’re already dead nick: once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe

“snape’ll be gone by the end of the year, that job’s jinxed. quirrell actually died doing it. personally, i’m going to keep my fingers crossed for another death …” christ harry is a savage but tbh same

‘it was a mark of the strength of their friendship that ron did not laugh.’

“it’s high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she’s got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have” stan minerva mcgonagall

“there’s no need to call me ‘sir’, professor.”

“i thought he sounded a bit like you. when you were telling us what it’s like to face voldemort. you said it wasn’t just memorising a bunch of spells, you said it was just you and your brains and your guts—well, wasn’t that what snape was saying? that it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?”

the polyjuice potion being something students should be able to make after completing their NEWTS, but which hermione made at age thirteen

slughorn giving hermione points for knowing all the potions and being an intelligent muggle-born, and ‘malfoy looked rather as he had done the time hermione had punched him in the face.’

“it’s not quidditch that’s popular, it’s you! you’ve never been more interesting and, frankly, you’ve never been more fanciable.”

hermione: harry’s got scars from umbridge ron: look at where those brains attacked me hermione: he’s grown over the summer ron: i’m tall

‘he did not usually lie in bed reading his textbooks; that sort of behaviour, as ron rightly said, was indecent in anybody except hermione, who was simply weird that way.’

‘the prince had proved a much more effective teacher than snape so far.’ hm right

“it’s only muggle-borns they hate, they’d be quite happy to let you and ron join up.” “my whole family are blood traitors!” “and they’d love to have me, we’d be best pals if they didn’t keep trying to do me in.”

ron and hermione’s ‘new policy of feigning deafness whenever harry mentioned his malfoy-is-a-death-eater theory’

“nice suit, sir”

“very astute, harry, but the mouth-organ was only ever a mouth-organ.”

tHe SLuG cLUb

‘it was natural that he should want to rip dean limb from limb for kissing her … no … he would have to control that particular brotherly feeling …’

“it looks like he’s eating her face, doesn’t it? but i suppose he’s got to refine his technique somehow.”

‘harry could not help admiring her spellwork at a time like this.’

‘ginny kept cropping up in his dreams in ways that made him devoutly thankful that ron could not perform legilimency.’

madam pince ‘looked as though she might have a seizure’ after seeing the half-blood prince’s book

‘arguing about whether or not filch and madam pince were secretly in love’

“he says very funny things sometimes, doesn’t he? but he can be a bit unkind. i noticed that last year.”

‘luna was demonstrating her usual knack of speaking uncomfortable truths; he had never met anyone quite like her.’

“what did you have to imitate her for?” “she laughed at my moustache!” “so did i, it was the stupidest thing i’ve ever seen.”

harry’s observation that ‘girls were very strange sometimes’

‘harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.’

the guy named worple at slughorn’s party bringing along his friend sanguini who happened to be a vampire

sanguini: *edges towards group of girls* worple: here, have a pasty

luna telling everyone that the aurors are part of the rotfang conspiracy “they’re working from within to bring down the ministry of magic using a combination of dark magic and gum disease”

ron: you can’t break an unbreakable vow harry: well it’s a good thing i have at least one brain cell

“fred reckons his left buttock has never been the same since.” “yeah, well, passing over fred’s left buttock—”

“aaah, george, look at this. they’re using knives and everything. bless them.”

*the twins discussing ron and lavender* “did she have an accident or something?” “what?” “well, how did she sustain such extensive brain damage?”

“he called it my ‘furry little problem’ in company. many people were under the impression that i owned a badly behaved rabbit.”

lavender giving ron a necklace saying ‘my sweetheart’ for christmas

kreacher sending harry a package of maggots and him being like “i’d rather have them than that necklace”

“you might have noticed he’s not minister anymore, but dumbledore’s still headmaster. i’d leave dumbledore alone, if i were you.”

‘percy had stormed from the house on christmas day with his glasses splattered with mashed parsnip (for which fred, george and ginny all claimed credit).’

“stay out of trouble” “i always do, mrs weasley, i like a quiet life, you know me.”

“he accused me of being ‘dumbledore’s man through and through’.” “how very rude of him.” “i told him i was.”

“blessed as i am with extraordinary brainpower, i understood everything you told me”

‘there was a certain amount of ill-feeling towards wilkie twycross and his three Ds, which had inspired a number of nicknames for him, the politest of which were dog-breath and dung-head.’

