The Amazing Grouchoman

            I guess my dentist’s office were only on holiday till Tuesday, since they finally answered the phone on Wednesday and gave me an appointment for late Thursday afternoon. It would be nice if they could mould a full tooth on top of what little there is left of my incisor, but I have my doubts.

            I finally found a full version in French of Boris Vian’s book of short stories, “Le Loup Garou”. I found it on a Russian site. I also noticed recently that the other Russian site, Gen Library, has lots of other Boris Vian books. The Russians seem to appreciate the French literature a lot more than Anglophones do.
            That night I watched “Captain America: Civil War”. It had a much simpler and less interesting story contrived to set up a situation in which the heroes would be battling one another than the Batman Versus Superman movie did. The film introduced The Black Panther to the Marvel film universe, and his portrayal was not too bad, except that they decided to make his suit bullet proof. As for the character, “Bucky”, I have never liked him. He shouldn’t have existed in the comic book as Captain America’s version of Robin in the first place, so there was no reason to rewrite him as an adult best friend of Steve Rogers.

            The only really cool part of the movie was the introduction of the new Spiderman. He kind of stole the show, from his first scene, even when he was a dork. He’s got to be the youngest Spiderman ever in a movie, but the original Spiderman in the comic book was a high school student, so that’s a nice change. He told Tony Stark that he’d only had his powers for three months. There’s a funny scene when he’s fighting the Falcon, who says, “I don’t know how many fights you’ve been in, but there’s not supposed to be this much talking!” In another scene when he’s fighting Bucky, who’s trying to punch him, he exclaims, “Oh, that’s so cool! You’ve got a metal arm!” 

            They’ve got to make Spiderman’s one-liners funnier though. They should get the guy that wrote Deadpool’s lines. In the comics, Stan Lee wrote some hilarious patter for Spiderman, like when he used his webbing to pin The Vulture's wings and Spiderman was sitting on the villain’s stomach as they were falling through the Manhattan sky. The Vulture began to babble and beg Spiderman to save him but Spiderman just asked, “Are you sure you weren’t vaccinated with a phonograph needle?” But I just discovered that Stan Lee stole that from “Duck Soup”. I’ve always thought though that there was a lot of Groucho in the original Spiderman. 

            The only major problem I have with this new Spiderman is that they’ve given Peter Parker a far too young Aunt May by having her played by Marissa Tomei. She has to be old because Peter has to be constantly worried about her. She’s supposed to be one of his many problems.