keeping mum

jake is very superstitious and never tells anyone about job interviews or articles he's reasearching, and if he does tell them, he doesn't tell them what they're for or about. i am just very afraid of failure and judgement, so if i don't tell someone about something i'm trying to do, it's because i'm afraid it won't happen and then they'll keep asking about it and then i'll have to admit my failure, ashamed. what makes it worse is, i talk a lot, and sometimes it's hard to keep things inside, and they just fall out of my mouth and before you know it family members with a possibly inflated sense of my potential are calling to ask if i've been accepted to berkeley yet (never. going. to. happen.). so lately i've been trying to keep more things on the d.l., like where exactly i am applying, what my aspirations are, and what i did while jake was at work this morning (a lot of places, i'm not really sure and that in itself is embarassing, read comic books and ate toast in bed which is not allowed). it's kind of fun to try and keep bizarre stuff secret by being vague. "hey, i like your pants. where did you get them?" "oh, thanks. just somewhere," (old navy). "hey, are you going out? where are you going?' "oh, nowhere," (the gym). see, the answers are boring, but when you don't admit them, they don't sound boring at all.

it has been way too long.

what?

a great thing happened this week

an old friend of mine came to town to interview at a hospital as a candidate for their med school program. but we actually didn't talk very much about that. we went to the bookstore, where all we looked at were cards, we got indian food which was not too spicy (anyone who orders the medium is a fool, and is going to end up on the street corner with frostbite in their extremities and the seventh circle of hell in their mouth), we went home to feed the cat where my friend was very generous to insist that his room is just as messy as our house (no way), we went to the nickelcade (the japanese game with video instructions, the biking game from which my entire body still hurts because the bikes are made for children, the dance dance revolution for your hands, a little gambling, a 3 nickel shooting game, more gambling, more nickels, tekken, more gambling. the amount of nickel-gambling was almost terrifying. we couldn't stop, and then when we were out of nickels, we waited around the machine on the off chance that some might just fall. thank goodness all we had were nickels. then we went to cash in our tickets. i told jake i would get him a prize, and i was just going to get a parachute man that we could throw off the bridge or something and then spend the rest on candy, but GUESS WHAT. the parachute men were NOT regular parachute men. they were star wars figurines, with parachutes! weird, because i don't think anyone ever had a parachute in star wars because they were all in space, but still cool, and even though i didn't have enough tickets the guy let me get one of each because i told him that for my birthday this year i went to the star wars exhibit at omsi. the COOLEST.), then we went to the bagdad for a delicious beer. all in all, a terrific time. nothing bad happened, everything good happened, and we both walked away feeling awesome about being friends.

dave hill dave hill dave hill

i also found this. it's amazing. i think the pet psychic and the comicon ones are the funniest.

update: that link doesn't seem to be working, so here is the address: www.davehillonline.com

mint chip milkshake

the other night i was kind of in a crappy mood, for some different reasons. first was that it was friday night and instead of going to an awesome party, i wanted to stay home and watch law and order. so i did, and that was pretty good. but then everyone came home all drunk and loud and made me feel bad for not going out on a friday night. they didn't actually say anything to make me feel bad, i just inferred that i was a loser. so, i got dressed up and took myself out. to carl's jr. for a milkshake. but it really wasn't as lame as it sounds. first, carl's jr is pretty far out there - it's kind of a drive. i actually didn't even know exactly where it was, or if i would be able to find it at all. so i got in the car and put on dookie and cruised around for a while feeling a lot like a teenager, you know that feeling when you are upset for no reason that you can really figure out so you try and pin it on a bunch of different things but it's not really sticking so you just listen to green day. then, right at the drum solo in emenius sleepus that i thought was awesome when i was like twelve, i found carl's jr. fortuitous! so i got one of those mint chip milkshakes that they have been advertising in that commercial where "milkshake" comes on and those two guys are rubbing cows. every time i see that commercial, first i laugh and then i have a desperate urge for a mint chip milkshake. so then i drove home and put on st. etienne's good humor, which i also listened to as a teenager but which goes a lot better with a milkshake. it does a really good job of making you feel like you're going to pull a thelma and louise, even when you're on your way home to not be mad anymore.

