Quick Notes on Eightball 23 - Daniel Clowes' latest issue of Eightball is certainly worthy of extended treatment, though extended treatment is something I want to work up to. It's a hell of a work, if not one I'm yet ready to rank with Ghost World and Ice Haven. Still, a handful of things that have occurred to me so far:
o Are we sure Andy's dad wasn't a killer like Andy? There seem to be an awful lot of dead people around him. And compare Clowes' description of Andy's demise in Ending C with what we know of Andy's dad's demise. There's a pretty strong first page-last page correspondence there, and a prima facie "dramatic unities" case for a connection.
o Isn't it also the case that a major problem with Louie and Andy's moral cosmos is that they misunderstand the ethos of superhero comics rather than that they embrace it? I think this goes for their relationship to punk rock as well.
o If we reviewed artcomics like we review superhero stories we would no doubt complain that Louie's decision to try to kill Andy when Andy is at his strongest rather than at his weakest is a "plot hole" as big as the one people spy in Doc Ock's decision to throw the car through the window in Spider-Man 2.
If I Were Still a Blogger I'd . . .
wish my blogson a Happy Blogiversary;
go to the Blogarama at Kalorama on Thursday, July 29;
finally get around to updating the sidebar, adding a bunch of fine folks to the New Crew section, shipping the old New Crew links off to their permanent homes and updating and cleaning throughout;
add a full-text XML feed, as requested by reader William Leuchtenberg way back in March;
wonder what Virginia Postrel, with her nose for the vagaries of libertarian fashion, thinks of (repeated!) "libertarian" expressions of support for a presidential run by Hillary Clinton of all people. Can you beat that for attempted Bad Boy frisson?
Now, as it happens, I've done or will do all these things, whatever that means.
Pro-America, Pro-Martha, Anti-War? - Matthew Barganier identifies my demographic.
Mailbag - RGB Bill Dowling writes
Is it just me or have their been no unqualified offerings since July 11th?
No Bill, it's not just you. I've been keeping quiet about the news because I don't want to queer my Vegas act. Also, after two years of assuming that blogger burnout was something that happened to other people, I discovered I was wrong. If I were blogging, I'd note how . . . touching it is, in its way, that the New Republic believes it would be just perfect if Iyad Allawi were the sort of person who thinks like a New Republic contributor, and how maybe, just maby, he does. I'd wonder what's up with Iraq's somewhat-less-mass -than-advertised graves (thanks to reader Eric Mauro); I'd agitate for war against Iran or whoever was behind 9/11 this month; and, for sure, I'd be writing stuff every bit as good as Will Wilkinson is turning out for the redesigned Fly Bottle, oh yes. I probably wouldn't have written about Eightball #23 yet because I don't know what I think about it yet.
Anyway, while we've all fallen into an alternate universe where Patrick Nielsen Hayden blogs and I don't, that's a glimpse of what things look like back on Earth Prime. Who, really, would choose to return?
Out in Right Field - Tacitus and allies have launched RedState.Org, kind of the Republican version of the Daily Kos, I think. It has some solid contributors, albeit predominantly national greatness symps. It is sure to nurture the next generation of conservative activists, though if they increase their body text size they'll be able to nurture older ones too. Anyway, go read and be amazed or dismayed as suits you.
Fitness Blog Bonus Item - It had to happen: finally, there's an official Heavyhands site on the web. Actually it looks like there are three:
Heavyhandsfitness.com
Panaerobics.com
and yes, the Heavyhands blog. They appear to be official Leonard-Schwartz-connected sites. I can't begin to say how cool this is. Hey, Doctor Schwartz! (or whoever checks your referrer logs) - UO has been keeping the Heavyhands flame alight all this time.
Still not convinced of the merits of Heavyhands? Check out the photo of system originator Leonard Schwartz that accompanies the interview by Parker Reed.
