I've never read any of the Harry Potter books. I've never seen a complete Harry Potter movie, although I have seen little chunks of a couple at other people's houses. I generally understand all the hoopla, though. Everyone wants a hero. Kids want kids heroes. It's good. I can dig it.

Because of Netflix, I occasionally watch kid's movies (and not just rewatch the ones I saw when I was a kid). But I don't really connect to them like I did when I was young. They are rather lightweight. Even the ones critics try to push off as great movies for adults and kids alike. Wall-E was good, but was it the greatest movie ever? Not really. The story is really straightforward, and it felt rather cold to me. It's still a kids movie, and that's the main thing. If kids don't get it, then it's not going to work.

But I discovered this week that the girl (Emma Watson) in the Harry Potter movies is rather hot. And she's 19 now (in real life anyway), so I guess that's okay. She's only half my age. I might end up watching those flicks someday. I only feel slightly skeegy about this.

My entertainment magazine indulged this new celebrity crush by having a spread on the dresses she wore to all the Harry Potter premieres. And, of course, they had ratings on how good the dresses were and how well she pulled them off. Ms. Watson fared rather well. I don't think there was anything less than a B- for any of them. I'm not a fashionista at all. I rarely can tell the difference between a D and a B. I think it's a combination of how much the grader likes the person in the dress and how much they like whoever made the dress. In other words, these grades are kinda stupid.

You might be wondering why this is my topic for the week. Because I could bitch again about health care (my platform is get rid of health insurance). Or rhapsodize about Walter Cronkite (but he was, like Howard Cosell, before my time for the most part). Or tell you that, once again, it was really freakin' hot in Albuquerque (so hot, in fact, we a record high low temp...it only got down to 76 Friday morning).

But that's old news. Kinda like saying that Heather Graham is a movie star (again) because of her ten minutes in The Hangover. Kinda like her ten minutes in Swingers...thirteen years ago!

I was having lunch at Dion's this week (local pizza chain), and an uncle or grandfather was trying to engage his pre to early teenage nephew or grandson (hard to say these days...I'm an uncle and in a few years I'll be old enough to be a grandpa...this guy was older than me by at least a decade) in conversation. Knowing that the boy had gone to see Transformers II: Sounds of Metal Crashing Into Metal, he asked if Megan Fox had made an impression (funny how nobody talks about the robots). And then went on to talk about this young actress in detail from tattoos to body parts. I'm not sure if the boy made a definitive answer yes or no about Ms. Fox, but uncle/grandpa was certainly into her.

Over ten years ago, a young Britney Spears graced the cover of Rolling Stone. A conversation about this girl (at the time still underage) began at my workplace, which was a newspaper. The conversation didn't last long. The newsroom was rather female heavy and talking about the body of a seventeen-year-old celebrity was frowned upon.

I'm not sure what my point is. I seem to have confused myself. Something has distracted me.

Oh yeah, my boss got fired this week. And the other marketing job in the office was eliminated (she was quitting anyway). This cut our office staff by a third. Company management (headquartered in Georgia) flew in on Wednesday, had meetings with our local client, came into the office around four on Thursday and left at about 5:30. Apparently our problem is communication with the client. It's kinda hard to tell for sure since the company manager telling us this speaks Greek. Literally.

It's kind of interesting that corporate people can fly in for less than two days, have meetings and then fly out again. We talk to our client daily. We have formal meetings weekly. I'm not sure bad communication is really our problem.

But I know the problem isn't that the young actress in Harry Potter has grown into a rather attractive young woman. And she's British, too--which is always cool.

Matt Worley doesn't want to hear "at least you still have a job" again.