Spidey Gets It Done, Mission Accomplished

photog 4 Comments Current Events, Movie Reviews, Reclaiming the Family, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , ,

I went with my three youngest grandsons to see the new Spiderman movie; “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”  And shockingly, I actually enjoyed it.  We got there early enough to pick out good seats and let the kids buy mass quantities of popcorn and sugary drinks.  So reinforced by these provisions we took our seats and watched the half hour of advertisements and coming attractions for all kinds of useless products and awful movies.  Now it’s been a few years since we went to this theater and in the meantime, it went out of business and been refurbished by its new owners.  And they installed luxury pleather powered recliners instead of the usual crappy movie seats of yesteryear.  So far, so good!

So, I missed the previous Spiderman installment but I was told that in it another MCU character (Doctor Strange) performed some kind of magic-adjacent activity which eliminated knowledge of Peter Parker’s existence completely from the human race including all his friends and the girl (MJ) that he loves.  Now this seems particularly stupid but that is the situation.  So, one of the plots of this movie is Parker getting up the courage to tell MJ that she has forgotten that they were once in love.  Okay, that’s an even stupider plot element but let’s give the writers some slack to try and make that work.  Then there’s a plot element where Peter is having major problems with his spider powers.  His ability to shoot webs and other skills seems to come and go.  Okay, this is more of a standard superhero plot element so full speed ahead.

And finally, some telepath is able to take control of human minds and force them to attack a shadowy government agency called the Department of Damage Control (DODC) for some unknown reason.  I won’t give away any spoilers by saying that DODC isn’t a benign organization and the telepath controlling minds isn’t completely unjustified in these actions.

Well, before the end we have a whole sequence where Bruce Banner is telepathically controlled and forced to turn into the Hulk with predictable cataclysmic results and we find out that Spiderman has a quasi-working relationship with the comic book character “The Punisher” an Italian American New Yorker whose real name is Frank Castle.  Castle is a vigilante who doesn’t have as many scruples as Spiderman when it comes to using firearms to thwart criminals.  As an Italian American native New Yorker myself, I especially relished Castle’s extremely accurate Bensonhurst accent and vocabulary.  It felt like coming home.

Well, anyway, the plot moves along in a reasonably superhero-ish manner and naturally our hero comes out the other side with some progress in his personal problems but no permanent solutions so he can be just as conflicted in the next Spiderman movie sometime in 2028.  And that is all that can ever be said for a Spiderman movie.  Also, the special effects were especially deft and fun to watch.  So, the movie was quite entertaining and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.  Or maybe it was the snacks.

Anyway, mission accomplished.  We returned home and Camera Girl loaded down a table with spaghetti and meatballs along with some biscuits that these grandsons especially love to dunk in a meat sauce.  What more could I ask for?

19AUG2026 – Quote of the Day

photog 1 Comment Quote of the Day ,

But mankind—the race would perish did they cease to aid each other.—From the time that the mother binds the child’s head, till the moment that some kind assistant wipes the death-damp from the brow of the dying, we cannot exist without mutual help. All, therefore, that need aid, have the right to ask it of their fellow-mortals; no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

Sir Walter Scott

18AUG2026 – This’N’That

photog 2 Comments Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,

Tomorrow, I bring some of the grandsons to see the latest Spiderman movie.  What is this, the ten millionth Spiderman movie?  Well, the oldest grandson is boycotting the film because he’s reached Marvel saturation.  And I can’t blame him.  I feel that no matter how many multiverse iterations they manage to shoehorn into the plot, I’ve already seen before what will be flashing across the screen.  But, regardless, I can’t pass up the chance to hang out with my younger descendants in their own element.  I can buy popcorn and their carbonated sugar water of choice and be one of the kids at least one more time.  What’s better than that?

And afterward, Camera Girl has promised them their favorite meal; spaghetti and meatballs.  We will gather around the dining room table and I’ll see what they have to say about Summer 2026 which ends for them next week.  And I’ll tread carefully because mentioning school would be highly insensitive.  I remember only too well how critical it is to forego the s-word this close to Labor Day.  But I am interested in hearing what they enjoyed most this year.  But I also want to just hear what’s on their minds.  They’re growing by leaps and bounds and I almost don’t recognize the little kids they were in the teenagers that they’ve become.  So, it’s important I keep some continuity in the relations so I don’t feel too disoriented by their rapid metamorphoses.