Support the Troops' Assault on . . . Parnassus - So I'm researching a paper on the NEA, which is how I learned of its latest high-profile project, Operation Homecoming. In Chair Dana Gioia's words:
In coordination with all four branches of the Armed Forces and the Department of Defense, the Arts Endowment is sponsoring writing workshops for returning troops and their families at military installations from Alaska to Florida, New York to California, and numerous sites in between. The workshops also will be held at overseas bases. Taught by some of America's most distinguished novelists, poets, historians, and journalists, these workshops will provide service men and women with the opportunity to write about their wartime experiences in a variety of forms - from fiction, verse, and letters to essay, memoir, and personal journal. The visiting writers, many of whom are war veterans themselves, will help the troops share their stories with current and future generations.
Reactions:
1) Dana Gioia is a genius at coming up with budget items Republican congressmen would have a hard time objecting to. I mean, seriously, I am in awe. I thought the Shakespeare in America program was savvy, but the cunning of Operation Homecoming leaves me in awe.
2) On one level, Operation Homecoming strikes me as the least indefensible use of the Endowment's money I've yet heard. It's just a budgeted employment benefit for a particular class of federal employees, and the class that's performing what even most libertarians agree is a legitimate function of the state. I don't get bent out of shape when someone builds a bowling alley on a military base, so why should if fuss me if someone holds a writer's workshop?
But then, while the bowling alleys probably offer lessons, I doubt that they bring in the top bowlers on the pro tour to do the teaching. If Operation Homecoming were just a matter of "let's help returning veterans who want to write," the base command could hire local writers to come in for what would likely be less than a workshop superstar like Richard Bausch probably gets. It wouldn't make nearly the splash that Operation Homecoming aims to make, though. Operation Homecoming mixes what are undoubtedly good intentions with an attempt to make the NEA's budget War-onTerror-sacred.
Do order the free CD, though, even though it means hearing the Sullivan Ballou letter one more time. It's narrated by Gioia, who has a wonderful speaking voice; it features reflections by Richard Wilbur and Louis Simpson; and, hey, you've already paid for it.
(Postsript: I forego snarky "previous generations of American veterans produced great literature without the NEA's help," because while that is strictly true, and completely true for Wars through 1918, you can make a case that many of the World War II generation writers benefitted materially from the GI Bill, and probably many Vietnam-era writers availed themselves of postwar federal education aid of one sort or another. It's not that federal programs like the NEA never do any good. Rather, often the good they do is something the government has no business doing. The children of our returning veterans would love ponies. Doesn't mean the government should provide them, even if a few of the kids grew up to be great jockeys or breeders and enriched the lives of racing fans across the country.)
Quick Links - Blogging is slow because, well, I don't give a shit about nothin' right now. Maybe it's the heat. I've read some nice stuff recently, though, and you can too:
Will Wilkinson has a thoroughly entertaining review in Reason of two books about Gouverneur Morris, the Founding Father your mother warned you about. If you're like me, you read a lot more book reviews than you read books, so you value the ones that are experiences in themselves. Will gives us that.
While we're on the topic of stuff in the current issue of Reason, Brink Lindsay's "10 Truths About Trade" is quite good. Nut: "Again and again, serious and influential voices have raised the cry that the sky is falling. It never does. The root of their error is always the same: confusing a temporary, cyclical downturn with a permanent reduction in the economy's job-creating capacity." Nor is Tama Starr's 'Confessions of a "Woman-Owned Business" Owner' to be missed - it shows just how strong the imperatives to get with even a "voluntary" government program are.
Ever find yourself saying "Love shrimp, but they're too cheap?" Me, neither. Good thing Radley Balko is on the shrimp tariff case.
Something from the Spectator that's not by me! Lawrence Henry's short memoir of childhood adventures with firecrackers.
Gene Healy has a blood-boiling op-ed about "the criminalization of almost everything."
Spider-Blogging Condensed - Post-liposection and spoilerectomy, my review of Spider-Man 2 appears this morning on the American Spectator's website. As always when I turn heavy blogging into an article, I end up producing more original verbiage than I expect. The first sentence was designed to please Nielsen Hayden's everywhere.
