Random Ramblings

6-27-07
During the month of July, I am going to participate in a personal NaNoWriMo with a couple of friends. For those of you that don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a contest where one tries to complete a 50,000 word first draft of a novel within the span of a calendar month. I’ve read the first half of NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty’s book No Plot? No Problem! (the second half is read during the weeks of the writing month), and I’m currently working on the week planning period. 50,000 words in the span of a month still seems like a daunting task to me, but I’m excited. I haven’t done near enough writing lately.

6-25-07
Yesterday I broke down and spent ten dollars on the Fair to Midland album Fables From a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times is True. I had heard the name Fair to Midland in the past, but only just recently heard a couple of songs by them. The album is real cool, I particularly like “Dance of the Manatee,” “Vice/Versa,” and “The Wife, The Kids, and the White Picket Fence.” Fair to Midland had a bit of a Breaking Benjamin (somewhat like “Polyamorous”) sound to them. And there’s something about the way they sound that I can’t quite put my finger on. Check them out when you get a chance.

Also, I did too many pages for this month, so there will be an additional update on Wednesday.

6-8-07
I just found out that they are making an I Am Legend movie starring Will Smith as Neville. I know this could very well be another good book desecrated, but for now I’m hopeful. I Am Legend is a classic horror story by Richard Matheson. The Charlton Heston movie, The Omega Man—one of the few movies that I’ve seen that actually scared me—was based off I Am Legend. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait for December for this one.

6-1-07
The last week or so I’ve read the book Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller. I finished reading it the other day. Then I read Ayn Rand’s Anthem in a day’s time.

I thoroughly enjoyed Blue Like Jazz. I understood Miller’s point of view and I feel like I deal with a lot of the emotional struggles he dealt with. In the end, I felt as if I had the opportunity to sit down and have dinner with Mr. Miller; it felt like he became an acquaintance if not a friend.

Ayn Rand’s story was an interesting story in the spirit of 1984, but in the last ten pages, the main character became a mouthpiece for Rand’s social beliefs. I’m all for an author working his or her beliefs into a story—in fact, I rather enjoy when they do so—but the shift from the plot of the story to the soapbox moral was so blunt that it took me out of the moment. Not knowing what to expect from the book, I thought she was going to preach from page one, and to be honest, I probably would have been more receptive if she had done so.

Sadly, Rand and Miller held two different attitudes towards people and how one should approach social relationship. Reading the two books back-to-back gave me a lot of trouble. In the end, I favor Miller’s point of view to Rand’s.

5-25-07
Ah, Memorial Day. It’ll be good to have the day off, even considering that I have to kill myself meeting early deadlines in order to get the day off. However, I don’t think I’ll bother worrying about the website’s deadline. You guys can just wait until after my day of relaxation for the new comic to be posted. And I only say that because I know you are wonderful and compassionate people.

5-18-07
Ugh! AT&T is so annoying. First their modem gives me problems, now they can't seem to grasp the concept that my name is not Jim. Considering the outrageous connection fees they hit me with, maybe I should try to give the bill to Jim.

5-9-07
Almost caught up. Tomorrow we should be back to the regularly scheduled program.

5-7-07
And we’re back. It’s so good to have internet and to be able to update the site again. It’s only been a week and it feels like months. I wouldn’t have missed any of the updates if AT&T didn’t have problems with their modems. Honestly, you would think that a reputable company like that would at least have halfway descent tech support. I spent an hour and a half with them on Thursday night. I spoke with two people and was disconnected three times. The last time they didn’t bother calling me back and by then I was so frustrated I went to bed.

I didn’t have another chance to call them until Sunday night. After the woman I spoke couldn’t resolve my problem she put me on hold until she could transfer me to someone else. Transferring me to someone else turned out to be the same as putting me on hold. Frustrated again, I left to run a few errands. When I came back, the modem was miraculously connected to the internet so I was able to finish the setup. So either they did something without me or the modem fairy took mercy on me. Either way, this better be good internet service. AT&T has a lot to atone for.

In other news—as most of your probably know—Spider-Man 3 has reached the theaters. Personally, I think this was the weakest of the three. I enjoyed the movie, don’t get me wrong, but it could have been much better; it could have been two movies. Instead they crammed so much into two hours and twenty minutes that nothing was fleshed out well enough. I’m sure no one would have objected to a Spider-Man 4 featuring Venom.

The movie starts off paddle balling back and forth between Sandman and Harry as the villain and then Venom shows up too late to play much of a role. They gave Sandman depth that as far as I know he doesn’t possess in the comics, but his story isn’t developed until the eleventh hour. Even at the beginning of the movie, it seemed pretty obvious that [spoiler] he didn’t kill Uncle Ben on purpose [spoiler], but his story never goes anywhere until the last few minutes of the movie.

Harry’s story as the “New Goblin” felt forced. The movie dives right into him using the serum to enhance himself and leaves the audience to assume that he researched the formula between movies. There is no indication that he the process drove him insane, as it had his father. [spoiler] The Spider-Man/Goblin team-up was fun to watch, but Harry’s discussion with the butler-who-knows-more-than-he-lets-on seemed contrived and Harry’s Han Solo-eque rescue was predictable [spoiler].

Finally, Venom. I admit, he’s my favorite Spider-Man villain (as he is many reader’s favorite), so the poor handling of the character brought me much chagrin. Where Sandman was given depth he didn’t have in the comics, Venom was drained of his character and portrayed as a two-dimensional evil villain. In Venom’s deluded mind, he’s not a villain, Spider-Man is. In fact, Eddie Brock is not even a bad guy. In the movie, however, we see Eddie intentionally write a bogus story for the newspaper and we hear Venom proclaim that he loves being evil.

One of my favorite moments of Eddie’s story (in the comics) is the moment when the symbiote first attaches to him. His career has hit rock bottom, his wife has left him, his father has disowned him, and he goes to church to ask God to forgive him for committing suicide. In the movie, Eddie goes to church and starts praying to God. I’m there emotionally; I’m on the verge of tears. Then he asks God to kill Peter Parker. What the Hell!!! It’s the same crap I got in Return of the King where they replaced Gollum’s most emotional scene from the book with him throwing bread off of a cliff.

Many readers consider Gwen Stacy to be Peter’s true love; that his relationship with Mary Jane will never be what his relationship with Gwen could have been. Yet there was no real connection between her and Peter in the movie. Her entire role was to make Mary Jane jealous; that’s the only purpose she served.

Peter’s struggle with the symbiote was handled competently enough, but the moral center of the movie was merely a shadow of that of the first two. The intro and ending narration did not strike the same notes as in Spider-Man 1 & 2. Instead if felt like one of Aesop’s Fables, spelling out the moral of the story for anyone dim enough to not be able figure it our for themselves.

Nonetheless, I left the theater relatively satisfied, and not furious like when I left X-Men 3.

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