So, I’ve sold over four hundred copies of my book.  Hmmm.  Not exactly a national best seller by any stretch of the imagination.  And in the last ninety days I sold a little more than ten thousand pages on Kindle Unlimited (KU) which equals about fifty full books.  And based on the royalty data that means a book equals about a dollar of royalties to me.  Well, all I need is nine hundred, ninety-nine thousand six hundred more sales and I’ll be a millionaire.  In your face Elon Musk!  Seriously, it apparently takes a lot more than what I did in order to market a book successfully.  It’s a little humbling but I still want to pursue finding a larger audience for the book so since the ninety-day window of Kindle Unlimited ends today, I’m going to suspend KU so that I can include “The Sniper” on the next Based Book Sale.  Getting the book in front of right-leaning sf fans seems like the right way to grow its audience.  We’ll see how that works out.  But regardless of my lack of millionaire author status. I think I’ll start the sequel after the summer.  I have had some complaints that I need to provide closure on a number of plot and character situations.  I think the biggest complaint is that Mel needs to be explored to find out how this AI came about and where she leads to in the story and in Cutter’s life.  Personally, I’m more intrigued (and befuddled) about how Connors is going to stabilize his organization after the events of the nuke attack on his underground facilities.  I think I’m going to devote considerable thought to how he decides to influence the future shape of social/commercial/political life in the radically altered American landscape.

Well, that’s enough.  Enjoy Tuesday.

And … I’m Back

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“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”  Huzzah! I’m back.  Like a Phoenix rising over Arizona.  Like Prometheus released from his cruel shackles I am back again!

Now what to discuss?  Of course, Jason Arday!

I mean this story is practically unbelievable.  Arday was the poster boy for DEI overreach.  Someone who was illiterate until he was eighteen was given a doctorate and then made the youngest black professor at Cambridge University with a dissertation that was plagiarized from the work of another black doctoral candidate.  And then there are the outrageous lies on his resume and about his private life including the statement that he ran 30 marathon races in 35 days with six of them on a broken leg.  He claimed to be a college instructor in Ohio at a college that had no knowledge of him at all.  He even claims to have had brain cancer without anyone else having ever heard of it.  And after being exposed as a fraud he has now, apparently committed suicide.

Presently, the Left is attempting to frame the people that uncovered his various frauds as his murderers.  A few have started describing his death as a “lynching.”  Well, I have an alternative opinion.  My underlying thesis is that DEI as it is currently perpetrated in academia is responsible for Arday getting into the terrible mess he suicided over.  If his thesis advisor had checked his work against the other published works in his field they would have discovered that he was a plagiarist.  In fact if they had bothered to check his references they would have known that several of them were fake.  And based on the comments by several of his students who have come forward, Arday was absurdly unqualified to teach in his discipline and should have been close to being discharged by the university already.  The fact that the department that gave him his doctorate degree didn’t acknowledge how woefully unqualified he was to teach at Cambridge proves that he was being hired as a DEI figurehead to show Cambridge’s commitment to social justice even at the cost of depriving his students of a decent education in that subject matter.  So DEI at Cambridge is responsible for Arday’s mess and is therefore the root cause for his death.

Now, Arday is only one of several black academicians recently exposed for plagiarism and other fraudulent practices.  This recent trend seems to have as its source a willingness of honest academicians to admit that “the emperor has no clothes.”  Colleagues who have watched as universities rewarded black academicians for substandard work now see that it is safe to speak up.  And now that they have, the truth has penetrated into the open and more and more cases will surface.

Jason Arday had a wife and two children.  His death is a catastrophe for them.  I take no pleasure in it.  But if his wife is looking to start a lawsuit then Cambridge University is the logical defendant to sue.  They should be punished for allowing plagiarism and fraud to be their public policy.