Spider-Blogging: On the Right Hand - Conservative and libertarian reaction to the movie pours in: Andrew Olmsted, Alex Knapp and Daniel Drezner, plus Chris Matthew Sciabarra. Chris' article reminds me of a puzzle:
1) Steve Ditko is a big Objectivist type.
2) You can't get much farther from the Objectivist ethos than "With great power there must come . . . great responsibility." Scare-quote altruism is close to the First Deadly Objectivist Sin.
3) Many people boom Steve Ditko as the "real creator/real author" of Spider-Man, with Stan Lee a side player who hogged all the credit.
4) The altruism focus does mesh well with what we know of Stan Lee's politics and philosophy, essentially a typical mid-century New York Jewish liberalism.
5) So, what up, huh? If Spider-Man is "really" Steve Ditko's character, where is Steve Ditko in Spider-Man?
6) If 60s Marvel is stereotypically famous for "heroes with feet of clay," AND 60s Marvel was "really" the creation of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, just how many heroes with feet of clay did either of them create in their post-Marvel work?
I'm not saying there's no answer to my questions: they're genuine. If anyone has answers, I'd love to hear them.
And in Response DOD Announces New "Ultimate" Pentagon - That manga boom - it's everywhere:
In an effort to increase readership of its annual defence white paper, Japan's defence ministry plans to issue a version of it as a "manga" comic book."We'd like to be able to reach the younger generations, those in their 20s and 30s," a ministry spokesperson said.
She was unable to give further details of what form the comic would take, saying that it was still under production, but added that the ministry hopes to issue it in August.
Have your comics shop add this one to your pull list ASAP. (Hat tip: RGB Bill.)
Spider-Blogging Monday! - All Spider-Man 2 spoilers, all the time! Start here and work up.
Spider-Blogging 6: "Cool Spidey Outfit!" - So I liked the movie. You figured that out. Since that's not true for some people, it's worth noting some of the film's formal virtues.
The "Mary Jane post" that starts us off discusses the care with which the film is framed. While I personally think the "Christ figure!" and pieta sequences on the subway train would have worked with a slightly lighter touch, the images nevertheless fit perfectly with the film's themes. The burning building scene is an effective recurrence: in the first movie, the burning building is really a trap for Spider-Man. In this one it's a real danger an opportunity for heroism for Peter. The dialog this time around is much better, with some genuinely resonant lines. "This is really heavy," Peter/Spider-Man tells Mary Jane as he holds a wall off her. The single best example in the movie is "It kind of rides up in the crotch" from the elevator scene. Underplayed, offhand and a perfect statement of The Problem. There's a wonderful - and familiar - humanity to the exchange that cements Peter and Mary Jane as a couple, while he's holding up that heavy wall:
"You do love me."
"I do."
"Even though you said you didn't."
This last is priceless as all true things.
And those fight scenes. My lord. Doc Ock whipping those bags of money at Spider-Man in the bank. The train sequence, the car hurtling through the window, the satisfying, primal crunching of vehicles throughout the movie - the sounds that speak to some quivering tip of the urban hind-brain.
The Iliad had great fight scenes too. I'm not saying Spider-Man 2 is the Iliad, but I will say that even to call it "the best super-hero movie ever" is fainter praise than it deserves. I think this is a great movie, period, and would have it seen as such. I gotta go to bed, but I think there's probably a lot more one could write. I've barely discussed the villain, for instance, because I've barely begun to think about him.
All of the actors are better. I talk about Dunst at length in a prior item. JK Simmons may not be better as J. Jonah Jameson, but he's got more tones to modulate. James Franco was not up to the close of the first installment (the script wasn't exactly helping him) but he handles his larger role in 2 with more assurance. I have every confidence he'll be able to carry his share of the third movie. Willem Dafoe's cameo forgives some of the scene-chewing in S1. Nate and Jesse have written well of the "useful Raimi-isms."
If anything, I liked it better on second viewing. I anticipate many more, and happy ones.