since that nothing has really happened. i went to work once, went to a show once, and finished the second season of carnivale, damnit. that show is so good and they cancelled it. people are retarded! oh, that's what happened. a guy i work with said that his mother has been teaching special ed for a lot of years, and he once heard her call someone a "fucking retard" on the phone, so it's okay for me to say it. oh, also another thing that happened is i finished the first two books of neil gaiman's "lucifer," which is AWESOME. i've been to the library twice since then to see if maybe they'd gotten it in and forgotten to email me, but they hadn't. and the library's not exactly close, either. i also finished the first volume of brian k/ vaughan's "runaways," which was really good. "y the last man" is pretty much one of my favorite series. i think vaughan is becoming my favorite writer - i feel like the true test is when someone who has done well on their own is asked to write for an ongoing series, or at least to write a plotline for an existing character, and it works. i read a volume of vaughan's mystique, and it was really good. i've also read some of grant morrison's x-men, which was terrible. i don't blame them for kicking him off the project early. you just don't mess with stan lee's work like that.

nerd out!

even though i was a marvel child, i never really got into ghost rider. i'm not really sure why; it's kind of right up my alley. i actually never got into spawn, either, at least not until i raided jake's comic collection, although it also rests on themes that are pretty appealing to me; vengeance, chains, a battle between the higher powers. anyway, i think that the new movie coming out is going to be pretty cool, so i decided to check out the backstory. as it turns out, both ghost rider and spawn are, like the green lantern, roles that are filled by various people through the years. unlike green lantern, however, both spawn and ghost rider end up in these predicaments (they are considered predicaments rather than an honor, like the ring) by promising their souls to the same demon, mephisto. mephisto is based on the demon mephistopheles (which comes from a latin phrase meaning "friend of faustus), a demon who has become part of christian mythology but who is not mentioned in the bible. the character of mephistopheles is believed to have evolved during the rennaissance, from the popularity of the story of doctor johann georg faust, the basis of goethe's "faust."

i love mythology. i'm going to spend my next three days off in front of the space heater reading a book on greek mythology i ordered from the library.

nothing to report

this is the first time i've had three days off with nothing big to do in quite a while. i know there's some stuff i should do: laundry, returning library books, getting ahead on grad school applications due in february, calling relatives, making any kind of decision. but i didn't do any of that! i read a stephen king novel in front of the space heater, watched numerous episodes of carnivale, and made a bunch of playlists for the car. it was great, like a mini vacation without travelling anywhere. but now i have all these playlists, and no long drives on the radar. i realize that the solution to this would be to clean my room while listening to one of them, but come on. the more time i spend in front of the space heater, the more time i want to spend in front of the space heater. actually, i wanted to go to the park today because it was nice, but jake didn't want to go, and i wasn't about to go by myself, so instead i sat in front of the space heater. tomorrow i'm going to buy a new rpg to play in front of the space heater. space heater space heater space heater space heater

HAHAHAHA

hey sarah, hope you feel better

so i went to a show tonight at dante's. it was pretty fashionable.
going out:
- fauxhawks
- their bastard brother, the rattail
- gwen stefani up-in-front do
- hooray!
coming up:
- pigtails (long and curly, short and nubby)
- mini bangs
next show:
- bring scissors
- cut off all pigtails in sight
- glue them to foreheads of people with mini bangs

i saw the hunches open for the black lips. thankfully, we missed the set of the opening-opening band, local retards reptilian civilian. they are pretty terrible. actually, the bassist is pretty good, but the whole band is dominated by this terrible frontman who thinks his shitty band is so awesome that they should be locally famous. they're obviously never going to get there on any kind of musical merit, so every show he takes his clothes off and tries to pull some stunt. but then the hunches played.

let me tell you what i know about the hunches. well, actually, i don't know that much about the hunches. but my roommates have some pretty terrific impressions of their frontman, hart. at the mention of his name, stephen cocks his head at a slightly retarded angle and says, over and over again, "i'm so fucked up, guys. guys, i'm so fucked up." andy says that hart claims it's his birthday every time andy sees him, and jake tells a story about hart shouting "what do you want? what's wrong with you?!" to repel unwanted advances. i was pretty excited to see him onstage, and he didn't disappoint. onstage, he was like a retarded three-year-old. i realize i've used the word "retarded" a lot so far today. first, it's really the only way to describe hart in person. second, i want to use it all the time and i'm tired of holding it in to be politically correct. anyway, i spent a lot of their set debating whether he was actually extremely fucked up, and that was why he was practically a dead ringer for an inebriated keith richards, or whether it was just his stage presence. i decided it was probably an act because there's no way he could be that fucked up and make it through a 45-minute set. also, there's this unspoken hierarchy in portland; who can be coolest by acting like they don't care at all about being cool. by acting retarded, hart had bested us all. the set included a mournful application to voltron, an impromptu standup but about "portland bee-ands, everybody loves ;em" and an extended metaphor about how portland bands are like restaurants and want to serve their audiences, which ended with hart's announcement that he didn't want any food, and then about thirty seconds of him shouting "bunny" into the microphone. but it wasn't a weird performance thing or anything - the band was great, but also hilarious.