‘friends they might be, but if ron started calling lavender ‘lav-lav’, he would have to put his foot down.’

harry resisting the urge to let ron run around under the effect of the love potion and instead taking him to be cured by slughorn because ‘they were supposed to be friends’

‘madam pomfrey seemed to have been counting hagrid as several people due to his vastness.’

“half our family does seem to owe you their lives, well, all i can say is that it was a lucky day for the weasleys when ron decided to sit in your compartment on the hogwarts express, harry.”

ron pretending to be asleep whenever lavender came to visit him in the hospital wing

luna’s commentary at the quidditch match

“smith was being quite rude about gryffindor, i expect he regrets that now he’s playing them—oh, look, he’s lost the quaffle, ginny took it from him, i do like her, she’s very nice …”

LOSER’S LURGY

harry: i want to find mclaggen and kill him madame pomfrey: that would come under the heading of over-exertion

‘harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while ron gave them his blessing …’

“how d‘you spell ‘belligerent’? it can’t be B-U-M”

“we were asked how we’d deal with dementors, not ‘dugbogs’, and i don’t remember you changing your name to ‘roonil wazlib’, either.”

“i love you, hermione” “don’t let lavender hear you saying that.”

“the more i hint i want to finish it, the tighter she holds on. it’s like going out with the giant squid.”

“yeah, we don’t need to hear about you being in love with malfoy”

‘harry swore. someone screamed. he looked around to see a gaggle of first-years running back round the corner, apparently under the impression that they had just encountered a particularly foul-mouthed ghost.’

“ghosts are transparent.”

“when we come face to face with one down a dark alley we’re going to be having a shufti to see if it’s solid, aren’t we, we’re not going to be asking, ‘excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?’”

harry deciding to go to aragog’s funeral because he saw the tears left on the letter hagrid had sent them

ron thinking of using felix felicis to get slughorn’s memory

“this is felix felicis, i suppose? you haven’t got another little bottle full of—” “essence of insanity?”

“in spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart’s desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart lord voldemort, and not immortality or riches.”

‘it was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. some people would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but dumbledore knew—and so do i, thought harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents—that there was all the difference in the world.’

“that’s my nickname”

‘there was ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. and without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, harry kissed her.’

“the truth is that you don’t think a girl would have been clever enough” “how can i have hung round with you for five years and not think girls are clever?”

harry admiring dumbledore swimming as they head to a cave on the most dangerous mission he’s ever been on, like ‘bloody hell this man is 300 years old look at his fantastic breaststroke’

“it is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”

“i am not worried, harry, i am with you.”

‘harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: it was his own grief turned magically to song that echoed across the grounds and through the castle windows.’

“what do i care how ’e looks? i am good-looking enough for both of us, i theenk! all these scars show is zat my husband is brave!”

“young and whole men do not necessarily remain so.”

“dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world”

“i feel that if a single pupil wants to come, then the school ought to remain open for that pupil.”

“professor dumbledore always valued your views, and so do i.”

“no other headmaster or headmistress ever gave more to this school”

‘he felt no curiosity at all: he doubted that he would ever feel curious again.’

‘and he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the phoenix had gone, had left hogwarts for good, just as dumbledore had left the school, had left the world … had left harry.’

‘all that appeared to have changed was that he now had a great liking for very rare steaks.’

“so eet ees lucky ’e is marrying me, because ze british overcook their meat, i ’ave always said this.”

“she was snape’s mother!” “i thought she wasn’t much of a looker”

‘the strange music and the knowledge that dumbledore’s body was so close seemed to take all warmth from the day.’

‘it was important, dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated’

‘she met harry’s gaze with the same hard, blazing look, and he knew that at that moment they understood each other perfectly, and that when he told her what he was going to do now, she would accept his decision, because she would not have expected anything less of him.’

“i never really gave up on you”

scrimgeour: the ministry can add two and two harry, inwardly: but there’s no maths in the wizarding world harry, outwardly: glad to hear it

“he will only be gone from the school when none here are loyal to him”

“you said to us once before, that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. we’ve had time, haven’t we?”