Spoiler-Blogging 5: the Virtue of Inequality - "With great power must come great responsibility," say Uncle Ben, Stan Lee and Peter Parker. (Not, presumably, Steve Ditko.) But there's a flip side to that: you can't accept great responsibility without great "power" -really, resources. Bill Gates can do a lot more to combat disease than I can because Bill Gates is rich. Peter Parker can do a better job saving runaway trains than I can because he's super strong and agile and can shoot webs. An inequality of means - financial, mental, physical - is an absolute requirement for societal "work." We are fortunate that genuine equality is impossible because it would be the social analog of entrop"heat death" of the social universe.
Spider-Blogging 4: Is Aunt May a Bitch or What? - Let me make one thing clear right now. If Rosemary Harris doesn't get "Best Supporting Actress" for this movie there will be hell to pay. The Academy's prejudice that SF films should get technical awards only - finally broken by "Return of the King" - had better not stand in her way. I could see my own mother and grandmother in the early scene where she insists that Peter take the damn twenty dollars for his birthday, even though he's seen the foreclosure letter and won't want it. Harris is terrific throughout. There's not a trace of "real actor slumming" syndrome you sometimes get when Dame This or Sir That does a turn in a genre film.
But let's skip ahead to The Speech. You know the one. The heroism speech that convinces Peter to return to his Spider-life. (Except it doesn't, as we discussed two items down.) One one level it is "stirring" in a conventional Hollywood "moment of shit" way, though there's some special urgency to the "finally allows us to die with pride" line coming from a woman nearing the close of her days. But there are some darker levels to which the speech may drop.
Everyone I've talked to thinks that the speech indicates that May Parker has figured out what her nephew wears when he goes out at night. So is the speech her blessing on him? Maybe. Or maybe it's vengeance. She is counseling her nephew and dependent that "sometimes you have to give up the thing you want the most," which would be a life grounded in the love of the one woman he's ever cared about. It was Aunt May herself who tipped Peter to the fact that their affection had become mutual, in the hospital scene toward the end of the first movie. If she knows that Peter is Spider-Man, she is urging him to live without love for the sake of his - or someone's - idea of duty.
Well why would she do that?
Maybe because of the the prior scene between the two of them, where Peter comes clean about his role in Uncle Ben's death, and Aunt May abandons him - withdrawing her hand and her comfort and staggering upstairs under the weight of her continuing grief. Two things happen when they meet next. She tells him all that unpleasantness is "water over the dam or under the bridge or wherever," and also that business about how the world needs heroes and heroes have to give up what they want the most.
It's . . . a bit . . . unsettling. There's the possibility that she's announcing Peter's punishment: make it up to me by giving up your one chance at happiness. It's also possible that we're simply seeing where Peter's own maladaptation to the problem of self-sustenance versus altruism comes from: Aunt May knows that she and Ben sacrificed much for the sake of their nephew, and she expects Peter to do the like when presented the opportunity. Giving what you can't afford to give comes naturally to her. It's the dangerous lesson her ward has absorbed.
Spoiler-Blogging 3: Great Responsibility - to Whom???? - I said below that Spider-Man, particularly in the second movie about him, is all about the conflict between one's responsibilities and one's desires. I also said that that wasn't quite right. Peter is not just trying to sacrifice his desires for his responsibilities. He's sacrificing one set of responsibilities for another. Crucially, he's sacrificing his responsibility to people he knows for his responsibility to people he doesn't. Everyone has come to see my play, Mary Jane recriminates, except "my best friend." Surely mutually requited love, which is what Peter and Mary Jane share by the end of the first movie, entails "great responsibility." It's a responsibility that Peter flouts until nearly the end of the movie. And what about friendship? The movie opens with tension between Peter and his former roomate, Harry, because Harry blames Spider-Man for the death of his father. The movie makes clear that Peter has been avoiding Harry. It's a difficult situation to be sure. But mightn't a real friend find some way to ease Harry's pain? Aunt May, who raised Peter, is losing the house in which she raised him. Surely, if he applied his powers and talents - and attention - to the problem, he could help her save it, safely, legally and ethically.
