June/2004: Movie-going - For quite a while now, I've touted the movie Unbreakable as the best comic book movie of all-time, despite it not being a de facto comic book before the genius of M. Night Shyamalan brought it to life. While I still consider Unbreakable a better movie than Spider-man 2, there is no doubt in my mind that Spider-man 2 is now the greatest comic book movie ever done.

For that don't know who Spider-man is, let me backtrack and bring you up to speed...

Get out. Just get out.

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Vote Libertarian Michael Badnarik in 2004
Now that we have the morons out of here, Spider-man 2 is the goodness. As much as I liked Spider-man 1, it is simply outshone on every level by the sequel. Spider-man 1 got the ball rolling by staying TRUE TO THE CHARACTERS and Spider-man 2 picks up the ball and runs the rest of the way.

I grew up reading Spider-man. The guy is supposed to be a tragic hero that wrestles with his confidence and fears about doing the good work he does. He eschews life, friends, family to sub-merge into the life he has been thrust into, due to his sense of responsibility. No other media form of Spider-man has captured this important essence of the character, but Spider-man 2 did. Peter goes through crisises of confidence throughout the film, and his redemption is stellar. The most important thing to me though, is the characters.

When you have established properties like Spider-man and other comic characters, a movie-maker has to understand that they're established for a good reason: People like them. Don't change them. Just don't do it. Don't make Catwoman a black version of "The Crow." Don't take Bullseye and make him a psychopath, he's a sociopath. A funny sociopath. Don't carve shit on his head. In other words, don't make the movie Daredevil at all. Nor the last three Batman movies. Or any of the Superman (He gives up his powers for Lois, and then gets his ass kicked in a bar? BULLSHIT) movies. Don't do that. These characters became loved for a reason! They were already well written!

Sam Raimi and the screenwriters GET Peter Parker. Furthermore, they GET Mary Jane Watson, J. Jonah Jameson, John Jameson, Harry Osbourne, Otto Octavius...

Speaking of Otto Octavius, what a performance! Alfred Molina IS Doc Ock. He's perfect! The origin is perfect! The casting is perfect! The performance is perfect! The powers are perfect! The attitude is perfect! The lines were perfect! The special effects were perfect! FUCKING CHRIST IT WAS PERFECT. His end was perfect! PERFECT PERFECT PERFECT!

PERFECT!

I can't say enough about what they did with Doctor Octopus. They didn't bitch-out and make him a psychopath. They made him the complex character he is. He has to come back. Has to. HAS TO!

oh, and J. Jonah Jameson! PERFECT!

Mary Jane Watson? PERFECT!

Ben Urich? PERFECT!

Aunt May? PERFECT!

PERFECT PERFECT PERFECT!

Hollywood has never, ever done a comic book movie better. Ever. Never. Ever. The acting was top notch. It wasn't JUST a fucking action movie. It wasn't a bunch of fight scenes strewn together. Why? Because Spider-man the comic book was never that. Half of the series is Parker's problems in life. That's the series! And it's in the movie! Valhalla! The scene at the party where he can't get the party food, and he has terrible luck throughout is simply Peter Parker. Nothing more can be said.

Fuck Peter Jackson, he has nothing on Sam Raimi. Sam Raimi doesn't know how happy he made us true comic book fans. The guy just ripped a bunch of classic Spidey stories and made a movie out of them. That is how it SHOULD work. The humor, drama and characters just can't be beat. A great ending that even I inwardly cheered at, and it set up the sequel nicely.

I was going to do some stupid review, but fuck that, just go see it. It's perfect! The perfect comic book adaptation.

PERFECT!

June/2004: The SNP - A lot of things have come easy to me during life. Reading history, public speaking, argumentation... quite a few traits. Public speaking is listed high on many American's "biggest fears" list, so it's something to be somewhat proud of.

One of the things I'm the most proud to have mastered is being alone. Grew up alone 90% of the time. Prepared me for a nice, typically-solitary adulthood. I'm very good at being alone in almost all areas. Except one. A very simple one I should be good at, but cannot master for the life of me.

Watching movies.

I love movies. I take endless joy in them. Love to watch them, love to "rent" them, you name it. Currently I have about 140 movies that I can watch. Now, of those, I've probably seen (and enjoyed) 100 of them. That leaves roughly forty movies that I have which I have not seen. Should be boredom bliss, no?

Nope. Can't do it. I have lost the ability to sit and watch a full-length film by myself. I simply cannot do it. I attempt it often, and fail. Just the other night, I started up "Finding Nemo", which I have not seen. Made it about eight minutes before breaking out to do something else. Tried "Lost in Translation" and got to see that the quality of it is very good. Went for, of all things, "Stuck On You" and got nowhere.

So I have all these movies and no real way to watch them. I love movies, they're wonderful... but it's impossible now. I used to be able to watch them alone. I used to go to the theater all the time, by myself, to watch films. I saw "Unbreakable" in the theater by myself three times before I saw it in the theater with someone else. Something changed. Not quite sure what it is. But it's something.

