jwaneeta

-- if you like comics at all. Maybe even if you don't. Hard to say. Maybe you sort of have to like comics to appreciate the tone of this flick -- affectionate, earnest, knowingly over the top, and often genuinely hilarious. Somehow the director managed a take that not only captures Stan Lee's heyday but the very feelings comic book readers have for comic book heroes -- yeah, we know it's cheesy, okay, but where else are you gonna find such an embarrassment of unabashed heroism and selfless angst in this cynical old world?

There are things in this movie that are actual improvements over the original Webhead Hamlet cycle. If the villanous Doc Ock was half this interesting the first time around, I missed it, for instance, and Mary Jane doesn't make me want to spork my eyes out. And maybe only a movie made many years after the original story could so expertly distill Peter Parker's snakebitten and tragic nebbishness. And that smouldering Harry Osborne! Hubba hubba.

Better than the first. Much. The first movie wasn't a crime or anything, but it didn't deserve to rake in half a billion dollars. This one does.

In other news, the Midwest continues to astound. One odd thing about this place is that people still use checks for practically everything. In LA the assumption is always that one's motives for using a check are suspect if not downright evil, and you get the hairy eyeball if you reach for a pen. Here they pay for gas with checks, for meals with checks, for movie tickets with checks, and no one asks for ID. Boggling.

And people here all have the same idea at the same time. It was raining and cold today, and every soul in Omaha decided it would be a fine idea to visit the zoo -- because no lines in the rain, right? Lord, what a mob scene.

Learned today that there's a thing in this world called a Racoon Dog. I kid you not. It looks like a racoon, but it's an honest to God dog, and it's the only wild canine that hibernates. They have sensitive little noses. I wish I could have a Racoon Dog.