"Joe's thirty-minute guarantee is a promise, Peter!" Mr. Aziz upbraids him at the beginning of the movie, and the film, to its credit, does not condescend to Mr. Aziz for even a moment, because he's right. Peter takes the job and Peter betrays the job.
They certainly kept the "feet of clay" concept. Peter Parker makes remarkably unsuccessful responses to the difficulties and conundra of his life. Everywhere you turn, Peter sacrifices the people closest to him on the altar of the wider community. I blame his guardians, in our Next Issue!
Spoiler-Blogging 2: Isn't It Time Someone Saved YOUR Life? - Our title comes from the movie's most important question, asked by Mary Jane Watson of Peter Parker after her "runaway bride" act. Like all rhetorical questions, the answer is obvious, which brings us back to one of Matthew Yglesias' few remaining misunderstandings about the film. Matt:
This is most notable with Spiderman's bouts of super-hero impotence which they don't even attempt to make consistent with the origin story in any way. Why would that happen? Who knows? And more important: Why cares? It happens not only to drive the story, but to drive the theme that heroism is a choice at a higher level.
Actually, this is not an utter misunderstanding. It does indeed drive the theme and it does indeed drive the story. I'm just not sure Matt quite grasps the theme.
Peter's "power outages" are clearly psychological. The campus doctor understands this perfectly well, though he thinks he's explaining things on a symbolic level rather than an actual one. Peter gives and gives and gives, and sacrifices much. I'm not going to get too all-fired proud of how well the movie conforms to my theory of the superhero story simply because Spider-Man bulked so large in the theory's formation. But it remains that Spider-Man 2 grapples fiercely - and slyly! - with the question of what we owe other people, and which other people? The movie is about the crisis point. Peter conceives the conflict as his responsibilities versus his desires. In this as in so much he is only partially right.
The bouts of "impotence" are his subconscious rebellion against a life of pure duty as he conceives it. Note that even after Aunt May's set-piece speech - about which more later - he still can't do it.
"Strong focus on what I want," he says, just before a failed leap that drops him several stories and hobbles him. So apparently whatever he wants, at that moment, is not to get his full spider-powers back.
When do his powers finally, reliably return? Only when Doctor Octopus unites his "responsibilities" and his "desires" for him. He gets his powers back when he needs them to save the love of his life. He saves a lot of other people while he's at it. He knows that "half the city" is at stake. But the trigger, the psychological Cialis that restores him to potency, is an outside force finally integrating his "selfish" and "selfless" halves for him.
That's not quite right either, but it's close enough, and we'll iron out the problems in due time. In the meantime, let's distinguish word, action and, crucially for film, image. After rescuing Mary Jane and, while he's at it, saving half New York, Peter/Spider-Man, mask off, with MJ the fly in his web, explains that they can never be together because "I'll always be Spider-Man."
Oh? Because the film has another little trick. We don't actually see Spider-Man in action thereafter. We don't see Spider-Man in action again until after we see Peter Parker staring forlornly out his window, and after Mary Jane Watson appears on his doorstep and, as she correctly notes, saves HIS life. THEN come the sirens, then the blessing of his love and finally, the leap into action.
I want to be very careful as we get to the whatitallmeans part. I don't want you to get the misimpression that I think Spider-Man 2 is a libertarian film. As I pointed out in regards to the first movie, the character's ethos is thoroughly liberal in the contemporary sense: give till it hurts. However. This movie is very much about the limits of altruism. "You do too much," Aunt May unwittingly chided Peter in the first film. In the second, his attempt to "do too much" breaks down. His very body rebels. He spends down to his seed corn on charity and comes close to having as little in the ground as Willie Loman. There is a narcissism to this level of "selflessness," and Matt's commenter Nick identifies the healing of this condition by others as the most important movement in the film:
Peter was trying to play god, in a way, by assuming that everyone would always do exactly what he expected - Mary Jane would want to stay safe and far away, people who found out his identity would give him up . . .