the black lips were great, too. i mean, i really love them, and was excited to see them again, but their show did seem a little routine. but terrific. one of the guitarists had a grill. it was awesome and everyone had a great time. but it didn't end there. here is what happened while jake and i were in line for the merch table:

heart falls over, pushes his friend into me. his friend says, "sorry, don't mind him." and i said, "its okay, i don't." then heart says to this friend: "sorry. do you want a hug? DO YOU WANT ONE?!" and the guy is like "uhhh . . . no thank you," so he offers one to the guy on the other side of his friend by yelling "DO YOU WANT ONE?! DO YOU?! IT"S A TRAIN" and the guy was like "uhhh . . . no" and got out of there. then heart turns to me, and i thought he was going to ask me if i wanted a hug, which i probably would have agreed to, but instead he just yelled "DO YOU SEE ME?!" and i said "ummm . . . " and then he said, in a regular voice, "noooo, you like the black LIPS." i said back, using my voice i usually use on small, unreasonable children, "yeah, i do like the black lips, but i saw you too." "noooo," he said. "you like the black LIPS." "i do," i repeated, "but i saw you too. you were great." "TERRIBLE!" he shouted. "no!" i said. "i thought you were great! everyone did!" "TERRIBLE!" he shouted again. then he went on to say something to the effect of "you should get into the black lips before they get big. they're going to be the next best thing." "it's too late," i said. "i already like them." "NEVER!" he screamed. he actually reminded me a little of jack sparrow. "THEY'LL NEVER GET BIG! And then you can tell everyone that you liked the black lips before they NEVER GOT BIG!" "okay," i said. "i . . . i'll do that." "But NEVER tell anyone you knew the hunches. never admit it!" at this point, he straightened up and became dead sober. in a normal business voice, he said, "my name's heart, by the way. pleased to meet you" and shook my hand. i told him my name, and he repeated it, and then he spun around and walked away. as i stared after him, he turned back around, squinted, and pointed prophetically at me with one shaky hand, mouthing the word "NEVER." it was amazing. then on my way out he pretended to collapse on someone else and poured a drink all over me. at first i was like "aw crap, i'm going to smell like booze and be all sticky" but as it turns out, it was only water. i want to be just like him. AMAZING.

i've hit 1,000, most of which were me refreshing a couple times because i only like nice, round numbers, or at least multiples of five

i think the other themes have gone as far as they can go, so now it's on to animals just doing anything remotely human.

thank you for reading this, arya. in the future i will try harder to be in public places and report on those around me.

for now, i can report on jake or the cat. i try really hard not to be one of those people who talks about his or her cats on the internet, so i will stick to jake. it's freezing in our house, so we are watching jim lehrer and looking at the internet in front of the space heater. i think he's actually reading my blog as we speak. he didn't seem to be interested in any of the videos, nor did he seem to read very closely. that's fine, i like to tease him about not reading my blog, but i don't really care whether he does or not. my gums hurt from all of the cookies we just ate; i assume he feels the same way. wow, now he's using html to do something new to his blog. that's pretty impressive, and i have no idea where he learned how to do that. i feel like i've been taught that stuff about eight times and it just never sunk in.

today it snowed. i drove in snow for the first time, and it was pretty hairy. i have all-wheel-drive, so i was fine, but of course there were a bunch of yahoos on the road driving around like it was a regular morning, a bunch of buses with their ass ends swinging around when they tried to get up small inclines, and dozens of accidents on the radio. but i got to work just fine. in fact, i gave a ride to some individuals whose bus couldn't get up onto the bridge. they didn't look dressed for the winter; they looked cold and downtrodden at the prospect of a snowy walk across the river, no matter how MAGICAL everything looked (that is, totally magical). my new year's resolution was to try to do more nice things for strangers, like giving someone who is lost directions about what bus to take, what stop to get off at, and where to go from there (i did this on new year's day and it made me feel like a great person, so i resolved to do it). also, i have a pretty good idea of how much it sucks to walk in the snow in sneakers, having fallen on my ass on the way to the car. i also resolved, sort of seperately but kind of attached, not to lie to strangers so much. i lie to strangers a lot - sometimes because i feel uncomfortable sharing personal details, which is completely understandable and okay, sometimes because i want that person to think i'm a good person, which is understandable but it would be better if i was just honest, and sometimes just because, which is unacceptable. i did not tell any lies today.

