Arachne Died of Pride

I'm at this later than normal, so it will be somewhat cursory, but for good reasons, or at least for what used to be normal reasons. I went out with the now-adult children on a Thursday night to see a Friday-premiering movie on "opening night" at the galacto-tron spaceship theater, the one with all the neon and the people.

This isn't going to be an actual review of the MASSIVE BLOCKBUSTER FILM we went to see, but I guess I should say (even if the date makes it obvious) that it was Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film about two strangers who meet on a train between two nameless European cities in the decade after the second world war and engage in a mostly wordless interaction that touches on both the banality and the existentially inescapable core truth of human loneliness, filmed in black and white and with a score made entirely by hucking raw chickens at a gong.

OK, actually it's about Spider-Man (sometimes in human form, but mostly in CG representation) doing Spider-Man stuff. And "stuff" is the right word because it is (no spoilers here) absolutely testing every single machine-stitched seam trying to hold this thing together, hoo-wee.

I stopped counting new plot points when we reached one million, round about the 40-minute mark.

The point these days is less the film (it was fine! I had fun) than the chance to reconvene the full body of the Family and not just a rude quorum circumstances and the natural course of fucked-up human social development allows these days. Like I get it, I'm glad I no longer have to drive them everywhere, but hey, drive this way sometimes, good god.

I think of the kind of son I am and the attention I pay my own (both living) parents and how that bodes for the future with my own adult children and... yeah, I'm going to appreciate all the moments we can manage to conjur. Even if not-particularly-edifying pieces of mass-appeal pop art have to be the instigating event. I'll allow Spider-Man to keep doing that for me as long as he continues to display the power to do so. LET THIS BE CONSTRUED AS PUTTING YOU ON-NOTICE, SPIDER-MAN. Fail me at your peril.