The most important rescue in this movie is performed by the Little Red-Haired Girl. The nominal protagonist can not save lest he be saved.
Next: Great Responsibility - to Whom???
Spoiler-Blogging: When Liberals Attack! - Matthew Yglesias somewhat misses the point of Spider-Man 2; Henry Farrell somewhat sets him straight; Brayden King somewhat understands the most important thing about the movie; and Matthew integrates their insights into a somewhat greater understanding and appreciation of the film. I think if they weren't liberals they could get the rest of the way, though Brayden King is already damn close.
What does Brayden King get? The biggie: "Like every story worth telling, it's about a girl," to quote the first line of the first movie. Whose face is the first we see, and whose the last? That would be Mary Jane Watson's. That's a gain of one bookend over the first movie, where Mary Jane is our first human image but Spider-Man the final. And what a transition between Spider-Man 2's bounding images. The first shot is a picture of a picture. "She looks at me every day," Peter narrates, mistakenly, for "she" is simply a billboard of MJ at her most made-up and ethereal - flat, creamy, dreamy, two-dimensional and, we might note, looking out at nothing from our left. The final shot is a one-level image: Dunst - still made-up, for it was to be her wedding day, but her this time, not her picture, staring out at a phase space containing different states of worry, affection, triumph and harm - staring, we might note, from our right. There have been two kinds of movement from the first image to the last - from left to right and from picture-in-picture to picture.
Okay, three kinds of movement. From a disembodied avatar of glamor in the first shot to - well, look. See her against that weathered window-frame with the cracking paint and the dark interior behind her, with her red hair and her distant expression. To me it's reminiscent of nothing so much as Wyeth's Helga pictures. Not any specific shot, mind you, but in terms of ethos.
So there's a movement from style to substance. This is wonderfully carried through the movie that passes between those two shots. One of the great things about the presentation of Dunst in Spider-Man 2 is that she's plausibly beautiful. Mrs. Offering points out that the ironed-hair do she sports in her casual shots is not her best look, but that's part of the genius of the movie - she looks like an off-duty actress. She looks like the starlets you see in the crowd shots at Laker games. Her pores are big, and right there for everyone to see when she's not on stage or at some formal function. Her cheeks are at least two tones, with enough ruddiness along the bones to recall her waitress days in the first movie. She gets more visual respect in this film - no "headlight" shots here - and she earns it: her acting skills have substantially improved over what was a credible performance first time out. Dunst doesn't improve as much as James "Harry Osborne" Franco, but she didn't need to. She is worthy of her character's role as emotional center and ethical linchpin.
Ethical linchpin? Huh? And what's all this about the liberals "somewhat" getting it? All will be revealed, Loyal Reader, in our next issue!
Happy Birthday, America! - Errands all day, fireworks with the kids in the evening. Spider-blogging will resume tomorrow, in the meantime, I offer you the following entries from Fourths past:
Crap! I see I pulled this trick last year too.
Anyway, try "We Hold These Truths," my poem "Independence," and two entries on Shanksville PA, crash site of UAL93: prose and verse.
Spider-Linking - Jesse Walker weighs in with some spoiler-dependent political subtext mixed into an actual review. It's worth noting that Jesse was at best lukewarm on the first film, so his very positive assessment of this one gains significance.
By No Means All Engineers Are Stupid but they do seem to have a poor immune response to crankery sometimes. The latest?
Italian engineer Felicce Vinci proposes an interesting hypothesis in his book "Homer in the Baltic." According to him, Odysseus was not Greek but Dutch and all events portrayed in the Homeric epic stories in reality took place around Scandinavia instead of the Mediterranean region.
That's from our good friends at Pravda. The "evidence" appears to be the usual insistence on an over-literal reading of the source story and a hunt for enough coincidental place names and geographical features to argue that the story "really" took place somewhere other than is commonly supposed. As I recall, Odysseus' Ithaka was full of vinyards. Clearly we have much to learn about the ancient viniculture of the North Sea!
(Via The Owner's Manual.)