at work i got really nervous that it would snow really hard, or warm up enough to rain but stay cold enough that the roads would freeze, and i wouldn't be able to drive home. so on my lunch, i went and got some boots so i could walk home if i had to. the boots i got are awesome, and were $5. i can't find a picture of them, but they are bright red and RAD. well, they're a little big so i scuffle around in them like a shy five-year-old with a runny nose, but when i'm standing still they're rad. as it turned out, i did not have to walk home, and then when i got home we went and played in the snow (which did NOT end with me pushed into the snowbank, crying, as jake predicted) and got some italian sodas. at the coffee shop, i read this book called "sole survivor", which is about the phenomenon of children murdering their parents for apparently no real reason and showing no real remorse but also not appearing insane. it made me want to have kids even less than i do now, which is not that much. i mean, i'm not going to lie, my body always wants me to stop and look in the window of baby gap at all the tiny little t-shirts, but my mind knows that a lot of cool stuff could still happen to me and doesn't want my body to ruin it. and now, i'm at home in front of the space heater watching bush bomb his interview with lehrer and the cat is snoring.

i think this would piss me off

a coffee shop: a hypothetical

hypothetically, if you are at a coffee shop where they are playing music that is pretty generally acceptable, and you have headphones and therefore the opportunity to listen to something that you REALLY like, but you are with someone who does not have headphones, it is polite not to use them, no? it's like in court, when the defendant can't have a glass of water because the jury will subconsciously be jealous. you would look like you were too good for both the coffee shop and the company. so you leave them in your bag, especially if the outing has been declared a "date," even just sort of. but what if the other person goes "el crappo," and then asks you if they can borrow the headphones that they know are in your bag? they are depriving you of an opportunity you had denied yourself as a courtesy to them, and if that isn't thoughtless, well, i don't know what is.

i think i am just bitter because the music is no longer "generally acceptable" and i have to listen to it, my headphones are going to come back having been in someone else's ears who i happen to know makes no effort to clean them, ever, and i can't just go home because it is TOO COLD and when i get there i have to get mad at someone about it and i hate confrontation so i'm just going to sit here and complain on the internet for a while. all in all, a pretty good example of how i am totally crazy.

tiny's: a coffee shop

i suspect my roommate of pocketing some money the rest of us gave him to buy heating oil, because we gave him enough to last the entire winter, or so i was told. then again, i suspect another roommate of turning the heat up to 70 degrees every time i'm not looking. either way, we are out of heating oil and the house is freezing, so i made a den out of blankets for the cat and headed for tiny's: a coffee shop. tiny's is awesome. they put cream cheese on your bagels for you, and a lot of it too, not like places that will half-assedly toast your bagel and then hand you some dinky little packet that always has a bunch of disgusting cream cheese juice in it too and juice included is never enough to satisfactorily cover even one half of your bagel. i hate that so much. but something i have decided i'm okay with is paying through the nose for fresh orange juice, because it is delicious and you feel good all day afterwards.

another thing i am pretty okay with is this couple at the table next to us. they are for sure dressed for prom: nice suit with boutonniere, sparkly blue dress with gloves and corsage. she's going to trip on her heels, though. ten dollars says she does it before they even get out of here. she definitely has braces. it's been so long since i've been an age where i didn't pity anyone my age with braces that i forgot how normal it is to have braces in high school. like, you can get a relatively attractive prom date, even with braces. it's not a handicap at all. anyway, they seem to be killing time with some sort of word game. this whole time i've been trying to figure out what the rules are, but it's impossible. for a while, they both had their cell phones out - you know, something you can look at so you don't have to look at each other (i know all about this) - and were saying cell-phone related words, like "ring," "voicemail," "message," etc. but then the guy also said "wormhole," and she thought he said "hormone." that was a tense moment. omg, i just heard him say "orgasm." well, my mind is blown.

i think they might just be saying things they can see. although, i'm pretty sure he did not see an orgasm from where he's sitting, so i guess i don't really know what the deal is after all. whatever it is, it's pretty retarded, so i hope their ride shows up soon. oh, "aurora borealis." how romantic. ooh! she countered with "tongue"! bad move because if she doesn't want to make out at the end of the night he's going to be pissed. now i have to go look up some stuff on urban dictionary so i can understand all the rap songs i downloaded from itunes.