“we’re with you whatever happens”

#hp book moments #half blood prince #harry potter books #harry potter quotes #hp textpost

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flauntpage · 6 years

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Some Thoughts on Whatever the Hell NBC Sports Philly is Doing

After Jess Camerato revealed on Twitter last week that she wasn’t returning to NBC Sports Philadelphia, I tried to list, off the top of my head, some of the departures and changes the network has presided over in the last two years:

Molly Sullivan out

Marshall Harris out

Jess Camerato out

Dei Lynam out

Neil Hartman out

Ron Burke out

Andy Schwartz out (longtime web guy)

production/creative services layoffs

new web policy restricting stories to 500 word max

I obviously missed a lot of stuff, which y’all helped remind me of:

Leslie Gudel out

Breakfast on Broad eventually cancelled, Sarah Baicker and Jillian Mele move on, Rob Ellis comes back in a different role after leaving 97.5 the Fanatic

Reuben Frank taken off Quick Slants

Tim Panaccio replaced by John Boruk

Mike Barkann moved to pre and post game roles

Brian Westbrook removed from Eagles postgame show

Amy Fadool and Marc Farzetta paired on Philly Sports Talk

new simulcast of the Mike Missanelli radio show

more short video clips on the website

didn’t renew Union broadcasting partnership (I don’t really blame them)

assimilated NBC 10 sports department (they no longer had separate anchors for NBC 10 sports segments, they’d just have Amy or John Clark or Danny Pommells do it remotely from HQ in South Philly, which made a ton of sense and saved $$$)

And, of course, Taryn Hatcher was hired as a multi-platform do-it-all person to cover a variety of roles at the station:

Host and reporter. Covering all sports – including, but not limited to, the Sixers. But, I’m not the sideline reporter for the team.

— Taryn Hatcher (@TarynHatcher) July 5, 2018

You still have regular contributors like Jim Salisbury and Corey Seidman and Dave Zangaro and Barrett Brooks and Derrick Gunn on the payroll. Roob, of course, is still writing for the site even though the TV appearances are less frequent. The various experts, like Jim Lynam and Ricky Bo, still do post-game analysis. There were some smaller hires behind the scenes and I’m not totally up to speed on who does what over there now.

I worked in television for nine years, and whenever moves like these are made it’s usually due to three things specifically:

saving money

getting younger in the talent department

trying to stay afloat in a business that has been slowly dying for a long time now

A lot of people are simply getting content from other sources via different mediums, like Twitter and Facebook through your smart phone. It is what it is.

But I feel like we can rule out that first reason, because it’s not like NBCSP is shot for money. Their Comcast overlords just built the biggest skyscraper in Philadelphia next to the now second-biggest skyscraper in Philadelphia. They sunk a bunch of money into NBC 10’s news product. They now own the Philadelphia Wings and Philadelphia Fusion in addition to the Flyers. There is definitely no shortage of cash when you go up the chain of command from Shawn Oleksiak to Michelle Murray, to whomever or whatever is above her.

So if we’re assuming that money isn’t the real issue, is it about getting younger? Maybe. Some of the old guard, the Burkes and Hartmans of this world, had been doing their jobs (very well) for a long time. But it’s not like Molly and Jess and Marshall were long in the tooth, so the age narrative doesn’t really seem to fit either. And even though you can kill two birds with one stone by replacing older, more expensive talent with younger, cheaper talent, we’ve already ruled out money as true problem.

The only real explanation would be #3, the idea that NBCSP is just totally revamping how they cover sports, with a more stripped down and bare bones approach. There are a lot of moving parts over there. Maybe it’s just not worth the effort or the cost to do everything they do, even if they CAN afford it. They could simply slash original content production entirely and focus on broadcasting the Sixers, Flyers, and Phillies, among other local teams. You can produce pregame and postgame segments, maybe enter an expanded simulcasting agreement with 97.5, and/or fill the rest of the slots with infomercials while taking in money from FIOS and Comcast carriage fees.

Specifically, you could ask yourself – do they really need an “insider” for each of the sports they cover?

I don’t know, but when you’re a team’s broadcast partner, the access and the content possibilities for someone like Camerato are significant, and she was one of the few traveling media members, so it seems goofy to stray away from that when you have a built-in advantage already. The Inquirer’s Keith Pompey is really the only other reporter who travels with the team.

Do they need sideline or “floor” reporters?

I don’t know, but I think Molly did a great job of adding flavor to the Sixers broadcast and getting interesting interviews while adding pieces of relevant information. Sure, you could just axe the position entirely and let Marc Zumoff and Alaa Abdelnaby run the entire thing from the booth, but I honestly think they should have gone in the opposite direction and tried to find more responsibility for Molly, which is what she wanted. In the case of a guy like Gregg Murphy, I think it’s easier to justify his inclusion during a longer and slower Phillies broadcast where he’s constantly moving around the ballpark and doing a variety of on-camera hits. The TV experience would feel thin and lose substance if he wasn’t involved.