The Media Really Does Suck, the Continuing Story - Virginia Postrel explains why what Brad DeLong calls "the big store about the economy during the last four years" doesn't get covered. The story? "--the rapid growth in productivity because of underlying structural changes."
Spider-Blogging Teaser - Steven Grant complains that
And all this is part of the problem: much of the story hinges on Peter's unwillingness to declare his love for Mary Jane and drag her into his dangerous life, because he'll always have enemies and they'll try to get to him through her. But there's not the slightest sense that anything of consequence (aside from Peter's inability to hold a job) has even happened in two years. Where are all these villains who are going to threaten Mary Jane, how will they know she has anything to do with Spider-Man, and what does it matter since the only two villains who have apparently appeared in two years go after her anyway?!
Italics in original. Actually, there are a lot more italics in the original. I couldn't face reproducing them all.
Regarding the very last bit, I think Nate brought it up when we saw the film, too, but more in a "Heh, he might as well" than a "What were they thinking?" way.
Here's the thing: that Peter Parker? He don't make such good decisions sometimes. That's the point of the movie. He spends most of it failing to successfully integrate his various responsibilities and desires. Smart boy, good heart, but he ain't got a lick of sense.
Much. More. Later.
Grant's bit about nothing of consequence having happened in two years strikes me as simple uncharitability on the reviewer's part. It's clear that Spider-Man is a prominent figure whose picture sells papers and that he's actively pursuing crimefighting, which is why Peter Parker's personal life is teh suck. He is no longer living with Harry Osborn and his relationship with Harry is, from early in the movie, strained. We can infer a certain change there, and the movie even makes it pretty clear what causes the estrangement. Mary Jane has made progress on her career. Peter is - but wait. This is supposed to be a teaser.
Spider-Blogging Weekend - I intend to blog in detail about Spider-Man 2 until you're sick of it, I'm sick of it and even Avi Arad, if he dropped by, would be sick of it. The heavy stuff will start after UO Viewing Number Two (aka Mrs. O. Viewing Number One) tomorrow. In the meantime, Nate has a good review, and I can vouch for the fact that he has seen the movie. Contains a few spoilers. Dave Fiore offers a fascinating linkage of the two Spider-Man movies so far to a tradition of romantic comedy whose very name constitutes a spoiler, so click at your own risk if you haven't seen the movie. All I'll say for the time being is that two years ago I wrote
Among the things Spiderman is is a coming-of-age movie. But not just Peter Parker's coming of age: it's also about the maturation of Mary Jane Watson.
The extent to which that continues to be the case in the second movie is worth some spoiler-rich blogging. ALL this site's Spider-blogging will be spoiler-rich as of Sunday morning, on the theory that Come on, people! What's taking you so long to see this thing?
A Specter is Haunting Matthew Yglesias, the specter of libertarianism. Anti-libertarian kvetching and more congenial topics now on offer at his new, maybe-temporary, maybe-permanent Typepad site.
FCBD3! - Tomorrow!
Yes, tomorrow you can walk into any participating comic book store in America and walk out with one or more comic books for no money. If you're not sure where the closest comic book shop is to you, click the logo and use the handy store locator. I plan to do a little tour of Montgomery County's emporia - we have three or four stores, two of them excellent.
If you're wondering what to pick up, you'll have quite a selection, encompassing pretty much any genre you care to name: humor, horror, social commentary, superheroes, science fiction and more. If you'd like to have some idea of what to grab ahead of time, let Laura Gjovaag and Johanna Draper Carlson be your guides. In each case, start with the offered link and scroll down.
Dear Liberal Readers, Commenters, Bloggers - Let me explain something. I am not saying that the problem with Eugene Volokh is that he's a libertarian. I'm saying I think he's not libertarian enough.
I'm glad we got that straight.
Slightly Longer Spider-Man 2 Reaction - It's as if the movie were my response to Steven Grant. Naturally, Grant himself is hot and cold on the movie.
More in-depth stuff about the movie this weekend, after I take Mrs. Offering to see it.