The fact that I can't watch movies alone anymore makes me wonder what else I can't do alone? Or what may I not be able to do alone in the future? Sitcoms? Wrestling? Music? Restaurants? Losing my superpower of "alone" would be a fate worse than death. I've long watched too many pathetic individuals make bad social choices just so they won't have to be alone. It's the biggest driver of human beings into bad relationships. I submit that it has created more bad relationships than even alcohol.

I may just have to invest in a prostitute. I wonder if it would be against the law to pay a female to lay around and watch movies with you. Could you go to jail for that? It is technically solicitation. Probably not, since you can pay for females to 'escort' you to parties and such. How transient, considering that I would obtain more pleasure from just hanging out with a film than random fuckery.

Anyways, I think I will simply continue to accumulate movies until if I meet someone. And if I do, they better fucking love movies. If not, they're going to be really, really bored. Really. Really. Bored.

Poor hypothetical chicka.

I'm starting to know how Superman feels when he gets close to kryptonite... just too bad I enjoy my kryptonite so much.

June/2004: The SNP - That's right, it's Sunday night.

So tonight, I've basically flipped between the computer, the TV and video games. Right now, I'm watching "CNN Presents... Warsaw Rising" for the third time tonight. Yes, that's right, I've already watched it twice today. It is simply amazing. Such heroism. It is hard to truly grasp what the Polish that rose up in 1944 against the Germans were made of. It is harder to grasp that the same elements that composed their bodies, compose ours. These were mostly uneducated, poor individuals who grabbed stones and old rusty pistols to fight infantrymen and tanks.

The special is simply well-produced and presented without gain. It paints the major three allies in equally bad light. The Russians, for killing the Poles who helped throw the Germans into disarray in the city. The English, for selling out Poland to the Russians after the war. And lastly, America, for not pressing Stalin to "allow" us to help the rag-tag fighters who needed ammunition. It is simply a moving special on every level, positive and negative.

Positive, because humanity can be as great as those thousands of brave poles. One particularly touching story involved an underground fighter who organized volunteers to storm the nearby concentration camp. The commander of the Polish forces said it was too risky, but the fighter found the troops to do it, took one of two repaired German tanks, and liberated the camp. Only a few hundred Jews remained inside the camp (Most of the Jewish populance had died in the even more heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943), yet these poles risked their lives to save them. Upon entering the back area of the concentration camp, the leader of the rag-tag force happened upon a military-trained Jew, who saluated and presented to the Poles what would become one of two Jewish brigades. Straight out of the concentration camps.

Yet, negative, as well. The ultimate betrayal of those underground fighters, and the reminder of just how evil the Germans were. Murdering the Polish populance randomly, destroying eighty percent of the city just out of hatred. And also negative, when you consider the attitude we have towards Poles today. They're derided as stupid, as inferior by many. However, no nation occupied by the Germans, including the French, resisted as sternly. They charged on horses in vain to struggle against the Germans at the start of the war, and lobbed stones and petrol bombs to struggle against the Germans at the end of the war. They paid a terrible price at both points, and then paid an even worse price for forty plus years afterward under Soviet rule.

And if I were to say the above to ninety plus percent of people my age, I would be met with a shrug and a vapid "okay." What a shame that most can't appreciate these past heroes, let alone appreciate the why of how hard they struggled: For freedom.

Other than watching the same hour-long documentary three times on CNN, I also got to catch quite a bit of an old Ronald Reagan interview with Larry King. I'd say more about that, however, Larry King is the world's worst interviewer.

I also took the time to check out a preview of "The Incredibles", the upcoming Pixar movie about a family of superheroes that come out of retirement to deal with a menace to their city. Simply incredible looking, and it's great to see Pixar create something that is a tad more geared towards adults. Their animation style is definited suited towards these sorts of projects, and hopefully they do more of them. Otherwise, I'm simply excited for "The Village", because I'm completely enthralled with anything M. Night Shyamalan does. He could do the third installment of the Brady Bunch movies and I'd be all over it.

Erika posted a nice story about getting to meet her absolute favorite singer and how nice he was to her. Very cool of him, but I still don't understand how one is supposed to act around a "celebrity" they look up to. Before Elliott Smith stabbed himself in the chest twice, I went over in my head what it would be like to meet him, and each time I thought of potential scenarios, they all went terrible. I had nothing in common with someone like him, and I don't even know what I would have talked about. The music? How cliche, talk about something that any artist wouldn't want to talk about. I just don't get how one is supposed to act. It, to me, seems like a lose-lose situation. Then again, Erika won, so... I guess the previous sentence is incorrect.

The weather here has been terrible, as it always is during our "Rose Festival." I think I'm supposed to be excited because it's Rose Festival time again... however, I've already dealt with this shit twenty five times so it's already lost it's luster. Sometimes I think about moving to a new city just so I could go do something new. I've done everything here, or at least, everything unique that I would want to do. Then again, would another city have all that much that is unique and different from our own "unique and different" events? Even Pasadena has it's own "Rose Parade", so I suppose I would be bored anywhere.

The woman at Subway undercharged me by two bucks yesterday. That was good food.