Unfortunately the TV biz can be some UGLY stuff. I saw a female anchor temporarily demoted to a lesser shift because she was struggling to lose baby weight after coming back from maternity leave. One of my stations accidentally fired the wrong person because they incorrectly wrote out the list of staffers who were grandfathered into a bloated, bullshit union contract. I saw CBS 3 move on from quality anchors like Susan Barnett and Bob Kelly due to contract and responsibility disagreements. They also met Chris May, Beasley Reece, and Kathy Orr at the front door and prevented them from entering the building as they were axed a few years ago in part of a restructuring by a new general manager. Beasley’s stuff sat at his desk for something like a year, though I don’t think he cared because he was probably fishing in Texas. There was also the whole Alycia Lane and Larry Mendte fiasco that predated my time there, yet loomed over us for a good six or seven years.

That’s the problem with TV as it exists in the private sector; news-focused bosses are forced to make changes by money-focused higher-ups, and it results in this revolving door of people who never stick. Yeah, you get the hot meteorologist or whatever to attract the 40-year-old pervert crowd, then she’s gone after two years and you’re loading up with reporters and anchors who graduated from Medill two weeks ago.

One of the reasons Action News is so dominant is because they do nothing. Seriously, that’s a compliment. They’ve had Jim Gardner on the anchor desk for something like 40 years. The format is the same, the writing is the same, the graphics are the same and they simply just give you the news of the day, the weather forecast, and some sports highlights. People watch Action News because they trust Gardner and they know what they’re going to get, which goes something like this:

“…but the big story on Action News is flames, a three-alarm fire in Kensington that forced families out of their homes in the middle of the night… good evening, I’m Jim Gardner, let’s go live to Dann Cuellar in Kensington with more on the story. What can you tell us, Dann?”

Rinse and repeat, over and over and over again to the tune of utter market dominance.

Sometimes less is more, but I don’t think that’s the right approach for NBCSP. If Comcast, of all owners, is slashing jobs in their flagship market, what does that say about the sports broadcasting and journalism business as a whole? I don’t know, but it’s not good.

Anyway, I asked someone over at NBCSP to shed some light on the situation, and he/she responded with this:

“This place is nuts. No one seems to have a handle on the direction.”

Bummer. I think they’ve got some great people over there, multiple award-winners both on and off camera who deserve more from the folks in charge.

Kyle’s take:

NBC Sports Philly understands that the old guard of TV is not only not longer necessary, but it’s unsustainable. Gone are the days of CSN serving as the water cooler of Philly sports. Social media, sports talk radio, and blogs, like Crossing Broad, have taken over in this regard. Almost every piece of original content CSN used to air is completely irrelevant in 2018. They’ve made moves to shift away. So while it’s difficult to see the likes of Leslie Gudel, Neil Hartman, and even younger folks like Molly Sullivan and Jessica Camerato, who were well liked, be pushed out, NBC’s strategy to shift away from traditional coverage makes sense.

My issue, however, is what they are replacing it with. The supposedly hip, more modern fare that has come in its place, like cheeky off-beat shows, Breakfast on Broad – whose only purpose was to launch Jillian Mele into stardom (or whatever you want to call feeding the president nuggets of biased news) – and Quick Slants. They are taking a page out of ESPN’s play book 10 years ago and calling it new. In a society that increasingly values quality, at least where quantity is already provided through other means, NBC Sports Philly has doubled down on quasi junk– cheap, inexpensive fare that ultimately makes the network irrelevant to modern sports fans. The only thing that actually works in its inevitability is simulcasting Mike Missanelli’s show. Other than that, I can’t think of one notable thing CSN has done from a content standpoint that truly resonated (there might be one, but I can’t think of it), though the 2008 Phillies program they will air this month seems like it has potential.

I’m not sure there are any good answers for regionals sports networks, where cost-cutting seems to be a priority. But it seems shortsighted to get rid of basically all of your well-liked personalities. Someone like Molly Sullivan, while perhaps a so-called cap casualty, was well-liked and had a good camaraderie with Marc Zumoff and Alaa Abeladladsnamsdasdhay. It seems you can’t ask for more from a sideline reporter, though I’m certain Molly would’ve happily given them just that, given the chance.

Time’s yours.

We’re running out of room and especially talented professionals! @RonBurkeShow @tpanotchUFA @dlynamCSN @lesliegudel @36westbrook @NeilHartmanTV @MollySullivanTV @mharrisonair @JessicaCamerato pic.twitter.com/PeUkPV6dYH

— Collegeville Bakery (@CvilleItalBake) July 5, 2018

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