i have been like this for as long as i remember

i have recently gotten pretty into visiting the dry sauna. at first, i couldn't stay in there very long because it got hard to breathe and i freaked out a little. then i slowly learned that if you roll with it, you breathe just fine. it's the panic that's inhibiting. it's especially nice when the swim team has temporarily taken over the locker room. if there is one thing worse than a gaggle of prepubescent girls, it's that gaggle in bathing suits and swim caps, giggling. during those times, the dry sauna is like a little fort. it's dark in there, and wood-panelled, and it just feels terrific to think about yourself in the world's tiniest, warmest ski lodge while all heck breaks loose in the shower. well today, i was there in the evening, and very much enjoying the world's tiniest ski lodge after a long day of hard work when a naked woman came in. as previously mentioned, i am pretty much a deer in the headlights around naked people. i said hello, but what to do after that? you can't look. i mean, you cannot look. you don't even want to! so do you look at the ceiling? the ground? it's horrible, and tangibly awkward, and the worst part is usually the other person is so cool with being naked that they think you are being insane and maybe you are but it is still terrible and no matter how hard you try you just can't be cool. the thing is, in the dry sauna, it's okay to close your eyes, because you're relaxing. so i did, immediately. but my posture may have belied my feigned nonchalance, because not a minute later - not a minute - i heard the door open and she was gone. i was relieved, but why had she left without even trying to experience the benefits of the dry sauna? i mean, she maybe took like three breaths. well, maybe she freaked out, i told myself. i know all about that. to tell the truth, the maybe half-minute she was there, i spent trying to decide when would be a good time to leave. even with my eyes closed, i didn't want to be in there. what if my eyes just flew open by accident, and i looked, and she saw me looking? a nightmare. but i didn't want to leave right away, because then it would be pretty obvious that i was like "oh god, a naked person! i gotta get out!" and that is not cool. so, when she left, i felt guilty because i thought she might have sensed my discomfort, but mostly i felt relieved. then, when i left the dry sauna, she was there, loitering outside. she made like she was going into the steamroom, but i knew that she had indeed sensed my discomfort and was angered by it, by my complete inability to deal with the concept of clothing-optional public spaces. when i turned into the shower, i peeked to confirm my suspicion of my own complicity. there she was - going into the steam room! not the dry sauna at all! nothing was my fault! except then, she turned and saw me looking. for shame.

i have been thinking this hard about things that happen between me and other people since i can remember thinking at all. you can imagine what my experiences with boys have been like. HORRIBLE. even just watching the o.c. leaves me emotionally exhausted. jake is the most low-key, minimal-drama person i have ever met. that is why this is to date the most successful relationship i've been in. sure, we both like comic books and star wars and some kinds of music, but those things are like trinkets you buy at the thrift store that look nice in the afternoon light coming through your window in the fall. they really don't matter.

oh no look at these

more to come.

recurring dreams

i have two sets of recurring dreams. in one, i have a beard, and at first i freak out and cry in the mirror but everyone else seems pretty cool with it, so i just leave it alone. i'm not sure if the second really qualifies as recurring, because it's different every time, but it's always about the same thing: this one old boyfriend. i haven't talked to him in probably around six years, except for this one horrible time when i was working as a waitress and he sat at one of my tables with someone who was obviously a girlfriend. i was so wired after that that they let me go home early, which NEVER EVER happened even if you cried. i got a ride home that night and made a new friend who had two lop-eared bunnies and a copy of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead on laser disc, but that story leads to an ashram and no one wants to go there. so starting around two years ago, about twice a month i have a really strange dream about this old boyfriend. this time, he had run away from a halfway house after being "rehabilitated" in some sort of institution, which he refused to tell me about. he found me staying at a hotel with my aunt in an unfamiliar city for a funeral. he came to our hotel room, i think handcuffed to someone and with a present he had made for me in a crafts class, an enormous pin with feathers tied onto it. the feathers were beautiful, but there was no way i could wear it without stabbing myself, it was so big. it was the most illogical present i had ever received, but how are you supposed to say that to someone who is insane? we hid from my aunt in the bathroom, and i got his handcuffs undone and told him i would meet him at a donut place around the corner from where the funeral was. when i got there, we decided to run away together, and it was the most satisfying thing in the world. all of the dreams end that way: i decide to dump jake for him and we are together forever. it's not like i wish we were still together, or getting back together. i don't even want to see him. we were in high school, so of course it ended badly, although i think it ended particularly badly even for high school. either way, it would be incredibly awkward and probably a little backhanded and evil if we ran into each other now. under no circumstances would we ever, ever decide to run away together, unless it was to some sort of duel or match of wits. so i have no idea what these dreams mean. i think freud was a crackpot with some interesting theories about society but little to nothing on the human psyche, but i can't shake the feeling that sometimes dreams mean something. i myself have had a few significant dreams that have told me some things about what i really think about people. usually, they're the sort of feverish dreams you have when you nap, so maybe they take on extra significance because of the fever; or, maybe all dreams are significant, but you only remember the ones during which you wake up, so you see those as significant. either way, these dreams keep coming back and really unsettling me, and i have no idea what to do about them. i tried looking him up on myspace just to make sure he's okay, but that's ridiculous. if he weren't, why would myspace tell me anything about it? maybe i'm just watching too much carnivale. i'm pretty sure my dreams aren't going to tell me about anything besides what's going on inside my own head.

