As someone who last week wrote a $365 check to the Town of Luther for a speeding ticket (valid, I was going 65 in a 55) and a ticket for “failing to yield to an emergency vehicle” (completely ridiculous, I didn’t pull over fast enough for Barney Fife) I take a tremendous amount of enjoyment in seeing a police force whose only seeming service is to poach money from highway travelers for a tiny town take such a black eye:

Jerry Pendley had worked for the Luther Police Department for about three weeks before his arrest by Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers on Monday. The U.S. Attorney’s office says Pendley lied on the documents by not noting he had been arrested and charged twice on suspicion of assault and battery.

moral of the story:

1. stay off Route 66 – take the Turnpike when you’re going between OKC & Tulsa
2. if you do happen to get a ticket in Luther, don’t go to court with a reasonable request to reduce payment on the meaningless ticket – they won’t do it and the judge will charge you $44 to appear in court
3. support politicians who strip little towns of the right to issue tickets on highways if their ticket revenue exceeds reasonable limits

Dear Spiderman 3,

Oh, how you suck. I mean you truly suck.

Normally, I don’t correspond with movies but on this occasion I really must get this off my chest. You really suck, and I mean it. Rather than just a drive by shouting, I think it may help us both move forward for me to explain just a few of the ways that you suck. So, here it goes.

First, I’m going to start with an easy one: Aunt B. She may be the worst old person character since Cocoon. What is she, just a platitude machine? Do you pull a string and she says crap like “The hardest thing to do is forgive yourself?” I haven’t seen this much emotional depth since the checker at Wal Mart asked me how my day was going.

And speaking of emotional depth, that is really all you have in this movie isn’t it? There is no good vs. evil it really just amounts to Spiderman vs. his wuss feelings. I hate to use other superhero movies to bring you down but when you’ve been exposed to the soul-searing evil of Heath Ledger’s Joker in the new Batman your bad guys seem about as evil as an Amway saleslady. OK, one guy is mad at you because you exposed his lies and fraud to your mutual employer and the other guy is mad because…. ummmm….. I don’t think you ever really went into that. (bad idea)

See your Spiderman will never give me real emotions, because you never allow him to exist in a real space where he has to make a hard choice (beyond whether or not to console Mary Jane when a freaking building is falling down). Your Spiderman just deals with emotions like he’s in a Lifetime movie starring Meredith Baxter-Berney.

See you wanted me to be repulsed by the “evil” choices that “Black Spiderman” took. (by the way that seems really racist when I think about it…) The problem is that I ended up pretty much liking Black Spiderman about 1000x better than normal Spiderman. Let’s review the major “evil” choices that “evil” Spiderman took:

1. He was mean to his landlord. This seems like fair play to me, that dude was always yelling at him. And while we’re on the topic, why does Spiderman have rent concerns? Doesn’t his inability to make even a small financial arrangement with the New York for his living conditions hinder his ability to fight crime effectively? Isn’t Spiderman just hurting New York due to his love of personal poverty?
2. He jazz danced down Broadway. Don’t even get me started with that damn scene.
3. He ate too many cookies from the landlord’s daughter. Was never quite sure while this was “evil”, she seemed to enjoy the whole thing.
4. He exposed a fraud whose lies endangered their mutual employer. The movie never even touches that it is a just thing to right a wrong, it only deals with emotions. “Oh, you hurt my feelings because you exposed me for the fraud that I am.” Batman wouldn’t deal with that crap.
5. He told whiny Harry the truth about his a-hole dad. Seemed like fair-play to me, the kid needed to know the truth. Especially since enabling his lie made him your mortal enemy and endangered your crime-fighting operation.
6. He was mean to Mary Jane by jazz dancing (again?!?) at her jazz club. This is the Mary Jane who brutally broke his heart by acting like she had an affair with his best friend. Seemed necessarily cathartic to me. She is a selfish girl who can’t sing well. She ain’t the Queen of Sheeba.

Finally, and maybe most egregiously – your superhero physics are all askew. So it seems that Spiderman can beat up regular men but is practically helpless agaist other superheroes. That just makes him the strongest human then, not a super-human. And the stupid sandman character, he can only be defeated by saying “I forgive you.” Then that just about makes him the best supervillan of all time. And he’s played by the guy from Wings which was an underrated show. Why didn’t they just make a movie about him?

So in conclusion, I hate you. I hate your stupid characters. I hate your lack of moral clarity. I hate your vendetta against the art of jazz dancing. And, I hate that you will make Spiderman 4 and even more bags of money.

Sincerely,
Bevan Houston