VENOM!

The teaser trailer for Spiderman 3 is here. in other uber-geek news i will be making Photogal take me to see Superman Returns for my birthday proper at some point Friday. I'm also trying to talk her into taking me to the last Figdish show at Elbo Room. it should be quite a birthday day, eh? I'm sure it shall seem tame compared to my birthday party but, eh, I'll be old and won't care.

Also, what do you think the chances are of me getting Photogal to wear a get-up like the one the young lady to the left is sporting? I mean, it will be my birthday, right?!

Okay, maybe birthday wishes can't make every dream come true...

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Speaking of growing old.

Dear Louis Menand,

I read your Talk Of The Town piece in last week's New Yorker and I've got to say it shocked me. It shocked me that The New Yorker would choose such an incredible puff piece as the lead to that section when they usually reserve that spot for honest bits of cultural (or (gasp!) political) criticism. Instead, this week what we got was a piece that painted its writer as being the epitome of the old codger bleating at those wild and crazy kids, along with the bleated caveat that said kids will never understand the bleating in the first place because they just wouldn't get it anywayt. I understand some of your points were meant to be "witty" and "tongue in cheek" but I regret to inform you they actually came off as "flat" and "foot firmly in mouth." Especially "delightful" is your clumsy comparison of teenagers to dogs in the schematic of which one makes an audience feel further diminished. And your defense of the "adult" regard of Billy Joel's music. I'll grant you a couple of his tunes pre-'84 but if you honestly are trying to defend anything from the last 20 years then I grant that your "chemistry has altered" and your internal critic is a compass without a point.

Keep in mind that I am no longer firmly within the ranks of youth. But I don't begrudge them their experiences and I'm not jealous that I can't possess their joie de vivre and temper it with my experienced wisdom. Tell me, as I get older will my humor fall over more tone deaf as well? Golly gee willikers, I hope not!

However I guess if you dare to question the viewpoints of an elder there's a very real chance that he won't hear your words so, for all intents and purposes, if you're over 54 this screen might as well be blank.

Sincerely,
Moi

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And one more thing.

When I was in San Diego proper (a.k.a. city 'hoods and the like) the populace looked like a bunch of Californians and the locale, to my sensibilities, seemed slightly exotic. However when I was eating breakfast at the Denny's next to my hotel, which happened to be across the street from a faceless shopping mall that bordered a featureless highway on the edge of town, I realized the clinetle looked exactly like the folks I might find in a Denny's anywhere in Southern Illinois or rural Indiana or upstate New york or anywhere else in the U.S.A. They all had that slack-faced, overfed sense of frustrated entitlement, along with the anger bubbling under that comes with losing out in the class war that aligns them with their oppressors and turns them against their percieved enemies. I realized even our most interesteing communites house the consumerist wastelands that serve to deaden average Americans and pull them away from the light.