if you are like me, you will know you have to read this as soon as you find out that it exists

awesome.

also, tim burton directed it. AWESOME.

this is slowly turning into a comic book blog, but i'm sort of impressed that i know enough about comic books to write this much

i realized that lately i have pretty much only written in this blog when i've had something to complain about, and while it's been pretty cathartic, i can't imagine that it reflects very well on me. let's talk about some things that i am pretty happy with right now.

i really love my mom. i had a great time with her when i was home. yesterday, i got a call from the company that's in charge of the security system at my house, and the fire alarm had gone off. i flipped my lid, because what if something happened to her? i know that sounds a little like a complaint, but really it's just evidence that i really, really care about her, which makes me happy. i'm really lucky to have a mother that is so awesome that it's easy for me to feel that way.

the cat has been surprisingly patient lately. usually he is up at five, and the second you move your hand or so much as sigh deepy, he is all over you trying to get fed. today he let me sleep until ten. ten! and i didn't even have to yell at him!

jake and i cleaned the house in preparation for finding a roommate, and it is still sort of clean. sort of. i mean, i can use the kitchen without too much trouble. that feels way good.

i saw the prestige again. still awesome. now, though, my ideas about nikola tesla are inextricably entwined with david bowie's music. and, christopher nolan is putting out a new batman - "the dark knight," although not based on frank miller's work - and heath ledger is playing the joker. my knickers are not in a twist over them picking a pretty boy, though. first of all, heath ledger is not a bad actor. second of all, in the original movie, the joker was played by jack nicholson, and portrayed as much older than batman (played by michael keaton). while this made for a great dynamic in that one movie because they were able to imply that the joker played a role in the deaths of the waynes, in the comic books the joker and batman are the same age, which leads to a completely different kind of adversarial relationship, which i feel will be reflected with this younger choice. not to pooh-pooh the first batman movie, though - of course, jack nicholson was terrific, but i feel that michael keaton doesn't get enough recognition for really setting the standard for how batman was going to be portrayed cinematically. he really distanced himself from the goofy adam west character (channeled later by george clooney in hands-down the worst batman movie ever), nailed the seemingly carefree drunkard millionaire playboy, and struck terror in the hearts of villains with the dead-serious, almost deadpan gravelly voice from the shadows. one of the reasons that i like christian bale in the role so much is that he takes pretty much all of his cues from this performance. also, i am really excited about the new spiderman. at first, i was sort of dismayed that they picked topher grace to be eddie brock. not that i don't like topher grace, but he's just so little and young. i always pictured eddie brock as older than peter parker, and much bigger. but then i talked to some coworkers who are even nerdier than me and reread some venom storylines, and eddie brock was much smaller before venom came along. i was also a little worried that they were going to try and tackle so many storylines in one movie. i mean, look at what happened with x3. gwen stacey, the sandman, and venom. they could probably make two movies for each of those plotlines alone. also, ten bucks says something's going to happen with both doc connors and the hobgoblin. but, i figure that like x3, this movie will probably be a jumping-off point for at least a couple different storylines, if not a couple different characters. they could do a whole venom movie, and it would be awesome. ron howard's daughter playing gwen stacey, i'm not too sure about, especially since the trailers make it look like he goes after gwen while he's still with mary jane. but she does look okay in the blonde wig. and i'm really excited about the dude from wings playing the sandman. i think he'll be great.