Lastly, today, my diet consistented of a milkshake, half a bottle of Sunny Delight, and a bag of Chex Mix. And not spread over a twelve hour period, but all in the same single hour.

Ugh. That was dumb.

June/2004: PeeJ musing - There are dreadfully few drawbacks to running Perverted-Justice.com. There are certainly even fewer long-term drawbacks... save one. It, to me, is the largest drawback to running that website. And it has been a consistent drawback. It's a drawback that makes it hard to start up the email in the morning, and difficult to sometimes read the forum in the evening. Sounds terrible, no? Sure. But it's not terribly terrible, if you can wrap your mind around that.

Compliments.

That's the drawback. Consistently, since the site was started, I've received often lavish praise over the website and how I run it. Compliments ranging from theological in nature (God bless you!) to atheistic in nature (Thank you for showing the world that atheists care!). All manner of compliments, really. And I hate it. I really, really hate it.

I've been online four or five years now, and typically I've gotten to deal with a lot of hatred. Hatred for strongly-worded opinions, statements, or moral stances. I'm comfortable with hatred. Hatred is actually fun to receive. It's easy to mock. I've been called every name in the book, so they don't exactly mean anything anymore when I hear them. Just gives a nice outlet to make fun of the person who is trying to lay down some serious insult.

However, with PeeJ, it's compliment city. Can't mock them, that'd be a terrible thing to do to someone. All you can do is say "Thanks, it's a team effort." But often, that isn't enough. a person will still go on with the compliments. It's enough to drive me batty. The website is a team-driven enterprise. Complimenting myself is foolhardy in the face of that. But moreover, I just hate hearing it, even if it were to be justified.

What special commendation should someone be given for doing something that anyone should do? None. Objectively, nothing I've done with the website is compliment-worthy because it is nothing more than what you should do. Looking from a strict point of view, paying myself a compliment is like saying "oh, what you're doing is so extraordinary, I could never do that." Yet, the fact is that you could have done it, and probably would have. So why compliment me? Makes no sense.

I often have seen the same sort of issue arise when dating. I would be paid compliments for doing things that I don't even think about doing, they're that natural. I was once complimented for simply listening. Listening! Is, of all things, listening that difficult for the typical male that it is now somehow compliment worthy? No. Just that they don't do it. That doesn't mean I should obtain a compliment when *I* do it, it means they should recieve condemnation when they don't do it.

I consider PeeJ the same way. Don't give me a compliment on it. It not only makes me uncomfortable, but it's rather insulting as well. Not insulting to me, but insulting to who the reasonable person should be. The reasonable person should undertake projects such as this. It shouldn't be viewed as difficult, for the work is it's own reward. Only contextually, in view of this shitty society and how horrible humanity commonly is, should what I do be complimented. And I would rather not be paid compliments because everyone else sucks so hard.

One notable example was the webmaster of a website that emailed me a few months ago, wanting to give me an award for the work I do on Perverted-Justice.com. I politely responded to her, explaining that the website was a team effort, and that the award should be given to the team that accomplishes what we do. The person responded and agreed, but then never did it. However, had I said "oh yeah, I'll take it", I bet it would have happened right away. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not insulting the person, it just typifies how people seem to view things.

They want an individual face to things. It can't be a group compliment in general. I suppose it's easier to think a person is doing something, rather than persons. I really don't understand why people are quick to compliment individuals yet slow to compliment a team of individuals. It makes no sense to me. Why anyone would view that front page and immediately think to give commendation to myself is out of this world. Can people not read the names of the people actually posting the chats?

It reminds me, in some ways, of the presidency. How many of us say "Oh, ______ was a great president!" when in actuality, most ideas come from the cabinent, or advisors. The recent death of Ronald Reagan is a great example. It is no slam on Reagan to point out that his many speeches were the brain-work of speechwriters. That some of his noble lines were actually the idea-children of others. When he called upon Gorby to tear that wall down in so many eloquent lines, he was complimented extravagantly for it. Yet if it were not for that speechwriter, no sentences are uttered.

I simply prefer to view humanity as it should be, not as it is. We should be better people, at base. We shouldn't be so terrible to each other, yet we are. That doesn't mean you commend the person doing what the reasonable person should do. Not at all. It is an insult to our forefathers, who often did far greater tasks with less rewards. It's an insult to ancestors who fought Imperialism, Nazism and tyranny of all other forms. I truly wonder, of those who have emailed me compliments... did they find a WW2 veteran? And if so, since they complimented me, did they get on their knees and lavish praise upon that veteran of that great war? Did they give gifts upon him? Because the compliment I was given should be multiplied by a factor of one million for someone who actually did do something heroic. Yet, I doubt that they did. Or even if they truly sat back and thought about the kind of sacrifice WW2 veterans made.

That is the worst part of each good tiding. Thoughts of the truly great... at the end of their lives, going without commendation. How does one take a compliment with such thoughts in your mind? Basically, you don't take the compliment. You say "thanks" to wrap up that section of the conversation, and then you move on to another topic quickly. That is the major drawback to running the website. It is literally the most uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling that I have to deal with.

Hopefully after writing this, I won't have to experience it again.