Thursday, May 24

Finally, a day in which something exciting happened: I bought a new guitar. It's a beauty, too. Thing's made entirely of graphite, which provides great stability and (hopefully) a long, consistent life. Playing it is like playing silk, if that's a permissible metaphor. Not sure it actually works, but you probably get what I'm trying to say.

And evidently, buying a graphite guitar is a way in which I'm helping the environment. According to the salesman, Sitka spruce (the wood that most regular guitars are made from) is quickly becoming scarce due to the influence of the Asian housing market (if all else fails, let's just blame it on the Asians, I suppose). In fact, according to some estimates, we may be completely out of Sitka in six years or less. Thus, in purchasing a graphite guitar, I have not contributed to the further deforestation of the Sitka spruce.

However, I bet my "carbon footprint" (I put it in brackets because it's not a real thing, as some would have us believe) is huge considering the guitar is made completely of carbon. Hmm.

In other exciting news, we also went to see Spider Man 3. A good, if not great, movie. It had all the web-slinging action one would expect from that venerable franchise of comic book-dom, but it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that I think the other movies had. The villains were alright and the storyline was okay, but it felt like they mailed it in a little bit. The main issue was that the ending was somewhat unsatisfactory.

Spoiler text time. For those who've seen it, highlight this block of material with your mouse and it'll magically appear. For those who haven't seen it, skip to the next block of white text (note: couldn't quite get the text colour to match the background exactly--oh, the imperfections of Blogger. It should be adequately concealed, but if you're really anal about it, there are only two paragraphs of it, so scroll past. Sorry about that).

Oy, that ending! I understand the importance of teaching moral lessons--in fact, I'm quite impressed with the calibre of I'm-okay-you're-okay lessons in that one--but seriously, how many misunderstood villains can Spidey possibly team up with? So what, the sandman realizes the error of his ways and stops robbing banks? Hello, your kid is still sick! What are you going to do, go on daytime TV and tell them how you're a really good guy who's gotten some bad breaks?


And then there's that storyline with Harry. Gosh. For two movies now, Peter's been trying to tell this dolt that he didn't kill his dad, and he doesn't believe it. Meanwhile, the trusty butler (in a scene that felt out-of-context) tells him the same thing, and he suddenly believes him? What, not a word of question? And then, he has this attack of conscience and decides to valiantly fight alongside our hero, even giving his life for the greater good? Wow. I think I missed the part where I was supposed to connect with the character's motivations. In fact, they could've spent a lot more time on that, and a lot less time on the I'm-going-to-ask-MJ-to-marry-me storyline.

Anyway, this reviewer gives it 3 noodles out of 5. Why noodles? Not sure. It seems every other arbitrary standard is taken, so why not? As much as it (the movie, not the noodle) was disappointing in some parts, it was still a Spider Man movie, and it still had those eye-popping special effects that will keep me coming back. And hey, what person (or what guy, at least) doesn't watch a superhero movie and come out feeling just a little bit more pumped up? Whenever I see a movie like that, it makes me want to go save a damsel in distress (spoiler-text bracket joke: as long as I don't kiss her, I suppose).

With that, another entry comes to a close. Since I've stopped updating my other blog, I've decided to make Fridays picture days around here, so tune in for tomorrow's entry--it'll be fun. Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.